Looking for God, Refusing Jesus.

I need repentance and forgiveness.

Today, as passed by the gas station on my way to church, I slid my credit card at the gas station to fill up my blue VW car and saw an old man out of the corner of my eye.

A dirty, old homeless man fishing through the trash cans in hopes of finding ...anything.

Today, as I thought about what was going to happen at the new year's church service tonight, an unkempt, dirty, old homeless man asked me to spare a quarter.

I quickly apologized and told him I was out of change.

Today, as I hastily returned the pump and walked to my front door so I could get to church on time, the poor and unkempt, dirty and old homeless man asked me once more for ...anything.

A "sorry, no" instantaneously flew from my lips as I drove off, hearing his "that's ok! God bless you" response trail off.

Today, as I was preoccupied with how I would meet God at church, it didn't occur to me that I refused Jesus at the gas station.

God, I pray for your forgiveness. And that you would continue to open my eyes to YOU.

"Then the King will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me...I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did not do for me." - Matt. 25: 41-43; 45.

"So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him." - Matt. 24:44

"But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous." - Luke 14:13-14.

"Yet for your sakes he became poor." - II Cor. 8:9.

"I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing." - John 14:12

College.

I'm ready.

To start anew, be challenged, bring change. To have fun, be an adult, be a college-aged kid, and be responsible. To meet people, be poured into, and pour into new people. To work, hard.

And I'm not.

i'm slightly scared out of my wits at the thought of an entirely new group of friends, leaving what i've known for the past eighteen years, at not belonging, at being challenged with things in which i'm sure to fail, and be transformed into someone my "old" friends don't recognize, or even more, don't like.

Oh, how invigoratingly scary transition and change can be.

Christmas time.

Every year, I struggle with how materialistic the world has transformed Christmas.

...Don't get me wrong. I love how b-e-a-utiful the city becomes around December and how happy my little cousins get when they open up their gifts. But I still fail to see the actual importance of it all.

Yet more than the superficial, watered-down Christmas, I am tired of the cliche Christmas Sunday sermons that preach essentially the same theme: "Jesus is the reason for the Season."

As if now is the time we should remember the importance of His birth, now is the time to celebrate His coming, now is the time to be joyful that we are surely saved.

And as if every other time of the year isn't.

Lead me to the cross.

Every other week or so, a random song grabs my attention.

And in my current struggles, frustrations, and questions with the call to discipleship,

Here's the one that is constantly speaking to me now:

Paradox.

It's weird:

to develop that fruit of the Spirit which is called self-control

and yet ask God to take control.

Plain and Simple:

I pray that God would use me

to comfort the afflicted,

and afflict the comfortable.

trans.for.ma.tion:

-noun: change in form, appearance, nature, or character.

I recently came home from another retreat.

But unlike most of the others I’ve been to, I knew this one would stick.

I’m still processing what exactly happened this weekend. But one thing I do know: the tears, the anger, the joy, the fear, the love, and the ultimate call that I felt has stirred in me something so life-changing, so transforming,

I have no choice but to move on from belief to discipleship,

To “throw off everything that hinders,”

To “run with perseverance the race marked out for [me].”

To “fix my eyes on Jesus.”

Hebrews 12.

Christian math.

I have recently come to the conclusion that the amount of my faith, if faith could even be measured, does not exist in proportion to my doubts.

That the more faith I have in what I believe does not mean the less doubts and questions that will arise in the future.

And, in relation, the more uncertainties that arise in my human, fallible and un-omniscient mind, is not reason to suggest I am losing faith in what I am certain of.

Because the definition of faith is "a simple trust in the Providence of God."

And the purpose of questioning and doubting is

to gain a deeper reverence for the character of God,

to obtain a greater understanding of yourself,

to reach a more enlightening conclusion about something,

essentially, to find the Truth.

But to place faith and doubt on the same platform would be to erroneously equate them. For in no way does what come from fallible creatures (doubt) balance that which is given by the infallible God (faith).

And to believe that, because I have faith, I will no longer doubt is just as grave a mistake.

Luke 17:5,6:

The apostles said to the Lord, "Increase our faith!"

He replied, "If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, 'Be uprooted and planted in the sea,' and it will obey you.

A simple trust; a complex concept.

A Lighter Side to Darkness

A few weeks ago, I deactivated my facebook.

I don't really know what compelled me to this sudden alteration in my life, seeing as how the facebook application on my phone consumes most of my time.

But maybe that was why.

Either way,

I've been reading a lot of books to fill up my time.

And no, not the Twilight series. Not the junky books that require no actual thought (sorry, Twilight fans, but you gotta admit: a book that revolves around a faint-faced vampire lover doesn't have much substance). Not the books where they can make a movie out of it or someone can give you a summary and then you know basically all you need to. Not one of those books where you don't really have to read it carefully to understand it.

But in my search for the narrow gate, I've found myself engaged in books that make me stop and think.

About my life.

About my past.

"Dark Night of the Soul" was a concept explored by St. John of the Cross (homeboy's a Spanish priest back in the ...1500s?). I will attempt to explain to you, but just as a word of caution: but my words fall short. As St. John said in relation to this journey, "for only he that passes this way can understand it, and even he cannot describe it." Well said, sir.

Essentially, it's the idea that the soul inside us must pass through many trials, a period of darkness that is both "spiritual and temporal" in order to reach "a perfect union of the love of God, as far as is possible in this life."

But it's not just that a person goes through hard times.

It's this intense anxiety.

A feeling of loneliness in which you are isolated from everything, everyone...and feel like you're even detached from God. It's a spiritual desert; you are so incredibly thirsty for Living Water and find no oasis, you knock and the door doesn't seem to budge. You call upon God to save you, and you still feel like you're drowning.

Friends, family... it seems as if everything fails to console you.

This isn't for the new to faith, mind you.

It's for the ones who have been growing in faith and it seems like they've dropped the ball somehow. As if their spiritual life has hit a certain wall they can't push past.

Maybe the old ways that used to get us close to God (worship, daily Bible readings) no longer suffice. Maybe your relationship with him has hit its lowest point ever, and all you want is God to sweep you off your feet so you can be in love with him again...or maybe you just want to know he's real and still there.

But instead of a sign, you're left feeling angry and alone.

At this point, some people refuse to continue into the night. They're scared. Some just turn around and refuse to deal with the pain, others try to find another route and end up at a dead end or back at the beginning of their frustration.

Sometimes people don't even realize they're going through it.

And there's the few that choose to go into the darkness, trusting God's purpose for a more perfect union with him in the end.

Place me in all of the above.

For the soul to be wholly detached from everything, and even feel isolation from God,

for the soul to be in complete darkness,

all to reach this "Divine light of the perfect union of love of God."

...interesting concept, isn't it?

I'm still wrestling with this idea, and I'm happy to say it's rocking my world.

But like St. John said, it's pretty much impossible to describe.

It's one of those books you just have to read to understand.

Glorifying the Poor.

(Something that the Africa team talked about on the trip. It's nice to know we're not the only ones who see this.)

There's a tendency among the wealthy to glorify the poor.

This happens when leaving the ivory hotel to walk among the masses for an afternoon. The rich decree, "These Guatemalans, they're just so... just so happy and content, even though they have nothing." The intrinsic assumption is that those who want for everything don't want anything.

As it turns out, a band of six-year-olds running in the streets with their kites made out of string and a discarded plastic bag, or playing a rousing game of kick-the-avocado because they lack a can, are indeed having a good time. Most six-year-olds are happy. It's how six-year-olds are. They don't understand their muscles aren't growing because they have no protein in their diet. They don't understand that 20 years from now, their education will have failed them and they won't be gainfully employed. They don't understand that Horatio Alger's stories won't come true, no matter how hard they work. But for now, the score is 2-1, and there's an avocado waiting to be enthusiastically kicked down the street.

As it turns out, the new mother, 16-years-old, is happy. It's how new mothers are. She doesn't yet know that nursing her baby will rob her body of calcium, and soon her teeth will fall out. She doesn't fear losing her baby to chronic diarrhea nor fear the possibility that her baby will go deaf from untreated meningitis. She accepts them as a natural risk of starting a family. Having lost a sister or cousin under similar circumstances, she accepts them not as obscure theory like being hit by lightning, but as a genuine risk to her family. Having accepted that risk, she moves on with life and smiles at her baby.

As it turns out, the day laborer in the field is not happy. He is hundreds of miles from home, moving every few weeks, following the coffee harvest, the cardamom planting, or whatever he can find. He sleeps on the hard-packed ground with a wool blanket he carries with him. For shelter, he has what his employer provides, sometimes a tin roof, sometimes an actual building, sometimes nothing at all. He was in the fields, swinging his machete before the sun was over the horizon, and he'll make his dinner in the dark on a fire over a small aluminum plate that he also carries with him. He'll go to bed tired, cold, a little hungry, unhappy, and invisible.

There's a darker underbelly to poverty. It doesn't show up in the happy glossy aid magazines, it doesn't show up on the tour schedule, it doesn't make the news, you can't see it from the car, and it isn't glorious.

In some cases, families of low economic means are quite rich in terms of community, family values and work ethic. Poverty and struggle can be common enemies that unite a family. It's tough to stay angry with three of your siblings when you'll share a bed with them that night.

Given the opportunity, a poor Guatemalan would gladly give up their status as glorious poor for the chance to be glamorously rich. The glamorous rich that have given up their wealth to become gloriously poor are so rare their biographies are written and they are nominated for sainthood. To have started life at the bottom of the economic ladder and not become a malcontent is certainly commendable, but it is not glorious.

Poverty, the invisible sort, will never be solved until we are willing to see it.

Thanks Wayne. Taken from: http://www.asgreenasitgets.org/

Speak To Me.

I am your servant, and I am listening

Speak to me, Lord, speak to me.

I need your wisdom, your truth and comfort

Speak to me, Lord, speak to me.

Speak to me, speak to me.

Through your Word,

Through your Spirit

SPEAK YOUR WORDS OF LIFE

Speak to me, speak to me.

I am listening,

I am waiting,

SPEAK TO ME.

I am your servant, and I am listening,

Speak to me, Lord, speak to me.

My heart is silent, my soul is longing,

Speak to me, Lord, speak to me.

Grace.

I've been wrestling with the Bible for, well, ever.

But in one of my deep, disappointed-with-God moments a few weeks ago, I turned to the Bible to find answers.

And it was quite a heart-wrenching shock to find that reading Romans didn't give me the peace I thought it would.

The peace that everyone says you get after reading the Bible when you've had a bad day.

In fact, I fell into this restless tornado of confusion that I have yet to get out of. And the question that has been nagging me for so long:

What is grace?

What does it mean exactly, to be saved by grace? What about mercy? What's the difference between grace and mercy, if any? What the heck is Romans 5 even about? And most importantly, what does this mean for me in my life right now, for my familial situation, for my struggling with doubts and beliefs?

Maybe I'm looking for a set definition of grace, and there just isn't one.

I understand that, because Christ died for us, we are not subject to the law, and therefore have grace, which is a righteousness that compels us to do what He asks because of what He did.

Or maybe I don't.

Maybe I see the logical intricacies of it, but don't believe it. Don't really, truly understand.

Or maybe I have the whole thing wrong and don't understand what grace is.

Either way, I know I haven't got it figured out. And this struggle compels me to continue searching for the Truth. Thank God I don't give up so quickly.

New Lessons.

I feel like God has been teaching me a lot these past few weeks.

Yet the more I learn about myself and about God, the increase in the number of questions that tag along.

- I've realized that I have put my trust in the wrong things. But what should I put my trust in? And how do I do it?

- I've realized that I may be undergoing what St. John of the Cross termed "the dark night." But what do I do now? Where do I go from here?

When I feel like I've finally firmed my relationship with Him, He pulls the rug out from under me, shakes me, and reminds me that the search for the narrow gate isn't easy. Reminds me that I'll never figure Him out. Reminds me that I'll always be struggling.

The J side of me finds it hard to come to terms with that uncompromising fact.

An Attitude Change.

I turned in my first college paper today.

Four pages of my genius written in an hour and a half of class time. As you can tell, I have come to gloat about my triumph. Just kidding.

But in the paper we had to compare and contrast two poems (thank you Mrs. Malott!). I chose "One Art," which is about a woman who denies that the loss of a loved one is difficult, and "Desert Places" (I absolutely love Robert Frost by the way), in which the speaker deals with his sense of loneliness. Unlike the woman in the first poem, the speaker in the latter accepts his situation without reluctance.

I basically pointed out that there are some things in life that are inevitable (such as someone dying or feeling alone) ...that will happen whether you like it or not. what determines how the outcome will be is in the attitude with which you respond.

Which got me thinking.

There are so many things in our lives that we choose to deny because the pain just sucks so much, or we don't want to be in a certain situation and begin hating it. And yet, no one said life was going to be easy. The guy in the latter poem...he knew this loneliness was inescapable, that sometimes, you can search for something and not find because, well, you're meant to feel that suffering. So he accepted it. He hated it, but he still submitted because he couldn't change his circumstances. And although he was still lonely, there was a tone of peace and calm.

Continuing with this whole transition phase, I've been feeling alone and depressed for a while now...and in an attempt to change my current situation, i've been in a constant search to make close friends. but for the last couple months i have significantly failed. don't get me wrong; i still have close friends here that i can talk to about anything, at any time. i simply mean that, at this point in time, i feel detached and apart from everyone else..and that's something i just can just wake up one morning and change. yet now i'm coming to accept that, yes, i am in a situation where i am alone, and though i've tried to change it, i can't. and maybe, instead of beating myself down for not succeeding, i should ask myself why. why am i in this situation right now? what's the point of my seclusion?

and i came to understand that this may not be the time for me to create friendships, but rather work on the ones i already have...most especially my relationship with Jesus. While it is a period of my life where i am seemingly detached from the rest of the world, it's not so much a time of seclusion as it is a chance for introspection.

while i may not be able to change certain situations in life, i can definitely change my attitude towards them.

Something I Forgot.

Sometimes, I forget that this life isn't about me.

That this life, my existence, was not created in any way for my benefit, to make me happy, or so that i could live in comfort.

God is love.

Some have a heart for giving,

Providing for the needy so great.

Others have a heart of understanding,

Knowing the comfort empathy creates.

Some have a heart for teaching,

Educating the youth with life's tools.

Others a heart for justice, equality

Epitomizing the Golden Rule.

Some have a heart for the mysteries of the world

From the seven wonders to the hope of glory,

Others the heart of a child,

Innocence captured in picture-book stories.

Then there are those with a heart for the lonely

Those who feel others' pain,

Those who see the drought in desert lands

And whose tears cry for healing rain.

A heart for the widowed, weak and weary,

A heart for the angry, bitter, lost.

A heart for the Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists,

A heart for the women struggling to survive at all costs.

One can have a heart for many things;

One can have a heart for all the above.

But what is a heart without a purpose?

What is a heart without love?

what am i living for?

it's not that i'm afraid to fail.

i just don't want to be successful at the wrong thing.

back me up.

i guess it was an answered prayer.

i rarely get anything out of church anymore. i sit in the pews and find myself contemplating what happened last night or scheduling what the rest of my day looks like, or wondering if i got a new text message or facebook comment. now, your response to that may be that i just need to open up and stop being so skeptical, or that i can always get something out of church if i just try.

but i've tried, really. and whether it's that i've heard the essence of the message before or it doesn't apply to me, i just have stopped listening in church. i try, often so hard that i turn my attentions to attempting to focus rather than truly focusing. and over the years, this lack of spiritual feeding has built up so much that i've just become apathetic in my Christian walk. i've lost my way, and i don't know how to get back on the right path. i've been at the point of questioning by beliefs for a long time, and without anyone to answer them or even just a direction in how to, i've been on a downhill path towards apathy, impatience, ignorance.

yet somehow today, a pastor managed to catch my attention.

he asked if anyone ever has felt oh so on fire for God, so excited to be reading the Bible that s/he couldn't get enough of it and read everyday.

-- i looked up from my phone.

then he asked if we ever missed a day or two of reading, and before we knew it, reading the Bible every day became hard to do.

-- i smiled embarrassingly.

then he told us that basically it was a lack of accountability; that without someone there to back us up and make sure we're staying on the right track, we fall apart.

-- i nodded my head in agreement. he was right.

granted, it's not like i've been left alone in the world without friends and people who care. on the contrary, i am surrounded by people who genuinely care about me. while asking how i am is mostly just a formality people begin a conversation with, there are those few that truly want to know about my life. and, either because i don't want to talk about my troubles or am in a hurry to get to the point of the conversation, i say that life is fine (and i'm sure you do the same). and if someone sees right through and asks me what's wrong, i tell them that i'm just tired (and, i'm sure you do the same).

but it's true. i haven't been doing well because no one has been there to keep my accountable. people ask me how i am, and i vent for half an hour. but i've had no real direction or help. or, if i have, it's only lasted a few days, and then my motivation burns away, leaving me back at the beginning or worse off. for the last year, i've been desiring to get my relationship with God back on track, and i believe God has kept me here another semester before i go to Berkeley so i can do just that. but although i've been searching relentlessly, can't find a way to do it, and haven't found a person to help me out of this ditch.

until today. as i walked in to Christian Assembly church, i was greeted by a woman i met a few months ago on an inner-city missions project. vanessa. i was surprised that, after not seeing her for months, she still remembered me. even though i met her for only a brief moment at the service project, she asked me how i've been, and i could tell that it wasn't just an opening line; though i gave my nonchalant, everything's good response, she told me she wanted to speak to me after the service.

as i sat in the pews, I listened as Tommy Walker prayed about a person in the congregation who was far away from God, who had desire to come back to Him but didn't know how, and that God would provide that way. and i thought, was he talking about me?

when i met up with vanessa again, she asked me to join her life group, a fellowship of college girls who just talked about life and their Christian walk together. i readily agreed.

as i drove home, i thought about how worn down i've become after all the struggles.

how i have been searching for a way to get on track with God right again.

how the pastor had spoken this morning about accountability.

how vanessa offered me the chance to join her life group.

how God answered Tommy Walker's prayer.

choices.

i made a choice today.
i pray to God it was the right one.
i sincerely hope that everything will turn out for the better, and what i'm feeling currently is just temporary.
i hate second guessing myself, and wondering if i had done what is right, and thinking how i could have handled things better, and worrying about how i affected who i affected, and wanting to just not think about my decision... and wishing for oh so much more.
i hate psyching myself out and telling myself i was wrong.

a note more to myself than anyone else: i have a lot of things to sort out in my life. i've been struggling with so much for these past few years. now is the time to make a choice and stop standing on the sidelines being indecisive. right now, i have made the choice to stop complaining, stop waiting, stop running away. i have made the choice to seek God and seek help from those capable of guiding me towards the right choices in my life.

i need to make a few more choices today; i pray that God would help me choose the right ones.

question.

Why did He save us?

waiting on me to change.

over the past couple weeks since i've returned from africa, i've battled with change.

i can't count how many times i've heard phrases like "africa will change you" or "when you come back, you won't be the same." and i took those ideas to heart.

except that didn't happen. at least, i haven't realized a change in me from my experiences on the trip. i've gone on mission trips and seen the poverty, homelessness, and hopelessness before. i remember going to mexico four years ago and playing with children, teaching them about Jesus and singing easy camp songs with them. i remember it wasn't the hard work that made me appreciate the trip, but just being able to sit with the little kids in a tight circle and roll a ball around the inside. and i remember how different, new, happy i felt when i came back. i remember being changed.

and over the following years, i lost my close relationship with Jesus. i've been having trouble with the idea of, to be perfectly blunt, God. i've questioned, believed, cried, praised, devoted myself, and walked away from Him...back and forth, back and forth.

so i believed that my trip to africa would bring me back. it would break my heart; i would not only see the need for God in this world, but also the need for God in my life. although i was in a very skeptical and questioning (and still am) period in the weeks (or months, or years...i stopped counting) before the trip, i asked God to "heal my heart and make it clean; open up my eyes to the things unseen," as the song by Hillsong goes. when i got back from africa, i promised myself, things were going to be different.

yet after returning, i felt as if everything was the same. i looked at my life: church, friendships, family, relationship with God, even my broken car, and became angry that nothing had changed. i became so frustrated with everything and everyone that i withdrew from the world in an attempt to understand what exactly was bothering me. and as i took a step back from my life and began to see things from an objective perspective, i came to understand that my irritation wasn't a result of the fact that nothing had changed; in consequence, everything around me was changing.

but i wasn't. i hadn't.

africa didn't change me like i thought it would.

and now, as the world surrounding me moves on,

i'm left struggling to catch up.

half full or half empty?

i have a shirt with this picture on it.

it's pretty easy to understand the artist's view on pessimism and optimism: if you see the glass half full, then life's good; if the glass if half empty, then welcome the grim reaper and rainy days. how you measure your cup is an age-old question people have been trying to use to pinpoint someone's view on life.

and i think we've come to the conclusion that those who are pessimistic view everything through a dark lens, that pessimists are so obsessed with the bad aspects of a situation and will bring everyone's spirits down with them. and yet, a so-called pessimist would argue that they are being realistic, not fatalistic.

on the other hand, optimists see everything in a good light. this is what everyone wants to be: the hopeful and happy who has such a good outlook on life. and yet, to be truly optimistic and see the good in everything without taking into account the bad, a person would have a hard time getting their head out of the clouds.

i have trouble deciding which side of the fence i stand. i mean, i choose to view things in realistic manners, and there have been times where i choose not to look at the good possibilities for fear that i will be disappointed. but i certainly realize the beauty in the world and understand that blessings come from bad situations. and where a pessimist would call my humor sarcastic, i would call it witty.

so what am i? neither. you can find me skiing on top of the water, and swimming underneath.

metamorphosis.

sometimes, i forget that i am constantly changing;

that who i was isn't who i am;

that i am a human being who makes mistakes;

that i am not infallible, not perfect;

that i have struggled, am struggling, and will struggle to figure out what's going on in my life;

that there are things about me i can change, and things i have to just deal with;

that, everyday, i am learning something new if i just pay attention;

that who i am isn't who i will be;

i forget. you forget. we forget.

we are constantly changing.

...but isn't it weird that we were made perfectly the way we were supposed to?