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).

Realizations

I'm winding down already, and there are still 2 weeks left. But it's good that I'm starting earlier this year. I realized last year after finals, that suddenly when you have nothing to do, life hits you really hard, and you realize that you've been distracted by school the whole time and not really thinking about how you are doing.

I didn't know how I was doing today, until I began talking to someone I haven't seen in a long time. She asked me how I was doing. With people you see every day, you can be like "I'm good", but with people you haven't seen in a year, you feel bad not telling them a more complete story of your semester or life. So I was like "Hmmm... let me think about how I am doing" and I began rambling, and it got longer and longer and I was just thinking out loud. And then finally I came to a conclusion about how I am doing and it hit me. I was like WOW, I didn't even know how I was doing until I told you how I was doing.

And I realized that I don't feel connected with people (not specific people, but people in general--like the human population), when I don't have extended conversations with people about stuff in my heart. As in rambling conversations. I had quite a few today, and I'm so thankful for them. It's so nice to have people who are willing to just sit and listen to me think out loud. And I find out so much from these conversations.

This is it!

This is it!

My life is a sum total of every today.

and yet, I still resonate with the song Consuming Fire:

"there must be more than this"

What's the next verse to the song?

There must be more than this

O breath of God come breathe within

There must be more than this

Spirit of God we wait for you

That is why there must be more than this. We need to wait for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on this campus, for campus transformation. We need God to transform us from the inside out. We need to be consumed with His love, and the knowledge and depth of His love. It is not His love that is lacking, but our knowledge or understand of it that is lacking--our knowing of Him, that is lacking.

Consuming Fire, fan into flames

A passion for your name

Passion. It's not a bad thing. I used to associate passion with emotion, and emotion with BAD, because of our culture that dislikes emotion. Even the Christian culture does that. We warn people excessively about how to not base our faith on emotion, but in fact the bible is filled with affection from God to His people, and from His people to God. Our faith is based on the Truth, not on emotion. But God created emotion and affection. And it is good.

At Ivy League Congress, someone asked what they should do if it's hard for them to feel love towards people. The guy said, to repent and ask God for help.

A friend of mine remarked that she had forgotten how not seeing God's beauty, or not appreciating God's love, or being in awe of Him, is sin. Not loving God is sin.

Repent and be passionate about God.

It's been over a year!

I'm going to celebrate how God has brought me through all this way, in terms of academics.

I had almost forgotten how painful it was to be borderline failing. I was looking through my email drafts today and found one titled "Reasons I shouldn't do this anymore". It was an email to myself that I wrote last spring (saved as a draft), of all the reasons I shouldn't do engineering anymore. haha. I can finally laugh at it, out of joy.

And yesterday, I had my first Academic Integrity Hearing Board meeting (as a student representative), and I was reminded, as I listened to people's comments on the offender, of what it was like for people to not think you would make it as a Cornell student. Or a Cornell engineering student.

And yet, it's just school. Maybe I can say that now that it's not so bad anymore. But it's really similar to any family problem or relationships or any other hardship. It's big when you're in it, even though it's all very small compared to eternity. And yet, God comforts us in every struggle and hardship.

yay. Thanks God.

Schoolwork

Thank you God for schoolwork. Thank you for the things I am learning. Thank you for diffusion, for vacancy sites and the interstitialcy mechanism. Thank you for radius of gyration and holes, even though they are imaginary.

I declare that I love it because I love you.

--

I heard testimonies at Ivy League Congress, where people said they used to hate school, but after college they realized they loved learning. I don't hate school, but I do treat it as something I have to do.

But I want to be like one of those field workers that sings while she gathers grain. To be full of joy while I work. To see it all as amazing because, well, God is amazing.

I don't want to run after the big picture amazing things and miss the little amazing things all around me. I don't want to be so consumed with the big picture mission that I forget how to love people around me. I don't want to be a hypocrite.

haha... it's been a big picture week for me.

SIGH God

It was really encouraging to see God do so much during Ivy League Congress--in other people and also myself.

For me personally, I almost felt that I was over-challenged, as in challenged beyond what I was ready for. But then, after a while, I am encouraged again, the fear is removed and I am again willing to hear God's call for me for the rest of my college days.

I realized that I am like one of those people that Francis Chan talks about in Forgotten God... one of those people who asks God to speak to them, but is afraid He will tell them to do something they don't want to do. I thought I had given everything to God, but I still have so much to lose that I have not yet counted as loss.

"I have nothing to lose"...I struggle now to believe that. I also am struggling with fearing God. I do not fear Him enough; instead I fear man. And I fear losing cohesiveness, acceptance, respect.

I am beginning to see why Jesus declared in Luke 7:28 that John the baptist was the greatest man who ever lived.

I mean.. dude, John the baptist was CRAZY. What kind of person wears camel hair and lives in the dessert and eats honey and locusts? I bet people were skeptical of him and judged him. I wonder if he was ever lonely.

SIGH God.

I hear that some people pray that God would "wreck" their lives so that they would not be comfortable. That seems like a very scary prayer right now. I am like the father in Mark 9, in that I will have to say 'I believe; help me overcome my unbelief'.

In other words: 'I am not there yet, but I want to be there'.

God's grace is enough for me. And He loves me no matter what.