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.