1"Come, let us return to the LORD; for He has torn us, that He may heal us; He has struck us down, and He will bind us up. 2After two days He will revive us; on the third day He will raise us up, that we may live before Him. 3 Let us know; let us press on to know the LORD; His going out is sure as the dawn; He will come to us as the showers, as the spring rains that water the earth."
- hosea 6:1-3
"Love Break Me"
Mark me with Your grace,shape me in Your wisdom Place in me a heart of mercy Open up my eyes, let me see Your glory Lead me to the place,You want me
Love, break me now Strip me down may Your beauty Deep inside of me resound Through me be found,Come break me now
Guide me in Your truth, mold me in Your nature Birth in me a hope,to hold on Show me how to wait,teach me how to listen Be in me the strength, to let go
Break me now...
Love, hear my plea Rescue me, bring Your peace I have come to You on bended knee I'm desperate for Your breath in me Your ears to hear, Your eyes to see Set me free, come set me free Like rain flowing over me... Lord continue to break me. break me of my own sinfulness, my complacency, break me of my pride and my tendency to neglect the gospel. break me of my insecurities, break me from the lies of Satan telling me that i'm pathetic and worth nothing and that i have to work so hard to prove myself. break me from my temptation to throw my faith away, letting doubts and my own intellect take control. help me continue to push on to know You more, to know Your character more even if i don't fully understand everything. i plead for You to break me, love me, and eventually restore me once more.
"the irony is that while God doesn't need us but still wants us, we desperately need Go d but don't really want Him most of the time." - crazy love
some cute pics to make this emo-free :D
even turtles are in awe of God's amazing ridiculously crazy love :)
and the big big God that we worship can still love the little tiny us <3
why am i sitting in a computer lab and staring off into space instead of doing something productive with this time?
oh yeah..because i'm going to be on campus for a total of 12 hours today. whoop de doo.
i hate that i'm becoming so negative lately. i tend to have that attitude when things aren't as ideal as i'd like them to be. but i also realized yesterday that i'm slowly starting to believe in myself less and less. it seems i can never reach the expectations that people place on me...that i fail again and again and the sorries and apologizing amount to nothing. am i that incapable of changing myself to become more considerate, selfless, and more humble? has my ability to form and invest in relationships vanished completely? it seems the more i try to "balance" everything, the more certain things get neglected. heh...even studying and isolating myself in order to focus more on school hasn't gotten me anywhere. the times i've rested just made me get really lazy and selfish. finding time to spend with those important to me is rare, but when i finally have the time they end up getting wasted on stupid meaningless things. emotionally i've been so up and down that i've told multiple people to really pray for my emotional stability. i don't want my emotional wellbeing to be dependent on things that are only going to be temporary. it's so easy to talk about the gospel everyday and how it should motivate and push you each and every moment, but it's so hard to really wrap your mind around that...to transcend beyond the soul-crushing thoughts and worries that we humans innately have.
the past week i've been wanting to blog something inspirational, something fascinating God showed me and taught me about Himself but even those revelations and joyous epiphanies are being overshadowed by my own internal turbulence....
the past few weeks so far being back in school has been a total struggle. everyday would result in arguments with eric about how i'm balancing my time and priorities..but most importantly how i've been neglecting my most important relationships in my life. no mattei how hard i tried to make an effort to improve in those areas, my selfishness and pride would take over and would push away those concerns. i knew that something was wrong however, because i soon realized that i seemed like a split-person. i knew deep inside that my heart was not aligning to my actions or words, but no matter how hard i tried i couldn't make the two connect again. my relationship with God was suffering because i lacked the energy and commitment to actively spend time with Him, and although i was already called out on the fact that this would affect every other aspect of my life including ministry, i refused to listen.
so because i decided to plug my ears and be the usual stubborn self that i am, God smacked me pretty hard in the head this past week.
the message at AACF was based on the prodigal son. we all know that story...but what was interesting was the fact that the speaker focused more on the older son. i remember in sunday school when we'd mostly talk about the younger one, but rarely or briefly talk about the older one. the speaker said that what separates us from God isn't just our sin, but also our damnable righteousness...the default human idea that we need to do something to make things right. that our own works and efforts will even out the score. the younger son was an obvious sinner, living a reckless pleasure-loving life that made himself his own god, but the older son was also doing the same thing by living a "good" and "moral" life...meaning his legalism was the thing that motivated him to obey and serve his father..not his love for Him. when Jesus said that the most important commandment is to love God with your heart, soul, and might, it really meant love God with your intentions and motivations.
the scary thing is that it's hard to catch when someone is backsliding legalistically. they can seem more prayerful, more involved in ministry, more passionate for the church...but it's all about performance and doing the right things. the speaker noted that christianity isn't just about repenting of our sin, but also our own righteousness...our self righteousness that blocks us from every seeing our actual state of sinfulness and brokenness which only God's grace can heal and restore. we were given five signs of legalistic backsliding, and every single one of them struck like an arrow to my chest.
1. you get frustrated and easily discouraged when things don't go your way. in your failures you either hate yourself, hate others, or hate God.
2. there is mechanical joy-less obedience in your christian life. there's always a fear of burning out and the need to show external obedience
3. you have a lack of assurance of the Father's love and a lack of intimacy with Him. you live with a schizophrenic perspective where you bounce between self-condemnation and boasting.
4. you easily hold grudges because it's hard for you to forgive others when you're having trouble showing grace to yourself. your heart is full of bitterness and resentment, while always internally calculating how much others are doing for you.
5. your christian life is reduced to what you do and what you don't do. if you don't do your quiet time you feel out of place and unable to worship. when you do them you feel pride in the fact that you're consistent in your spiritual disciplines. instead of a relationship, it is reduced to works and you're deaf to God's question: DO YOU LOVE ME?
i saw myself in every single one of these points. i recognized the self-condemnation of myself, the inability to accept God's grace, my internal boasting at having done the right things, the weighing of how others can serve or see me, the bitterness and anger harbored in my heart. all these things dawned on me and God revealed to me why i was struggling so much with just going through the motions..why i felt so separated from Him and from my other relationships.
even in these convictions it's easy to think...oh man. i need to work harder, i need to do more devotions, i need to serve with a better attitude. but once again i feel like God's bringing up that lesson i learned in Uganda..that i shouldn't be too focused on the DOING but on the BEING.
even though i am the older son, my response should be that of the younger one.
that all i need to do is BE there as He sees me coming back home and runs towards me with His arms open wide.
this is definitely something worth blogging about.
if you don't already know <and i doubt anybody DOESN't know> i am a MAJOR HUGE CRAZY disney fan and this whole entire summer, i've been itching to see the new fantasmic dragon. UNFORTUNATELY although i've gone to dland twice already this summer, murphy the dragon was still being fixed up from her tragic dress rehearsal accident. FINALLY it's out and has been seen by thousands already...except me.
here's a video of murphy's amazing awesome-ness
and if you want to watch some other closeups there's another one on this site: http://thedisneyblog.com/2009/09/02/leave-murphy-alone-also-new-fantasmic-dragon-debuts-at-disneyland/
AHHHHH I NEED TO GO BACK SOON!!! everybody has annual passes :( but hopefully my awesome friend who works there can get me in sometime before this year ends. i think i'm seriously going to cry when i see murphy in real life...much like how i did when dumbo came out during the new fireworks.
man living in the apartments is so weird. i have too much space and i don't know what to do with it. although i've been looking forward to cooking in my own place since freshmen year, the dream has faded and i've already started depending on frozen costco food for sustenance...as well as my roommates' leftovers....hehehe. it's also gonna take some time getting used to wooden floors...we are in great need of a swiffer mop already since my feet keep turning dirty and i'm too non-asian to wear slippers around the no-shoe zone. for the first time, i'm living with all christian girls. while i'm super excited that we will be able to fellowship and everything, it'll be interesting to see how we all live together since we come from different backgrounds and denominations.
most people already know i'm pretty psyched about AACF this year. it's been a huge encouragement to see our core really united in our vision and what we want to see happen this year. it's awesome to see a group that's so committed to the gospel, and also striving towards biblical fellowship in everything we do. while i'm probably not gonna stop worrying and burdening myself about the things we could do better, it's refreshing to know that i'm not alone in some of my ideas and opinions.
classes have started out pretty well. psych 10 looks like it's gonna be easy, with only three non culmulative multiple choice exams. i love my physio anatomy class already, with learning about embryology and human development the first day. it's amazing how God made it possible for a zygote to form a full fledged beating heart within one month of fertilization. the pictures our professor showed us awed the entire class, as we saw that already by two months you can see the beginnings of a human form. as for my last class, LS4 genetics, it looks to be quite boring. fortunately i've found friends who i can suffer through it with. research search is still going on, and a professor contacted me back saying we could meet up sometime next week. i got excited when i saw on the bottom of his email "in the beginning was the Word...soli deo gloria!" perhaps this is an opportunity from God to work with a Christian scientist? but he hasn't emailed me back confirming a day yet. unfortunately, God has this funny habit of shoving great opportunities in my face and then taking them back. it's His way of checking up on my trust abilities.
i think this year's challenge is going to be learning how to BALANCE. if you know me pretty well, you can start to tell that i'm incapable of finding the healthy balance of things. i'm always leaning towards one extreme or the other. i'm either REALLY REALLY passionate and excited about things, or pretty apathetic. i'm either super hyper, or super moody. but this year with more responsibilities, a relationship, and the whole pre-med shenanigan, i'm gonna have to learn how to find that balance. i talked to our AACF speaker for this past week, who is a doctor and graduated from UCLA as an undergrad. in college, he was pre-med and was involved in multiple ministries, and is still involved today in his church. hearing him speak, you would think he was in seminary for a few years. when i asked him how he did it, balancing ministry and studies, he told me two things: sacrifice and discipline. hopefully with God's grace i'll be able to master those things or at least get some progress onto them. either way, this year is gonna be super challenging but with the potential of it being super fruitful <why do i keep using the word super?>
i think this is the first post in a long time where i've just written about what's been going on, instead of trying to express the inner i-can't-really-put-down-in-words-adequately-enough thoughts going around in my mind. always good to put daily happenings in personal blogs.
