International Student Track Reports
Applying kingdom thinking to our daily lives
Greg Steward
"Let his kingdom come in your lives and let his will be done."
This was a closing comment of Lisa Chinn's Sunday morning address. While it may
be expressed in different ways, in general, students are coming to Urbana looking
for a fuller expression of kingdom living in their lives. Urbana's Sunday morning
small-group Bible study passage included a consideration of John's baptism of
repentance and his call to "bear fruits worthy of repentance." Kingdom
living cannot start without repentance. This was addressed more fully Sunday evening.
David, from India, desires to be a missionary. But he found that he needed to
examine his motives. Did he want to be a missionary because that is what God had
called him to? Or did he have ulterior motives: prestige, self-importance, pleasing
parents. The call to repentance caused him to examine his heart.
Another student from Chad has been experiencing tremendous spiritual growth while
in the United States. Before he left Chad, his mother told him, "I won't
be expecting you to send me money, but don't forget your God." He began to
take his discipleship seriously.
One of his concerns has been human rights activism. While here he has had some
good discussion with other students and has been helped by some of the seminars
that he has attended. These discussions and seminars helped him to clarify his
position regarding approaches to fighting human rights abuses. He said, "It
is not enough to bring salvation. We must also bring transformation to society."
But Sunday's call to repentance caused him to seek transformation from within.
"The evening of repentance was very powerful. I didn't expect it to happen.
It started slowly with prayer and then it happened. A girl next to me was crying."
He began to think of a bad relationship with one of his three non-Christian roommates.
The difficulties of sharing space and different ideas about "neatness"
led to arguments and a coldness in the relationship. "Even if he was wrong,
I was wrong, too." He stood up and repented of his sin in the relationship.
He plans to go back and ask his roommate for forgiveness.
Another student from Canada felt that the Sunday evening session was "helpful
to lead us into a time of thinking about what barriers there are between us and
God, but that this is not a one night process. I struggled with the approach that
was taken. God did his business last night. Maybe not in the way we are used to,
but he challenged us to see things in a new way."
"A girl in my small group shared about how stuff in her life is preventing
her from worshipping God fully. And I could totally related to the speaker because
I am on a similar school track to the one she was on. How do I know that I am
doing God's will? Because of the last Urbana, I have a sense that God is calling
me to pastoral ministry. And if God is calling me to this, it would be frightening
to me to not do it.
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