Date: September 22, 2023
Transcript taken from this video:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cxf2TYTRfuY/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=bmZraG1vbTM3dmVx
Hi there, I’m Benny. I was previously a student at Taylor’s University, and I was part of Taylor’s Christian Fellowship (TCF). When I was in TCF, I was a Campus Group Leader as well as the Vice President there. RUF has helped change my perspective in terms of who God is and how seriously we must treat God’s Word. Previously, I always thought God was someone who was like an ATM machine: He gives me what I want, grants all my wishes – He’s a genie, you would say. Now I see how God is the Creator, and He owns the world, and because He is my Creator, He therefore owns me as well. And that being said, it means all of my life, all of my time, all of the gifts that I’ve gotten from God are all for God’s use and all for God’s ministry.
With that understanding, it changes how you view serving God as well. It’s no longer serving God because I want to gain salvation or I want to gain blessings from God, but serving because I know I was an undeserving sinner, yet God chose to save me, and now I am able to freely serve God. I’m a servant of righteousness. I’m a servant of God, and I can put all that I have into God’s ministry, serving in His ministry, and I’m no longer enslaved to sin, doing whatever the devil and sin dictate to me to do. I used to just read God’s Word as it is, and used God’s Word to inform what I think the Word means to me. That is not the right way to understand what God has intended for us to see and learn from His Word! We’re supposed to understand what the author wants us to know, and not interpret for ourselves what we think the Word means to us. So understanding that gives us clarity that when you are not following His Word, when you are not obeying God’s Word, you are also not obeying God.
It’s not just not obeying the Word. And that actually struck me when I was doing my time with Taylor’s Christian Fellowship, as well as my involvement in RUF. I see that it is important because if we don’t understand God’s Word, we don’t understand God’s plan, we don’t understand His will, and how are we supposed to then know the purpose of being a Christian? How do we know what does it mean to be a Christian? And that’s how RUF has changed me today.