When Carissa Messah stepped off the plane in her homeland of Indonesia, she could feel her resentment rising up inside her as it always did when she returned. The Indonesians are notorious for their poor treatment of the Chinese minority. Carissa, who is of Chinese heritage, has always had a hard time forgetting.
While there to attend a friend’s wedding, she was given an opportunity to teach English in the slums of Jakarta. It was there that God seemed to break into her resentments by breaking her heart.
She felt deeply moved by the plight of both the Chinese and the Indonesians, and knew that God was calling her to return to Indonesia and do His bidding among people with so little hope.
However, when she got back to the U.S. months later, she immediately returned to her old ways of spending very little time in the Word of God, the gravity of which threatened to undermine the work that God had laid out before her in Indonesia.
Says Carissa, “I knew that what I was about to do was important. There was no way I was going to be successful at it without a hunger to read the Bible.”
But how does one create desire? Carissa had tried everything she could think of and had never found success, only the sting of disappointment that comes with perpetual failure.
One day a friend pointed out that the Spiritual Disciplines class that is given as a part of the Rock U program may offer some answers. Skeptical yet hopeful, she entered Pastor Mickey’s class and found a brand new perspective waiting for her.
“Pastor Mickey taught us that we were saved by grace, but we also grow by grace,” says Carissa. He explained that the work of grace puts us in the place where God works. “We pray and read the Bible so that we are in that sweet spot where God can connect with us. He's doing all the growing. We are just catching the wind.”
Carissa’s life has transformed as a result. She now cannot wait to return each day to the Bible, to be carried away by the grace of God to new understanding of His love.
Adds Carissa, “I thought my Rock U experience would help give me a new approach. It has helped give me a new life.”
To learn more about Rock U, click here. »»