It is only from the place of place of grace that I can extend grace. It is only from the place where I am constantly receiving the love of the Father that I can just overflow. Then my heart is not affected, my heart is free, my heart is not consumed with any other threats.

It really doesn't matter when you're living from that place.

I am in love and loved by a man named Jesus. 

He asks me to put my hands on His nail-pierced wounds and see for myself. 

'See Soomin? I made sure you will never feel lonely or doubt the way I created you'. 

Would I be able to experience His liquid love? 

If I wasn't hurting? 

Liquid love- 

How could You be so hurt and misunderstood 

but still love the way You did? 

When people didn't see You at all? 

And how can You be the same GOD that 

we can't dare to lift up our faces, 

move our fingers, make one sound with our vocal cords, 

or even dare to feel anything in our hearts but fear and awe 

in Your presence? 

You lift Your voice, the earth melts. 

We are silenced by Your love. 

Our scars, our pride, our rights, our securities 

pale too quickly and completely 

in response to Your worthiness. 

My King, I can't move away from Your feet. 

Hurt.

I can't just cover it up. 

You see them. 

I've been hurting.

I am hurting. 

And what You're doing in my heart is more than 

just smiling. Saying that it's okay with my smile and maybe my words, 

but still feeling hurt. 

Returning to that hurt. 

It will take You. 

It will take You to scoop up all these things 

not so pretty things 

on the surface of my heart, now. 

Floating. 

You are about to do a new thing in my heart. 

I know, 

because I don't know what to do. Haha. 

I don't know how to love 

beyond what my heart knows how. 

It will take You. 

Lord, 

so I am admitting before You, 

I am hurt. 

Before I even try 

to take the thorns off of my own heart, 

that have been moving to my eyes, 

I really don't like thorns in my eyes... 

It blurs my vision from seeing You, 

seeing others,

and too much of myself.

I guess You know that I try to ignore the thorns in my heart, 

but that I can't ignore them as well in my eyes.

I admit before You, 

I am hurting... 

won't You come?

because all I know, at this point 

is that 

it will take You.

To be 'made' for someone

A romantic concept- 

The truth is, I was made for Your pleasure. 

___________________________

To become a lover of God, 

to speak face to face 

to know Your thoughts

to abide in Your love, 

in Your love for me 

to keep Your commands 

that I may be filled with joy 

To walk in the cool of the day with You, 

to gaze on the beauty of all You do, 

to meditate on the glorious splendor, 

I was made for You .

___________________________

I am actually made for You. 

For Your pleasure. 

It is not my responsibility to try to please everyone else. 

But to help them see that they too, are created to please You. 

And that they will be filled with joy, while they're at it. 

We can't help but be filled with joy in Your presence... 

Like C.S. Lewis says, "(You) cannnot give us a happiness and peace 

apart from (Yourself), because it is not there. There is no such thing."

Hehe. 

You are also most 'glorified' when we are most satisfied in You. 

Do we really know how You 'glorify' Yourself in the first place? 

Or is it something that we hear and just use, growing up in Asian churches? 

How does it look like ? How would you choose to 'glorify' Yourself? 

You surely do not need to try to glorify Yourself, because You are God. 

All of creation declares enough. 

You surely do not need more people to tell You that You are worthy, 

You have legions of angels surrounding Your throne. 

You surely did not choose to 'glorify' Yourself the way we expected You to, 

when You became one of us. 

So it must be something else... 

I think- 

I make You happy by being who You made me to be. 

Since I am made for You in the first place.

I think, that when I try to be anything else- 

anything more- 

try to fit others' needs- 

try to please others- 

try to play Your roles (ha.ha)

Not only is it impossible,

But I am deviating away from the original picture, 

rebelling against 

who You made me to be.

It robs me of the only purpose of my creation and being- to bring You joy, 

and also of the truth of who You are to me. 

It makes sense, 

because the enemy would love to rob, to steal, 

as much as possible, from us living in the truth-  

that being in Your presence is joyful. 

A joy that much of the world doesn't even know exists. 

That You delight in us.

We make you happy. More than anything else.

He has done enough to try to steal... 

Pleasing You is not by performance, 

but just being. 

The idea of pleasing You shouldn't lead to feelings of inadequacy, or feeling drained.

Neither should it make us picture a selfish God- 

because of the brokenness of this world, 

it's hard for us to picture a pure heart whenever the word 'pleasure' is used.

But it should give us the greatest confidence in the world, 

that our Heavenly Father loves to be with us, just as we are, 

just as He made us to be.

He made us for His pleasure, afterall. 

It is a lie that I am only hurting others by being myself.

It is a lie that I am always going to feel isolated because of the first lie.

I refuse to fall into the pit of self-pity, hopelessness, into my old identity.

I am not going to be impressed by his tactics, 

because I have a God who can take anything and make it beautiful. 

Not only redeems, but uses anything, even ugly things, to turn it around, 

and to magnify His beauty. 

I've seen this characteristic of You, 

many times. =)

All I need to know is that I was made for You, in the first place. 

Not for others.

Thank You for wanting to ground me in this truth- 

and thank You for letting me know that my heart is far from pure... 

Pure = holy. 

Long way to go =)... But I'm in.

Dear Heavenly Father,

I want to be Your hands and feet. I want to feel Your groanings for Your people on this campus. I want to be convicted of nothing less than Your relentless, passionate pursuit of them. LORD- I am a bit overwhelmed as You are opening my spiritual eyes. As You open them to the value of Your children, also to our brokenness. How can they be and live for such hollowness? 

Guard my heart against pride God- I want to overflow, not just for myself to be be filled but overflow as far as I can. As far as You can reach. 

I want to burn out bright that people will see that the light is not from me but something that has to be divine, supernatural, not of me. I feel like I'm about to get past this threshold- that beyond this point- they may be able to see You. Beyond me. Beyond my 'personality', 'disposition', 'talents'- God I want that so badly with all my heart... because it is You who bring life, not me... Not me... How unfortunate would that be. 

Pastor Jamie prayed for me that I would be such a clear and transparent container that they may be able to see Your light, Your glory. And the speaker described my fear of feeling like a weak container/jar of clay (2 Corinthians 4:7) and the fear of being consumed- 

I need to be led by You- Your Spirit- I need to be so close to You that You show me how to be the clearest container that I can be. Consume the parts of me that block any rays of Your light- even the darkness is light to You... Open my eyes to the reality that I can't be anything for my friends, family, except when I pour out Your truths to them. 

God I repent for any ways- hints of pride, apathy- that prevented Your light from shining. For keeping Your light under a bowl. God I pray that as I understand the darkness of this world and of this campus that I will realize and live out that I can't afford to keep Your light under anything... 

My desire has been for others to 'see me through'- which You alone meet over and over...

Now I want others to see 'beyond me' to see YOU. 

And You are great at making me laugh. As always... The day I come back from IHOP, You would own me with the message that resonates in the deepest parts of my heart, that tells me that You've seen me and led me all throughout the last season... on top of that, You would humor me again with the 'lion cake' and the 'bunsen burner' cake. You are. Really funny. 

I feel like one of the greatest lies that the enemy likes to tell us is that our days don’t matter… or don’t matter as much as they really do. What we choose to do, what we choose not to do… wait to do… that we can only be passive consumers of whatever mood we are surrounded by in our environment… that everyday we just go through the same things… without making much of a difference in anything… not doing this won’t have too much of an impact… someone else will do it… and a popular one for me -_-: I’ll do it later.

Once he gets us to enter this cycle, we end up at a vulnerable place for other lies as well.

It’s funny because I think most of us like to see tangible ‘progress’ or ‘impact’ in things- and the way we measure progress/impact is for example, being able to see the weight that you’re losing, the A’s showing up in your transcript… not that these things are bad… but I feel like our eyes are much more closed to our ability to make lasting impact. Really. We’re talking eternity.

Cleaning has the ability to change the mood of the environment- the mood of the people dwelling in the environment- Exercising/eating healthy is an investment to your health (my mom likes to say that right now, I’m investing into my health in my 30’s, since I’m in my… twenties o_o) - it also releases endorphins, it literally makes you feel better. At least after the exercise is over, ahha (I can’t relate as much to this analogy, as I can hardly get myself to exercise). Studying… you should be able to relate what it does. Haha. It builds knowledge. It makes all these pretty fascinating connections between your neurons. Learning in general also increases your ability to appreciate. Heh. That’s something I love.

But praying… Bahh. Do we really believe and expect that every time we get ourselves to listen, wait on His truths, it shifts everything in your heart? That it reminds you of who you are, His beloved, your sole identity? That it allows you to be filled with His love, and leak only that, not other things you would be filled with if you haven’t been with Him (popular ones for me are anxiety and self-pity)… If so, why am I not going to His feet before anything else? Especially when I’m anxious and see myself falling into self-pity…

Reading the Word… His truths, His dreams, His desires. Interceding… Proclaiming His truths, His dreams, His desires… Like how He said ‘let there be light’ and it came to be.

I think another popular lie that has correlation to the previous one is that seeking Him is not exciting, at least less exciting than the activities we’d rather do in that time. And I’m writing from personal experience/struggles too… But really… Why does it seem like at that moment that browsing the web is more exciting than getting to interact with the Creator of everything good. Hmm. I think the enemy likes to deceive us to think God is a lot less appealing than He truly is. Because if there was nothing in the way of our sight from seeing Him for who He is, it would be too powerful of an attraction- that I can only describe as magnetic- except that it’s more powerful than any force that we can imagine- definitely more than magnetic, more than gravity, even more than the greatest passion that we have ever witnessed in anyone- then Satan is screwed. But our hearts are designed to long for God in every way…

I think we think that ‘interesting lives’ are ‘eventful’- at least that’s what Korean dramas, movies, the latest news about celebrities, our statuses, tells us. This post is kind of going everywhere, haha, in the beginning, I started making a list of ‘Things That Always Make Things Better but Are Not Necessarily Easy to Get Yourself to do’ for… fun. Anyways, what can be more eventful than listening to what the Creator is thinking??? What He thinks of you? That He wants you to express His dreams? That He can’t wait to bring this certain character into your life story that He’s writing? How He feels about that lady sitting down in front of Lucky’s in the cold, even though there’s maybe one or two people who ever stop to care about the organization that changed her life?

I am going to go through today with my eyes and ears wide open.

my utmost for his highest: gracious uncertainty

. . . it has not yet been revealed what we shall be . . . —1 John 3:2 Our natural inclination is to be so precise— trying always to forecast accurately what will happen next— that we look upon uncertainty as a bad thing. We think that we must reach some predetermined goal, but that is not the nature of the spiritual life. The nature of the spiritual life is that we are certain in our uncertainty. Consequently, we do not put down roots. Our common sense says, "Well, what if I were in that circumstance?" We cannot presume to see ourselves in any circumstance in which we have never been. Certainty is the mark of the commonsense life— gracious uncertainty is the mark of the spiritual life. To be certain of God means that we are uncertain in all our ways, not knowing what tomorrow may bring. This is generally expressed with a sigh of sadness, but it should be an expression of breathless expectation. We are uncertain of the next step, but we are certain of God. As soon as we abandon ourselves to God and do the task He has placed closest to us, He begins to fill our lives with surprises. When we become simply a promoter or a defender of a particular belief, something within us dies. That is not believing God — it is only believing our belief about Him. Jesus said, ". . . unless you . . . become as little children . . ." (Matthew 18:3 ). The spiritual life is the life of a child. We are not uncertain of God, just uncertain of what He is going to do next. If our certainty is only in our beliefs, we develop a sense of self-righteousness, become overly critical, and are limited by the view that our beliefs are complete and settled. But when we have the right relationship with God, life is full of spontaneous, joyful uncertainty and expectancy. Jesus said, ". . . believe also in Me" (John 14:1  ), not, "Believe certain things about Me". Leave everything to Him and it will be gloriously and graciously uncertain how He will come in— but you can be certain that He will come. Remain faithful to Him. from CJ's old xanga.  CJ- I am excited to talk to you about things when we meet again. I wish I could have known you more deeply- not just through glimpses of who you are through your more contemplative posts... I could always relate to some very much, and I think we appreciate similar things... Anyways, can't wait. =)