rough around the edges

As I lay in bed I thought about how I’m like a ragdoll. I’m like a worn out stuffed animal with torn bitten edges and rough molten fabric. That in its own value it would never have gotten any far. It’d be deserved to be put to rest in the garbage. It should be too filthy and unhygienic to be placed beside anything remotely fresh or new as my ruggedness might be contagious. I smell. I’m unsightly. I’m unfashionable. I should be tucked away in secret attics, under dusty floorboards or in corners of large closets together with old lego boxes and barbie dolls from 2nd grade. 

But there in bed I lay  and I saw my saviour. That rugged as I am, He loves me. And just like a ragdoll He is the reason why I’m still laying in the lap of luxury and enjoying the intimacy of my master. He’s my King and I love Him. And He keeps me close though I am valueless and there I find my identity, my security. He’s the one who gave me a room in his palace. He prepares my place for me. I have my little spot close to His resting place. And when I sleep His breath will be a soft breeze that caresses the top of my head. I will feel His kiss from heaven and find Him in His secret place. I will hear His secrets. I will feel his heart. And He will know my everything.

Rough around the edges and that’s how He likes His girl. So who am I to complain? It’s the best place I can be.

love lies bleeding

 You have me befuddled

when you sent your love lain bleeding

and when im a fool and still you love

so i’ll be a fool for the king for love.

Spent 30 minutes trying to pray about certain things that’s been bothering me. THen spent another 30 minutes trying so hard to even put them into words. Then another 30 minutes with my head in palm and face on dusty table. All these time with one song on repeat. Then an hour just letting the spirit lead in prayer. An hour of so many things just emerging and pushing my face harder onto the table’s surface. 

When the going gets tough and when I don’t feel even like a fraction of that person God seems to be calling me to be, all I want to do is simply hide. An hour of prayer and an hour of ‘hows’ and ‘what nows’ and ‘where to from here(s)’ and all I can say is that God is a God of love and salvation. God is not a God of who, what, whys whens or hows. But He’s a God of ‘what is the right thing’ and ‘what is the loving thing’. 

When the going gets tough and when I dont even feel like Im getting a fraction of where God is calling me to go, and when I can’t remember ever feeling as uninspired, unworthy of doing this, or even picking up the act of ministering and being His mouthpiece at this precise moment, God just… reminded me of some of the most earnest, broken, hopeful faces that I’ve ever seen for the past few weeks as I spoke and listened to some people. God reminded me of the tears of hope, the hope that they’ve found in this local church and community – and the fact that all over the world and for a long time, deeper and greater than I’ve ever known or imagined, that people are longing to be ministered. People are longing to be challenged, invested into and prayed for. And it isn’t up to me, or how I feel about myself, to decide if I should pick myself up from this. Because it is God and His spirit who ministers. And I may not be top notch quality minister material but I think God will make up for it. God will make up for that 99.9% that I lack. God will make up for that inadequacy that always threatens to swallow me up ever so often. God will make up for that lack, for that lack of inspiration I felt as I stepped up with a bible, an empty notepad and absolutely nothing inspiring or relevant to say. God will make up for it. People long to be ministered. No time for me to sit around and wait until I’m good enough, because that is never going to happen.

On Love 2

She hadn’t always looked like this. There was a day when she had been someone’s little girl, when someone cherished dreams for her, perhaps. When she had dreams herself, maybe. But that day had been gone a long time. It had been years since she had been in the public company of anyone respectable. It took all the courage she had to brave the looks and whispers in that room. 

She had brought perfume to anoint Jesus. This was generally done by pouring perfume on the person’s head. But as she watched Jesus, the tears came. Maybe she was thinking of how she earned the money to buy the perfume. Maybe she was thinking of the little girl she once was. Maybe she was thinking of the gap between who she had become and who she wanted to be. At any rate, instead of his head, she began to anoint Jesus’s feet with a mixture of perfume and tears. 

 

On Love

Anne Lamott wrote of an eight year old boy who had a younger sister dying of leukemia. He was told that without a blood transfusion she would die. His parents asked if they could test his blood to see if it was compatible with hers. He said sure. They tested, and it was a match. Then they asked if he would give his sister a pint of his own blood, that it could be her only chance of living. 

He said he would have to think about it overnight. 

The next day the eight year old boy told his parents he was willing to donate the blood. They took him to the hospital; he was put on a gurney beside his six year old sister. Both were hooked up to IVs. A nurse took a pint of blood from the boy, which was given to his sister. 

The boy lay in silence as the blood that would save his sister dripped from the IV, until the doctor came over to see hwo he was doing. Then the boy opened his eyes and asked, “How soon until I start to die?”

 

 

when God is in the way?

I’m ashamed to say that sometimes when things don’t go the way I expect it to go, or the way I want it to go, I feel that God is in my way. I feel that God is holding me back from realising my hopes and dreams. I feel that God is an unloving, unkind, unfavourable God who holds back the best from me. I feel that God is selfish and that God doesn’t care about my best interests. I feel that God, the lord of the heavens and the earth, is a hindrance. I feel that God is stopping me! 

But what’s really stopping me is my immaturity isn’t it? It’s my severe lack of faith. My inability to look ten steps ahead of what is NOW, and believe where God is bringing me. It’s my insecurity. My need to grasp and hold on to anything tangible and my unfounded fears and anxieties of sinking when I let my feet into the water and can’t feel its depth. It’s my innate need for stability and my habit of wanting to just settle for whatever I can see right now. 

God is not in the way. I am.

 

When I feel like that, I am the kid who wants to hop into a rickshaw when my dad is coming in a limousine (wooohoo). I’m like the girl who wants to settle for Chee Beng (private joke!) when she can marry … … … …. er, a hot, godly young man who wants to fulfill the great commission and who is the perfect blend of mayer & takashi kaneshiru (gotta choose the asian looks this one). 

Or on the more serious note, I am the complaining israelite in the wilderness. I am the ungrateful generation. I am the forgetful people who wanted Joshua to build an idol of gold to worship when God has been so clearly tangible & brought them through the red sea. 

 

The carnal me wants to go for broke & just settle for whatever. 

But if I do, then I am in the way of God… who is preparing the way for me. I am in the way of my Father who is closing the doors necessarily so that I wont walk into the lions’ dens. 

God I don’t want to be in Your way. Please hlep me to trust You better! 

Man, these fundamentals, time to graduate from them already! 

 

Be careful to follow every command I am giving you today, so that you may live and increase and ay enter and possess the land that the Lord promised an oath to your forefathers. Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the desert these forty years, to humble you adn to test you in order to know what was in yoru heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from teh mouth of the Lord. Your clothes did not wear out and your feet did not swell during these forty years. Know then in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, so that Lord your God disciplines you.

Deuteronomy 8:1-5

I am sad like a little sad dog

I am sad.!!!

On journalism

Sometime back, someone  gave me this advice on on journalism:

‘no one cares about you think, thats why you must 1)cite everything you write 2)report the facts & keep your opinions to yourself.

And now, in 3 assignments I got back, I have similar comments under my marks:

‘appalling number of quotations & citations’

‘would have liked more of your own voice to come through on the issues’

‘would like more of your opinion and analysis!’

How ironic, the difference in the style of education?I’m confused.

why I choose to believe in Jesus

 

 

“Indeed, Mary of Magdala is a study in undying love. I ask you: What provoked such unending devotion? It was simply this: Mary believed the Lord’s opinion of her. She took His opinion of herself rather than her own. In doing so, love was awakened within her own heart for Christ…

Therefore, the next time you feel condemnation over your past, please remember this one thing: The first person to lay eyes upon the resurrected Lord was a former prostitute.

God chose Mary Magdalene from the foundation of the world, knowing the kind of life she would live. And He chose you and me from the foundation of the world, knowing full well all the mistakes we would make this side of the veil.

You have a Lord who wishes to cherish you. Neither your fallen nature nor your sins are an obstacle for Him. He has dealt with them thoroughly, completely, and willingly by His death and resurrection.

Never forget: This God of yours allowed a prostitute to love Him extravagantly in the house of a Pharisee. Such is the wonder of the sacred romance into which every believer has been swept up. So go in peace, and love your Lord like Mary did.”

 

Frank Viola, From here to eternity 

 

When you’re a rational, sensible, good-thinking adult woman in your early twenties with choices, you gotta checklist some things in life and do alot of self-evaluation now and then. 

 

I do. Alot. 

 

At lifegroup today…

We had a few firsts – like SOPHANNY TEA’s first everrrrrr (first of MANY MANY Others…) discussion leading, at which she did a FABULOUS job at and also Anita’s firstttttttttttttt visit to our awesome little family.  

Going to lifegrp never ceases to refresh me and  in between celebrating PHUQ1’s 6 month anniversary & hearing sop so very skillfully facilitate the discussion, I was so stirred and many things of the past, the word spoken over PH, the word spoken over us as a student campus based ministry, the word spoken over our lives as a leadership team, as a lifegrp and myself, just reverberated so violently in my heart that I had to throw away everything I prepared to wrap up the discussion with and let the spirit take lead. 

In a nutshell, to simplify it as we shared about being pillars of God’s house:

• The brutal stats of 18-22 being the highest grp of church dropouts
• 18-22 being the age group most of us in Powerhouse. 
• We are pillars of God’s house – and thus, the building blocks of our lives need to be strong!
• And what we do matters in this world especially in a world so broken and so in need of light. 

 

1 Sam 3:19 says ‘The lord was with Samuel as He grew up and he let none of his words fall to the ground’. 

Earlier this year after a pretty traumatizing incident I remembered getting onto the ferry on my way home at night and instead of feeling anger or paranoia I thought in my heart, a thought so shook myself and frustrated myself I bit my lips in despair amidst the chilly night air, and that is – ‘if the church is not the answer, what is?’ 

I’ve never seen brokenness to this degree, or emptiness and hopelessness from that angle. And that night, it was a completely violent revelation to my heart – in between one of utter confusion, challenging my mindset, my thinking, and shaking the entire foundation of my hopes and dreams and plans because i know, something deep within me, God has revealed and changed something in my heart. I have seen, and I couldn’t ignore it. 

Then God spoke to me and broke me with His word; that we are like pillars in the house of God, in a world that is broken, so that the very very broken can come in and find refuge in the midst of the storms and the fires of sin. So that we can be a protection, a covering and a comfort to the afflicted and the lost. So that those who are hopeless can find hope, and those who are lost can find direction. And those who thought ‘this is it‘ or ‘there is no more’ can know that in Christ, ‘this is not it‘, and that because our saviour king sent His son, ‘there is more to life‘. The pillars of God’s house need, so badly, to be strong, to be the ones who will hold up the world and say ‘here’s the truth’ in this generation of devastated lives, numbed hearts and empty souls. 

The building of the Acts 2 community starts with YOUR community. How do we recreate a glorious Acts 2 church? How do we bring back that glorious Acts 2 community that God exchanged his most precious for? It starts with the community we are building right there in our campuses, in our small groups, the lives around us, the people who are dear, the ones who are close, and also the ones who are not close, but the ones who are there, the ones who are near, the ones who are with us. 

If we want the Acts 2 community to be alive again, our lifegrp has to be right. Our lifegrps have gotta first be alive.

….. let none of His words fall to the ground.