You and I Were Made to Worship

You and I are called to love
You and I are forgiven and free
You and I embrace surrender
You and I choose to believe
You and I will see who we were meant to be

Before I get into my post, I just want to say that I was slightly confused with Blogger, but I think I'm getting it sort of not really now hahaha. Anyway, here I go:

I have many goals in life, but I have a relatively short list of things I have to do before I die. One of these things is I want to bring someone to Christ. Not just to have them say yes or have them pray the prayer, but to bring someone to love Christ – that they would grow in sincere love and worship of Him and follow him passionately for the rest of their time on earth. I feel like that is a much more daunting task than simply getting them to say yes.

On my list, I think this is definitely the thing that I’m the least in control of, but also the one that I desire the most. Obviously its not me or by any power that I have that someone will become a Christian or come to love Christ. On one hand that’s really comforting, on the other… well sometimes I feel like I need to be in control to make sure something is completed to the very end. In this case, I think its more comforting than worrying.

A couple days ago I read this verse from Jeremiah:

⁶ “Ah, Sovereign LORD,” I said, “I do not know how to speak; I am only a child.”

⁷ But the LORD said to me, “Do not say, ‘I am only a child.’ You must go to everyone I send you to and say whatever I command you. ⁸ Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you and will rescue you,” declares the LORD.

⁹ Then the LORD reached out his hand and touched my mouth and said to me, “Now, I have put my words in your mouth. ¹⁰ See, today I appoint you over nations and kingdoms to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant.”

Isn’t that amazing? It’s a good thing God is in control and not me. He is timeless, omnipotent, benevolent, majestic, powerful, holy, etc. Everything good, that’s what He is! And what am I? I’m just a child, wining, sinning, confused, wretched. Ya… good thing I’m not in control. And because I’m not, God has given me so much power! WOW, nations and kingdoms, building, planting, it all sounds so good :)

So anyway, there’s a friend that I’ve been thinking about, praying about. I’d say its a pretty cool story I’d love to share with anyone that asks (and sometimes share with those who don’t even ask). But yeeeees. The first time she came out to AACF with me, she had told me that she wasn’t a Christian, but she had been thinking about God for a while. Yesterday she didn’t come to LG, but for some reason God had me pray that I would be given the chance to talk and ask her exactly what she believed. I’m not confident in myself. During closing worship I thought of the words I would use, the way that I would turn conversations towards the subject. Today after our midterm, God gave me the perfect opportunity and I didn’t even have to do anything. She asked me to have lunch with her. I shot an arrow prayer and was determined that this was it. During lunch we talked about a lot of random things. Somehow our conversations always come back to the idea of God and Christianity. So I asked her. “Would you say now that you’re a Christian?”. After a second, she said yes :) To make sure, I asked her what she thought of God, what exactly believed. She believes that Jesus died for our sins and that only through faith in him can we be saved. You have no idea. I was so excited. Not only has she come to Christ, but she’s excited to grow, she’s excited about ministry. She asked me how I got involved in doing all this ministry and she asked me before if she could go on the missions trip to Ensenada. She’s interested in joining my small group and she wants to know more about discerning God’s will in everything, plans for the summer, her relationship with her boyfriend. I’m so excited. I didn’t do anything. But to be a part of God’s great work… after we had lunch I was so excited I felt like I just had to tell someone. There was a certain someone that I thought to call. But then I didn’t. Instead I went back to my room and played guitar and praised Him for letting me be a part of this.

On Tuesday I had the privilege of having lunch with some cool people and got to hear a testimony from someone. They talked about how they tried to ignore God's call, they tried to reason the thoughts away, but in the end they took the leap and found what they were looking for.

We were made to worship, and He continually calls us to Him! :) That makes me happy.

I realized today as I was pondering over it that when I first made my short list, it was filled with things that I wanted to do. Goals that I would accomplish. As good and Godly as those goals were (I mean, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to bring someone to Christ), I was expecting to fulfill them by what I would do. Instead God has shown me more that at least for this thing on my list, it should have been/is something I want to see God do. If I try by my own human efforts to change a persons life around… well I know I’m not qualified for that. Childish, wining, sinning, confused, wretched, afraid… that’s all I am. But God. Almighty. Worthy of all my praise. Strong and mighty tower. Yup, this is the power of Christ.

All we are
And all we have
Is all a gift from God that we receive
Brought to life
We open up our eyes
To see the majesty and glory of the King

He has filled our hearts with wonder

-Puppy!
I like to sign my posts, I feel more personal this way :)

Tangerine, Lunch & Boba

Today was a crazy day with 2 midterms. I have to say that it was AMAZING though because God comforted me throughout the day.

In the morning, I was super excited for my midterms after reading this email which I will send out soon. However, my mood drastically changed when I came out of my first midterm. It turns out that I possibly failed it. So, let me talk about each object:

Tangerine-

My classmate saw how down I was so she walked me to the library. Before we departed, she offered me a tangerine to brighten up my day. It is so amazing how a bright fruit could brighten up my day so much! Wow...small acts mean so much =]

Lunch-

I decided not to go to the library because I was pretty down from the midterm so I decided to eat at Ackerman. It was amazing to see Josh there. At first, I was complaining to him about my midterm. No doubt I was not in the mood to study for my next midterm at 2pm. It turns out that Josh had a midterm at 2pm. So, we decided to go to the library to study! Thank you Josh for keeping me accountable! I was able to study for a good hour before the midterm. =]

Boba-

On my way to my second midterm, I bumped into Amy Lin. Dang..that was super random. She noticed that I was not happy and ended up walking me to my class. Before I got into my class, she prayed for me. So, the midterm turned out alright...it was not as tricky as the first one. After the midterm, Amy took me out get Boba! It was a really great meet up.

Well, I want to reflect on how God has the best timing with everything. God used my classmate, Josh and Amy when I needed the comfort the most. My life is full of trials but God has blessed us with fellow believers to demonstrate his LOVE & Glory. This reminds me of my devotions today:

Ephesians 3:16-19

¹⁶I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, ¹⁷so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, ¹⁸may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, ¹⁹and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

This verse kept my going today.

Nothing Compares

Waaah, I'm really sleepy. Actually all I want to do is run away and sleep. I slept for 13 hours today (maybe because I slept less than two hours two days ago). Life is difficult.

I just finished listening to a message from Francis Chan entitled the "Holiness of God." Read Revelation 3 and 4. It's similar to what Larry shared at prayer meeting. And I just realized how big and awesome God is. That nothing else matters. Whatever good I am doing, how much I know the Bible how much I serve others and love them, my grades, my job, if I ever get married. When I face God in heaven and stand before His holiness. I will shrink and cower. I will be undone like in Isaiah 6. God is holy! He is holy, holy holy. And whatever I can hold on to, whatever security, whatever things I can claim for myself there is really nothing that matters.

What am I doing with my life? Why am I so worried about the future? Why am I trying so hard to be in a relationship or figure out summer plans. All I really want to do is follow God. I think that's why it's so comforting to be around believers. Instead of worrying I can just act and serve. Instead of focusing on myself, I can focus on others. I can work on things that will last rather than just serve myself which means nothing. I am so worried about grades, about people's opinions of me, about my future, about VSET or jobs. But none of that is going to matter.

So what am I doing? What matters?

On a tangent, I think I've read way too many comics and watched to many animes and played too many video games. "Getting stronger," "leveling up," "growing," they all don't exist. I don't think God can ever make us stronger. In comparison to His greatness, to His holiness, I don't think we can ever achieve any measure of aptitude that allows us to be better, wiser. We will never get a uber sword move that allows us to slay enemies in one hit. In comparison to God we are still nothing. In fact, all growing stronger means is knowing that you are nothing and God is everything. It means humbling yourself so that God can lift you up. It means surrendering and letting go so that God can help. Spiritual Discipline/training are kind of an oxymoron. It doesn't mean we get stronger, but it means we surrender to allow God to do more.

God is everything. People are everything. What else matters?

"Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far out weights them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal."

-2 Cor 4:16-18

4:40am ramblings

I think this has to be the longest overnight shift ever. I think the world has past and it's only been 10 minutes. Tick tock and another 5 minutes pass. I am doing absolutely nothing. Gchat ppl have gone to sleep and I've clicked every single link on my facebook feed. I even read all the entries to the blogs I follow (my latest obsession).

I'm pretty tired. Not getting rest today (even though I don't usually get much rest) means totally crashing as I complete my 24 hr day with less than two 1 hr naps. One nap while listening to a Q&A by Rick Holland and his wife. Which was pretty interesting. It was pretty cool to see college students ask GCC's college pastor random questions, 99% about relationships. I think I want to be a pastor. Maybe... I've been telling myself and the more I look at the future I could never satisfied if my identity was in being an Engineer, or whatever profession. Even being a father and a husband would be nice, but I want to be ministering to people and loving others.

However, growing up in the church has been hard. I've been hurt by alot of things and I never really liked alot of things about the church. It's way too formal and soo many rules you have to obey. But the more I think about church is just another word for family or body of Christ. Matthew 18:20 says "For where two or three come together ni my name, there am I with them." Recently God has really been showing His love through His people. Erick Loh said that even though we don't "need" people, God chooses to love us through people alot of the time. We are relational beings who desire relationships with others. I am so thankful for every one of you. A place to go and study. A place to ask and seek prayer. To spur one another on towards love and good deeds, and to seek God together with each of you.

For the last two years after being hurt or just what God was been brining me through and delivering from, I was totally without any support. Kicked out from under my knees I was helpless. It helped me found my Rock on Christ and trust in Him knowning my relationship with Him is way more important than gold. But it's so nice to have people again. I need to apologize for being a jerk the last two years. I didn't follow people up. I've missed out of two years of what has been going on in my closest friends. I struggled with myself and sin on and off. I was in a constant depressed state where I was of no use to anyone. I rejected company from people despite you calling me your friend. I am unworthy. And humbled to have such an awesome group of people who have been praying for me day in and day out, and ready to accept me back without a blink of an eye. I am blessed. You are my family.

God is soo good. Wow half and hour has passed since writing this. Praise the Lord! Two hours left in my shift. I should probably be panicking about my midterm on Thursday or about getting my VSET letter done. My anxious spirit wants to worry about my relationship with God. "Am I getting closer? Must do more stuff and learn about Him." But I think right now I am just resting. Just sitting and knowing and being still. Quieting my soul and remembering Him this week. This morning, yesterday, last week, last month, last year, two years ago. Oh man He is so awesome. It's nice to have some downtime between myself and God. And it's not a Bible mania super QT, or a frantic cry out for desperation. Just a simple sitting in my CLICC chair and smiling. "God, I'm tired." :]

Too be honest, I'm glad I'm not doing much at the moment. Amongst my busy schedule it's nice to take a break from everything. I can't even fall asleep because I'm at work. So I can think and remember. How am I doing with God? Where is He taking me? Submitting, surrendering, praying.

Oh so random, someone just gchats me and I've never ever heard of them before. This is not that entirely strange since I have like a thousand friends (on facebook, gchat, AIM, etc...) that I'm not entirely sure who they are haha. So I do a search of their sn and their xanga pops up. And I'm like ooh, it's a Christian and I get really excited. Seeing God pop up all over the blog is encouraging seeing AACF tagged as a group and just reading random entries from a complete stranger, wow it's awesome to meet a Christian and it's still a mystery of who they are.

I wonder when people see me if I give off that aura? Do people notice something different? Or am I just a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal? I hope people see God through me, and see His work in my life. There's nothing special about me, I am just a lazy engineer who hates to do his homework. But I hope He's using me.

Anyways, yay only 90 min left of my shift. Maybe I can finish my VSET letter or do my DFD. Here's a cool verse I found yesterday:

"Both the one who makes men holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers." Heb 2:11

Wet From His Rain

Haha. Hope you enjoy the pun. Welcome to a new beginning for this little blog. Though its beginnings start here, hopefully the whittles we make now last for a lifetime, going far and beyond this little body of believers.

"As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another." - Proverbs 27:17

also, apparently "whittle" does not exist as a noun the way I'm using it...oh well I just whittled out a new usage for it i suppose...hahaha

Pendulum

So I'm sitting in the CLICC lab two hours into my three hour shift, and I really don't want to study xD

I know I'm supposed to be a good steward of my time, in fact the Purpose Driven Life devotional today is "Do all your work in love. 1 Corinthians 16:14 (TEV)" . God definitely has a sense of humor.

Anyways, today was interesting Danny spoke about the "fear of God" at WHEC and Erick brought up an interesting idea of a pendulum in smallgroup. As Christians we are constantly swinging back from experienceing the fear of God and being totally destroyed like in Isaiah 6. This means epxeriecning your finiteness in comparison to God's infiniteness, and actually being afraid of God, like the Israelites in Deutoronomy 5:24-26. And the other side of the pendulum is approaching God as your friend and following in faith and experiecing His saving grace. In Luke 5:8 Peter says "Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!" and Jesus responds "Don't be afraid; from now on you will catch men." So they pulled their boats up on shore, left everything and followed him."

For me this I think I'm constantly fighting against the pendulum. When I follow in grace and confidence, I question God why don't I experience you? And when God reveals himself and I get destoryed I am like "God have mercy help me, take away my sins and help me to experience grace." Haha, I never realized that God actually wants us to keep swinging back and forth to experience Him more fully. I thought my dual like nature was quite unstable, like if Christ is our rock, how come we constantly are rocked by our experiences of God and sometimes we go through dry times where we don't seem to fear God? Isn't swinging back and forth as a pendulum kind of unstable? But Juan reminded me that the pendulum is still connected to God, and by His grace we can still experience the fear of God and still given the grace to obey in faith. In fact as growing Christians our goal should be to swing back and forth in God's timing, instead of being stuck on one side or worse be stuck in the middle. If we are too crippled by the fear of God then we may never realize the redemption of Jesus Christ, and if we take grace for granted then in our obedience our we actually seeking out the fear of God and obeying? But in His grace, He allows us in His perfect timing to go back and forth in experienceing our sin and His saving grace.

my ABCs

my Absolute Best for Christ

I find myself always struggling to be disciplined. Continually pushing myself to cut off the sinful things, to cut off the extraneous things, the things that are good but I haven't actually been called to do and to focus on what I actually have been called to labor in. Furthermore, I've noticed--rather to my chagrin--that the more successful I am in being disciplined in my life the more I tend to lean towards having a bad attitude.

The more I try to do, the more stressed I become. The more stressed I become, the more lonely and isolated I feel in my struggles. I more isolated I feel, the more I complain for the purpose of seeking attention. And ironically the more attention I get from people around me, the more depressed and frustrated I become at the lack of peace people actually offer.

All these happen becomes I lose sight of God. BUSY means being Bound Under Satan's Yoke. Work that has lost its purpose.

Jesus all I have is you
You're the hope I'm holding to
I might weep but still my faith
Rests in you

I realize its time to go back to the basics. Time to review my ABCs. Yes, it is good to be disciplined, but my success is not measured by my actual progress. It's measured by my faithfulness. And in being faithful all I can do is my absolute best...and God will take care of the rest.

Restlessness

So if you haven't heard the last two weeks of my life have been utterly amazing. A total testament to God's grace, I've never felt God's presence so clearly before in my entire life. After doing QT during Pastor Min's message last Sunday I didn't do anything special but pray specifically and struggled to surrender many strongholds in my life. And since God has been nothing short of awesome, delivering me from my deepest sins and fighting for me on the frontline of the battlefield to combat lies and tricks of the Enemy. It's been a great adventure of diving into Scripture and claiming God's promises. I've been especially blessed by Ps 139:23-24:

"Search me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
See if there is any offensive way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting."

That brings us to the topic of the post, that over the course of the past two weeks this spirit of "uneasiness" has settled in me. I can't really put my finger on it. It's a mix of restlessness, guilt, shame, fear, worry, anxiousness, weightiness. It's like something isn't sitting right and I can't seem to figure it out. Normally I atrributed the feeling to stress, but after surrendering my obviously overloaded and busy schedule, the feeling has continued to persist (Phil 4:6-7). I have also turned to introspection and have repented my sins numerous times but this feeling seems to not be derived from that (1 Jn 1:9). I questioned if there was an evil spirit inside of me, but I know that I am a follower of Jesus Christ (Jn 10:28).

At last I thought I figured out that God has been trying to say something to me, to question my knowledge of God's will for my life. Like, do I really know what God's will is? Maybe I'm just tricking myself, but Jeremiah 29:13-14 says, "Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart." In short even though I am not completely surrendered about every little thing, I can take steps of faith in God's will, because not only do I seek Him, but I know that He is revealing Himself to me (Jn 14:21). I also know that "in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His prupose." (Rom 8:28). And that nothing can seperate us from the love of God. (Rom 8:39). Another awesome verse I found was John 6:37 "All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away." =]

Lol, anyway as I look up and claim these promises I can't help but feel comforted that God really loves me and nothing bad can ever happen to me. Even though this feeling persists, if anything it's driving me closer to God and have me cling onto His words. I thought maybe I was just studying scripture and had forgotten that God was a person, but as I study His word, I am really studying about God, and claiming His very nature, to fufill my desitre for Him. I know I am God's son (Jn 1:12) and that God loves me (Rom 5:8) and that "He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all - how will He not also, along with Him, graciously give us all things?" (Rom 8:32). "Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you." (1 Pt 5:7).

Lol, Sorry for the super long blog post. I started with this acheing feeling inside of me, but even though it has diminished quite a bit, it has been fun to journey with you in claiming each of God's promises. It's like God is speaking to me and comforting me through His word. Thanks for joining me on a journey on how my mind works and how to combat the Enemy's lies and deception. How can he harm me when God is on my side? I love you Lord.

"Why are you downcast, O my soul"
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise Him,
my Savior and my God."
~ Ps 42:5-6a