So Faithful, God

God is so faithful. I suppose I have consistently been embracing the truth of my freedom in Christ. Many opportunities have been opening up at me, internship/experience-wise, while I’ve remained unsure about how to go about playing the game and asserting myself at these people and organizations who might tell me I’m not worth investing in and feeding me lies about my worth.

And with this affirmation, I continue to remain free as ever, in my God, my Provider now and forever.

Brothers & sisters, what the Spirit recently told me is this: obviously we’re living in a broken, fallen and messy place and time. If we, the warriors in this spiritual battle, are not completely free from every shackle the enemy will try to tie around our ankles, who will fight for the kingdom? Our experience of a free life is only secondary to the purpose it fills for the glory of God’s kingdom.

Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. YEHYAYEEE.

Hangook

We all know about the situation in North Korea.

But in South Korea, more people commit suicide than in any other country in the world. More living breathing people with families and food to eat and freedoms and good friends, take their own lives, than in any other country in the world.

Something is wrong. :( I don’t really have much to say other than that I live in a fallen world. Always be sensitive to the spiritual. The only thing that consumes my mind these days: the Cross is the only way. I love that old rugged cross.

Occupy For the Love Of Money

This is not to undermine the current political and social pursuit of economic justice that is taking place today, literally today.

But in pondering everything that is happening with these occupy movements, it’s difficult for me to move past the notion that this mess of an Occupy movement - tensions between the people and the powerful - escalating to use of violence, reflects to me nothing more than the plight of a people who love Money. But we cannot love both God and Money. This leads me to a sad realization that we are a people who do not love God.

I mean, this could be called obvious, but the picture of brokenness laid before us is so raw. We are moved to occupy, occupy moves us to emotion, emotion leads to physical force (even with the use of weapons), and there is chaos. There is a spirit of rebellion and humanism, as my roommate noted last night.

Brothers and sisters, let’s even re-examine our motivations and places in which we find security. Could we at any moment, leave everything that secures us financially and follow him? If not, we’re caught under Money’s fetters like those outwardly showing it.

I don’t even know what concrete things to pray for. What I do know is that I need to beg God for his mercy, his compassion over a bunch of insecure and broken people. We are so passionate for the small-scale aspects of an 80-year life on this earth, and this passion reveals a broken humanity in the form of rebellion, malicious subordination, and just outright hate.

His grace is all-encompassing, but He is Holy. God is Holy, but his compassion is relentless over us. Church, let’s actually intercede. I, a lazy uncommitted young woman, am becoming more and more convicted to come humbly and ask for mercy. His righteous anger, and even sadness over us is just. 

And when that long-predicted earthquake comes, and the passion for the right to a public education is drowned beneath piles of ashes and mourning at the loss of life, let’s pray for a renewed awareness of our sin, that the message of the Cross and his amazing grace, be life to us in this dark world.

Father, have mercy. We’re clinging to you.

Letter To Self From BAyUP

Yu-Shuan mailed us the letters we had written to ourselves at the end of BAyUP.

“…Do justice for the love and honor of the Lord, not for justice itself. Love kindness because Jesus has poured his kindness over you. Walk humbly with God because it is in your poverty, not riches, that the Holy Spirit will bring healing through you.

Have you stopped interceding? Has the passion faded? Have you come apart from being one with the Father’s heart that weeps over the brokenness, the exploitation, the abuse, the hunger, the un-freedom, the injustice of this place? Ask humbly that God would grant you access and sensitivity to his heart once again. Don’t be driven by guilt, but by the joy of his restoration, his new mercies every morning. And now, pray.

Have you lost the purpose behind which you have been inspired to study and work to do well in school? This education is your key resource into a life of advocacy for others. Don’t rob others of their voice because you wanted to be comfortable or lazy.

You are the Lord’s servant. Maybe it be unto you as the Lord says. Amen!”

Dang, I just told myself. Thank you Holy Spirit.

Community

This lesson is one that I’ve been learning for some time, but I want a somewhat comprehensive reflection about it written somewhere, so here I write.

I think it was only when God brought me to a particular point in my spiritual journey with him, a point at which I could sit there and say “LORD, I am actually deeply and utterly satisfied in You” that I could experience such a dissatisfaction about community. When I am not one whe Spirit, and walking with him intimately, I find myself rather desensitized from my soul’s need for him and for spiritual community. Being desensitized to dissatisfaction actually sounds pretty good, like “ignorance is bliss.” The horrible/wonderful thing about knowing the God of the universe is that his sovereignty coupled with love means that there is full potential for my complete and deep satisfaction with life, with him. This means that knowledge of my periodic desensitization to dissatisfaction yields not bliss, but rather even more discontent.

So Jesus struck me with this understanding, that when I am in a posture of deep satisfaction in him, that I would become restless. Because if there is real satisfaction, real joy in my being, I cannot bear to be joyful and satisfied in stillness. For the first time, the Way-I-Was-Designed cried out to me, saying that my joy needed to go someplace outside of myself. For the first time, the Way-I-Was-Designed told me that I should be deeply satisfied with the community I had surrounding me, because in very few of the relationships I had, did I know that there was an understanding of of course I am committed to your soul, of course I know you - of course you know me, and of course you are committed to me as well.

And for a while I wrestled with this: If I can say that I am wholly satisfied with my God in every arena of my life, is it appropriate for me to be so discontent about my spiritual community? He told me, it is right to be dissatisfied at this point, because I was created very much intentionally, with a pocket of space to experience the Spirit with and through others, a channel through which testimony and confession and praying with the laying of hands (just cause I love to lay hands) should flow freely. I guess I’m realizing my hunger for every part of my Father’s divine design of me to be manifested outwardly and consistently. Anything outside of that, and I’ll be not satisfied.

I think I’m an introvert, in that I love spending time in solitude. (Esther psycho-analyzed me here.) In my comfort in being alone, I have rarely pursued a relationship with another person (besides romantically). As a result, a majority of my relationships were birthed out of proximity or convenience or luck, never out of a loving pursuit on my end. Some of these relationships, by God’s grace over me, have blossomed to become meaningful, but I can’t be credited for the joys I’m reaping in these relationships. I believe the Lord is discipling me into a lifestyle of more intentionality with people. Putting myself out there and pursuing others whom I admire without assuming they’d not like to grow in relationship with me. Because ultimately, our relationship should flow confession and testimony and prayer with the laying of hands, and the Spirit should be seen and exalted in that.

But if anything, I’m learning. Jesus had his Twelve. King David had his Three. I’ll learn to pour into and receive from those he’s growing me in relationship with more as of now, and continue in this battle against myself, to remain deeply rooted in him, because I am so prone to grumble and be lazy and forget.