Sad

=/ I'm really sad. I know I'll see people again, but I'll never see them in such a casual context, like 2am in duffield, or wandering around in PJs, or lying asleep on my couch in a mound of blanket, or visiting my apartment, or standing by the doorway of someone's dorm room in casc late at night. There will never be another time when I'm walking somewhere on campus that I'll see someone on my way to class, and get to smile at them and look at them.

Most of all, I really just miss looking into people's eyes. I will really miss people's eyes. yea, I really love eyes. And I love being in people's presence.

Okay, yea, so I really don't know the point of this post. I guess I do have some encouraging things to say. Like, how I'm so glad that we all still desire to keep in touch with each other. I'm really encouraged by that. I am really just happy that there are people I love all over the country and world. And all of us are running towards the same goal. And so I guess we are all going towards the same thing, although in different places. And I'll just have to really let go of being able to look into people's eyes and seeing them on the way to class and seeing them in my apartment. And trust that God's got them, and that they will go on and meet new people and form new friendships, even while holding fast to the ones built here at Cornell. As one brother mentioned, there are no friendships like those in college, because you'll never be able to spend that amount of time with people in such close contexts again.

But the point of all this friendship stuff is to support each other and to keep running after Christ, keep spurring each other on. It's not really about staring into each other's eyes forever and hugging each other and just spending time together. But to take all of that support we do have and really go where God wants you to go. And if we really had our hope in Christ and believed in God and this hope, we would be excited for what God is going to do in our lives and in others' lives in the future. God is good. Let us focus on that. God is going to do great things in each of our summers and even after that. Do we believe it?

Now, at the end of my blog post, now that I have encouraged myself, I am no longer really sad. But I am excited to hear back reports from people of what God is doing in them, what they are learning, how much more they love God now, etc. Please don't stay stagnant. God is everything that we have. If we don't run after Him, what else in this life do we have?

and at the same time, if you are struggling to be passionate about God, let people know! Never give up sharing praises and struggles. This is the body of Christ. This is love.

Life is so weird

Okay, I understand that 4am posts sometimes are unwise, but I wasn't planning on saying anything specific. And I don't have much more time to blog before I will be in China, where blog sites are blocked and I won't be able to blog, although I'll still be able to read other people's blogs through google reader.

Life is weird.

It's amazing how we learn so much. Through experience. Through observation of experience. Through experience of observation.

Through God-- It's hard to remember that everything we have is a gift from God-- even our supposed ability to "come up" with stuff, even the way we think, how we perceive and notice the things of life. And all of these things--the way we think, perceive, notice, come up with stuff--can be corrupted, muddled, perverted, biased. And only God can purify these gifts He had originally intended for us to use in a way that builds up others.

And Life is weird because no matter how much you observe, or experience, no matter how much you think you got the pattern down, no matter how great of an accuracy you think you can predict the stock market, sometimes life takes you by surprise. Actually it always does. Periodically at least.

But we stubborn man. We think we got it down just because we have learned so much. We have grown so much. We have increased awarenesses of new things of life. And we wanna quickly bask in this wonderful change, instead of being so in awe of the One who made this change, or the One by whom all good change is possible, and remembering there is always more.

There is always more.

There is always more than enough.

Strong Rebuke

Galatians 2

"When Peter came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he was clearly in the wrong"

..."When I saw that they were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Peter in front of them all, 'You are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile and not like a Jew. How is it, then, that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs?..."

I always thought rebuke had to always be gentle and private. But apparently Paul and Jesus think differently!

I was reading this passage that a pastor wrote in a book, about what he does in his church:

(by the way, this is key! I have personally seen innerworkings of a church divide because of this)

"One Sunday about 20 years ago, back in our days in YWCA, I said something impromptu while receiving new members into the church that has stuck with us ever since. People were standing in a row across the front before me, and as I spoke, the Holy Spirit seemed to prompt me to add, “and now I charge you, as pastor of this church, that if you ever hear another member speak an unkind word of criticism or slander against anyone—myself, another pastor, an usher, a choir member or anyone else—you have the authority to stop that person in midsentence and say, ‘Excuse me—who hurt you? Who ignored you? Who slighted you? Was it Pastor Cymbala? Let’s go to his office right now. He will get on his knees and apologize to you, and then we’ll pray together, so God can restore peace to this body. But we will not let you talk critically about people who are not present to defend themselves.’

“New members, please understand that I am entirely serious about this. I want you to help resolve this kind of thing immediately. And meanwhile, know this: If you are ever the one doing the loose talking, we will confront you.” "

~Jim Cymbala, Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire

So good.

Fear God.

My Parents Know Me

I got one of my prelims back today, and I did really badly (and I thought that prelim was my best prelim of the semester after I took it). And then it hit me that I'm not doing well in any of my core courses for my major. "Not doing well" is also probably an understatement.

I found myself writing an email to my mom warning her that this semester's gpa might be the lowest, and sort of explaining myself and stuff.

But then she replied with some stuff and was like "Anyway, just do your best !"

Obviously, she didn't consider it too big a deal.

And I thought to myself: well, that was dumb; why did I feel the need to explain myself to my parents. They know me. They know my habits, my tendencies, my heart. I don't need to prove myself to them, or prove that I have changed, that my work ethic has changed or that at least, even if I'm not trying my best, I know that I'm not and I feel bad about it. I don't need to prove my heart to them. I don't need to prove or explain my genuineness. I don't need to earn their respect and trust. For some reason, they already trust me. Or, they've 'let go' of me.

And it's kinda like that with God. God's not a control-freak, not micromanaging. I'm free to make mistakes. I have nothing to prove and no need to explain.

Thank you God!

Wow. I am so glad God saved me from a deep pit. The last couple of days I had felt a little strange... like I've lost my sense of direction in life or something. I felt kind of purposeless going through this finals week stuff. And I thought the reason was simply because the year is coming to a close and I tend to have those type of feelings at the end of the year.

But that wasn't the reason.

The reason was because I forgot God. I forgot Him in my conversations, I forgot His passionate jealous love for the people I had been talking about--and for the Church. I did not fear the Lord--I forgot about that too. If I feared the Lord, I would watch more carefully what I say about His beloved ones and how I say it and why I say it. Sometimes we claim to want to help people by talking about them, but how can we help them properly when we forget God's love for them? or when we are so caught up in what we think, that we forget God.

And so I've been reminded that when talking about other people, it's important to have the right heart about it--( to fear God), and to never talk about people without praying for them.--and I don't mean like you slap on a prayer later in the day so that you can be excused about talking about people, but truly having a heart to intercede for them in prayer, to see them change and to believe in change for them.

ugh. I really need more of God in my heart. I just want to talk about Him, how wonderful He is, all the things He has done, and be in awe of Him again.

Note for all of you and for my future self: I am writing this post as my sharing, and also as an encouragement to everyone who can relate and who finds this relevant and helpful for them. This is why I write posts.

Aching for Something Greater

This song makes me want to cry.

Not really just because I can connect with it, but also because I feel for others who can really connect with the song.

God

These are four testimonies from this year that God wants me to share:

Last semester, at the interfellowship prayer meeting in the plant science building, after the worship, I felt God telling me to tell a certain sister that He really loves her, is pleased with her and is proud of her. So I just went up to her and told her that I felt that God wanted to tell her this. Since it was such a common/general thing, I didn't think much of it (like I didn't think it would have any impact), except that I wanted to obey God. I actually had forgotten that I had told her that.

But last week, she came up to me and told me that what I said to her last semester really helped her to decide to go to a foreign country for missions this summer, because at the time she was really struggling to decide. I was like WOAH; that is so cool. God is so good.

Second testimony:

During the days of Easter Prayer tent, on Saturday, I had just come back to my apartment from a CBS junior class prayer meeting and I was standing in the living room talking to someone, when all of a sudden I felt this very strong urge to go to the Easter Prayer tent. However, I really didn't want to go because I really wanted to start doing my schoolwork (in order to not make it seem like I am lazy and mooching off of people--and I knew I needed to improve in this area) and also, I knew a couple sisters who were already going to go, and I didn't want to make it seem like I was just going because they were going. But I feared God, so I knew I had to go, because this sudden urge was so strong that it could only be from God. So, I was actually in mid-conversation with this sister in the living room, when all of a sudden I let out this big sigh/groan "UGH" and was like "Sorry, I have to go", and I rushed out the door and walked quickly. When I got to the law school building, I saw someone who I had not seen or talked to for a year. I began to talk to her and we had a lengthy/awesome conversation. After talking, we walked together back to my apartment building. A couple weeks, later I felt led to email her to ask her how she was doing since we last talked. This led into more sharing and accountability between the both of us, and in the last email, she wrote that she was thankful to have met me in front of the law school building because she had been praying about talking to someone, and that it really amazes her how good God is. After she wrote that in the email, I remembered how God led me there in the first place.

Often, God does not tell me exactly why I need to go somewhere, but He tells me to go. And usually, even though I think I'm going to location A, I am really supposed to go to location C, and God leads me to location C as I am walking to location A.

#3

One day after meeting with someone in the physical science building, I began to walk home. Shortly after I started walking home, I felt God tell me to go to the Cornell store. I wasn't sure if it was just me or if it was God, because sometimes I feel an urge to do random spontaneous things. But I figured that it couldn't hurt to go. So I went, thinking that maybe I need to buy some earphones. I looked through the earphones, but they were kind of expensive and I already had earphones. So then I went downstairs, and there I saw a friend that I hadn't seen for almost a year, and it was really cool that I got to talk to her for a long while. This is not just any friend, but there is a particular reason why I knew that this was from God. For privacy sake, I will not share in more detail about this friend.

Four.

I went to six flags a couple weekends ago. We wanted to come back to Ithaca saturday night/sunday morning. Our plan was to get on the 8:30pm bus from six flags to Port Authority, NY, and then get on the 11pm shortline bus from NY to Ithaca, arriving in Ithaca at 4am. However, the 8:30pm bus from six flags was full, so we had to get on the 9pm bus. We got to NY at 10:40pm and had 20 minutes in this huge multi-floor building to find out where to buy shortline tickets and get on our bus. The escalators were closed off, so we had to use the elevator, which means we had to wait for the elevator. Then it took us forever running around to find out where to purchase tickets. Random parts of the building were closed off with yellow tape, which confused us even more. There were 3 of us from Cornell who had to get on this bus. I and another brother ended up running off to find the ticket booth without the third sister, because she was too slow. We finally found the booth, around the corner in this deserted area that was almost all closed off from yellow tape (not sure how we managed to find this ticket-selling booth), and bought 3 tickets. Then we ran back to find the third sister; I tried calling her, but she didn't pick up. I called someone else who I thought would be with her, but he didn't pick up either. But thankfully we found her on the way and gave her her ticket and told her to run with us. We ran down escalators, through hallways, to the fourth floor, where there were rows and rows of people in different lines waiting for buses. There were no signs anywhere that told us which line was for the ithaca bus, and we had 5 minutes to figure it out before the bus was going to leave. We asked people if they were on the line for shortline buses, and they said "no, these are NJ transit buses; shortline is probably in another building". We were like.... what other building? How do we get there? There was no time. The other sister suggested we just go outside where the rows of buses were, so we ran outside. Rows and rows of buses were lined up. We ran through the lot. I was running ahead of them and chose a bus and started running towards it, the other two followed. I asked the driver what bus this was, and it happened to be the exact bus we were looking for. All three of us got on the bus, and right after we got on--maybe a minute after--the bus left for ithaca. It was just amazing--how we got the tickets, how we picked the right bus to run towards, how we decided to go outside and not listen to the people who were telling us to go to another building. All of this happened so fast; there was no time for decision-making; everything was by impulse and running.

Several days later I talked to the brother and he said that when we were running towards the bus, he knew it was the right bus, and he said that the other sister also told him that she knew too, that it was the right bus. I was like WOAH; that's so cool. God is amazing. I love it when God leads people like that. And so we got back at 4am; if we had missed that bus, we would have had to wait until morning for the next bus.

--

I want to know God and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death, and so to somehow attain to the resurrection from the dead.

Not that I have already obtained all this or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me ~Philippians 3

How Dare I

How dare I not love people with the same magnitude that God loves them.

Our love for the people around us cannot compare to God's love for them. How dare we.

How dare we not love and treasure people the way God does and see them as precious and beloved ones whom God loves. If we truly loved God, we would love them the way God loves them, out of our fear of God. Who are we to pass judgment on someone GOD has accepted? And how can we dare not love someone to the full extent as God does?

What is love? What does it mean to love someone? God is love.

If I was told to imagine sacrificing someone I love the most, (my mom), for someone else, I would definitely feel the deep pain of that sacrifice. I cringe just thinking about it.

However God's sacrifice isn't just that. --because God the Father loves Jesus more than I love my mom. And the more you love someone, the more it hurts.

Just as, the more deeply you love a friend, the more pain you would feel if they committed suicide.

In the same way, the Holy Spirit grieves when we harm ourselves and others whom God loves by sinning (ephesians 4:30).