Malachi 4:6

[brain dump time]

After years of being wanderers of a foreign land, and avoiding accumulating stuff, I am finally converted by my husband’s book collection to get back physical books and large study Bibles. I think every since moving out of Vancouver, I gave my books away and purely have my pocket Bible and kindle, thinking it’s a hassle and waste of money when I move so much. But I don’t yet foresee what ‘settling’ would look like since we are willing to go anywhere, but we feel settled at heart.

I’ve always thought I am someone who needs structure in order to thrive, my whole life I aim to be disciplined, structured, organized, neat, driven. But I took a personality test for P2C staff and found out that structure is not what I needed, but under stress, it is my go-to to feel safe/ comforted.

In this season of Coronavirus in which every day there are new changes and new limitations, I find myself very restless at home. I was trying to figure out why it is since I usually work from home anyway. God changed my mindset by reminding me that one of the repeated prayers I have for others is also for me. Understanding God is a creator, who make new things, and is still giving and actively creating, and as we reflect his nature, we will also carry the nature of creativity and solution in times of crisis.

With a change of mindset, this past week completely changed for me in terms of thinking, doing, and experimenting with new things in impossible situations. (1) Getting to know the youth. I sensed one of the youth is going to be lonely being homebound, so I offered to hang out with her for two days before more rules came out. Then we moved the hang out to google hangout chats with the junior high and children. (2) House church & broadcast. Got to bring our usual home worship with friends and record preaching, edit for the first time, and upload it. Pulled an all-nighter, but I enjoyed it so much and got to hear the message for a solid ten times as I break it down and put in titles in the hope to help people engage with a long message. (3) introducing an online small group after a sermon. This is something new, our church’s small group is often social & food-related, which we find it hard when we first step into the context. But since God shook the church structure and not allow social, it leads to a creative platform with guided questions for discussion.

This past week’s message is on faith, and our friend Jonathan has been someone who pursuit the growing of faith in very tangible ways of applying biblical principles over his finance, ministry, relationships, etc. Many parts of his message I would go through a shock and have to rethink, contemplate, believe, and then experience over this week. He broke down faith beyond salvation level and speaking boldly into all aspects of our lives. How we view finance, health, relationships, wisdom, etc.

Anyways, it must have had an effect on me. I was wondering what he means in his message regarding how we sometimes want something so badly and we eventually get it; if I understand correctly, he is attributing that to our exercise of faith without even noticing it. As I was pondering on that, interesting things start happening OR I am now noticing it, and in the past, I attribute it to God’s grace purely and passive on my part, but now I’m challenged to see the partnership of both. A simple example was that I was craving a simple burger, but all the places are closed. An unprayed desire. Then our neighbor gave us a HelloFresh box (this is out of ordinary) and it has the burger grocery as part of it and I made my own burger the way I wanted. Only when I took the picture, I was reminded of my desire! Andrew was sharing the dream he had, and I was giving him the interpretation. In the midst, explaining the desire of his heart, then as we were talking about the person, our phone popped up the person’s text (it wasn’t that out of ordinary, but we have heightened alertness for “coincidences”)

This morning with a strong desire/ intuition/ conviction (I don’t know, just felt like it) that I need to put creativity/ creative solutions to practice if this is a season God has for me. I had a strong mission to resurrect and reuse Andrew’s old ipad2, which he deemed as impossible because it is not compatible with the new ISOs for ages. I YouTubed everywhere and most people said impossible and not worth it. I just somehow had a really strong hope that turned into the faith that this iPad will be my solution to two monitors/ one for sermon notes/ slides and one for Zoom recording for this Sunday’s preaching (in this time of Coronavirus). Mind you, this iPad cannot even download the youtube app, chrome app, photos, bible apps, the basics of basics... basically. At one point, Andrew really thought this is not a good use of my time as I was 3 hours in, solving the impossible. BUT it happened in the 5th hour!!! I found a solution to use this old iPad as my second monitor AND downloaded all the apps I need! Oddly, through this experience, I feel like my faith increased and realize faith can be creatively stretched and exercised beyond ‘stepping out of comfort zone’ to evangelize, support raise, or in times of distress. 

Today, faith happened when I was able to envision and be certain about the end product. It remained at the hope level when I just want to make it useful somehow, but the moment I felt I was able to destine its use and purpose, then the solution started to come. Kinda interesting and hard to explain, but I’m glad I get to experiment with what I heard. I like how Jonathan said it: “Faith is the gift from God to us for us to believe, but the growth is dependant on us.” I definitely feel the responsibility for my faith beyond just ‘holding on during persecution’ as I often imagine it to be. But the purpose of experiencing abundant life. 

One last thing that I experiment: healing. Maybe because of his health field? Since the first day I met Andrew, he always had a strong conviction on healing as God’s will, and he is open hand about whether the person gets healed or not. He just know it’s his responsibility to pray. But anyway, one night he was so tired of me scratching so much because of my eczema that he got up and fervently prayed in tongues and declaration over my body. My eczema was drastically 90% better. (the 10% is when the weather gets humid or my stress level goes up, I feel my tendency wanting to scratch the old spots even though it looked completely healed.) Anyways, in Jonathan’s message, he was very confident that he would not get Coronavirus even if his whole neighborhood is with it. He literally said “I just don’t have the faith I will get sick” There is a strong conviction about abundant life and God’s nature, and on top of that it is people’s partnership of worldly knowledge or God’s principle. hmm... not to say we don’t recognize people go through hardships. However, I guess when we try to understand and compromise God’s goodness in order to relate, our message becomes powerless and not truly the goodnews Jesus came to offer that does demonstrate with healing and restoration beyond simply spiritual.

Came up 3 times in two days. This is one of the things that contributed to my burning out, and I’m glad I am now aware of it.

Last night I decide I don’t always have to be spontaneous. I can make early decisions in terms of what to wear and what to eat, what to bring for the next day, so that I can prepare them before I sleep.