- Faith. Without it, it is impossible to please God.
- The Cross, the blood of Jesus. Is really powerful. Redeems us.
- Ownership/sonship, & partnership with God
I was in a Hillsong concert, when suddenly I realized that my worship towards God felt different than it did a year ago. I was worshiping and praising God out of my identity as a child, not out of an identity as an ex-wretched person that He saved. That's why the song "Unashamed" bothers me; it has so much emphasis on being unworthy and praises God out of that identity or state of being unworthy. Obviously, we are unworthy compared to God, but by faith we are made righteous and a new creation. I feel like sometimes Christians intentionally put themselves down in order to praise God "more". God isn't insecure. We don't need to degrade ourselves to make Him look better. Additionally, we don't need to wrap our identity around being a sinner, when we are actually a new creation in Christ. We need to praise God out of our new identity.
In fact, that is what God desires--that we worship Him out of this secure identity as His son/daughter. We are not slaves waiting to blindly receive an order from our master. God wants us to partner with Him in taking ownership over the things we are called to do here. We are His friends and sons/daughters, and we are co-heirs with Christ.
I also realized that I like to downplay my abilities and accomplishments. I also like to spin things in a negative way in order to be funny or more "real"/genuine, because I guess the heart's cry of our generation is for realness. But sometimes the "realness" is a bit too real that it actually becomes unreal. We define what is real by what we say. If we say it enough times, it becomes real to us.
So one area I have been downplaying/real-talking is how I ended up in California, why I got an MBA and why I like California. Every time someone asks me, I come up with a different answer. One of the latest inventions/answers is that I got an MBA so I wouldn't have to live in the middle of nowhere. When you live in the middle of nowhere, all your friends end up leaving you and moving to the big cities. All my friends from my first company have left already. When you live in California or a big city, people come to you. Now, all my Cornell friends are moving to where I am. I don't want to live in an undesirable location with no young Asian Americans like myself.
Then a week later, I realized I was framing my life out of fear, rather than purpose. In essence, I am saying: I'm in California because I don't want to live in the middle of nowhere. --That's living out of fear, out of survival mode. Instead, I should say: I'm in California because God has called me here to make a difference, especially in my own culture and at work.
I need to stop framing things out of fear/survival mentality, and start speaking out of an identity as a child of God, out of ownership, out of royalty. Bay area is my territory, and I'm here to make an impact. When I'm in survival mode, I just want to survive. When I'm in ownership mode, I say, this is my house, my land, my people. Is there pollution? Are there cliques at Church? Let's solve this together. Let's do something about it. Often, prayer changes our own hearts so that we become the solution and the answer to our prayers.
