P.Josh asked me for my prayer requests, but it became a journaling/blogging session instead. Just thought I'd share with the rest of y'all as well. :)
- Hunger
I need to take good care of myself. I'm not very good at eating healthily: I eat when it's convenient or when I remember. Sometimes I forget to eat for the entire day, and my body suffers for it. I realized this past week that the way I take care of my physical health also translates to my spiritual health: just as I don't eat healthily and exercise regularly, I'm also a "binge eater" of the Word, eating only when I remember to do so or when it's convenient. I think my physical body has been numbed to the sensation of hunger; consequently, I don't understand what it means to be HUNGRY for God. This is dangerous physically; this is also dangerous spiritually.
I am committing to eat 3 meals a day and to read the Word when I wake up and before I go to sleep. And protein bars don't count. I need to revive my body and my spirit's ability to hunger.
- Finance/Provision/Calling/Faith/Intimacy
Sometimes I don't eat because I don't want to spend money, but this shows a heart that doesn't trust in God as the Provider. If I only believe that He provides but don't live a life that reflects this belief, then this faith is dead [James 2:20]. I need to act on the belief that God will provide financially by allowing myself to use money to take good care of myself.
Another aspect in which I believe that God is the Provider but only in theory is that I've started worrying about my income because the Alameda afterschool program hasn't started yet. It was supposed to begin this past week. But it hasn't, because we don't have any students. None. Consequently, no one knows when the program will begin, i.e. when I will have this job, i.e. when I will start getting paid. (Wisely or unwisely,) I haven't been looking for other jobs and have been waiting for so long for this program to finally begin so that I can devote most of my energy and attention to loving our juniors and seniors rather than having my attention be divided by overwhelming thoughts of finance and by attempts to look for other forms of income.
I want to live a life of intimacy with the Lord and with His people. But I can't have intimacy without faith, and I can't have faith without risk. I'll be honest. It becomes riskier and riskier for me to continue serving in this ministry. It's going to hurt progressively as time passes by...and it could go on indefinitely. I don't know what I'm getting myself into. I second-guess myself. A lot. And oftentimes I lack confidence that what I'm doing is what God really intends for me to do, that I've missed his memo or something. So many thoughts and doubts swirl around in my mind that maybe I've made the wrong decision, that I could have done "something else" to please the Lord. Maybe I wasn't called to serve the juniors/seniors. Maybe I'm deluding myself, thinking that God intended for me to serve Him in this way. Maybe this was my own desire rather than God's. Maybe I was supposed to look for a full-time job or at least an internship that relates to my majors. They say that the first year after graduation is the most crucial period for your career or lifegoal. Maybe the best way for me to give my firstfruits to God wasn't for me to be here doing what I do but for me to go out looking for something related to missions or international relations or social justice or whatever. Maybe I should have said yes rather to the opportunity PJ offered for me to start a missions organization that connects small local churches to the different places we've been to, starting from Nicaragua to China to Thailand to wherever else. That's more consistent with who I am...right? Or maybe, as some people have mentioned, the best way for me to serve and help other people is for me to get a grad school degree or experience in working at a law firm or political office or to be proactive in networking, etc.
Maybe. But it is precisely because there IS a chance that these "maybe's" are true, or that there IS the possibility that I've made the wrong decision, that my step of faith to serve the junior/senior class as their pastor in defiance of what I see or perceive ahead of me has substance...has weight. I need to risk. I need to trust. I need to cling onto Jesus as if my life depended on it, because it does.
It's scary that the afterschool program hasn't started yet. It's even scarier that there's the possibility that it will never work out, that I've been wasting all my time waiting for it. But I want this, SO BAD. I want to love and serve the juniors/seniors as much as I am able. I want to work at the afterschool program. And so I am going to have faith in God and not doubt in my heart but believe that what I say will happen, because it will be done for me. I need to ask God for this in prayer, believing that I have already received it, because then it will be mine [Mark 11:22-24].
(Some of you might think that I'm making a big deal out of a no biggie. But bear with me, I'm still growing, and I'm still new/noob to all this :p.)
This is the decision I've made this past weekend, to trust that God knows what He's doing, to wait on him. Contrary to what others may thing, I am NOT being idle or lazy, because waiting is an ACTIVE, not passive, thing. It requires for me to command my body, my mind, my heart, my soul to be still even when they squirm and wrestle to wander off to something else.
Everything else in my life tells me to "do something else". But there is NO "something else" for the people of God; there is only the words of Jesus that say "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life" [John 14:6]. NO ONE comes to the Father except through Jesus. NO ONE can receive the REAL LIFE of intimacy with God without clinging onto nothing but Him.
This is my act of walking backwards, and I wait to see what Jesus will do with my faith.
But I'm also not gonna lie, I do hope He moves quickly. :)
I'm gonna go eat now. :p
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