Growing Point Testimony — Seoyeon Yoo
Hello everyone! It feels absolutely great to be back and share once again, another testimony to you all. My name is Seoyeon Yoo and today I’ll be talking about my experience with Growing Point. It’s been by far one of the best studies I have completed and I am grateful to share my journey with you today.
Like many teens, in my last few years of high school, I felt completely lost. You know how when you feel you’ve hit rock bottom and you question yourself, “how did I even let myself get this far?”. I felt so disconnected from friends, my grades were only holding up because thank God for online school. I knew what I needed was change and consistency. So (and this is obviously a long story short), I started to pick myself up, my life became busy, school started to reopen etc. yet, I still felt so lost. Growing up, I knew that God was loving, but I could never feel the love from Him. It was hard to distinguish if God was trying to speak to me so I wasn’t really sure as to why I even decided to willinging take Growing Point but I did anyway. I was like, “okay Seoyeon , this is your chance, maybe if you take it God will come out of a wall or something and it’ll be super climatic and He’ll speak to you”. Clearly, I was more mature enough to realize this wouldn’t be the case but little did I know I’d come to learn some valuable lessons.
As I took Growing Point, there are 3 main things I took away from the study. First, we must change our habits. It’s important to create time aside for myself and God; AKA, Q.T. Why you might ask? Let’s take exercise for instance. We do it for health, right? That’s essentially what God would be doing for us if we allow even just a minute of Him into our lives. Perhaps, even better. A lot of people think that Q.T. just consists of praying. If anyone knows me, I cannot pray for long durations. Like, I have so much respect for Pastors, I don’t know how they do it, it’s great they can pray for hours but no, I can’t do that. All jokes aside, my point is that Q.T. doesn’t have to be just sitting down, closing your eyes and praying. You can do prayer through worship, write a letter to God etc. It’s baby steps, just devoting a bit of your time to God in any way can make a difference.
Secondly, we are one body in Christ. God has given all of us unique gifts and those gifts are the different functions of the body. You know how I said I felt He never spoke to me or loved me? Well, He has been this whole time. God works through us. We are constantly spreading the good news and what are we doing every Sunday as one body? Celebrating the joy of the Lord. Lastly, we do not have to over complicate Christianity. For the longest time, I thought being a Christian was such a complex lifestyle to have but it isn’t. God loves us, gave His life up for us, and forgives us. It’s as simple as that. It seems like such a hard concept for many people to grasp because what I’ve realized is we tend to feel we don’t deserve that kind of love when we do deserve it the most. You are God’s child and He created you to experience this amazing love and life.
There are many big changes that are happening in my life such as going to university. After completing this study I’ve come to find that God would want me to serve in other ways within the church like being a new youth shepherd. Sure these decisions and new beginnings are big and can make one nervous, but I remind myself that we aren’t perfect. Even when I feel lost, I always remember, there is a plan for me and even you. And when there is a plan, there is a way. Thank you Esther Sung, for being an outstanding shepherd as we did Growing Point, and let us give glory to our amazing God. Thank you.
