where is God for me?
“Moses answered the people, “Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the LORD will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again. 14 The LORD will fight for you; you need only to be still.” {Exodus 14:13-14}
I stand because I am called to. I wasn’t sure how that would work. I was ready to stand, but I wasn’t sure if I was doing what was right. I want to stand, I was prepared to stand, but most of all, I was equipped to stand.
God has been speaking to me for the past few weeks through different people but today was just such a relief. To be able to feel that, to be able to confirm that….that thing..to be able to rest upon my God…my Father. My Father is going to fight for me. I was only meant to stand still. Stand still and know that You are God.
Saturday reflection
One of the things that I find that limits me in my capacity to do what I do is my lack of knowledge. I believe that knowledge plays a big role in what I am doing and without the knowledge, I always feel like I have not done enough. I try to read more and study more but because I do not have a “test”, it’s almost as if I don’t know if what I know is good enough.
I think I feel that my knowledge is one of the “thing” people judge me with. I feel that because I have not been a Christian for that long, people could use that as an excuse to undermine me. Therefore, sometimes I feel that I have to becareful or even “prove myself” to these people – even though I know I do not have to. I know I do not have to prove myself to anyone but God – and this brings up the whole “accepted” thing.
I think my issue is not about being accepted, but more about being rejected. I fear being rejected because of past experiece. I associate rejection with all these bad memories…and therefore I push myself to try harder to ensure that people accept me.. but this brings the question of whether people are accepting me for me or accepting me for the person I push myself to be? Or perhaps I am a person who push herself harder.
I feel that my association with acception and rejection stem from my parent’s (especially my dad’s) acception and rejection towards me.
In Godspace: I know that God does not require me to be someone else that I am not. I know He is not asking me to do something that is not me. I know that God, as a loving Father accept me as I am – which is probably what my parents does too. Perhaps it is in my assumption that I have created the rejection from my parents.
God only uses what we have in our hands, and not what we don’t have.
Through experience, I also know that sometimes God uses me when I allow Him to do so – and I feel that is the bigger calling in my life. I feel that it is not about how much I know, how much I can do but how much I allow Him to do through me and then He will show me. He has shown me so much – sometimes even more than I thought a person could know. Sometimes I realised that the words I speak are not even my own – it was me being an empty shell for Him. And that is when I realise that I have let go of what I am holding on to all these time – the power to control people’s acceptance.
Letting go becomes more than just letting go of what I know of. I let go of everything. It is when I let go that I realised that I am trusting – and gaining trust.
when is the line drawn?
Somehow things are just not the same anymore
Yet I hold on
And I stand
Because I’ve been called
Today, I will be a bigger person
Today, I will be brave
Today, I will stand
Rush of regrets
Tears of joy
No more
Today
God’s love
How do I tell you that God loves you?
He sends people around you to teach you.
God taught me how to love when I did not know how.
He showed me how is it to love unconditionally,
A love that last forever without boundaries.
He shows me a glimpse of how He feels for His loved ones.
He surrounds me with people that knows how to love.
He surrounds me with people that loves me.
I know God loves me because He shows me how.
He shows me how to love when it is too hard to love.
He shows me how to love when I don’t believe in love.
He shows me how to love when I am too hurt to love.
My God loves me because
But I am like an olive tree
flourishing in the house of God;
I trust in God’s unfailing love
for ever and ever.
{Psalm 52:8}
Thursday reflection
“typing” the feeling
I hate typing how I feel because I know that the words I type will clearly reflect on how I feel. Sometimes I feel that I over expose myself – one point that I annoys me about myself. I express myself too honestly and I feel that this annoys people around me.. I realised that a lot of what I feel, how I react and why I do certain things revolves around my assumption of what others think of me.
To be completely honest, I realised that deep down inside, I actually do care about what people think of me. I always thought that I was confident enough in knowing who I was and what I wanted and how to get there without caring about what others think.. but little do I realised that without realising it, I have imposed on myself what others wanted me to do.
Mum wanted me to be a lawyer – so I went studied Law in Uni just to please her even though I hated it. Looking back, I was fulfilling what Mum wanted me to do. It is too complicated to draw a line on whether perhaps I did wanted to be a lawyer or if I have imposed this on myself because I felt that was what I wanted to. I don’t think I could ever clearly draw a line on knowing what it is because of the way I was raised up as a child.
My family was western in many ways but my parents were traditional Chinese in their thoughts. I feel that I have somehow been taught to understand that I have to live my life the way my parents wanted it to be to show them how much I loved them.
Confidence
If there was a test on confidence, I think I would have failed it a few times and then it would have really helped with my confidence (NOT!) I’ve never really had great confidence in myself because I’ve never been told that I have done well enough to deserve anything. I would think that my confidence would not matter much if I was doing something else, but being in this role has exposed me to the fact that I need to have confidence in God for this journey that He has called me to.
I was struggling to keep my confidence a few weeks back because I felt that every confidence I had was almost fake – it felt that it was materially given to me and then snatched away before I even had the time to understand it.It was surreal.
I realised that I have been putting my confidence in man instead of God. While I know in theory and often speak of the theory to others to put your confidence in God, I have somehow relied in man. I think the lack of a real relationship with my real father has somehow clouded my relationship with my Heavenly Father. I did not know how to to truly rely on my Heavenly Father because my earthly father has betrayed me and in the process hurt me.
I was afraid.
I have since made a number of reflection to ask God to show me who He is.(Who is my father)
I am the worst judge of myself
I have never defined what is good enough; therefore, in everything that I do, I don’t think that I might be doing enough. If I am given a report to write, I would write the report and attach an extra detailed research report (and perhaps another report) just to ensure that I have done enough of work. While most of the time I do not do that now, I sometimes still beat myself about it. I feel that I am doing so to ensure that other people have nothing to fault me in.
I judge myself to ensure that if I do get judged by others, I would not feel too bad about it because I have already done it worst to myself and therefore it’s not as bad! I detest people telling me that I have not done enough or that I am not good enough. It’s almost as if I need affirmation from others but it’s not really like that. It’s not that I need people to tell me that I’m good enough or that I’ve done the right thing.. but I have grown up in an environment (parents, relatives, teachers) that my journey was dictated by what others thought about me.
grace
When I realised I’m saved by His grace,
I fall on my knees
in awe of His grace on me
in awe of His presence
in awe of His love
but most of all, in awe of Him.
heart business
The heart lacks what the brain tell it to do.
My destiny starts with God’s willing purpose
I stop sorting out what I think it is
I start thinking what God wants it to be
I start dreaming in a way that God has dreamt
I start waiting.
Waiting because it is a journey of eternity
Waiting because I have been called
Waiting because deep inside, I know.
my limitations to world domination…hah
I hate public speaking. Therefore, naturally, preaching is not something I like to do “for fun”. Standing in front of the public is daunting to me because I feel that people are scrutinising every single part of me. (what I say, what I am doing, what I look..). I am on a journey of rediscovering that I do not need to care. I just need to do what I am suppose to do.
Sometimes when I am preparing for a preach, I am troubled with the fact that perhaps (maybe perhaps) people would not want to listen to me because I am not good enough. Random thoughts would run through my head and I realised that I find myself questioning.
Am I animated enough?
Am I inspiring enough?
Did they understand what I was trying to say?
Did I tell them what God wanted them to hear?
Am I just going on and on?
Sometimes I am not sure if what I say cut it. I think my inexperience in preaching to people shows; when I start questioning myself. Most of the time I try to ignore the questions and go where the spirit wants me to, but when the night ends, I often battle with those questions again.
I want to be God’s vessel when I preach but I don’t know if I know enough. I find that because I have not been a Christian for long, I probably don’t know a lot. I can’t help but compare myself to other youth/young adult pastors. What do I have that would allow me to know as much as them when most of them have been Christians for most of their life and some of them have been to bible college? Even though I try to learn as much as I can, getting as many resources that I can to fit into my time, I don’t know if it is enough. What is enough? I don’t know what is enough for me to know…perhaps the reason for that is because there isn’t ever enough in this area…? I think I will be able to accept that if I am told that is the case. I will summit to that.
I am probably not the most confident person that a lot of people know. I am not used to flattery or praises because that is almost foreign to me when I was growing up. I do not respond well to praises because I never know if people actually meant it or they are being sarcastic. In Malaysia, sarcasm is almost non existance because we normally associate sarcasm to being rude. Therefore, to come to here to adjust to the fact that sarcasm was basically part of life is hard.
I don’t know how to be confident. I don’t understand how what I do has been good enough to deserve a pat on the back. I always think that I am standing in for someone – that it is not really me that people want; a second fiddle.
I am learning how to be confident in God – which in turn allow me to be confident in Him. I know that God only uses what I have, not what I do not have; so I use it. This is a huge journey for me, but I know it will get there.
Because I am not very confident, sometimes I struggle with knowing that I have the authority and capacity to reach people. I feel that I am more confident that I can touch young and newer Christians. Older Christians are sometimes a chore. I feel that they have a perception that I am not good enough to talk to them. Or I don’t know enough.
The main reason that I have struggle with it is because J told me that he feels that some of the people he knows are wasting time in id because it’s not good enough for them. To be honest, I was not too impress with it. I believe that we are not to rely on our own wisdom but God’s wisdom. I know that a lot of my leaders are probably young at their Christian faith, but I know that we are also working hard in learning more, gaining more wisdom and relying on God more.
I know I do not have to please everyone.
I know I cannot reach everyone
I just need to know what I am doing is enough
I often struggle with time. I find that sometimes I am running against time because of going from one job to another and the demands of trying to be the best PA and YAP. I struggle to find a good balance to be good at both and because of that, I feel that I have dissapoint people around me. I want to be good at what I do – but I cannot be good at what I do if I am not given the oppurtunity to be good at it!
Being a PA is a huge challenge to my time. Even though I try to make things as easy as it could be and as smooth as it should be, I find that things are change at a drop of a hat without my knowledge. I do not like looking or feeling like an idiot…but sometimes (not always, but sometimes) I feel that I am an idiot because I don’t know what my boss is doing or wanting to do! I know this is my problem because I can choose to think otherwise and I can choose to be more proactive, but my time limits my capacity to function at 100%.
Sometimes I also feel frusrated when I have to be doing other stuff such as sitting at the reception..while I don’t mind doing it, but it has prove to be my biggest time wasting task. I am not able to do my work while I am at the reception because of the needs of others yelling from every corner of the rooms! Generally, I hate wasting time because I lack time….and when I waste time, I feel that I haven’t been productive.
I hope I have been putting in enough time as a YAP. I don’t know if I have because I don’t know if what I am doing is enough. Sometimes I get annoyed because I don’t have enough time with the young adults. I know that one of the biggest influnce on to someone is by spending time with them… but how do I know if I have done enough?
I need to know if what I am doing at the moment for this season is enough. I will summit to that. I need to know that I am not making things worst. I need to know that I am somehow still making a difference..
