For His Glory

Last week was Spiritual Life Week at ICS.  God used the week to work in the lives of many students and staff.

What is Spiritual Life Week?  In this case it was a chance to focus the whole week on God.  The students attended chapel twice each day.  These chapels were lead by a group from the NICS school in Korea, five students and two teachers.  The students lead the times of worship while the teachers (John and Ben) did the actual speaking.

The theme for the week was "For His Glory".  Each day John helped us to see a better picture of God's story in the world around us.  Ben made things more practical as he shared his story and the way God has been working in his life.

It is so easy for us to get caught up in how every little thing affects our life.  We lose sight of the big picture.  Sometimes our whole life experience rotates on a single decision or action.  God is orchestrating something great in each of our lives!

As humans we tend to look at people and ourselves and center our value upon what it is that we do.  But God is not interested in what we do, He simply loves us for who we are.

We make terrible messes sometimes; often we look at our life and think that there is no way that God can use our situation, whether because of sin or because something HORRIBLE is happening.  But God is using even those messes and difficult times to create something great. 

Ben shared with us how five years ago, the week before they were to follow God's call to serve Him in Korea, they found out the child growing in his wife's womb was not going to survive.  The doctors said she just needed to get an abortion.  They refused.  Over the last four months of the pregnancy they prayed and prepared, but the child, little Benjamin, lived for only 47 minutes after birth.

The next day Ben told us how God used that mess to orchestrate something amazing.  Instead of collecting flowers at the funeral they asked people to donate funds to a mission in Russia.  Over the course of the next few months, $10,000 was raised.  That was enough to buy a home for a Russian family working to adopt orphans and train them up to know God and serve him.

God's story is SOOOO much bigger than we can imagine; He is doing amazing things!

Our life must be lived to bring glory to Him, but the only way that can happen is by letting Christ live in us and through us.

On Thursday and Friday students were given a chance to share what God had been communicating to them.  It was awesome to hear many students share, some of which were making major changes in their lives.

• Please pray that the commitments made over this great week will be kept.  Also that students will not just return to the same old lifestyle, but that they will take away something from this week.
• Pray the same for me and the rest of the teachers as well!
• Praise God for the part we each get to play in God's story!