What do you need?

They say that God has a sense of humor.

The story of this particular part of the past year of my life strikes me as being funny. Maybe it is.

A little over a year ago, I began to desire to have a boyfriend. My life seemed so unstable. I wanted to be with someone who had all the answers. Someone who knew what they wanted and why they wanted it. Someone with plans for the future. I wanted to be able to anchor my life onto a steady, rock-solid man.

And while God knows what we want, we don't always get what we want.

Instead of giving me the rock-solid Christian with his whole life planned out, God put Peter into my life. Peter. The guy who responded to "tell me your testimony" by seemingly reading my mind, voicing and articulating my buried questions and doubts about God's sovereignty even better than I could. The guy who not only failed to have all the answers, but also seemed to have no answers. The guy who didn't know until three months ago if he would even be in the United States this school quarter. The guy who still doesn't know what country he'll be in three months from now.

God knows what we need. And sometimes... it's better than what we want.

The only way we could possibly have made it through the past year is by God's grace. And we know it. Peter could probably tell you more about his side of the story, but here's a few effects of our relationship on my relationship with God.

Peter's uncertainty was exactly what I needed. His doubts drove me to my knees to pray for his faith with an urgency I hadn't felt in a long time. I couldn't anchor my hopes and dreams to him; I had to give my everything to God. To rely on God. Peter's lack of answers forced me to re-examine my own questions and search for answers on my own again. They gave me motivation to truly seek God's will. I could have been content drifting along for a long time. But my desire to be with Peter trumped my desire for security, comfort, and complacency. I honestly sought God and was open to hearing from Him. Because a chance at being with Peter was worth the risk of God telling to me to do something I didn't want to do.

And while Peter's leading me spiritually hasn't look like I might have imagined, I never needed a boyfriend to fill another pastor or discipler role in the first place. I needed someone to grow with and question with and seek with. Someone to walk side by side with. A fellow broken sojourner desperately clinging to God.

Faith

I finally finished reading A Retrospect. I started it way back nearly two months ago when we had that excerpt in the readings. And I slowly worked my way through the first half which was full of super awesome challenging-ness. Then raced through the second half which was more descriptions of what happened rather than depictions of true faith. I was feeling really challenged by Hudson Taylor’s faith and how he would struggle and wrestle with God in prayer for hours and hours – spending all his free time in prayer with God when things weren’t making sense or when things were turning out differently than he had expected. I was moved because I realized that I really hadn’t been doing that. After my brother’s death, I had a lot of questions for God. There were a lot things that didn’t make sense to me, and some characteristics of God that I couldn’t seem to reconcile with my experiences. I’ve mentioned a couple of these things in past reflections, but after starting A Retrospect I began praying that I would be able to struggle with God and go to Him with my questions. Then, a couple Sundays ago my pastor said something about asking God questions without questioning who God is. And I think shortly after my brother’s suicide I did a lot of questioning who God is. And I had sort of shut that down by praying for more faith to know that God is who God is, but then didn’t revisit those questions and address God as who he is and ask him my questions. But I started praying that I’d be able to. And two Thursdays ago I came across by chance (on my old laptop that I haven’t used in years) a letter that I’d written my future self when I was a senior in high school. It was for a class assignment, and was supposed to be mailed out by the teacher after college graduation, but I found it a year early. And I was again very challenged, but this time it was by my own faith, not by Hudson Taylor’s. It’s one thing to see the intense faith of this spiritual giant, but it was another to read what I’d written only a few years ago when I was in a really dark period. I’d thought that that was the darkest point of my life – the end of senior year of high school. My brother had attempted suicide twice that semester and others close to me were struggling with thoughts of suicide as well. And yet, I’d somehow written, in the middle of this letter to my future self

Let’s see – the important stuff. I hope you love God with all your heart. Jesus is the only reason for living, and I can tell you with complete certainty that your life would not be nearly as fulfilling or blessed as it is right now if not for God’s amazing and overwhelming love. Maybe at this moment, you’re agreeing with me, or maybe you’re shaking your head because life isn’t good at all. But that’s okay because four years ago, life wasn’t good at all, and with God’s love you made it through okay. So let’s thank God and move forward.

I went on to talk about how I hoped that I finally knew what I wanted to do in the future and how I hoped that my relationship with my brother was better and how I hoped he’d still be alive whenever I was reading this. And I talked about how grateful I was for the little Bible study group we had in high school and those short trips we took to Mexico together and all the “miracles” we got to see, like hardened prisoners weeping and crying out to God or bratty American teenagers cheerfully sleeping on the cold cement floor and offering to do extra chores to make the trip easier for the adults. And I ended by saying

God is good. He has a plan and a purpose for your life. Love God wholeheartedly and love your neighbor as yourself. You’re just one person, but God lives in you. Live for His purpose, to bring Him glory, and advance His kingdom. Change the world! Oh, and tell Mama and Daddy you love them. They did their best. Always remember that. J

I don’t know if you can hear the faith in that letter, but it’s there. And it was incredibly difficult for me to recognize that a couple weeks ago. Incredibly difficult to recognize that I used to have this much faith… and somehow lost a whole lot of it. And I can’t even blame it on circumstances really, because in many ways, things were worse back then. And I’m not sure how I lost that solid faith, but since finding this letter I’ve started praying again… really praying and talking and listening to God. I’ve also been praying that my view of God would be enlarged. The God I used to believe in is a whole lot bigger than the God I’ve been believing in recently. And I really want to believe in the all-powerful and purposeful God again. 

Hudson Taylor - The Call to Service

*Note: If you have time (which you do if you're reading this) read Hudson Taylor's "The Call to Service". It's the second chapter of Hudson Taylor's autobiography A Retrospect. Actually, read the whole book! I plan on reading it soon, and when I do, I'll post a summary/reflection on it and link it here.

I read Hudson Taylor’s “The Call to Service” about a week ago, and I promised to reflect on how I might “be so ready for [Jesus when he comes again] as to be able, whenever He might appear, to give an account of [my] stewardship with joy, and not with grief”. One particular thing that stood out to me last week was how Hudson Taylor went and donated a bunch of his books and clothing… that his retention of those things would be a “loss of blessing”. 

I figured that after a time of thinking and reflecting on this, I might do something similar… give away some books and maybe even see about organizing a clothing drive at Caltech. Instead, three days into my stay with my grandparents (yay – Spring Break!), I’ve already ended up accumulating about two dozen more books, DVDs, and CDs. The first night here I told my Grandma about a book I read this past week, Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus (again, hurray for Spring Break!!), and how good I thought it was. And lo and behold, Grandma had it! She told me if I liked that book, I really should read The Grand Weaver by Ravi Zacharias. Later that night, I mentioned that I was making my way through R.C. Sproul’s series of short booklets (all free on kindle ^_^ and hurray again for Spring Break!), and my Grandma said she really liked him (though not as much as she likes Ravi) and that she has some things by R.C. Sproul so why don’t I take a look at her things. Well, it turns out that she has dozens of Sproul’s CDs and books, and while going through and choosing a few that I felt were immediately useful to myself or would really speak to people in my life (I haven’t been able to give a really adequate response to my old roommate’s questions about God’s sovereignty and humanity’s free will and how those can both be possible so I picked up a CD series on that; an international student moved into my hallway this term, saw my cross necklace, and asked me about the “difference between Catholicism and Christianity”, to which I was also unable to adequately respond so I picked up an explanation on that too; I had coffee with someone two weekends ago and somehow we started talking about suffering and God, so I picked up a DVD lecture on that too – I’m not sure if we’ll get a second coffee (that’s not a normal date conversation, right?) but I’ll be [more] prepared next time!), I was reminded of my conviction over the course of the last couple months to pray more… and more effectively. I told my Grandma about this, and she assured me that we would be able to find some good books on that. So, the next morning, we went through all her bookshelves and located probably close to 30 books on the subject. She and my Dad looked through them all and decided on about a dozen that were “excellent”, “life-changing”, or “necessary”.

So now, a day later and a day wiser, I’ve decided that maybe I’m not in a stage of life right now to be donating a lot of books (though I will have to see about that clothing drive…), but I was able to help my Grandma bless me (haha, that sounds so backwards) and hopefully by reading those books and listening to those CDs (I do have a 1100+ mile car trip back to LA – yay Spring Break!!) I’ll get to be a blessing to those around me. My hope is that by spending my Spring Break reading and listening to God’s Word and related topics, I’ll be better equipped to share my faith and be more able to at least give an account of the next week and a half. 

Guilt

Based off the booklet What Can I Do with My Guilt? – R.C. Sproul

I’ll start with the conclusion. I picked up this book because it’s short, free on kindle, and because it’s something that’s crossed my mind several times over the past year. According to R.C. Sproul (and I’m inclined to agree with him here), our guilt should bring us to the cross. It should bring us to Jesus, to forgiveness, to reconciliation with God.

Last summer, I was struggling with feelings of guilt, and I brought this up in a conversation with a wonderful friend. I’m not sure why she said this at the time. Maybe she said this because she thought it was what I needed to hear at the time. And maybe it was. She told me that guilt never comes from God… that I didn’t need to feel at all guilty in any way. That I had done nothing wrong. And even then, God never wants us to wallow in guilt. Guilt is never from God.

R.C. Sproul’s take is quite different, isn’t it?

Guilt Vs. Guilt Feelings

Guilt – objective reality; “that which a person incurs when he violates a law”

Guilt Feelings – subjective feeling; those things we feel if we’re not a psychopath or sociopath

Side points:

-          God is the ultimate Lawgiver. Everyone is held accountable by God to God’s laws. God’s laws are perfect laws because God himself is perfect.

-          Guilt and guilt feelings are rarely in proportion

o   Having guilt feelings doesn’t necessarily indicate the presence of guilt

o   Not having guilt feelings doesn’t necessarily mean we didn’t incur any guilt

Common ways to deal with guilt

Denial; believing a law does not exist does not mean there is no law (God has written His law on the hearts of His creation…); attempt to stifle conscience

Justification, Rationalization; coming up with excuses doesn’t work with God; attempt to stifle conscience

Penance; we can’t possibly pay the penalty for breaking God’s law

REAL CURE: Forgiveness through Jesus

If feeling unforgiven/ guilty:

1 John 1:9

If after confessing still feeling guilty:

I found this part really interesting. R.C. Sproul proposes that this may be arrogance on our part.

God says that he will forgive us if we confess our sins. Yet, after time and time again after confessing the same sin to God, we still feel guilty. We assume that these guilty feelings imply the presence of guilt. But this is living according to our subjective and ephemeral feelings. We need to live by God’s objective Word and Truth. If God says we are forgiven, we are forgiven, no matter how we feel. We have no right to refuse that forgiveness. We need to trust God. To do anything less would be to place our feelings above God’s Word – arrogantly. So, despite any guilty feelings, if we know that we have truthfully confessed our sin to God, we need to trust that He has forgiven us.

I think perhaps what my friend was referring to was accusation (as opposed to conviction). According to Sproul, accusation comes from Satan with the intent of robbing us of our freedom and joy in Christ. Conviction comes from the Holy Spirit and drives us to Jesus to ask for forgiveness. And while it can be difficult to discern the difference between the two, we should never be trapped under the accusation of a guilty conscience. We need to trust that God forgives us when we confess our sins. Trust God.

God is Greater

I think what most affected me this week from Perspectives was from Andy Pearce’s talk. I’ve struggled with balancing honoring my parents with honoring what I thought was a God-given conviction for some time now. I’ve wanted to go to China as a missionary for a few years now, and I thought that was confirmed last summer when I got to go to China as a student studying in a fantastic language immersion program. I had amazing opportunities to share the Gospel with several of my teachers, had great conversations with some of the other students, and even took a relative to church for her first time. And for this summer, I had an internship all lined up with an American company with their branch in China doing research I’m really interested in. So I thought everything was working out and I’d hopefully be on my way to China in a long-ish term way, God-willing, in a bit over a year when I graduate.


But… my mom doesn’t understand why I’d ever want to go to China besides to visit relatives. In her view, it was so hard for her to be able to come to America, she doesn’t understand why I would ever want to leave America. So I haven’t pushed or even talked about going to China for any time longer than a summer with my mom until a couple weeks ago, on Feb 15, when I tried opening that up as a possibility. My mom gave her normal spiel about why America is so great, and before I could reply (which I was planning on doing for the first time), I very distinctly heard/felt God telling me to drop it.


So I did (not easy), and it was like this huge weight had been lifted off of me, but at the same time, like I was drifting and in a large sense purposeless. It’d been such a huge part of my plans and dreams for years now, and I wasn’t sure what to fill that void with. But over the next couple days, I was fairly sure that God was directing me to fill the time I’d been praying about my future in China with praying about my present here in Pasadena. I “coincidentally” ended up on a prayer walk with a friend around the Caltech campus a couple days later. And I felt even more of a burden for Caltech than before. We made plans to continue prayer walking on a regular basis throughout Pasadena. I went to an apologetics conference the following weekend where they encouraged us to live as “living, breathing billboards for Christ” where we are placed right now. In short, it was seeming like God really was telling me to focus for now on where he has placed me (in Caltech / Pasadena). Then, last week, Andy talked about so many ways he has had cross-cultural experiences right here, and I was really convicted that I’d been focusing so much on the chance of future opportunities there, that I’d probably passed up a whole lot of opportunities here.

Glory

The Bible is about God. Did you know that?*

This course: gain God's perspective of how He's working on Earth

What is the mission of God in the world?
- John 17:1-4
- Phil 2:10-11
- John 4:23-24

So what is God seeking? Worshippers who will worship Him in Spirit and Truth

God's glory is at the heart of God's mission.

What is glory? Substance, weight, brilliance, radiant beauty, worth.

What does "glorify" mean? To speak of one's glory in public.


I remember the day I learned the purpose of life. I was in 9th grade and helping in a Sunday School classroom filled with 1st or 2nd graders. (I actually learned quite a lot from those lesson plans designed for 6 year old children). The lesson was on creation. The teacher veered off the script and bit and asked "Why did God create us? What is the purpose of our lives?" The children didn't know. I didn't know either. Fortunately, the teacher didn't call on me to answer. She told us that God created us for His glory. Our purpose in life is to glorify God. And now, 6 years later, I'm still learning what that really means.

Worship: to ascribe worth/honor (linked with glory)
- Psalm 86:9

God reveals His glory to all nations so that he might receive glory from all nations.
- Psalm 96:1-9

"Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever" - Westminster Shorter Catechism

Psalm 97:1, Psalm 67:3-4, Psalm 69:32, Psalm 70:4, Psalm 16:11, Psalm 37:4



* yeah, me neither. I mean, I knew it... of course the Bible is about God. But like... it's all about God. So often we humans like to make it about us. Haven't you heard before that the Bible is a love story about God's crazy unconditional love for us? Or that the Bible is the story of redemption for fallen humans? And the Bible is all those things and more. But beyond that, or perhaps underlying that, the Bible is God's story. It's about an amazing God so completely worthy of being praised and glorified and honored and worshiped. It's about a God who created a universe so beautiful and so vast we can never understand it. It's about a God whose love for us is so deep and wide and high that we can never exhaust it. It's about a God who somehow chose to become like us and die for us. It's about a God who has infinite power and authority and yet allows us to choose Him. The Bible is the story of God being glorified... by every peoples, nation, tribe, and language. It's not about the people who are worshiping God. It's about the God being worshiped. Let us not forget the goal of missions. It's always about God, not about people.

Purpose

This was meant to be an introductory post explaining the purpose of the blog, but the key word for Perspectives this week was Purpose, so I might as well just jump right into things.

If you haven't heard of Perspectives, I highly recommend checking out their website.  It's a 15 week course offered all over the US and the world (mostly in churches) designed to understand God's global purpose and heart for missions. 

My dad took this class wayyyy back (in the 80s?) and has since retaken it, and he's been encouraging me to take the course since I started high school. But, coincidentally, life got busy around that time, so I didn't get around to taking it until now. AND IT'S AWESOME. AMAZING. FANTASTIC. HIGHLY EXCELLENT. 

Yes, I'm only on week 1, and I have yet to do most of the reading for this week, but it's already changing the way I see God and the world. 

So this past class, the speaker went through the Old and New Testaments, highlighting passages that show that since the beginning (and I mean like starting in Genesis beginning), God has had a plan and God has had a purpose: bring salvation to every tribe, tongue, nation, and people. 

I highly encourage you to look up the following passages in their entirety. Even more powerful with context!

Psalm 67

(^how many times have I heard the first half of this sentence and not the second half?!)

Genesis 12:1-3

Deut 4:5-6

Ex 9:16

Ex 12:38 

Joshua 4:22-24 

1 Sam 17:45-46 

1 Kings 4:34

2 Kings 19:19

2 Chronicles 6:32-33

Ps 22:27-28

Ps 86:9

Ps 96:3, 7-10

Isa 49:6

Daniel 6:25-27

Jonah

Mark 6 and Mark 8 feeding of the 5000 and 4000 (note Jesus's attitude towards the people vs. disciples' attitude)

2/3 of Jesus's major miracles are towards non-Jews

Matt 24:14

Acts 26:22-23

Rom 1:5

Gal 3:8, 13-14 

2 Cor 5:17-20

Romans 15:20

Rev 5:9

Rev 7:9

I don't know if you're as mind blown by this as I am, but this definitely has, at some level, restored my faith in the goodness of God. 

My brother committed suicide last summer, and I was struck by the seeming randomness of, well, life in general. I know that God is sovereign. Having grown up in the church, there are some attributes of God that I take as being fact without truly trying to reason through or understand what that means (both a good and bad thing, but a discussion for another time). And, as taught in Sunday School, I knew that Sovereign meant that God knows everything (Wise), can do anything (Powerful), and is Good, so therefore everything that happens is under God's jurisdiction and not random (and in fact is working toward the good of those who love God and are called according to His purpose (Rom 8:28)). And yet, I had trouble sensing this in my own life. Specifically, why me? Why not my brother? Why did God choose to be so faithful to me? In many ways, I feel like the testimony of my entire life is God choosing me, putting me on this path of faith, me wandering dangerously close to the edges, pushing God away, being ashamed of Jesus, hiding my faith, etc., and God picking me back up and guiding me back onto the center of the path. 

Anyways, this is something I've been struggling with for about half a year now. But going through the Bible and seeing how God has had a Purpose since the beginning has made me realize it's not about me. It's so much bigger than me, bigger than my brother, bigger than the small percentage of the world that I know. It's about God getting His name glorified. It's about Him being glorified and honored and praised forever. By all the nations. And that's comforting. More than anything else, this is comforting. God has had a plan since the very beginning. This plan is a big plan, and a good plan. And even right now, we get a glimpse into what it looks like when this plan is accomplished. And isn't it a glorious picture?

After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, 10 and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” Rev 7:9-10