Throughout the 3rd Quarter, I have learned many things about my faith and have been impacted by them. We started by watching a clip from one of my favorite movies Saving Private Ryan. We saw as the squad of 7 or more men gave their life for the one soldier they were sent to rescue. This is an example of what Christ did when he died on the cross to save you and me. It must have been so hard for God to send his only son to die in the most painful way possible. Yet, he did this because of the love he had for us. This helps us focus on the cross. Focusing on the cross was talked about much in our class. This really impacted me. I have grown up hearing so much about Jesus and the sacrifice he made for us. Unfortunately, this tends to dull my perspective when I hear about the cross every day. By putting so much emphasis and truly “seeing” what he did for us, I am able to put this back in the correct perspective. Another great example of this was the video of the train worker’s son. God did exactly what the train worker did by sending his son to death to allow others to live.

When we watched End of the Spear, I was very excited. I first heard of Nate Saint in 8th grade when I did a presentation on him. I loved his story of the selflessness that he showed. A key part of the movie is when Nate Saint tells his son Steve that if the Waodani attacked, they would not fight back. His reason was that he and the other missionaries were ready for Heaven, but the Waodani were not. This hit me hard. So many times I am quick to judge people. I decide I am never going to talk to them based on looks or personalities. This point was also helped by a missionary that I heard speak this week. He was identifying how many people lived in the place where he was working and said there was 300,000 souls. When it comes down to it, everyone has a soul and you could be their only chance to hear about God. Nate Saint felt this way. He was willing to go and sacrifice his life so that others could come to know about God.

In Patch Adams, we get the message of missions in everyday life. Patch thought that if he could make people feel better about themselves than he had done a good job. He knew that people just needed someone they could talk to and he tried to do that. Many times at school, I will feel that because I do not think God is calling me to the mission field I am excluded from this whole sector. This is not the case. God has called everyone to be missionaries. Also, being in this school since K5, I feel that I have all the knowledge but sometimes don’t turn that in to action. Patch Adams was being a doctor long before he graduated from medical school. He was taking what he learned and applying it to everyday things. This is what we should as Christians. Knowing the right answer is not all there is in life. We must take what we learn and transform are life into an example of Jesus Christ. This is halted by the temptation we face every day. In the Lifehouse Drama, we saw temptations that we face. It is very powerful and we see that in the end God is always strong enough to defeat everything that is harassing us.

Louie Giglio’s speech on “How Great Is Our God” was very inspirational. It is awesome to see how big our Lord and Savior is. We see this and we know that He can handle anything that gets thrown our way. However, the second point of his speech was even more impressive. We saw how big the stars were that God made. Yet, He stills cares about us. He sent his son to die for us. The Bible says that not a bird hits the ground without God knowing about it. This is very comforting to know that God cares this much about us. When we looked at the statistics on other countries we realized just how blessed we are. Not only does it so how much we are blessed, but it shows the need other countries have. This comes back to missions. We should use every second of our day to further God’s kingdom. Whether we are in Africa or a Christian school, we should be missionaries for the gospel.