Summer! Reflections and Looking Forward

Wow, summer's got a better start than I've probably ever had before.

It's probably because being out of my first year of college, that I know I can't slack off too much. Though it's very easy to just play, play, play, I know from past experience that I don't want to waste my summers again.

I have to say, I really enjoyed my first year of college. It certainly went by fast (yeah, it's certainly true). There were a lot of ups and downs, but God is still good through it all.
In regards to my previous post, I'm feeling much better. and I feel more determined/excited than ever to chase after what God has in store for us :)

For this summer, there's a lot I'm excited for:
I want to work more on my personal projects and sprucing up my work-in progress portfolio.
I want to build a deeper relationship with my parents.
I want to build my relationship with God on a more intimate level.
I want to learn how to play my lovely tenor ukulele.
I want to probably pick up my piano again.

Haha, so a lot of stuff. But, I'm really looking forward to the rest of this summer. I'm just glad that it's only the second week in, and that I'm starting early.
I'm really thankful for what God's been showing me that past school year. The best part is that He's never going to stop showing me His glory. Whether it'd be with the person I love or with school/work or struggles, He's going to work with me to help me get through it. God showed me His refining fire at the beginning of the year and He will definitely show it to me again and again as I and my loved ones grow in Him.

I'm excited, a little nervous, but happy.
:)

A Crying Heart

"From the end of the earth I will cry to You, when my heart is overwhelmed; lead me to the Rock that is higher than I." - Psalm 61:2

I guess all I want to say is that.. my heart is overwhelmed.

My heart likes to go on emotional roller coasters that I don't want to get on. But sometimes it's smart enough to not go on a roller coaster and just go on the Giant Drop, to just fall in order to bring me back to Him. I had a pretty heavy conversation with someone I really care about. I'm not going to dive into details, because that's between us and God. But, I have to admit. I really am on my knees in this.

It's not that I'm not against what the ending conversation was about. It's just that my heart still feels the sting from the process. What I'm most upset about is that I'm still feeling the sting. But I don't want that. But it wouldn't go away. I retreated to my room during lunch hour today and just wept. I felt really lonely. I felt inadequate. I wanted to see God's face before me. I opened my devotional book and lo and behold, it was titled "The Great Comforter". 

"The Lord is near to those who have a broken heart." - Psalm 34:18

A crying heart proves how much I need the Lord. A crying heart proves that I'm human. A crying heart proves how much I care for them. A crying heart proves how much I want to change and be strong for them, but ultimately for the glory of the LORD.

I'm sorry that I've hurt them in ways I didn't intend. I'm sorry that I still feel the sting, I feel really lonely when that happened suddenly and I wasn't able to see them, and discuss in person like we've done before. I was a little heart broken by their tone (but typing is so impersonal). I know why they were stern because they care about me so much. 

It's simply miscommunication. Miscommunication causes a lot of damage.

Had they explained and discussed everything and thoughts with me instead of just telling me, I probably wouldn't have taken it as harshly. Because the first time they laid it out sounded like they suddenly cut me off without context.
I guess the reason why I'm still crying here and there all day today, is because I just feel really lonely and pushed away. My roommate moved out so we could've had space. And then that happened, I had to go back to an empty room, where every sound echoed, and I felt just as empty. Because I felt like I wasn't allowed to see them anymore. I know that's not true.. but it felt that way when they first told me of their resolve.

What I desire so much now, is to just feel God's presence, His peace, and that He will grace me with his wisdom and discernment, to hear the difference between what He says as opposed to what other people say.
LORD, what am I supposed to feel now? Can we go back to how we were, but this time, under Your wisdom? I know we can. This is just a little bump in the road leading to You and what You intended for us. I'm only taking an extra day to get over it. There's just some potholes that I need to smooth over.

There is going to be peace. There is going to be love. There is going to be joy.

I believe in that with all my heart.

I believe with all of my heart that we will be grounded, in love with Christ.

The God who is mighty, sovereign, above all things, is the same God who loves romance.

LORD, I know that I'm feeling lonely and helpless now. But LORD I know that this is only temporary. Help me to focus on the future and on You, LORD. Help me not focus on these negative emotions and to remember LORD, You are good.

You are good, LORD.
I care about them so much.
They are proof that You are good and that You care.

Mold me, LORD, into the woman that You intended me to be.
My broken heart cries out, please give me peace.

Baptized in the name of the LORD - My Testimony

Today, April 1st, 2012, I was baptized at my church. <3

It was a joyous occasion and I'm very happy about what God has been doing for me all these years. Below is my personal testimony about how God has worked in my life and how He's changed it.

I guess you can say I’ve lived a fully Christian-by-name kind of life since I was born. My parents became Christians in Hong Kong before coming to America, and they’ve been attending CCUC before I was born. I grew up in a Christian home, I went to Sunday school every week, and I was even put in a Christian education system. I knew all the Bible stories and I believed in Jesus, and what He has done for me on the cross. I don’t remember when I started calling myself a Christian. It felt as if I was just born Christian. I was confident in calling myself a Christian at such a young age (grade school). But that was just a sliver of what I thought being a Christ-follower was.

It wasn’t until sophomore year of high school that my take on my faith turned for the better. A lot of it contributes to when I was in Jared Lee’s Sunday school in my first year in Kingdom Seekers. Since I knew all the Bible stories so well and was confident in my faith, I took the initiative to answer his often-feared question, “What is the Gospel?” Every answer I gave him, he just turned it around, and it really made me realize how shallow I’ve been treating my faith. I was always the nice girl, who always knew the right, Christian thing to do; I was what I like to call a “textbook Christian”. I had all the head-knowledge, but it never deeply resonated in me, what it meant to follow Jesus. I started to look at my faith more carefully, and was being hungrier for a deeper relationship with God. I wanted to know what it felt like to fall in love with God. I wanted to know the passion of those who are just crazy for Him. I wanted to feel that for myself. I went to Teen Camp that same year, and that was where I consciously asked for Christ to be in my heart. That was probably the first real conscious choice I made to follow Christ.

After that, I slowly grew in my walk with God as I tried to look at things in a new light at school. I took Bible lessons and chapel talks more seriously, and was often discouraged with the spiritual dryness of my high school. Because, it isn’t a surprise that being a Christian just became routine when it is all you knew since you were a child. But it also made me want to know the people in my class on a deeper level, as brothers and sisters in Christ (I’m still working on it). In the last years of high school, I went through a lot of trials and triumphs in my growth with God, be it in school or in church. College was coming up, and I was afraid of losing my faith. Thankfully, it only grew increasingly to this day.

My freshman year of college has been such a blessing to my faith. I’m in a great Intervarsity group and I’m in situations where I can talk about my own faith. Being on my own just led me to be more dependent on God, and I thank Him for putting my friends and family where I needed them in times of trial. It’s just that I’ve seen and experienced much in being God’s presence and seeing His work. I’ve felt the joy of the Spirit of the LORD so many times this past year, and I can’t ask for anything more joyful, or more fulfilling than those moments. It’s just such a blessing that I am taking my faith more seriously in the way that I want God to be the center of my life. It led me wanting to be more intimate with my family, more earnest with my friends, and more genuine with acquaintances and strangers. It also led me to have more trust in God, and I’ve never felt such peace before to do so.

 There are times where I am wrapped up in my own stress and fears that I feel numb to God’s words. And that scares me. But it’s so encouraging that God is unchanging and that I am His prodigal daughter, His rescued princess, and His lost sheep. This year after Winter Fest (an Intervarsity conference/retreat), God reminded me of His characteristics as a King, a Redeemer, a Savior, and a Shepherd. That weekend, I recommitted myself to the Great Commission saying, “Here I am, send me.”

I really believe God placed me in Christian home and education for a reason. Had I not have the Holy Spirit, I’m scared of what my life could’ve been. It doesn’t matter if you were born in a Christian or non-Christian home or how your life was. God reaches out to everyone with His unconditional love and grace. There are definitely trials to come, but I’m excited for what God’s going to show me for the rest of my life. LORD, following You was the best decision of my life. I can’t ask for anything more. I want to fall deeper in love with You, God. You are my LORD and King!

Thank you, be blessed :)

Hebrews 12:11

No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have trained by it.

Hebrews 12:11

In the past couple months, I was glad to witness my college group at my church display brotherly love in, not necessarily rebuking each other, but just reminding one another to be cautious about what we say and do as Christ followers.

Most of this started when the video about Christianity being a relationship and not a religion by Jeff Bethke.  At first, I agree fully what Jeff had to say and there was no doubt that it contained some truth about Christianity. However, I came to realize through the help of some friends (who were older and wiser), that  Christianity is just a religion as any other. A friend of mine, Mark Brunke, who is a youth pastor wrote nice article summing up what Christianity is as a religion and it reminded me that yeah, it's okay to say my faith, Christianity, is a religion. (Click on Mark's name to read his whole post) 

Most young Christians, including myself, believe that since people are turned off at the mention of religion, they might not be accepted to start a conversation about Jesus or just won't be accepted in general. Almost everyone I knew was posting on Facebook left and right about this video and amen! and all that good stuff. Though I do like to see my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ being passionate for the LORD, it really does convict me that we should really look at both views/sides to anything; not just religion, but also politics, news, etc. This leads to my next subject, the recent hype about KONY 2012. But before I switch gears, let's make one thing clear: 

Christianity is not JUST a religion. It is ALSO a relationship.

Anyway, I was one of many that saw the KONY 2012 video and jumped right on the band wagon. I'm not saying that the campaign is a sham, I'm saying that there are other layers to this story.

There have been criticisms of Invisible Children with the way they spend their donations, their method of using military force, and the actions of some (not all!) people who are involved with ulterior motives.

Visible Children - We Got Trouble

Criticisms of the KONY campaign

Seems kind of fishy right? After reading some more, I was starting to think, man, you gotta know both sides of the story! I just started contemplating about having discernment in campaigns such as these. I was starting to feel, "Okay, glad I didn't invest much further without investigating more."

BUT.

Lo and behold, there's another layer:

Invisible Children Critic Response

This time around, I just sit in my chair and think, "Well then..."

The conclusion that I've come to is that we as humans just aren't perfect. Something good may turn out to be bad or have skeletons in the closet. Something bad may actually be good in the long run. No one knows. This is a broken world where there are skeptics and pious people. But there are still people who genuinely care about others and want to do things the cleanest way possible and I admire that.

I'm not telling people to swing one way or another. I'm just drawing attention to the fact that yeah, we have to know both sides of the news and of the stories, even if you have to sit and wait a couple hours or even days for all the information to present itself. Then you can do your own research and determine what you believe is true or not. 

The ultimate thing is that, let's all try and take a step back, do our research thoroughly before you decide to jump into the fray.

I titled this post as Hebrews 12:11 because people will disagree. I have brothers and sisters in Christ with conflicting views on matters such as these. But whether something was right or wrong, we should continue to respectfully inform one another, to help each other be discerning.

So, don't cause division amongst friends just because of one thing, do it in brotherly love and with respect for one another. These little ripples in the water will soon pass, so please don't get overly biased and hyped about things so quickly.

Make every effort to live in peace with everyone and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord. 

Hebrews 12:14

God Is Good. All The Time. No, Seriously!

Wow, I have not posted here for a long time. And I really want to again. And I will. But so much has happened within the past three months. There was sorrow, there was anger, there was anxiety. But there was joy, there was peace, and there was healing.

I want to start by saying, I never knew that I'd be posting more about my faith than what I originally intended, which was my art work and other miscellaneous rants. But I guess that just goes to show you and myself about how much more important my Christian faith has become in my life. To be brief, I am coming to understand what it really means to take up my cross and follow Christ. And honestly, it has been a real ride. A good ride.
A couple of my past posts have been dwelling over someone. Someone who I grew to care about, but it has been a rough time. In the end, I realized that I was starting to make similar mistakes in a past experience: I was starting to place that person over what should be the most important thing to me; my relationship with God. In the end, God pulled me out of my messy situation even if I had to feel hurt in the process. But it was good. It was necessary. It was what I needed.

A part of God's process in healing me was through getting back into His Word, being more honest with my family (biological and church), and also through a special someone, because it'll be a long story. But the point of this post is, God is good. All the time. No, He seriously is!

(Augh, I can talk about so many things branching off from this post alone, but I don't have the time to, nor is it the purpose of this particular post.)

I kind of want to make this fairly short, so I'll get straight to the point.
I've been through a lot of emotional and spiritual distress and I have not seen one moment where God has failed me. Never. Even when I feel at my lowest point, slowly but definitely, God was working in my life at my side for the better. There are a lot of lies that I tend to fall into and it tears me up from the inside, but every time I bow my head or look up, and just say, "God, I can't do this! I need Your help!" He answers. Leaving things in God's hands is to give up all of your desire to control things for your desired outcome. These past three months, I've come to fully understand that God's plan really is the best plan for me. Starting the second semester of my freshman year of college, I saw myself growing spiritually immensely and I have never felt such peace and joy in my life. Yes, sometimes it's tough. It's not easy to be Christian, but you know, God already told us it'd be hard. But it's all worth it in the end, because I'm alive because of a God who loves me so much that He came and died to repare the distance between us. How amazing for a love like that to exist? The best part: it does :]

If you're a Christian and feeling stuck, don't give up. Look up to Him who is more powerful than anything in all the universe, whose heart is bigger than all the universe. If you're not, then just ponder on what you've just read. I'm sure you have a lot of questions of your own.

Until next time :]

"I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full."

John 10:10