There's a section on seminary applications that asks you when you became Christian or accepted Christ as Lord and Savior. I keep dreading that question because I really have no idea when I became Christian. I don't even have a specific experience of personalization (a fancy term I learned at UCLA as a Religion major meaning the act of taking and making the faith of one's parents into one's own personal faith). I just always went to church (as if church is just a building right?) and God became more evident in His existence and sovereignty in my life.
As a result, I don't really even have a "first love" experience or memory. Whenever I read Revelations and think about my first love, I usually just go back to previous "moments" - the kind where you are so in awe and consumed by God's love and grace. It's probably the same thing right? (This is probably why my personal theology on salvation centers not around a decisive moment but rather a life of continual sanctification and obedience to God...but this is not to de-emphasize that singular, important moment of justification...but I digress).
Regardless, whether your story is like mine or you have a more decisive salvation story, the fact is we as humans are quite forgetful, especially of the love and grace of God. Sometimes we just get into the grind of life, work, school, and ministry and forget the reason why we decided to do everything in the first place. We may be faithful in terms of what we do, but our heart and motive behind it has become hazy and unclear.
On the mission field, I have found no better first love reminder than seeing and witness to the first love of new Christians. God is like that shiny new toy that we loved and played with and got bored of, but when someone new comes and is having fun with the toy again, you suddenly want it back. But with God, there's enough to go around for everyone!
I bring this up because in the past two weeks we've had two new believers put their faith in Jesus Christ. The kind of joy in the air and the excitement in their eyes can't be replicated by other circumstances. If I remember correctly, John Piper's father once told him, "There's no greater joy than winning souls." I truly do believe this because as new believers learn about God, share their experiences and testimonies, I see God reviving joy in the hearts of all the other members. Both of the staff members here cry every time they hear someone's testimony. I see friends of new believers with tears of joy that their friend has entered into and are now enjoying the great community of God.
Back when I was in college (that is...seven months ago...), I got to experience the kind of joy and love of teaching and sharing Christ with younger believers. This brought me great joy as other students moved from the socialization of Christianity (growing up in a faith or tradition) to personalization of faith, but I regret that I never saw one complete non-believer come to Christ. And this is my fault because I never bothered to go outside the bounds of church.
I mean if you really think about a complete non-believer putting their faith into Christ, it's really an amazing thing. And I'm not just talking about the amazing theology behind it - God by his grace regenerating children of wrath, and calling rebellious beings into the adoption of sonship through the obedience and suffering of Jesus Christ. I think about all the practical things behind conversion like the fact that someone is giving up a worldview that they've grown up with, with its attached cultural and behavioral values and customs. Christian kids know the Christian law, values, and behavior before they accept the Christian gospel, but when they put faith in Christ, the worldview of Christianity is more or less there. But growing up Buddhist for twenty years, believing in the power of merit from all sorts of rituals, then leaving all those things behind to follow a daresay foreign God? I mean Buddhism technically doesn't even have a God in its belief system.
But these new believers have found something worth throwing away twenty years of what previously gave them worth and value in their life. They're willing to face being shunned or shamed by family members and friends. And on top of that, they're just filled with this infectious joy that's overflowing from their first love.
I would love for brothers and sisters back home to be able to experience this kind of joy, and they CAN. We just need to step outside our four walls and turn to a neighbor or a classmate. But more on my thoughts of how that can happen later.
For now, please pray for Kazuko and Jubjib, the new sisters in Christ, that their joy would only continue to grow as they come to know and be known by the living God.
God is moving!
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Spiritual Wilderness
It's been a long time blog. Too long?
Quite frankly, I'm writing my first post in over a month with hesitation and fear. I love putting into words the different thoughts that have been jumbling around in my head. I love sharing the different experiences, emotions and feelings that God has given me with people back at home. But blogging, that is sharing things God has been teaching me, comes with a deep deep price.
I don't know about other people, but I am a very prideful person. My nature is adverse to humility and arrogance courses through my veins. And what horrifies me the most is that I have the uncanny ability to take something beautiful that God has given me or has taught me, and turn it into something that glorifies not God, but myself. I am blessed by God. I am blessed when I share my blessings with others. But rather than continually looking toward God for more blessings, I become satisfied with not what God has done or is doing, but what God has done or is doing through me.
And the thing about blogging is that I don't like writing about lessons God is teaching me in the middle of it. I like going through the entire experience, then reflecting back upon all that has happened and creating a nice beginning, middle, and end. Unfortunately, when I'm mid-trial or tribulation, I don't feel much like writing. So here's a secret: if you haven't seen me blog for a while, I probably don't feel like I'm at a point where I should be blogging. And this vicious cycle continues where I blog, become proud of what I've learned, become independent from God, fall hard, don't blog, recover, and blog again. So I have a lot to share from the past month which I'll try updating topically, but please please, pray that blogging would not become a source of pride and self-satisfaction. I would love to share all the blessings I've received, but I can't if my blessings turn into my own curse.
I am reminded of Jeremiah 2:13 because I commit two evils: forsaking God, the fountain of living waters and hewing out cisterns that hold no water for myself. The picture I see in my head is something like drinking crystal clear, mountain spring water and then being proud that I sweat it out. Then I proceed to satisfy and sustain myself on my own sweat. Maybe a better example would be drinking one's urine. Or the biblical example would be the dog returning to its vomit right? Whatever the case, God's grace flowing out from us is not meant to feed us. Yes we are blessed when God uses sinful creatures like us for His will, but it's supposed to make us look continually to God, not ourselves.
Anyway, Song Kim (Missionary Daniel's wife) said something quite profound to me last night and I want to leave with this: "There's a kind of faith that grows in the context of church and being surrounded by Christians, and there's a kind of faith that grows on the mission field. The kind of faith that grows on the mission field has to be a deep faith."
I'd say January had to be the toughest month for me in Thailand. Maybe it's the six month wall or that I have a huge slump every winter time starting from my freshman year in college. Actually, this past month was the toughest month of my life. All the other times I had my friends and my pastors and my church to fall back upon, places and people to nurture and take of me. And I grew during those times. But this past month was so, so hard. Perhaps it was the sovereign plan of the Lord for me to go through this during a time when everyone back home gets to be uber-blessed from two weeks of teuksae and prayer and sermons. And this was my first month living in my apartment so I was never home to talk to people at home. And people were probably tired from teuksae so they weren't online to talk anyway. And Satan used the new year with all my self-effort, self-induced goals and ambitions to bring all my failures crashing down on me.
Whatever the case, I had nobody but God in the spiritual wilderness. And I understand now just a taste of what the missionary's faith requires: a deep deep foundation and rooted-ness in the vine that is Christ. There's no water in the desert, that's why cacti have freaking deep roots. So hopefully God made me more like a cactus.
Quite frankly, I'm writing my first post in over a month with hesitation and fear. I love putting into words the different thoughts that have been jumbling around in my head. I love sharing the different experiences, emotions and feelings that God has given me with people back at home. But blogging, that is sharing things God has been teaching me, comes with a deep deep price.
I don't know about other people, but I am a very prideful person. My nature is adverse to humility and arrogance courses through my veins. And what horrifies me the most is that I have the uncanny ability to take something beautiful that God has given me or has taught me, and turn it into something that glorifies not God, but myself. I am blessed by God. I am blessed when I share my blessings with others. But rather than continually looking toward God for more blessings, I become satisfied with not what God has done or is doing, but what God has done or is doing through me.
And the thing about blogging is that I don't like writing about lessons God is teaching me in the middle of it. I like going through the entire experience, then reflecting back upon all that has happened and creating a nice beginning, middle, and end. Unfortunately, when I'm mid-trial or tribulation, I don't feel much like writing. So here's a secret: if you haven't seen me blog for a while, I probably don't feel like I'm at a point where I should be blogging. And this vicious cycle continues where I blog, become proud of what I've learned, become independent from God, fall hard, don't blog, recover, and blog again. So I have a lot to share from the past month which I'll try updating topically, but please please, pray that blogging would not become a source of pride and self-satisfaction. I would love to share all the blessings I've received, but I can't if my blessings turn into my own curse.
I am reminded of Jeremiah 2:13 because I commit two evils: forsaking God, the fountain of living waters and hewing out cisterns that hold no water for myself. The picture I see in my head is something like drinking crystal clear, mountain spring water and then being proud that I sweat it out. Then I proceed to satisfy and sustain myself on my own sweat. Maybe a better example would be drinking one's urine. Or the biblical example would be the dog returning to its vomit right? Whatever the case, God's grace flowing out from us is not meant to feed us. Yes we are blessed when God uses sinful creatures like us for His will, but it's supposed to make us look continually to God, not ourselves.
Anyway, Song Kim (Missionary Daniel's wife) said something quite profound to me last night and I want to leave with this: "There's a kind of faith that grows in the context of church and being surrounded by Christians, and there's a kind of faith that grows on the mission field. The kind of faith that grows on the mission field has to be a deep faith."
I'd say January had to be the toughest month for me in Thailand. Maybe it's the six month wall or that I have a huge slump every winter time starting from my freshman year in college. Actually, this past month was the toughest month of my life. All the other times I had my friends and my pastors and my church to fall back upon, places and people to nurture and take of me. And I grew during those times. But this past month was so, so hard. Perhaps it was the sovereign plan of the Lord for me to go through this during a time when everyone back home gets to be uber-blessed from two weeks of teuksae and prayer and sermons. And this was my first month living in my apartment so I was never home to talk to people at home. And people were probably tired from teuksae so they weren't online to talk anyway. And Satan used the new year with all my self-effort, self-induced goals and ambitions to bring all my failures crashing down on me.
Whatever the case, I had nobody but God in the spiritual wilderness. And I understand now just a taste of what the missionary's faith requires: a deep deep foundation and rooted-ness in the vine that is Christ. There's no water in the desert, that's why cacti have freaking deep roots. So hopefully God made me more like a cactus.
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