Gospel Renewal Night (GRN) is an annual event hosted by KCM that aims to bring together students from various campuses to hear the Gospel and to understand what KCM exists for.
Here, we have two current students who have been personally blessed by this event and wanted to share their encouragement and story with us!
Angie Lee ( Junior, USC )
Go to GRN. I was so blessed by going, so please go. You won’t regret it.
Last year was my first time going to GRN, and I honestly don’t remember how I ended up there. Yet I am so glad that I decided to go because, to this day, I still carry with me the perspective of the gospel that Pastor James Lee (CrossLife Bible Church) opened my eyes to that night.
Growing up in a Christian family, my heart grew numb to the weight of the gospel, and it’s difficult for me to fully grasp the amount of sacrifice, humility, love, and grace that it must’ve taken for God to send His only Son whom He holds most dearly to save those that truly don’t deserve Him. During GRN, Pastor James went into great detail of exactly what Jesus went through to bring us salvation from our sin. I remember him focusing on John 19, where the passage describes the events leading up to Jesus’ crucifixion. Jesus was mocked. He was sworn at. He was spat on. He was whipped. He was betrayed. He must’ve felt like the most hated person on Earth.
In that moment, I realized just how much shame Jesus must have felt. He is King and Lord of all these people, yet in order to fulfill His Father’s will, he had to go through this unbearable amount of shame. Shame and guilt that we deserve. We deserve to be mocked. We deserve to be sworn at. We deserve to be spit on. We deserve to be whipped. Yet Jesus bore it all, because He loves us just that much. It’s unexplainable. It’s extravagant. Tears streamed down my face as I reflected on this truth that night.
My hope and prayer for everyone who attends GRN is for the Holy Spirit to speak to them in the same way He spoke to me last year. I hope for all of you to experience just how sweet the gospel really is. After the sermon, I remember worshipping in response and looking around at all the brothers and sisters who were worshipping with me. Seeing all the KCM campuses glorifying God as one body allowed me to see a glimpse of what heaven will look like. It was truly an experience that I will never forget, and I am so excited for what God has in store for each of our hearts this year at GRN. Go and be blessed.
Paul Ji ( Senior, UCR )
When I first heard about Gospel Renewal Night my freshman year, I was unsure if I wanted to go. I had been to countless worship nights and frankly, I just did not have the heart to go. What I wanted through KCM my freshman year was a place where I could primarily meet people and not God. I only had the desire to go because there would be a lot of people there from different campuses and I wanted to get closer with people at UCR KCM.
At GRN, I met a lot of people and I felt more connected to KCM through the time that we spent waiting for worship to start. Some of the people that I met there for the first time are some of my closest friends now, and it was a good time. However, I didn’t want to sit through the worship time and the sermon. I was only looking forward to going to fellowship afterwards.
The time came to go into worship and I somehow got placed in the middle section in the front. I was dreading it the whole time but worship eventually started. The praise team got up to lead worship and it was good because I think praise is one of those things that I always enjoy, but when Pastor Steve Bang went up to speak, I could feel myself falling asleep. I was jolted awake by Pastor Steve who was passionately preaching the gospel while looking straight into my eyes. I then started to pay close attention for the remainder of the sermon.
Pastor Steve’s preaching of the gospel, something that I’ve heard countless times, hit me differently for some reason at GRN. I believe that it wasn’t anything that the pastor did or said, but I believe that it was God speaking to me. After GRN, I was able to realize that God led me to be in KCM not for me to just meet people, but to primarily to know God on a deeper level so that I could learn to value Him and His glory through everything KCM offered.
If you are on the fence about coming to GRN, I encourage you to just come! Even if you are like me and just want to meet people and have fun, I firmly believe that God will use that in ways that we won’t even know. God used my self-centered reasons to help me realize what KCM exists for, and if it wasn’t for GRN, I might not have stayed in KCM. Even through me falling asleep for most of the sermon, God was able to use that so that I could grow my heart for KCM and the gospel.
For the upperclassmen, I know the feeling of not wanting to go to more KCM events because you think that it will be the same experience. If you are on that boat, I encourage you to come out again! You never know how God will work through your experience, and by saying that it will be the same-old, you are saying that God is not capable of working through GRN for you. Have faith that God will work through GRN and come and be renewed by the Word of God.
Gospel Renewal Night is coming up on Saturday November 2nd @ Living Hope Community Church!
Click HERE for the FB event page!
