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THE GOSPEL: BE TRANSFORMED

Canada UBF held the 3rd annual Gospel Retreat from January 2-4, 2020 in Paris, Ontario. 57 participants came from Montreal and Ontario chapters as well as from Chicago and Washington UBF. The purpose of the retreats is to prepare an environment where students and young people can hear the gospel of Jesus from Scripture and experience the life-transforming power of God.

The retreat focused on Romans 12 and the theme was “The Gospel: Be Transformed.” The key verse was Romans 12:1. “Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God--this is your true and proper worship.” Second only to “obey,” “sacrifice” may be the least popular word in our contemporary culture, yet we offer ourselves as a living sacrifice to many things, such as career success, a girlfriend or boyfriend, acceptance by peers, and whatever other dreams we may have. We learned through Calvin Raveenthan’s message that these idols will take our sacrifices and leave us desolate and empty, but God will accept our living sacrifice and make us holy and pleasing to Him. God transforms us and conforms us to the image of Christ that He might do his good, pleasing and perfect will through us.

We had a workshop on Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, which requires re-orienting our lives toward loving union with God through the Daily Office: regular remembrance of the presence of God throughout our days and weeks. We also learned about other important aspects of emotional/spiritual health, such as knowing ourselves in order to know God, recognizing the influence of our family’s patterns in our lives, dealing with grief and loss, and struggling with “the dark night of the soul,” when God seems so distant. We pray that God would transform us deeply and help us to grow mature emotionally and spiritually as disciples of Jesus.

God blessed the retreat through four life testimony sharers: Grace Baik, Shanitra Cooper, Joseph Park and Esther Lazo. We could see how God worked in their lives when they surrendered their will to God and trusted in His love and goodness. We pray that God may use each of them to bless many people through His gospel work.

Frank Lin gave the closing message on Romans 15:16, “to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles. He gave me the priestly duty of proclaiming the gospel of God, so that the Gentiles might become an offering acceptable to God, sanctified by the Holy Spirit.” We have the privilege and the duty to proclaim the gospel of God wherever we are, trusting in the work of the Holy Spirit to transform lives.

God has used the retreat and the preparation leading up to the retreat as opportunities to train young disciples in taking up responsibilities and leadership roles. We praise and thank God for Canadian young disciples who are growing and maturing as they persevere with hope in Christ. We thank chapter directors and coworkers for their prayer support. We thank Little Sarah Kim for her prayer support. She came to all three gospel retreats with several coworkers from Chicago.