Be Thou Exalted

“O God be Thou exalted over my possessions. Nothing of earth’s treasures shall seem dear unto me if only Thou art glorified in my life. Be Thou exalted over my friendships. I am determined that Thou shalt be above all, though I must stand deserted and alone in the midst of the earth. Be Thou exalted above my comforts. Though it mean the loss of bodily comforts and the carrying of heavy crosses, I shall keep my vow made this day before Thee. Be Thou exalted over my reputation. Make me ambitious to please Thee even if as a result I must sink into obscurity and my name be forgotten as a dream. Rise, O Lord, into Thy proper place of honor, above my ambitions, above my likes and dislikes, above my family, my health and even my life itself. Let me sink that Thou mayest rise above. Ride forth upon me as Thou didst ride into Jerusalem mounted upon the humble little breast, a colt, the foal of an ass, and let me hear the children cry to Thee, “Hosanna in the highest.” Amen.”

Be Thou exalted above my circumstances, Lord. Let me fix my eye upon You and exchange my heavy burden for Your sweet yoke. I desire to view everything in my life through Your perspective, only I can’t do this by my own strength. I feel so tired and weak and useless and broken, and no one but You can restore me and make me feel whole again.

***

This is a sweet prayer, it puts into words the prayer of my heart:

“Lord, I would trust Thee completely; I would be altogether Thine; I would exalt Thee above all. I desire that I may feel no sense of possessing anything outside of Thee. I want constantly to be aware of Thy overshadowing presence and to hear Thy speaking voice. I long to live in restful sincerity of heart. I want to live so fully in the Spirit that all my thoughts may be as sweet incense ascending to Thee and every act of my life may be an act of worship. Therefore I pray in the words of Thy great servant of old, “I beseech Thee so for to cleanse the intent of my heart with the unspeakable gift of Thy grace, that I may perfectly love Thee and worthily praise Thee”. And all this I confidently believe Thou wilt grant me through the merits of Jesus Christ Thy Son. Amen.”

- Tozer

I want to delve into the works of the ancient saints. The words that they wrote to God and for God are so beautiful and pure and filled with passion that reading them makes my heart burst. I feel like I can learn so much from them.

I was thinking again about some of the ancient literature [i.e. Chaucer] and I thought how perfectly beautiful and amazing and admirable it is that even in the midst of their frivolous love stories/songs/lyrics, they never forget to devote some space to the exaltation of God. They never forget to put their love for God even above their love for their lovers.

And even though I still don’t understand much of it, I am beginning to think that Song of Songs is a magnificent book. I want to have God ravish my heart and love Him as perfectly as I can. And I really do hope that I’ll learn to love God more through the poetry class I’ll be taking next semester.

What a gorgeous prayer

“Father, I want to know Thee, but my cowardly heart fears to give up its toys. I cannot part with them without inward bleeding, and I do not try to hide without inward bleeding, and I do not try to hide from Thee the terror of the parting. I come trembling but I do come. Please root from my heart all those things which I have cherished so long and which have become a very part of my living self, so that Thou mayest enter and dwell there without a rival. Then shalt Thou make the place of Thy feet glorious. Then shall my heart have no need of the sun to shine in it, for Thyself wilt be the light of it, and there shall be no night there. In Jesus’ name. Amen.”

- Tozer

:(

Okay God I really need You to come through for me again.

I have failed again at being consistent and using my time well and I wish I could read Urdu so I could do a better job at this, especially since all the critics keep making snide comments about how bad the translations are. And argh, I do wish there were more hours in a day so I could miraculously come up with some kind of draft and send it to my prof by TOMORROW since Monday will be way too late. At the moment I have nothing at all. How? God, HELP!

And oh yeah, God? I really don’t think a life of research is for me. I get too restless.

Maybe this is God’s way of showing me that my own plans are never as good as the ones He has in mind for me. So, seriously, NO POST GRAD. Unless it’s Bible school or theology or something like that. But even then, I’m not so sure anymore. I’m not very fond of this form of learning.

Jesus Culture

You Won’t Relent

I don’t wanna talk about You
Like You’re not in the room
I wanna look right at You
I wanna sing right to You

***

Past few days have been good, God has been affirming what’s on His heart for all of us: the Father’s heart, which is so cool.

I just feel so encouraged to see so many of us having the same kind of vision, direction and purpose, but God has been showing us different areas that He wants us to bring this vision and purpose into. It reminds me so much of 1 Corinthians 12, where Paul talks about spiritual gifts and being one in the body of Christ.

***

Come be the fire inside of me
Come be the flame upon my heart
Until You and I are one.

***

How He Loves Us

Kaulah Segalanya

***

RencanaMu indah bagiku
Kau ada di s’tiap jalanku
Hatiku haus dan lapar
Akan Engkau

And You Came to My Rescue

My whole life I place in Your hands
God of Mercy, humbled I bow down
In Your presence, at Your throne

I called, You answered
And You came to my rescue and I
Wanna be where You are

***

Lord, I am so sorry for doubting You.

Even though it totally breaks my heart today REALISING how many people I know are fatherless and how many people are hurting today because they don’t have a father to celebrate father’s day with, I realised that there is nothing You can call me to, or ask me to do, or any message You want me to declare, that can be considered peripheral. It made me realise that any little dream that You put upon my heart is SO important because it really MEANS something, and can change someone’s life, and You would not have called me to do it if it did not also break Your heart a million times more than it did mine.

Lord if I haven’t heard You wrong all those years back, please let me do this even though I know I will whine about it throughout the entire process and even though I have absolutely NO IDEA how I’m gonna fit all my “little” dreams that really aren’t all that little into THIS little life that You have given me. Because I want to have compassion for these people the way You do. I want to help them and I want to have an opportunity to touch the lives of this fatherless generation and tell them that they are NOT fatherless after all, because their heavenly father loves them more than they can ever imagine. It’s the kind of love no one can put words to, it’s the kind of love no one can talk about without breaking down and just making a fool out of themselves, it’s the kind of love that never ever ends and never tires itself out loving, and it’s the kind of love that we need the most.

***
In my life, be lifted high
In our world, be lifted high
In our love, be lifted high

***
I was debating with God about the same old thing.

And I said, “God, these people who have never heard of You…they need You more than all these ‘intellectual’ people who waste their lives MOCKING You. And they are just so pretentious and this and that…”

And it was crazy, God very gently showed me that this is exactly why they need Him – and in some ways, they need Him MORE than those who have never heard of Him, because they’re deliberately rejecting Jesus and subscribing to their own self-made gods designed in their own image – because these people are so empty inside all they have to hide behind is an “intellectual” facade. That is their way of asserting their self-importance so they can convince themselves that they have a lot of worth, and that they don’t need God to love them.

And He showed me Hebrews 12:3 and in my Bible it said “Think of all the hostility he endured from sinful people, then you won’t become weary and give up”, and there was an asterik next to it and the footnote said, “Some manuscripts read Think of how people hurt themselves by opposing Him.”

And wow when I read that I just felt very sure that the most important thing God wanted me to get out of that verse is that He hurts so much when people hurt themselves by opposing Him. It isn’t even their act of turning against Him that hurts Him as much, but it’s the fact that these people are just groping around in darkness, planning their own self-destruction, thinking that they’re doing well, or pretending that they’re doing well and they don’t need Him, that really really hurts Him.

And I felt God just giving me a kind of understanding about how intellectual people feel inside and it was absolutely heartbreaking for me. Maybe because I know that I was so nearly like that. I could’ve been so nearly like that if God didn’t pull me out of it through Chinh.

And of course it’s so easy to just say, “God I’ll do anything You want me to” but it’s so much harder to just trust that God knows what He’s doing even when He’s throwing you into the lion’s den or wherever.

But He does, and I know that I owe all that I am to a God who loves me so much that all that He asks me to do is to make sure that people around me are not hurting themselves too by rejecting Him. Because these people don’t know how lost they are…and how God feels when He looks at them.

And I think they deserve to know, because He was so overcome with grief that He died for them, He died for everyone.

“The things which are impossible with men are possible with God.”

So yesterday I went to church and God’s word for me took me by surprise:

“You need to believe in the impossible because God is going to make them happen in spite of your circumstances.”

I don’t really know/understand what it means yet but I’m excited just by the idea that God wants to do impossible things in my life, in and through me.

Recently God has awakened a few of my abandoned dreams and I kept finding myself thinking I’m never going to be able to achieve them – I’m socially awkward and so slow and stupid in person that I never know how to connect with people or even have a basic conversation with them, and there’s just so much WORK that I’m not sure I can do well enough because HERE’S my limit and THAT’S what people want but WHAT do I want? Is it okay to be greedy and to want to do all these things at once? – and feeling even scared to be thinking of them at all because they seem so far away and just so beyond what my natural ability is capable of and I want to tell God to give me the easy way out, even though I don’t know what that means and in some ways, THAT dream is an easy way out.

And to add to that confusion, sitting there in the middle of some village in Vietnam, I felt the presence of God so strongly that I couldn’t even stand up. That has never happened before. And as God as tugging at my heart, I was thinking and telling Him back, “I truly am happy here. I love these people, I love their hunger for You, I love their passion for You, I love how happy they are even though they have nothing, I love their simplicity and pure joy, I love all these simple people God. Why do You want me to reach out to the intellectuals? This feeling is irreplaceable, I could REALLY live here…”

And I thought, “God I really don’t understand how my calling can be for BOTH the intellectuals and simple people…help me understand how that is going to work out.”

I don’t know but maybe God just gave me an answer last night, although I think that also refers to something more specific, something more in the present.

You know what’s funny? A few months ago God told me that I’m really excited about my future but the truth is that I don’t really know what my future entails so I find it funny that God said that. Except maybe HE is excited about my future and He cannot wait to see what my reaction will be when I reach it and see all that He has planned for me. And that’s what I’m excited about. Knowing that my future is in God’s hands and that wherever I go, regardless of whether or not I achieve my dreams, even if I find myself in a place I never imagined I would be, God will be there with me.

And a life with God can only be exciting.

So I’m excited!

I have the best cell leader

She really is the most patient and loving person I’ve ever met.

Only thing is her prayers are always REALLY REALLY long hahaha but that’s because you know that she really loves you and wants to cover every single area of your life.

I think I will miss my sister when she’s gone. I get really silly with her around [except when she's complaining to me, like all the time, then I must be the "big sister"] and we just do the craziest things like laugh non-stop in the middle of a prayer.

So we were talking to Elysia and she was complaining to us about the other cell members and how exhausting it is to deal with them because they do not know how to interact socially and they call her about 3 times in a row and keep saying the same thing. And once when we had lunch with her husband, he was saying, “I always know when ____ calls, coz I’ll see Elysia take on deep breath before she picks up the phone.”

And it made me feel bad because I was REALLY grumpy a few Saturdays ago and not in the mood at all to be talking to people and then she sent me a message telling us we have a dress code and so I was so annoyed I started texting Nic to complain about not being able to fit into communities…and I accidentally sent it to Elysia.

And she didn’t scold me at all. She didn’t even mention it actually. Maybe it’s because, as she always says, “I don’t think Becky cares about what other people say at all [about herself].” I have a feeling this is also why Pastor Rachel never dares to scold me haha.

But yeah I felt really bad because it’s not her fault, she’s just following orders. And I can’t imagine what it must be like being the cell leader of the largest cell group because all the new people and whoever the rest “can’t handle” just automatically get thrown into our cell group for some reason and we no longer really get to have fun in cell the way we used to.

I really admire her, and will miss her when I’m gone. She’s so strong and so beautiful. I hope that one day God’s love will shape me to become as wise and passionate as she is.

p/s: So not looking forward to youth camp. Sigh.

The Gospel as Fairy Tale

“Let the preacher tell the truth. Let him make audible the silence of the news of the world with the sound turned off so that in that silence we can hear the tragic truth of the Gospel, which is that the world where God is absent is a dark and echoing emptiness; and the comic truth of the Gospel, which is that it is into the depths of his absence that God makes Himself present in such unlikely ways and to such unlikely people that old Sarah and Abraham and maybe when the time comes even Pilate and Job and Lear and Henry Ward Beecher and you and I laugh till the tears run down our cheeks. And finally let him preach this overwhelming of tragedy by comedy, of darkness by light, of the ordinary by the extraordinary, as the tale that is too good not to be true because to dismiss it as untrue is to dismiss along with it that catch of the breath, that beat and lifting of the heart near to or even accompanied by tears, which I believe is the deepest intuition of truth that we have.”

- Frederick Buechner

Oh Wow #4586266

“When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, “I am Almighty God; walk before Me and be blameless.”
—Genesis 17:1

Without argument, most things are at their best when they are fulfilling their purpose and design.

For instance, a piano is made with a specific purpose: to produce music. However, I happen to know that someone once stood on a piano in order to put a fastener of some kind in the ceiling. Some artistic women have used piano tops as family picture galleries. I have seen piano tops that were cluttered filing cabinets or wide library shelves.

There is an intelligent design in the creation of a piano. The manufacturer did not announce: “This is a good piano. It has at least 19 uses!” No, the designer had only one thought in mind: “This piano will have the purpose and potential of sounding forth beautiful music!”…

Do not miss the application of truth here. God was saying to Abraham, “You may have some other idea about the design and purpose for your life, but you are wrong! You were created in My image to worship Me and to glorify Me. If you do not honor this purpose, your life will degenerate into shallow, selfish, humanistic pursuits.”

- Tozer