I know that You are great and I trust in You, but that isn't enough is it? Faith by itself, if not accompanied by action, is dead. I know that I am small in comparison to You, and yet my grasp of the enormity and vastness of your love seems not to be enough to occlude my pride. I serve You, however, is my service driven by desire to see Your glory or by my obstinance in fulfilling a duty?
Father God, I ask that you break me once more and make me humble, so that I may truly see you and learn to serve in accordance to your will.
Wednesday, 20 January 2010
The first sentence that mother said to me when she arrived back
from Hong Kong last Tuesday was to criticise the “mess that the house is in”
and how stained the kitchen looked. I had finished cleaning the kitchen sink
and the dishes just as she was walking in through the door; Dad had cleaned the
entire house the weekend before. Every word she’s spoken to me in the past week
has been words of criticism, the way I dress, my personal grooming, my study
habits, my grades, my commitment… “I
don’t know anyone studying medicine that “studies” as much as you do. All this
hard work must be reflected in your grades then, no? Well, does that mean
you’re more stupid than anyone else I know who goes to university?” I’ve
achieved the grades, I got into medical school and I’m getting decent grades
(despite circumstances). On top of all that, I’m twenty years old and she still
doesn’t trust me to decide for myself what I wear. “People are laughing at you behind your back…you look a mess…your appearance
will make people think that we are abusing you…” Really, Mother? If people
were truly so concerned about me, then surely someone would have said something
to you or to me? Is this all just about the puffer jacket that you bought me in
HK that I said I didn’t like? Well, you’ve known forever that I hate puffer
jackets and this one is particularly awful for the crime that it looks like a
puffed-out black body bag.
This morning, I decided to take some time out and study at home.
What I anticipated to be a quite morning was shattered when, seizing the
opportunity, mother launched into a well-rehearsed rant covering the topics of
the above paragraph. “It’s not the matter
with what I say, it’s your heart.” Wait, is it not the other way round??
It’s not so much a matter with me but merely how you see me? I was so angry
with her for the suggestion. It seems that she doesn’t clearly perceive me at
all. Could she not tell how depressed I’ve been for the past year? I was angry
at her blinkered vision of the world and her lack of understanding. How many
people does she really know goes to university? Does she really know them enough to give value
judgements? How dare she criticise me when she doesn’t understand? If anyone is to make value judgements, at least allow
the opinion to be based upon knowledge or solid experience and not some fantasy
ideal about what should be the case. In general, one would say that it’s
foolish to neither have an understanding of a subject upon which you speak, nor
to seek knowledge about said subject before forming opinions on it. Shouldn’t
the same principle apply to knowing people and in relationship building?
Why is nothing I do done well enough…?
Why is she complaining when I haven’t actually done anything
wrong…?
Meaningless, meaningless, meaningless. There is nothing new
under the sun.
It would be so easy to run away…
I must have quite a masochistic nature to stay here…
I AM NOT MEANT TO FEEL LIKE THIS!
20th October 2008: “I made my decision out of
strength not weakness. I am not going back home because I am accepting my
mother’s rule over me, but that of my Heavenly Father. I am not going home to
be ruled over, but so that my mother will not be anxious anymore”
This relationship was never meant to be this way. I can see a
better future – it may not be what other people deem normal, but it works for
us and it is good. I’m tired of running away, yet I’m weary of this war.
Conflicting emotions of anger and frustration. I know things were not meant to
be this way and I must be patient and stand my ground until the day that things
get better. I was sure by now, that God
you would have reached down, and wiped my tears away. But once again, I say
‘amen’ and it’s still raining. And as the thunder rolls, I barely hear you
whisper through the rain “I am with you”
So I’ll praise you through this storm, for I know that you my
God are with me and will bring me towards the sunrise.
The first verse of this song really struck a chord.
Set Me Free by Casting Crowns
It hasn't always been this way
I remember brighter days
Before the dark ones came
Stole my mind Wrapped my souls in chains
Now I live among the dead
Fighting voices in my head
Hoping someone hears me crying in the night
And carries me away
Set me free of the chains holding me
Is anybody out there hearing me?
Set me free
Morning breaks another day
Finds me crying in the rain
All alone with my demons I am
Who is this man that comes my way?
The dark ones shriek
They scream His name
Is this the One they say will set the captives free?
Jesus, rescue me
Set me free of the chains holding me
Is anybody out there hearing me?
Set me free
As the God man passes by
He looks straight through my eyes
The darkness cannot hide "Do you want to be free?
Lift your chains I hold the key
All power Heav'n and Earth belong to me
You are free"
Recently, I’ve found myself
feeling really fatigued. Weary is
perhaps a better word of it. At the end of summer, I felt really hyped up from
Momentum and I started off the term with a goal in mind, a focus that was
beyond the humdrum cycle of daily living, but rather something that was holy
and something that I knew to be right. Yet having had that focus in mind, I
still somehow found myself caught up in the busy chaotic rhythm of commuting,
uni, lectures, commuting, home, study, what-do-I-have-to-do-next, sleep,
commuting, what-do-I-have-to-do-tomorrow, preparing for this-and-this-and,
commuting, sleep, uni, class, 360 night, study, what-do-I-have-to-do-tomorrow,
Bed, Waterloo, London Bridge, Bed, prepare for this-and-this-and Sunday, commuting,
teen leader, church, teacher, commuting, whatdoIhavetodonext, eurgh Monday,
whatdoIhavetodotomorrow …
At school, I was the geeky
kid who read ahead in lessons and started tasks before the teacher finished
giving explanations because I’d already studied finished reading the
instruction sheet. I was never satisfied with the present and instead I craved
for more, more possibilities, more explanation for things. It was never about
any egotistical sense of academically trumping my peers, just the satisfaction
of pushing my faculties to the limit. Living at the limit of what my body and
brain can handle is a dangerous and unfortunate habit of mine. Again, maybe I’m
using the wrong word, since “habit” doesn’t really describe it. I thrive in challenging
situations, but there’s a very fine line between a stimulating number of
challenges and an overwhelming number, the latter situation (which is more
often the case) resulting in my switching to autopilot “stress and compromise”
mode.
I’m all out of sync and I
don’t know what to do about it. I’m trying to juggle everything and as a
result, I’m not being fair on anyone. It’s not fair on the teens at SOC that
I’m dashing off each Sunday instead of spending some quality time to get to
know them better; it’s not fair on the kids at Hounslow that I only see them
briefly twice a month; it’s not fair on my friends and family that I’m not
paying them much attention by being so busy; I’m not being fair on myself by
forcing my mind and body in so many directions at once and compromising my own
studies. Ultimately, it’s not fair on God by trying desperately to manage and
make do and power-on through everything myself as well as cutting chunks out of
time that belongs to him.
Matt 11:28-30
"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I
will give you rest.Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle
and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." (NIV)
I’m all out of sync and
only wish my heart were still enough to REST!
We were discussing the
actions and character of Pharaoh whilst studying Exodus ch.8 during 360° this
week when the question was raised of whether his stubbornness was justified in
the face of what he considered to be a rebellion amongst his subordinates. What
was disturbing on reflection was how easy I found it to play devil’s advocate
and empathise with Pharaoh. To “imagine
yourself in Pharaoh’s position” was too easy to do. Pharaoh had been shown
time and time again God’s awesome power and yet each time a plague passed, he
returned to the same obstinate state as before.
Am I like Pharaoh? How many
times have I witnessed God’s mercy and grace in my life, and yet each time
trouble passes I find myself lapsing…
I was sure by now, God,
that you would have reached down…
But one again, I say amen
and it’s still raining
As the thunder rolls I
barely hear You whisper through the rain,
“I am with you”
…my strength is almost gone
How can I carry on if I can’t
find You?
And I’ll praise you in this
storm
And I will lift my hands
For You are who You are
No matter where I am
And every tear I’ve cried
You hold in your hand
You never left my side
And though my heart is torn
I will praise You in this
storm
I lift my eyes onto the
hills
Where does my help come
from?
My help comes from the Lord,
the maker of heaven and earth
I lift my eyes onto the
hills
Where does my help come
from?
My help comes from the Lord,
the maker of heaven and earth
(Lyrics from “Praise you in
this storm” by Casting Crowns)
In Jeremiah 13, the prophet (Jeremiah) is told by God to take
fine linen belt and to hide it in damp place by a river where it would become
rotten and useless. The point was to graphically illustrate the broken
relationship the people of Israel
had with God. Eugene Patterson explains the passage like this:
Israel
was the fine garment that God wanted to wear, but she wasn’t ready yet to be
used for His purposes. She wanted to live an ordinary life first, so she wadded
herself up and stuffed herself into the secure routines, separating herself
from what God had at great cost purchased her for, but when that day comes, it
will turn out that she is good for nothing. The beautiful moral life that she
set aside for a more convenient day will turn out, when she picks it up, to be
mildewed and moth-eaten. (From ‘Run with the Horses – A Quest for
Life at its Best’)
Replace the word “Israel” with “Elim” and, well,
that’s what has been going wrong with my life recently. But this isn’t all, the
Lord says a little later in the passage: “…because you have forgotten me and
trusted in false gods. I will pull up your skirts over your face and your shame
may be seen – your adulteries and lustful neighings, your shameless
prostitution! I have seen your detestable acts on the hills and in the fields.
Woe to you, O Jerusalem! How long will you be unclean?” (NIV)
It’s not just been a matter of getting lazy with quite time and
filling up my schedule to the brim with ‘important’ things, but I had let these
things become ‘false gods’ and I had become detestable in the eyes of God. It
hit me that my thoughts and my actions (or lack of), and by repeatedly
abandoning God’s calling, has made me no more reputable than if I had gone and
sold myself on the streets of Amsterdam! Disgusting, moth-eaten, shameful. I
wouldn’t do it in life, so why do it in my spiritual life? Our heavenly Father
knows when we run from him, even when we’re so good at kidding ourselves into
thinking that “I’ll do it tomorrow” or “this is enough effort”. At the end of
the day, we’re just kidding ourselves into thinking we’re secure in what we do
and that everything is OK when it isn’t, because in reality, the things we do
are shameful…what’s worse is that subconsciously we may even know this and yet
we carry on because what we do is comfortable and cosy.
Yesterday, I casually told a friend that I could never put up
with a man who was constantly passive-aggressive in his attitude towards my
work and my mistakes (in reference to my supervisor at work, who to be fair is
actually a really nice guy), so today I guess I received my just deserts. I could almost hear the
words being screamed at me from the page as I read them.
HOW LONG WILL YOU BE UNCLEAN?
These six small words for me conveyed both the anger and despair
of a righteous father, but also, they seemed to say “when will you come back to
me?”
Father, how can I come to you when I have done such shameful
things in your eyes?
…and the answer always comes as this: because I have already
redeemed you. Because you are mine since I made you and then paid for your bail
so that you may come home to me again.
Father, I’m sorry…I love you too.
1 John 4:19 says “we love because he first loved us”, similarly,
we live not because we deserve life (since the things we do are despicable and
contrary to the purpose we were created for), but for the reason that we have
been redeemed out of love; since by grace, Christ Jesus (being God) took the
just punishment (being death) for our sins and in rising from the grave, he
removed that debt so that it were as if our sins have never existed. We live
because our lives are no longer our own but rather because we have something greater
than ourselves to live for. I can return to the Lord because the awful things I
have done, and thought about doing, because I have already been forgiven.
Tuesday, 19 May 2009
Perseverance is a gift from God, given so that we may be able to know him better through the undertaking of everyday tasks. We suffer through the everyday and the mundane, not because of dutoy to ourselves or others, but because we have been called to persevere for the sake of our Father in heaven. We are called to persevere through the mundane so that God can show us just how extraordinary he is.
OK, so I wake up with the worst headache ever, the sun piercing through my eyelids and the screech of my mother's voice, screaming at me to get out of bed... it seems something big was going on. Two hours later (I fell asleep again after helping mum...my headache was the excuse), I come downstairs to find that two dudes with hammers had dessimated the office and the sitting room, such that the carpets had been rolled back and the ceiling to the office was now on the floor, along with half the plaster from the walls. It really begs the question as to what could have possibly caused me to sleep through the noise of my house being pulled down around me? .... I guess all the pent up tension from charging around being "busy" has finally caught up with me. Allow my body the luxery of 9 hours sleep and this is what happens...my immune system takes a holiday and I crash. One week before exams. If the condition of the house were a metaphor of how I am at the moment, then one could say that the two builders with their kit are the viruses hacking away at the walls my upper respiratory tract and the woodworm is the backlog of work that is slowly eating away at my conscience, but having yet to do anything about it, the house and myself will inevitably collapse into a pile of rotten joists and dusty grey matter.
Jesus was taken and blessed. He was broken for us, so that
the debt of our transgressions may be erased and that God’s boundless love for
us may be shared.
I am chosen and blessed. I was led through darkness, only so
that I may learn to share what I have.
It is only through brokenness that things may be shared.
Brokenness in itself isn’t such a bad thing.
Last weekend at Easter Conference set me on an amazing journey
up a steep learning curve and it just goes to show that if God wants to speak
to you, there’s no set way in which he’s going to do so. Although I wasn’t a
part of the main conference, being a leader in the children’s program, God used
what I was doing and where I was to meet with me.
One thing I learnt about myself this weekend is that I’m not
good at asking for help. This may come as a surprise to some who know me and
are reading this, but seriously, I’ve never quite clocked onto this minuté aspect
of my character. I just put it down to maybe a slight over-confidence (which I
know isn’t exactly nice either); however, the appearance of confidence appears
to arise from the fact that I’m terrible at asking for help. I much prefer to
sort my problems out myself and when it gets all a bit too much for me to
handle, I bury the problem deep down so that I don’t have to deal with it. I
pretend that everything is fine. That much has been evident in my blogs lately.
Near the end of the celebration service on Saturday evening,
everyone was invited to come to the front of the chapel to be prayed for by one
of the leaders. The last time I attended a service where prayer was offered to
everyone in such an open manner was a couple of months ago, when I had been feeling
pretty miserable. The last time, I’d stayed pretty much glued to my seat whilst
everyone else on my row got up at some point to pray with someone else (whether
in praise or for intervention). The last time, I felt unable to tell my
problems to someone I didn’t know, or rather, someone who didn’t know me, and
to be prayed for by them. I told myself that my problems were too messy, what
would people think of me if I told them that I was just pretending to be OK, I
don’t need someone to intervene for me… What a fool I was. Wallowing in
self-pity stopped me from realising that I needed to ask for help and that I
was too proud to ask for it.
This time was
different. Recent experience had already taught me how deep hurt runs in my
life and I knew already that I really do need prayer, and yet, through the fear
of standing up in amongst hundreds of people to ask for help a verse came to
me, which we had read in our morning group devotion: “Have I not commanded you?
Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the
Lord your God will be with you wherever you go” – Joshua 1:9. God’s voice was
both an encouragement and a command to Joshua in the context of the passage as
it was to me, sitting in the chapel that night.
If you read the first chapter of the book of Joshua, you
will find that God tells the chosen leader of the Israelites to “be strong and
courageous” a total of 4 times in the short space of 17 verses. It seems even
mighty warrior leaders chosen by God to do great things also need reminding of
the divine assurance we have in God let alone us normal mortals. Have I not
commanded you? Not only are we encouraged to trust in His faithfulness to
provide and guide us, but it is imperative that we do so.
The devotion notes from that morning sums up my thoughts at
that moment rather nicely, which say “it is good to recognise our own
limitations, [for] only when we have an awareness of our own personal inadequacy
that we can fully appreciate the assurance of the divine sufficiency”.
As I stood there near the front of the chapel, waiting for a
person to become available to pray for me and still rather nervous about
sharing my broken heart with some stranger, God came through for me. He showed
me just how faithful he was and how he would never make me do anything that he
knew I couldn’t achieve. Through the small crowd of laughing, sobbing people, I
saw Aunty Ann smile and beckon to me. I almost felt God’s smile shine through
hers, smiling at my doubt and fear. It’s OK, I’m here. Do you really think I would
abandon you when I'd promised to guide and protect you?
I think I cried a lot that night (my memories of what
happened after being prayed for are a little fuzzy). I don’t cry, not
publically…I’m not really a public emotions sort of person. I’m sorry if I
confused people at the time or made friends overly concerned. I was just
feeling a little broken. I think I’m better now.
Thursday, 16 April 2009
I’ve been hurt – part 2 (that which continues after part the first)
And where was God in amongst all of this? Well, right there beside me actually. It was in most private and miserable moments where I found Him.
I remember a time where I was so lost that I pleaded for God to reveal to me why I felt so bad; after all, I should be glad that my parents are not longer always so angst-ridden that they’re calling me up every hour to check where I am and to ensure that I wasn’t skipping meals. I should be proud of myself for being able to take the step to compromise, and appreciative of the fact that my folks care so much about me.
God spoke to me in such times, after a while, after I’d stopped pouring out my sorrows and complaints like the writer of Psalm 102. The depth of my hurt and pain is a reflection, albeit a poor one, of the hurt and pain felt by our Father and his desire to have a relationship with us. It shocked me to realise that whilst I was busy being miserable, God was hurting more, for me! The Maker of Heaven and Earth was hurting for me and waiting to turn back to Him.
I rediscovered that, for me at least, it is in my moments of vulnerability that God speaks strongest to and through me.
In my preoccupation with my vulnerability and my problems, it seemed that I had become the one thing I had always thought it was against my nature to be: passive. I am not referring to the beautiful fragility and strength displayed by so many ‘church women’ or the energetic peacefulness exuded by content housewives. The passivity I saw in myself was more of the couch-potato, apathetic kind. When it comes to principles and important matters (other than studying as a rule), I’ve always like to think of myself as an active, passionate person (some who know me more closely may call this trait stubbornness). Imagine then, my shock when I found myself being so enervated in my faith – God as supposed to mean everything to me! Did I not sing and shout to testify as such during worship and to my Christian peers? Why then was I flinging my arms out like a small spoilt child who was too lazy to take any responsibility for herself? “Bless me, Lord…make me change (but please make the change easy and effortless)”
I had forgotten how to fight for the divine-given spiritual transformation of the self that comes from true passion and life in faith. I had become so bogged down in my so-called suffering and fixated on “letting go and giving it to God” that I had lost the urgency and drive to take action in faith.
I remember, about this time last year, I wrote about ‘active surrendering’; where I found myself constantly battling against my natural urge to do things my way, so I may conscientiously surrender to God’s will. Now, it seems, with my natural urge to fight for things switched off, the counter-instinct to dampen down this impulse lies redundant as well, which gives rise to my recent pathetic state.
I remember how I found joy in fighting for my faith, in clawing back that extra half an hour in the day so I may have some quite time before dinner (even though it was amongst manic exam revision); however, I also remember the peace I found when I first truly surrendered to His guidance. Perhaps the ideal spiritual condition and my aim ought to be the equilibrium of these two states?
Short and chinese is meant to be scary? Then you can see me running when I see you :P
I know....i look much nicer in real life :) However, i can see the huge similarities between you and your picture...:p
Did anyone tell you how evil you can be....wait that's complimenting you! Damn..how to insult you...I'll take a raincheck on the insulting at the mo. Can't think fo anything. Well ta
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