Community
What’s up guys, my name is Yiming and I wanted to share how God has been working in my life over these last two terms. Before that, I’ll first share a bit about the background of my faith. Growing up I was raised in a Christian household, so I would find myself at church every Sunday. Because of this, I’d tell others I identified as Christian. Despite telling others this, I don’t think I can confidently say I ever took my faith seriously. I would serve my youth ministry but looking back, I think it was more for fun or to hang out with my church friends than for God.
This was basically the closest I got to having a relationship with God throughout my entire time in high school. Then, when I came to Waterloo for university, I lost all communication with God. I didn’t go to church, I stopped seeing any Christian friends, and I didn’t attend CCF or any other Christian fellowships. At the beginning of last term, I decided to check out CCF. Initially, I had the intention of just going to make friends and have a good time, with no plans to reconnect with my faith or with God. Thankfully, He had other plans.
Through CCF, I finally began to find a sense of consistency in my faith. I was so blessed to have such wise and loving upper years as the first few people I talked to. By just spending time with them and seeing how loving they were to others and how they embraced God’s love lit up a spark to rediscover my faith. I was then able to meet some friends through intramurals and really get to connect with them at my first retreat last term. The theme for that retreat was Unity in Christ and it wasn’t until recently that I truly understood how powerful it really is. But before I get to that I wanted to share about some of my experiences last retreat and my takeaways.
Going into my first CCF retreat I was still at the beginning stages of rediscovering my faith so I still didn’t really understand God’s love and what I was looking for, but I knew that I wanted to have it and thought surely this retreat would have some answers. By the end of retreat, one of the biggest things I was able to take away was the deeper conversations I was able to have that I most likely wouldn’t have had anywhere else. The opportunity to just be vulnerable and share things that have been heavy on my heart and to find comfort in the advice of others is something I’ll forever be grateful for. Plus getting to meet a bunch of lovely people of course.
So yeah the first retreat was a very cool and valuable experience, found some peace from being vulnerable and discovered that I had a support system around me. Following retreat, I continued to actively seek God to grow in my faith, constantly asking upper years tough questions that came to my mind and just trying to find answers for myself through the word. By the time it was finals season, I was able to confidently say that I had found peace in God knowing I had a loving father always watching my back and knowing that he had a plan for me.
This was definitely one of the biggest moments for me, but a new problem arose. I was starting to be filled with nagging thoughts of wondering “how long will my relationship with God be like this for?” Is what I’m experiencing just a phase? Throughout the term, I often heard about spiritual highs and spiritual lows and I often thought that I was going through a spiritual high and that it was going to crash soon, especially since I was about to leave for a co-op term away from the community I was able to grow so much in. But God had a plan for me.
After returning home to Hamilton, I was actually invited to go to McMaster CCF Retreat because some of my Hamilton friends I knew are in the fellowship. I was more than willing to go and the second week of January I found myself at circle square ranch with a new community of Christians. Since I didn’t really know anyone I didn’t expect to be able to grow my faith a lot during my time there. Because of that mindset, I had blinded myself from all the work God was doing that weekend.
On top of that during year sharing I learned of some struggles that their third years were going through and produced this idea of a lack of community in my head of McMaster CCF as a whole. However, the one thing I was able to take away from that retreat was the amount of new Christian friends I made there. It wasn’t until the following two weeks that I started to see God’s plan for me coming into place.
Following retreat, I ended up going to Mac campus every day for like the entire day (like 830am to 10pm lol) because I was waiting to hear back from some co-op interviews and my start date for the job I got was Jan 30th so I had time to kill. During my time there I was able to take advantage of the relationships I made during retreat and quickly integrate myself into the Mac CCF community. In a way I was slowly able to see how wrong I was about my initial thought of Mac CCF’s lack of community and that it was just as strong as Waterloo CCF’s.
After the two weeks I started regularly attending Friday night CCFs there because I would come back home from co-op every weekend. One week it was testify night, a time where you are able to share about your experiences with God, and that was when everything clicked for me. Just seeing everyone be so vulnerable about the struggles they went through or are going through really cemented how strong the community was and listening to how God was working in everyone’s life made me come to the realization that God is not only doing so much good in my life he’s doing that to everyone else as well.
Whether it was Waterloo or Mac CCF, God’s love is present and all the same everywhere, and that’s when I really understood “Unity in Christ”. I was also given the answers to my concerns of falling into a spiritual low. I now know that whenever I feel I’m slipping away from God, I can easily remind myself of his presence by looking at all the good things that God is doing in the lives of those around me and finding encouragement that He truly is there, always at work. This is enough for me because the majority of the time when my faith falters is when I have random moments of doubt if God is really there working.
Another realization that I had while reflecting on my recent growth in faith, was simply how crazy it is for me to be where I am now with God. I would often hear fellow brothers and sisters share about how God had turned their lives around and done a complete 180 as they found Him. Each time I heard of these amazing testimonies I would simply disregard them, thinking that something like that would never happen to me. How could I go from not even being able to confidently say I believe to having an intimate and loving relationship with God? But let me be living proof that it is possible, and that God’s love is so real.
However, I want to emphasize that it didn’t just happen without me doing anything. The amount of time and energy I spent seeking him and trying to learn more about him is bewildering to me still today. It’s not something I realized until later, but if you look for Him, He will come to find you. Although I spent so much time and energy, not for a single moment of my journey did I feel tired or fatigued. God’s wonders are so amazing.
At the start of next month is the Waterloo CCF retreat for this term, and I will also be attending that. I think that’s why I felt called to share this because I want those who are going to really take advantage of how amazing of an opportunity it is to grow close with God, and the community he’s placed us in. Whether that be taking the time to be vulnerable at retreat, or just making new friends to help grow closer into the community everything retreat has to offer is so powerful.
My personal goal is to give back to the community for all the things that the community has done for me. So if you’re reading this, even if you’re not going to retreat, feel free to reach out anytime if there’s anything on your mind or just want to chill. I am more than willing to do any of these things. GOD IS GOOD.
