yoojaehee:

True that…

This is tomorrow’s QT but when I saw the title of it, I couldn’t help but read and meditate on it. God never fails to surprise me with His piercing Word. I feel like God is constantly speaking to me in my insecurities and uncertainties of the future. Whenever I doubt, whenever I feel like a failure placing all my trusts and hopes in my own future planning and worrying, God speaks into my life through my girlfriend, RUF (Reformed University Fellowship), and Daily QT.. 

God really helped me figure out the pattern of my life. It’s when I finally abandon all my thoughts and plans to the Lord, He allows the opportunity for me to have it. When i am praying solely to receive the blessings and the gifts that I want from Him, I feel like there is no peace in my heart but when I finally lay everything down before Him and ask to be led is when I feel like my heart is right with God. 

This is the QT from My Utmost for His Highest for April 29th. I hope it speaks to a lot of you who are uncertain and worried about your futures just like how it spoke to me. 

“It doth not yet appear what we shall be.” - I John 3:2

Naturally, we are inclined to be so mathematical and calculating that we look upon uncertainty as a bad thing. We imagine that we have to reach some end, but that is not the nature of spiritual life. The nature of spiritual life is that we are certain in our uncertainty, consequently we do not make our nests anywhere. Common sense says - “Well, supposing I were in that condition…” We cannot suppose ourselves in any condition we have never been in.

Certainly is the mark of the common-sense life: gracious uncertainty is the mark of the spiritual life. To be certain of God means that we are uncertain in all our ways, we do not know what a day may bring forth. This is generally said with a sigh of sadness; it should be rather an expression of breathless expectation. We are uncertain of the next step, but we are certain of God. Immediately we abandon to God, and do the duty that lies nearest, He packs our life with surprises all the time. When we become advocates of a creed, something dies; we do not believe God, we only believe our belief about Him. Jesus said, “Except ye…become as little children.” Spiritual life is the life of a child. We are not uncertain of God, but uncertain of what He is going to do next. If we are only certain in our beliefs, we get dignified and severe and have the ban of finality about our views; but when we are rightly related to God, life is full of spontaneous, joyful uncertainty and expectancy. 

“Believe also in Me,” said Jesus, not- “Believe certain things about Me.” Leave the whole thing to Him, it is gloriously uncertain how He will come in, but He will come. Remain loyal to Him. 

I was worried about my future and my soon-to-be long distance relationship with Jieun but God is really telling me to just abandon everything up to Him and just trust Him to lead my path and my relationship. God is taking away my doubt and my worries! Hallelujah~ Praise God from whom all blessings flow !!! :)

Why do I lack faith? Whenever I feel like I am in control of my life I realize that at the bottom of my heart there is fear. Fear that comes from trusting more in myself rather than trusting in God who is sovereign over everything. He holds the master plan for all of us but I have such a hard time believing in His ultimate authority. I have to lift up every area of my life. My future, my relationship with Jieun, my friendships, etc. I can’t try to make things happen because if it doesn’t go the way I want it, I would be so heart-broken and disappointed. I want to completely submit to the Lord like I tell everyone else to do. Why am I so future-oriented? Why do I worry so much about something that didn’t even happen yet? Considering possibilities of what may or may not even come through. Why can’t I just let go of my desire to be the captain of my ship.. I just pray that God would give me the grace to do His will…

and I am so thankful for Jieun. I think I have a better understanding of what it means to complement each other in a relationship. She has qualities that I need to learn and I have qualities that she lacks. I am so blessed that God allowed this relationship and we are trying to be prayerful and trusting. Praise God :)

We have no right to judge where we should be put, or to have preconceived notions as to what God is fitting us for. God engineers everything; wherever He puts us our one great aim is to pour out a wholehearted devotion to Him in that particular work. “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.”

I will do His work in Kenya with all my might!! :D Praise God 

Pray for me folks ~

Lord I want this to be my true confession: The one passion of my life is to proclaim the Gospel of God. I welcome heartbreaks, disillusionments, tribulation, for one reason only, because these things keep me in unmoved devotion to the Gospel of God.

‎”A woman’s heart should be so lost in God that a man needs to seek Him in order to find her”

Blessed are You, Lord God of 

Israel, Our Father, forever and ever.

Yours, O Lord, is the greatness, 

The power and the glory, 

The victory and the majesty;

For all that is in heaven

and in earth is Yours;

Yours is the kingdom, O Lord,

And You are exalted as head

over all.

Both riches and honor come 

From You,

And You reign over all.

In Your hand is power and 

might;

In Your hand it is to make 

great

And to give strength to all.

“Now therefore, our God, 

We thank You

And praise Your glorious Name.

But who am I, and who are my

people, 

That we should be able to offer 

so willingly as this?

For all things come from You, 

And of Your own we have 

given You. 

For we are aliens and 

pilgrims before You,

As were all our fathers;

Our days on earth are as a 

shadow, 

And without hope.

I just came back from a retreat and Im just thankful that God let me finish this year with a prayer and start a new year with a prayer :) 

I’ve been struggling and thinking about some things for a longgg time.. 

and pastor peter’s sermon at the retreat really helped me understand why I was struggling with those things. 

I learned that prayer is our way of showing dependence to God. The fact that i havent been praying was a direct result of me being prideful because one of the implications of not praying is that im not really depending on God for everything in my life. 

second thing i realized was my life was  no different from a nonbeliever’s life. 

I’ve always wanted to change my lifestyle. I wanted to live a life of worship but my excuses and laziness always kept me from praying and reading the Bible everyday. Hence, just like how I cut down on online chatting (msn and aim), I am going to take another bold step in eliminating other things that have been dominant in my life. Although I dont really listen to music that much, I decided to give that up as well because i realized that the kind of songs i listen to really affect my spirituality. Starting on Jan 1st 2011, I am giving up secular music and media that I think negatively affects my spirituality. This includes all the songs and movies with excessive profanity, sexual innuendo, violence, horror, etc. I really truly want to live a life that is set apart from the world. I know im considered extremely conservative by many but I am willing to be even more conservative to set myself apart from the world.

Im so glad I have friends that I could talk about faith with. I am truly thankful for that. I remember this past semester, me meta jree and joe talked about our daily walk with God out in the morrison hall. One of the many things we talked about was how we experience a different kind of persecution than those living in the middle east or north korea putting their lives at risk to defend and preach the Gospel. In a country like America, we dont really have those kinds of persecutions but we have other temptations that we so easily fall for. I believe that all of us have a choice not to sin because we have the Holy Spirit teaching us what’s right or wrong. With His help, we are capable of choosing to obey the Spirit. Knowing this, I am going to do my best to avoid the sources of sin and ask the Holy Spirit for strength to overcome these temptations. 

Pastor Peter preached that If you dont feel like you are being persecuted in anyway as a Christian then there’s something wrong with the way you live.. I was truly convicted by this statement. My biggest fear of living a transformed life was the persecution from my own group of friends and the feeling that I am missing out. By persecution from friends, I mean being awkward with friends, not being able to enjoy the worldly entertainment the same way we enjoyed it before, etc. I was really nervous about cutting off msn and aim because I was such a slave to it. I wasted so much time online chatting about random useless things… although there were some good convos, I think most of my time was spent talking about stupid stuff that doesnt even matter..However, God has granted me power to overcome it and im willing to do the same with other things that dominate my life at the moment. 

I wonder If i had a kingdom perspective and truly understood the values stored in heaven, how easy it would be to live this short life on earth. God has been teaching me how there’s nothing the world can offer. He’s been teaching me the NOTHINGNESS of life.. I want my faith and my lifestyle of worship to define who i am as a Christian because I know that there’s no genuine satisfaction coming from the things of the world. I must decrease to nothing and God must increase to everything! His amazing grace to an unworthy, undeserving person like me is truly overwhelming and life on earth is wayyyy too short for me to be living a life of complacency so I am going to do everything I can to live a life of holiness for the Lord.

now… for the new year’s resolution part.. haha I know that none of this is possible If I dont have the willingness to pray, read the Bible and live by the inspiration of Christ daily. Hence, I decided to buy a devotional book and do it everyday! I also wish to gather a group of friends who can be accountable for one another in this lifestyle of worship. YES It will be awkward at first and YES the thought of not being able to enjoy some of the worldly things that we enjoyed will make us hesitant to these changes but we believe in the goodness of God and He will provide!

I am so excited to take a step closer to the Lord. This is going to be a great semester! 

from distractions now haha I hope. 

I think i’ve been off msn and aim for about a month now and…

the MSN/AIM fast is really working !~ 

NOW the final stage of this “Distraction-Free” experiment is for me to deactivate facebook and.. I did today!

Im really curious how I will change without facebook :) 

hopefully, I will change for the better ~