Follow the Leader

Every day I have to readjust my perspective. It's so easy to be near sighted. I always need to keep myself in check that the person I'm following is Jesus Christ. He is my leader and when I keep my eyes on him, everything will fall into place. I need to focus on Him and let him direct my path.

I realize in my everyday living that I'm always in need of a leader whether it's in the organization I am serving at, in my church, in my home, in my social setting, whatever it is. Internally, I'm always looking for that leader so that I can follow and when I follow, I follow wholeheartedly. Im blessed to have wonderful leaders in my life but I realize that that in itself is nearsighted too because I'm not following THE leader, I'm focusing too much on following the human leaders path. 

How much more amazing to follow the leader of all leaders. When I do that, then I won't feel so bad about moving on and entering different transitions. When I do that, I'm being faithful to my current circumstances but when it's time to go, there will be no hard feelings because we are going where the big boss wants to take us. 

I think about that often, especially because I'm in then process of transitioning church families and I'm also graduating next year. People often ask me what I'm going to do next? Internally, I feel pressured to come up with a response to show that I have everything planned out. But it seems that every step of my life, none of my plans were God's plans for me. Everything chapter of my life has been literally paved by God, so why stress out so much over it? I have thoughts about wanting to stay in the job I'm currently at because I love my team and my boss. They all have stayed so long and I wish I could do that too, but why pressure myself? I'll go where God leads. I need to follow the leader and stop planning my own life out so stringently.

In small group the other day, we were reading John 10 and it talked about how sheep knows the voice of the shepherd and it follows it. The sheep know the shepherd and the shepherd know the sheep. The are always going in God's leading and no matter how stupid they are, at least they are following their shepherd.

I Don't Belong

It's weird, but there are more moments than less where I feel like I don't belong. All my life, I've always been in some way, the odd ball out, I don't care about the extra necessities in life.  I just need enough to survive, everything else is extra. I just want to get to the basics, where it's just about loving God and loving people. It might be because of the way I was raised, it might just be my personality. When I have conversations with people or when I am just hanging out with others, it's just different. Nothing wrong with them, nothing wrong with me, it is what it is. There are many times I feel that I don't fit in, I don't belong? Is it because I'm Christian? I don't think so because they are Christian as well. Is it because I'm still waiting on the assignment that God will be giving me and until then I'm just called to be faithful? Until then, I'm called to just be content in where I am, assimilate. Although I appreciate it, for me, I don't enjoy eating food that costs enough to feed a whole village. I don't care enough to keep up with fashion, buy the trendiest things, spend money on extra necessities that does not necessarily add value to my life. I am not so fascinated by the newest music that comes out or the new movies that show in theaters. I do not care enough to spend the time entertaining my life with things that do not add value and build or encourage me in my walk with God. There are people that have told me that I deserve better, I should be getting paid more, and although I do wish that because expenses never seem to go away, all I want to do is serve at a place where their mission and vision is kingdom related. It seems that I've been called to the current one I'm at now and so far so good, but I don't think this is the end, I feel like there's something else. I've been to plenty of places where people have less, where people live on less, where people almost have nothing and outer appearance isn't the most important. I'm not sure if I belong there either, but there's always been a tugging in my heart that my home might not be here and it might be elsewhere, since the first day I ever experienced outside soil. It's funny because the more I get exposed to just loving people who have less and giving my life up to share the love of Jesus, I have a different feeling in my heart. I feel eagerness, I feel excitement, I feel yearning and I just don't know when and how and what's going to happen. Will it happen sooner than later? I hope one day it'll be at a place where I can successfully learn the language of the people so that it will be easier to relate and communicate. But I see the lifestyle that some people around me live. I want to do that. I don't so much want to do this. But, I'll do it and I'll learn to like it until then. Until then, God, I thank you for allowing me to live comfortably for this long, I thank you for the family, friends, and the different environments you've allowed me to experience. Thank you for always providing, thank you for your protection, thank you for your guidance and providence.

Food for thought:

Ecuador Jungle Mission 2014

I've been on many mission trips over the past couple of years and every single mission trip has been different in so many ways. I'm so encouraged to see the way that God uses people and how the gospel is reached to the masses.

This summer, I had the opportunity to visit Ecuador, specifically the oriente region of Ecuador, about four hours away from Quito with my current church. We lived in a newly built mission home in Tena, Ecuador and traveled to three different villages over the course of ten days, all of which are quite a distance from each other and all of which are located in the amazonian rain forest.

1. Ila-Yaku
2. CampaCocha (the people of this village spoke both Spanish and Kichwa)
3. Cuni-pare (most people of this village spoke Huaorani)

I traveled on this missions trip with a Korean church who worked with a Korean missionary that has been living there for five years and who is being supported by five small local churches in NY. It was quite difficult to communicate with everyone there because my brother and I were the only Chinese people there and every else either spoke Korean or Spanish. Fortunately, there were a handful of people who spoke a little bit of English and I was able to converse with. I was able to understand a little more about the culture, the missionaries, the things they were doing there. 

As a short-term missionary, I acknowledge that I cannot do much there, especially because I did not speak the language well and half the time, I had to rely on my handy dandy Spanish English dictionary which helped me converse the locals there. So in my mind, I was there to just love on the members in the areas that the missionary has already established a church family at. The great thing about missions is that we get to share lives with so many brothers and sisters in Christ around the world, the sad thing about it is that we develop a relationship with them but it's not likely that we will see them again, or merely just a couple of times in our lives. The only thing we can do is pray for them and possibly support in any way we can. 

I learned so much about the missionary and his heart and passion and drive and it made me look at missions and life calling in a different perspective. The missionary we worked with lived a complete life, he was a teacher in Korea. Only after he retired did he move to Ecuador to become a full time missionary and he is living off of his pension. Every dollar used to support the missions goes straight to mission work and not to his own pocket. When I heard his story, I learned that he was impacted by a missionary, David Ross, who had a heart to missions in Korea when he in high school. I learned that the missionary we were working with had a very hard life as a kid. His father ran away from home when he was young and his mother was too stressed to take care him so she went on to marry someone else. This missionary was left alone to fend for himself for all of his life. He was exposed to church because the people there made it fun for him to learn the Bible but none of the teachings sank into his heart until one day he met David Ross, the missionary. Since then, God transformed his life and gave him a heart for missions. Today, he serves full time in Ecuador. Throughout the trip, he hosted not just us, the NY team in the mission home but also some members to help throughout the whole mission trip, about ten of them, all of them were between the ages 14-18 and seems like he has been helping them develop in their faith. He's been training them, doing daily devotionals with them, teaching them christian songs, loving them, teaching them, showing them what it means to be a Christian. I was very encouraged by what he was doing and the impact that he was making on these youth. 

He is one of the few missionaries that we met in Ecuador, we met a handful of other Korean missionaries that moved to Ecuador full time. I was only able to hear one testimony of another couple there because they had time to spend with us during parts of the trip, and they spoke just enough English to converse. It's encouraging to see these older folks live up their calling and go where God calls them and leads them. They learned the language of the people, live amongst the people, and pours into the lives amongst all these people. I pray that God would use my family and I in this capacity or a different capacity as we continuously walk in Him whether its in my hometown or elsewhere. It's just amazing to see how God uses people and how unique it is for every single person. I've encountered so many different people and all of them are used by God in such inspiring ways. People who serve God get mistreated, taken advantage of, misunderstood, but all in all, that does not stop them from the calling God has for them.

This is a link of a glimpse of what we did there. There were a lot of other things we did but this was the bulk of our mission: http://youtu.be/oTr7Hzw3Y5E

Found: God's Will

These are the things that stuck out to me after reading the book, Found: God's Will by John MacArthur:

• "You say you do not know what God's will is, but I'll tell you what it is. Above all it is that you know Christ and then that your neighbors hear about Christ. That is His will. So often we sit around twiddling our thumbs, dreaming about God's will in some distant future when we are not even willing to stand up on our own two feet, walk down the street, and do God's will right now."
• "The question is, has He ever been able to release that power, to fill your life so that you can become what He is?"
• "When he got separated from Jesus, he was a failure." - (In reference to Peter walking on water). "Apart from Jesus, he was nothing".
• "Do you know what the Spirit-filled life is? It is living every moment as though you are standing in the presence of Jesus Christ."
• "Spirit filled life is nothing more than living in the conscious presence of the indwelling Christ."
• "We are to be under the control of the Spirit rather than under the influence of wine."
• "The curious thing is that Colossians 3 has the same list: submission, speaking in psalms and spiritual songs, wives submitting, husbands loving, children obeying, parents not provoking, servants, masters."
• "Do you see what the Spirit filled life is? It is being saturated with the things of Christ -- with His Word, His person."
• "Planned neglect: plan to neglect everything that was not related to her goal."
• "To be Spirit-filled is to live a Christ conscious life, and there is no shortcut to that. You can't go and get yourself super dedicated to live a Christ conscious life. The only way you can be saturated with the thoughts of Christ is to saturate yourself with the Book that is all about Him. And this is God's will, that you not only be saved but that you also be filled with the Spirit."
• "We ought to keep our bodies in subjection to ensure that are honoring God. That includes controlling the way we dress and the things we do with our bodies."
• "Don't act like the rest of the world -- they are guided by their passions."
• "Submit yourselves for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether to a king as the one in authority, or to governors as sent by him for the punishment of evildoers and the praise for those who do right. For such is the will of God."
• "For such is the will of God that by doing right you may silence the ignorance of foolish men."
• "Live an exemplary life in society."
• "For it is better, if God should will it so, that you suffer for doing what is right than for doing what is wrong."
• "Evangelism isn't just the preacher's job, it is yours."
• "Evangelism involves living a godly life in the face of an ungodly world."
• "Satan doesn't really know what he's getting into. God is sovereign."
• "Pray to God that he will give us more boldness."
• "People have been living their whole lives in offense to God; let them be offended for a while."
• "God's will is that you be saved, Spirit-filled, sanctified, submissive and suffering."
• "Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart" Psalms 37:4.
• "If you are living a godly life, He will give you the right desires."
• "Then trust that it is God who planted it. God out of here."
• "He had the right idea, God had a different city."
• "He likes to use people who are already moving."
• "He never told them till they had proved their faith and persistence and couldn't take another step."
• "They need to start moving so God can steer them to that area of service He has planned. Knowing God's will may mean pushing down a narrow line until you hit a dead end."
• "You see, the will of God is not primarily a place. The will of God is not, first of all, for you to go there or work here. The will of God concerns you as a person. If you are the right you, you can follow your desires and you will fulfill His."

Go Wherever God Leads

I feel like a lot has happened these past couple of weeks, just a busy season. One of the biggest transitions recently is the idea of transitioning to a new church family by the end of this summer. The other and I have been praying about it for quite a while and recently, it seems that God has been opening the doors for this to happen. There's a lot to pray about and so far, everything's going pretty smoothly.

It seems like the prominent theme that keeps occurring the past couple of weeks in my life is: "Go wherever God leads". I mean, he's led us thus far, why be anxious and worried about where we are going to go next? This has given me a lot more peace of mind since I'm the type of person who's always concerned about what my next step should look like.

Recently, I read a book: "Found: God's Will" by John MacArthur. It's a random book I decided to pick up and read because it was only 75 pages. The book encouraged and reminded me about what it means to be "spirit-filled" and that as long as we are walking full of the Spirit and being faithful to his Word, everything will fall into place. (Will blog about this in another blog)

Then, a couple of days later, I met with a friend who just came back from Russia and she was sharing all her crazy stories of the things that happened to her the past 6 months there. And over and over again, she kept talking about being full of the Spirit and how every step she took, she relied on the Spirit.

Then, a couple of days later, we had a work picnic, and there was a man who shared a very heart-felt and honest testimony of his battle with the brain tumor that God healed him of after 9 months. Now, the "Praise You in The Storm" song by Casting Crowns means that much more to me after he sung it. As he was sharing his testimony, he used his personal experience of saving a bird after he dove into a pool, it was pretty amazing. It's crazy because when we got back to work the next day and debriefed about the testimony, God couldn't have used any other man than him to display his power and glory. Since he was in his youth, he has always been radical for God, very smart and set an example in faith. It wasn't shocking that it was a brain tumor and it wasn't shocking that he was able to overcome it because of his faith in Christ.

During the picnic, I spoke with one of the higher ups because she was a missionary in Ecuador for 14 years before she started working in the college. Her life in itself is very encouraging, she says that the only reason she transitioned off the missionary field was because that's where God was leading and she will go wherever God leads her and her family to.

Another one of our coworkers was going to be a long term international worker in Palestine at the West Bank, and he said something very profound that had a lasting impact on me: "The call is there, we are just waiting for the assignment." A lot of times, we feel that God is calling us to something more, something bigger, and then in the season when nothing spectacular is happening, we feel that we're not hearing from the Lord and we question if there is more to life than this. He reminded me that there is a season of preparation and God was growing our faith to fully rely on Him. That's definitely how I'm feeling in this season of my life. We are being put in a position to learn to trust Him. In the meantime, while we are stuck at where we are at and positioned in the certain areas of life, be a good steward so that when we leave, leave it well so that we can miss the relationships that were established. For me, in this preparation season, I feel like I've definitely failed many times in the sense of my lack of trust and impatient-ness towards God. I have a long way to go. But I'm continuing to learn to trust God and trust that this is what the Lord has for us in this season of our life. Life can change and anything can happen overnight, and I must be prepared for it. Just like one of our coworkers said, he said "this is the pattern that the Lord has always used in our lives", I feel the same way. We have no control of anything and He makes us sweat things out a bit, but all we are called to do is be faithful.

Lastly, my boss prayed a prayer and said: The Lord's vision is not complicated like the things that are complicated in our lives. It's not, God just calls us to be faithful in whatever we are doing.

In the midst of all my worries and concerns, one thing that gives me peace of mind is that the other and I are surrendering it to God and just walking by faith and in the meantime, serve faithfully wherever we are until we receive our next assignment. We trust that God will lead us wherever when the time is right.