Reflections on Undergrad

7 lessons that I learned from undergrad that have grown my relationship with God

The most beautiful building on campus (source: University of Waterloo website).

As the undergraduate chapter of my life ends, I want to take some time to reflect on some of the most important lessons that I have learned over the last 5 years:

1. Our effort and God’s effort in dealing with sin
2. Praying for others
3. Serving others
4. Making time for God and others, even when inconvenient
5. The reasons why we go to church and fellowship
6. The resurrection in evangelism
7. Being a good example to others

I hope that some of these lessons will help you in your spiritual journey.

1. Our effort and God’s effort in dealing with sin

Every Christian undergoes the process of sanctification, that is, the process in which one becomes holier — acting and thinking in ways that please God. This process is enabled by the Holy Spirit (2 Thes 2:13, 1 Pt 1:2), but we ourselves need to make an effort to follow through (2 Pt 1:5–7).

One key change in the life of the sanctified Christian is the reduction of sin (e.g. 1 Thes 4:3). Now a natural question for a Christian to ask is: Have I put enough effort into conquering sin? This question rises especially when the reduction of sin is less evident.

This question in particular troubled me for a good part of spring 2018. It was troubling for a good reason — a lack of reduction of sin can indicate a lack of sanctification, which indicates the lack of the presence of the Spirit, which finally indicates a lack of salvation (Rom 8:9). But if you find yourself struggling with this question, do not be dismayed, as your struggling with this question is evidence of the Spirit’s work.

1.1 100% God, 100% us

As stated above, both the Holy Spirit and we ourselves participate in the process of sanctification. But what percentage of this work is performed by the two? Is it 50–50, 80–20, or 40–60? The answer is that both contribute 100% to the work of sanctification.

I like this answer for a few reasons. For one, any contribution percentage — say 50% Spirit and 50% us — can be interpreted as a standard God expects us to meet in order to be considered Christian, which clearly contradicts salvation by faith alone. With the 100%-100% answer, we can be assured that God is pleased with our progress. Second, the answer highlights the importance of both components to sanctification and shows that they are not independent of each other. Indeed, the Spirit helps us in our efforts to conquer sin, and our efforts to follow the Spirit, in turn, enables Him to work even more in our lives. Third, I find it poetic that similar 100%-100% answers are found elsewhere in Scripture, such as the God-man nature of Jesus: Jesus is 100% man and 100% God.

Overall, the fact that both God and ourselves contribute 100% to conquering sin is an encouragement that even if you don’t find that your sins are reducing despite your efforts to do so, you will not be condemned by God.

1.2 Our effort — taking practical steps

I now address a pattern that I have observed in my own life. Oftentimes, we feel convictions from the Spirit to make a change in our behaviours to further glorify God. This can be a conviction to spend more time with God or to address certain sins. We typically get these convictions during church sermons or fellowship sessions — any time we have opportunities to reflect on our spiritual state. We may have the desire to follow through with the convictions, but when we are done reflecting, we forget about the convictions and we continue to live our lives unchanged.

A possibly relatable example is the following: you attend a sermon and the Spirit convicts you to take prayers more seriously. In the moment, you agree with this conviction and tell yourself that in the next week, you will make sure to take time to pray. But after the sermon, you completely forget about this resolution and thus do not take time to pray during your busy week.

One solution that comes to my mind is to take smaller, actionable steps (à la SMART goals). The idea is to concretely realize an abstract spiritual goal into something that can be easily followed. In the example above, we can expand our desire to pray more by determining at what time to pray or how long to pray. We can use a reminder app, alarm, or an accountability group to remind us every day. We may have to consider cutting down on other things in our lives that take time and focus from our prayers, such as work or screen time. And if our prayer time is not improving, then we should re-evaluate our strategies and modify methods if necessary.

Ideally, we come up with actionable steps for spiritual goals during the times we receive convictions from the Spirit. So when the Spirit convicts us to pray more, we should immediately think about steps to reach this goal instead of keeping it as a pipe dream. Think of the conviction as coming from the back of your mind — instead of letting the conviction creep back, drag it out to the forefront of your mind. This can be difficult since the Spirit’s convictions are contrary to our sinful nature. For example, you are convicted to pray more, but you know that this would likely involve cutting down on your free time, and so your lack of desire to follow through plummets. But the hope is that by specifically targeting the things that distract us from praying through actionable steps, we are more likely to follow through with the Spirit’s convictions when the time comes for us to pray.

In order to develop a good habit, we must both realize its importance and find enjoyment. The Spirit helps us to realize the importance, but oftentimes, we don’t find enjoyment. Observe the following positive feedback loop: when we do something, we find it enjoyable, which in turn makes us want to keep doing it. By taking practical steps, we attempt to use discipline in the place of enjoyment in order to place ourselves into such a loop, hoping that obligation soon turns into enjoyment.

1.3 God’s effort — trust in God’s timing

We can make the effort of following through with the Spirit’s convictions, but it may be the case that we don’t observe many changes in our lives. During fall 2020 through winter 2021, my desire for spending time with God was stagnating. I expressed my frustrations to a breakoff group during my church’s prayer meeting and the group members encouraged me to be patient for God’s timing.

Indeed, God may call us to persevere in our efforts to grow and rely on Him for strength. After all, God works in our weaknesses (2 Cor 12:9–10) — a clear example of this is Paul’s thorn (2 Cor 12:7), which God did not remove despite Paul’s pleas for removal. Who are we to complain to God that we aren’t growing (Rom 9:20)? Note that the key here is that we continue to persevere. We should not leave everything up to God and make no effort ourselves.

2. Praying for others

God wants us to pray for others (Jas 5:16). When I joined my first ever discipleship group in Pittsburgh, for the first time, I took down the prayer requests of the other members and prayed for them throughout the week. That week, I found that I enjoyed prayer more than I have ever in the past. Here are some reasons why I think I enjoyed prayers more:

• The focus of the prayer shifted from myself to God and others.
• I always had something to pray about — this helps if you are struggling to think about what to pray about.
• I was spending more time with God in prayer.
• I could more easily see the effects of prayer by seeing how God was working in others’ lives.

I keep track of prayer requests with 2 methods. For requests from groups that meet regularly, such as discipleship groups, I like to use a shared Google document so that everyone in the group can pray for everyone else throughout the week. The document can also be used to keep track of how our prayer requests change over the weeks and how God has answered our prayers. I keep all other requests in a note on my phone. I don’t go through everybody’s prayer requests every night, but I will cycle through them during the week.

I encourage you to start taking down prayer requests of others and praying for them throughout the week. Take the effort to actually write down requests (e.g. on your phone) rather than memorizing them so that you won’t forget the requests, and so that you can ask for updates later on. Lastly, take time to ask “How can I pray for you?” during conversations — especially catch-up conversations in CCF or church. This also doubles as a method for improving intentionality, if this is something you are also trying to work on.

3. Serving others

God also tells us to serve others (Mt 23:11, Gal 5:13). During my time in Pittsburgh, one leader continued to push me to find ways to serve the Christian community back home. I took this to heart, as 2 school terms later, I led my first small group and discipleship group at CCF.

During my times of service, I noticed these personal benefits:

• Increased dependence and time spent on God
• Opportunities to witness the growth of group members
• Form better connections with people within fellowship

I know that many are hesitant to serve. Three common reasons I hear — and I struggled with these too — are not having the right motivation, not feeling adequately equipped, and not having enough time.

As for motivation, a church elder once told me, “It is better to do good with imperfect motivations than to not do good at all.” The hope is that we begin serving with anticipation that God will perfect our motivations. If you wait until you have perfect motivations before you serve, you will never end up serving. Of course, there are limitations to this saying. For example, you should not serve as CCF chair if you just want the prestige of being chair.

Regarding being equipped, it all comes down to relying on God for strength. There is no expectation on those who serve to be perfectly equipped. Everybody has spiritual gifts (1 Pt 4:10), though oftentimes you will have to discover what they are. Some skills are most easily developed through serving. For example, a DGL requires knowledge and the ability to lead discussions, which is easily developed in a role similar to a DGL. Try out different roles and see what works and what doesn’t. For myself, I found that the DGL role was quite suited to my strengths while being a good SGL was much more difficult. Again, there are limitations — for example, a DGL should be very familiar with the gospel.

I will address time in a later section.

In summary, if you feel a nudge towards a certain role and you feel that you have the basic qualifications, trust in the Spirit and give the role a try.

3.1 Reflections on SGL/DGL

Below, I reflect on my experiences as both an SGL and a DGL. For those thinking about trying SGL or DGL, I hope these reflections are helpful.

There are many different ways to lead a DG, but I typically aim for a method that balances learning and community. The most recent method I used for leading a DG is to start with 1 hour of sharing and prayer. We share highs and lows of the week, progress on spiritual disciplines, prayer requests, accountability reports, and answers to 2 questions of varying depth — from icebreaker level to deeper spiritual level. I then spend the remaining hour on the study topic. Outside of the weekly meetups, I like to pair members off with the express intent of building up relationships — typically, pairs will catch up one-on-one through a meal, but I invite pairs to try other bonding activities as well. In particular, I do not expect pairs to do accountability with one another and instead prefer to do it with the entire group. I would say that the most important qualities of a DGL are: the ability to guide discussions and ask meaningful questions; and the ability to establish community and vulnerability.

I found being an SGL to be much more taxing than being a DGL. It’s relatively easy to be a competent SGL, but much more difficult to be a good, impactful SGL. Many people, myself included, walk into the role thinking that the primary job of an SGL is to lead Friday-night Bible studies (I like to say that if this were the case, then you would actually be called a BSL — a Bible Study Leader). Leading a Bible study isn’t actually so difficult, because you would attend a pre-study to ensure you discuss the right content, and because you can enlist help from your SG co-leader or knowledgable SG members. I soon realized that the community-building aspect is equally, if not more, important. Ideally, an SGL takes extra effort to individually minister to group members and provides opportunities outside of Friday nights for the group to bond. You can take time to check up one-on-one with members, or organize weekend group events. The difficulty is that, unlike in a DG, there is no minimum level of commitment for an SG member. Thus, your efforts to build the group may result in little return. I hope I haven’t discouraged anyone from becoming an SGL, but I aim to show that the qualifications of a good SGL lean more towards community building, rather than the ability to lead Bible studies.

4. Making time for God and others, even when inconvenient

A common prayer request that I get from others is to spend more time with God in devotionals, Bible readings, prayers, etc. I have had a similar prayer request for the last year, which was to be able to make time for others, even when it is inconvenient for me. Normally, I schedule my time first, then reserve time if others need me. However, in the past, this scheduling would be fairly rigid, in that, if I was needed during ‘me time,’ I would not help out until my ‘reserve time.’

A saying that comes to my mind is, “if you really care for something, you will be able to make time for it.” The contrapositive of that saying comes back to bite me: “If you aren’t able to make time for something, it means you must not really care for it.” Indeed, this is a fairly hard saying to accept: “If I can’t find time for God, then I don’t really care about Him.”

We typically organize our time around our priorities, in decreasing order. This organization can be intentional (e.g. scheduling time to do homework) or unintentional (e.g. playing games during study time). So I reckon that if you can’t find time for God, it is because the rest of your day is already booked with higher-priority items. Having something higher-priority than God is a huge problem — it is idolatry, and God detests it (Ex 20:3–5, Zec 13:2). So the simple solution is to first purposefully set aside time for God and arrange other things around that time. See Section 1.2 for advice on developing discipline. By disciplining ourselves to have time with God, the hope is that our priority for God will increase.

Increasing priority for others can work slightly differently due to the spontaneous nature of others’ needs — allocating a set time during the day doesn’t always work. My thought for this is that we accept schedule modifications in order of increasing priority. That is, we will only override an event with a higher-priority event. Thus, the reason why we don’t make time for others is because doing so would override something we deem to be higher priority, which is typically something self-focused. So the solution is to place others above ourselves through humility and service (Phil 2:3–4), and to develop the discipline of reorganizing our schedules.

There aren’t many excuses for not finding time for God. But for finding time with others, understandably, you may have to worry about fitting time in your busy schedule, or even about burnout. First, I address worries about fitting time. This address is specifically targeted towards those who have not served yet but are considering. In my own life, I notice that the amount of work that causes me to feel ‘very busy’ is quite a large range. The implication is that if you haven’t experienced the absolute upper limit of your work capacity, then you may be surprised at how much work you can take on! The explanation behind this is that as you fit in more tasks, within reason, we become more efficient with our time and don’t become distracted as easily. Of course, we never forget that it is God that ultimately sustains us, and so we should always depend on Him for strength to complete our responsibilities that glorify Him (Phil 4:13). In short, my suggestion — if you are about to serve for the first time and are worried about fitting time — is to go for it, and to rely on God for strength.

Addressing burnout, I can think of two distinct cases: burnout from a combination of school/work and service; and burnout primarily from over-service. The differences are subtle but important to note — an example of the former would be taking 6 hard school courses in a term and serving as a DGL, whereas an example of the latter would be serving in 5 different CCF and church ministries. For the former, I would suggest reaching out to others for prayer and assistance, and also discerning whether God wants you to cut back on work, service, or distractions. For the latter, consider delegating work to others; trusting that God can get things done without your input; and determining motivations for service, being careful to note if the motivation is obligation, pride, or acceptance. Replacing personal time with God with service is a huge red flag. A quote that comes to mind is that “God cares more about your relationship with Him than anything you can ever do for Him.” Carefully discern through your time with God whether He really wants you to serve at your current level, or if it’s time to cut back.

5. The reasons why we go to church and fellowship

Consider the following questions: Why did you start going to CCF? Why do you continue to go to CCF? Why are you going to the church you’re going to now?

Hopefully, it is not the case that the only motivation pushing you to attend CCF or church is other people; for instance, going to CCF because friends are there, or going to church out of peer/parental pressure. Of course, the reason why this motivation is not ideal is because once those people are gone, you will have very little desire to stay rooted in a Christian community. This issue is pervasive both during and after university — the 2 periods of life where many become apostate are near the start of university and right after university. I initially decided to attend CCF and Trinity Bible Chapel because I knew some people going there, but thankfully, these were not the only factors pushing me to attend.

In my lower years, the primary motivation that pushed me to go to fellowship was that I knew that being connected to a Christian community was beneficial for me. I would say that this motivation, though not ideal, is better than the previous one since it pushes me to stay connected when it is inconvenient, or when I am not willing. Eventually, my motivation shifted to a desire for spiritual growth and for pouring into others.

Our motivations for attending church can be different than those that push us to attend fellowship. It is not an uncommon struggle for well-connected CCF members to have trouble connecting to a local church. CCF keeps emphasizing that it is not a church and that all members should be connected to a local church. Reasons include that CCF leaders are not formally trained to teach, that CCF is inherently temporary, and that CCF lacks variance in life experiences. My motivations for attending church experienced a similar shift compared to my motivations for attending fellowship. I suggest making it a priority to get plugged into a church as soon as possible. I wanted to connect to Trinity since my second year, but because of bad timing and COVID, I was never able to make it through all the steps in order to start attending small group. Fortunately, COVID provided opportunities for me to connect to my home church.

Advice from the previous sections can help to change our motivations for attending church and fellowship, in particular, serving, time management, and discipline in attending despite inconvenience or lack of desire. One additional habit I found to be helpful is to avoid gravitating towards friends. Instead, I look to converse with people whom I don’t normally talk to, or those that seem new or quiet. I was fairly mindful of doing this in my final term of CCF, but to my regret, I do not make as much of an effort to do this at church.

6. The resurrection in evangelism

Paul writes, “And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain” (1 Cor 15:14). The importance of Christ’s resurrection can oftentimes be overlooked, especially during evangelism. At one point, I felt the resurrection to be too complicated to explain during gospel sharing/campus evangelism, so I left it out. I know that even today, this sentiment is shared amongst some.

Let us first review a few reasons why the resurrection is important:

• It fulfills prophecy (Mt 17:23, 1 Cor 15:4).
• It gives a glimpse of our own resurrections (Rom 6:5).
• It shows that Jesus’ sacrifice was sufficient to pay for our sins (Rom 4:25).
• It shows that Jesus has power over death (1 Cor 15:54–57, Rv 1:18).
• Because of the resurrection, we worship a living God, not a dead God.
• It caused the birth of the church.

Over the last few months, I found 2 points that I resonated with and began using in my evangelism:

• The resurrection proves that something happens after death.
• The resurrection demonstrates Christ’s authority and superiority.

The first point refutes the common belief that nothing happens after we die. After all, if nothing happens after we die, there is no resurrection, so then Jesus could not have resurrected (1 Cor 15:13). I like this point since it reduces the argument of life-after-death to arguing that Jesus’ resurrection — and the Bible as a whole — is legitimate. That is, I no longer need to prove the existence of our spirit, heaven and hell, nor the afterlife. Instead, I simply need to prove that Jesus really resurrected, and as an extension, prove that the Bible is reliable.

I find the former topics more difficult to prove since the Bible doesn’t cover those topics in great detail and since none of the former topics are physically observable. The latter topics are easier for me to discuss because I am more well-versed in the supporting arguments (for example, the birth of the church is evidence for the resurrection, and I have a working knowledge of the history of the Bible), and because these topics deal with things that are or were physically observable.

The second point aims to establish why it is reasonable to listen to Christ over any other religious figure. Miracles in Scripture are often used to confirm a prophet’s legitimacy — two great examples are Moses and Elijah. Jesus’ miracles bear witness to His power and authority (Jn 5:36). The ability to tell the future is also the mark of a prophet (Dt 18:22). The gospels record Jesus’ predicting the destruction of the Jerusalem temple in 70 AD (Lk 21:6) and His death and resurrection (Mk 9:31). Finally, Christ’s permanent resurrection is unique amongst other prophets and religious figures. Thus, the works, the prophecies, and the resurrection place Christ a tier above other religious figures. During evangelism, I like to bring this point by comparing Christ to other human (therefore observable) religious teachers such as Muhammad and the Buddha (I am not aware of any prominent Hindu teachers). I ask how the other religious teachers have performed miracles and made predictions, then I make the point that Christ has performed superior works, especially His resurrection, which, to my knowledge, no other human has been able to do.

In summary, recent realizations regarding the implications of the resurrection have caused me to have a greater appreciation for the resurrection and to place more emphasis on the resurrection during evangelism.

7. Being a good example to others

Paul writes “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ” (1 Cor 11:1). He also writes, “Show yourself in all respects to be a model of good works…” (Ti 2:7a).

There are a few reasons why I want to bring up this lesson that I learned. First, this lesson is yet another outcome of some of the previous lessons, such as service, making time for others, and motivations for attending fellowship. In addition, compared to the earlier lessons, this lesson has a greater sense of urgency and obligation. Finally, I feel that my year could have done more for CCF, and I wish for the younger years to not make the same mistakes as us.

The importance of being a good example cannot be understated. Jesus certainly lived by example to His disciples. A prominent example is the washing of His disciples’ feet (Jn 13:5, 13:14–15). Additionally, His death and resurrection exemplify His obedience to the Father (Mt 26:39) and His love for mankind (Jn 15:13). And as quoted above, Paul wrote several times about being good examples. As you move into your upper years, you will become the leaders of CCF, and the younger years will look up to you. They may be inspired by your interactions with others, what you do for God, how you participate in church and CCF — the list is not exhaustive. You will also set the environment for the fellowship; we do not want fellowship to simply be a social group, but rather, a place where people want to take their faith seriously. In my own life, by receiving advice, observing conduct, and hearing stories of works of faith from upper years, I have been inspired to live a life more focused on God, much more than I would have imagined in my first year.

One advantage of living as an example is that it helps with discipline. There is a stereotype in the secular world that Christians are hypocrites, meaning that we do not do what we preach. While we are not perfect people and thus cannot perfectly follow what Scripture teaches us to do, this doesn’t mean we give up. Instead, we continue to strive to do things that please God. In my time at CCF, I have encouraged others to serve, to do spiritual disciplines consistently, to go to evangelism, and to live sacrificially. Some of these, such as evangelism and living sacrificially, are things that I am still currently working on and thus don’t always have the desire to do. In order to show an exemplary life — in particular, that we are not to live as hypocrites — I am pushed to continue doing these things.

In order to live an exemplary life, we must place others above ourselves. In the past, I have encountered an attitude of, “it’s only between God and me, so nobody can judge me for what I am or am not doing,” which is a deplorable attitude. While it is true that one’s salvation is between himself and God and that we should not judge others for personal gain, such an attitude is extremely self-centered. Our actions have consequences on others that we may not even realize; we must especially be wary of those that discourage others, especially when people look up to you. Paul writes that we are to live in a way that builds up others and that will not cause them to stumble (Rom 14:13–15:7). Thinking about others and the impacts of our actions on others can be difficult. In the past, I have been rebuked for disrupting a year event with excessively loud piano playing. Even now, I sometimes engage in suspicious (that is, ‘sus’) talk, which can be discouraging to those that look up to me. A few years ago, our year also got called out by a younger year for posting pictures depicting (light) alcohol consumption at a Christmas party. I don’t have much specific advice for dealing with this problem, but I can suggest making conscious efforts to think about others and being careful with the actions we take, and being willing to take rebuke humbly when others are discouraged by our actions.

Conclusions

University overall has been a great experience for me, especially in spiritual growth. I thank CCF for making a great impact on my time here. Graduation is not the end of the journey, but only a milestone. Growing our relationships with God will continue to be a non-trivial task. I hope that by sharing some of my learnings over the years, you may also find ways to grow in your spiritual maturity, especially as you near your own graduation.