A Community on Mission

The ISC Friday Night Fellowship began last week with a great meal of Venison Stuff Bell Peppers from our chef, Courtney. The meal was enjoyed by all and we are looking forward to Wenjune’s Jiao-Ma (Pepper-Sesame) Chicken this week. Our vision and prayer for this semester is to become a community on mission with the Lord using us to impact our campus for His glory.
As we began last week, we ask the community to consider our “purpose in life” and why we do what we do? According to Scripture, God created us to “Worship & Enjoy Him” and when we are fulfilling this life purpose we will find true fulfillment and meaning from the day to day activities of life. Of course the real challenge in all this is the “World” and its own set of values and pressures that constantly try to divert us away from our divine purpose and calling. We get so consumed with the details and pressures of life that we loose track of the greater meaning—just having to function in the fast paced world of computers, and media saturation, and personal desires can overwhelm even the most focused person. Or sometimes we in academia become so entrenched in our pursuit of the next cure or the next discovery that we isolate ourselves from the rest of the world relationally and don’t even realize we are separated from human interaction and contact until we are depressed, overworked, sleep deprived, and generally hard to get along with.
Our Goal and Vision for the ISC Community is to be a people (*a family) who are seeking the will of God and loving others. It is our prayer that we will not only be a supportive loving community within ourselves, but also a community with a love and heart for others on the U.T. campus who are isolated and don’t have a community of support and love. Thus, last week we issued a challenge to everyone (new and old family members) to invest relationally in someone within their sphere of influence. The hope is that each person will find someone they are around each day and commit to spend time with them and really care about them–taking an interest in their work and in their life beyond our own interest and priorities.
This Friday night we are going to be attempting to get our minds and hands around the idea of “The Word of God”. We will be considering Who and What the Word of God really is and how the Word should be impacting our daily existence. As we investigate John 1:1–17 and the creation of the world I know that God is going to reveal His divine revelation to us. We will then be considering deeper the Word of God in its written format and what Jesus had to say about it’s power and our interaction with God’s written revelation. Finally, we shall examine the idea of this Word of God “abiding in” us. What would it look like to have the revelation of God stable and fixed in our minds so that we were listening and hearing God all the time —in every aspect of life. This will bring us back to where we began last week making it possible to worship God in spirit and in truth as He has intended and as Christ has commanded us.
You see the Scriptures and Jesus clearly tell us that a firm foundation for life must be built upon the Word of God (the Rock). And the house built upon a Rock foundation will be able to stand against the winds and floods of life that will surely come to all who walk this world in their 70 or more years on this planet.
So our focus and goal for this semester as a community on mission is that ISC might be filled with the revelation of God and the ability to worship and enjoy God for His glory and His honor and His praise on the campus of U.T. Austin.
Come Join our family and help us be a Community on Mission who is having a lasting and eternal impact at U.T. and even beyond.

Your ISC Daddy,

cliff