snapshot

some photos i took with film over the past few months…finally got them developed today YEAH!

been trying to take more photos of people…..

my personal favorite…..

some other stuff….

some thoughts on the Philippines….

Taiwan Update Part Deux

sorry it took SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO long but here it is (there are two parts):

Part 1

Part 2

ai carumba!!!

Ever had one of those months or seasons where you know what’s going on but you’re not sure how exactly you’re going to get from point A to point B? Everything seems to be spinning and continuing around you while you yourself are at a standstill. Your smiles your tears seem to not penetrate the deep uneasiness inside despite the fact that you know full well that God is with you and His hand is steadily moving you to an uncharted territory.  I desperately want the road map with detailed instructions on how to maneuver through this and where all the rest stops are.  But all that I see before me is just one single step, one lonely rung on the ladder.

Sometimes I allow myself to honestly admit that I’m friggin’ scared out of mind, but most of the time I’m able to either hang on to the fact that God is in control, convince myself that I can endure this or God’s grace is on me.  Other times I replay and reread prophetic words given me to comfort the billion questions swarming inside (which I did just now).

During the three weeks of missions in Taiwan, I felt God’s heartbeat for each group of youth I ministered to.  I heard God’s voice.  I worshipped and lead people into His heart.  Yet all of that still feels so foreign to me.  For so long I’ve grown accustomed to doing all of this in secret.  Not because I was super holy or anything but simply because of circumstances.  But now I’m beginning to see the fruits born through all the trials and lonesome months I could not perceive at the time.  I’m moved to tears to see how by simply loving God and asking Him how He feels for the youth, by simply worshipping Him and not leading worship when I’m on stage, God ushers individuals into His heart, into the mysteries of His simplicity, the mysteries of His infinite, generous and inclusive love.

Four years ago I told God I just wanted to do what He wanted me to do, I was so desperate to see some God action in my life….and now I find myself here with more history with God than the previous seven years of believing in Jesus.  There is now no way that I can deny that God is a good God who provides, who speaks, who hears, who heals, who loves me ever so deeply because I’ve encountered the reality of all those things to a certain degree.  Yet despite all that, my heart yearns for even more, and now God is answering those yearnings by ripping my heart open to contain more of Him.  And all I can say is it hurts, it’s uncomfortable but God is good.  Lord help me remember that.

I know I haven’t updated for awhile, and I apologize for that….mission in Taiwan was hectic and now I’m in the Philippines still trying to make sense of everything.  I bet God doesn’t want me to think this much…but my mind’s still spinning.  So I’ll update when I can, hopefully I’ll get my videos up on youtube soon. I’m still in the process of editing the monstrosity.  Thanks all and God bless : )

Taiwan Update #1

Tension is to be loved…

I’m sitting here at the San Francisco airport waiting to board my flight to Taiwan and reflecting upon the jam packed emotional roller coaster I’ve been through for the past few months, feeling compassion towards those who’ve witnessed my freakout sessions during this period. The only way I can describe how I feel right now is how one feels after returning from a missions trip. Words do not suffice when you try to relay to others what it was like to be in a different country, totally out of your normal context and experiencing a greater dimension of  God’s heart. It’s HUGE!!!! So as I sit down and try to document and articulate everything, I’m finding it hard yet helpful for myself to share God’s goodness to me in these past months.

Looking back through my previous update videos for my supporters, I remembered how back in February God woke up a hunger in me for His Word to be written deeply in me.  As I committed to reading the Bible and understanding the book of Joel, I saw how God did answer my prayers and began to write His Words in me.

In my mind, I envisioned this process as memorizing all the End Times’ events and His promises.  Instead, He began to make His Word come alive in my life through studying it and through relationships in my life.  He began to show me how good He is.  Rather than holding on to the same fear and anxieties I first approached the topic of End Times with, I began to see what all the Old Testament prophets saw, that God “is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and he relents from sending calamity..” (Exodus 34:6, 2 Chronicles 30:9, Nehemiah 9:17, Psalm 86:15, 103:8, 111:4, 112:4, 145:8, Joel 2:13, Jonah 4:2)

Though I was reading about the coming calamities, about Jesus’ robe drenched with the blood of His enemies, I didn’t see an angry God, I saw the intensity of His love.  God’s goodness grew increasingly tangible as I dove deeper and deeper into the book of Joel and now finally into Revelation.  I truly believe that God gave John the apostle the task of writing Revelation because he is the beloved, the one whom Jesus loved. As my friend Pat always says, Jesus had his twelve, His three (James, Peter and John) and His one, John the beloved.  God chose John for the task to show all His believers, that the book of Revelation is a book revealing who Jesus is, love.

I have to admit I was severely intimated by the End Times.  I felt that I would never be able to comprehend the enormous atrocities the earth will soon face. But my friend Christina and I decided that we would meet once a week to go through the book rather than stand far off from the event most talked about in the Bible, held back by our fears.  As we encouraged each other to devour the End Times, we saw how God does bless those who read and study the End Times, just as He promised (Revelation 1:3 “Blessed is the one who reads the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it, because the time is near).

Not only did God reveal the truth of His love, the foundation of the End Times, but He also broke my heart with His goodness. God invited me into trusting Him with my heart.  As He invited me in through various opportunities, I realized how scared I was of what He would do with my heart.  But He showed me, as He led me through many fears I have towards myself and Himself, that He is good. His goodness is not just a statement the prophets are taught to memorize to repeat back to the people. But it’s something so deeply engrained and experienced by these individuals that they would proclaim this truth in the face of the harshest enemies and instruct them, in love, to turn from evil and back to their patient and loving Father.

I wanted nothing more than to avoid these times where my weaknesses are revealed and tested.  But as the book of James proclaims (James 1:2), God tests our faith in order to prove what’s there and to produce strength in us rather than to make us fall flat on our faces.  Sixpence puts this into words most articulately, “tension is to be loved, when it is like a passing note to a beautiful, beautiful chord.” I’m slowly beginning to see now, what He is producing, great fruits for all to enjoy, including myself. Praise the Lord.

Tension is to be Loved
By: Sixpence None the Richer

but tension is to be loved
when it is like a passing note
to a beautiful, beautiful chord

rock to this…

so there’s still a lot i’m in the middle of and processing….so rather than a straight up update, i thought it would be nice to share some good music with you lovely people. so here’s some lovin’:

You’re Beautiful 

by: Phil Wickham

I see Your face in every sunrise
The colors of the morning are inside Your eyes
The world awakens in the light of the day
I look up to the sky and say 
You’re beautiful

I see Your power in the moonlit night
Where planets are in motion and galaxies are bright
We are amazed in the light of the stars
It’s all proclaiming who You are
You’re beautiful, You’re beautiful

I see you there hanging on a tree
You bled and then you died and then you rose again for me
Now you are sitting on Your heavenly throne
Soon we will be coming home
You’re beautiful, you’re beautiful

When we arrive at eternity’s shore
Where death is just a memory and tears are no more
We’ll enter in as the wedding bells ring 
Your bride will come together and we’ll sing
You’re beautiful, You’re beautiful, You’re beautiful

I see Your face, You’re beautiful, You’re beautiful, You’re beautiful
I see Your face, You’re beautiful, You’re beautiful, You’re beautiful
I see Your face, I see Your face
I see Your face, You’re beautiful, You’re beautiful, You’re beautiful

 

i highly recommend purchasing this cd:

Increase of Italian doctors refusing to perform abortions

check out this interesting article in the New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/world/europe/23fbriefs-RISEINDOCTOR_BRF.html?ex=1366689600&en=6a1bd490f0c1599f&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

what’s going on God?

The past few months God has been pruning my heart. I’m still in the middle of it so there’s still a lot of ambiguity as to what exactly He is doing with those shears in His steady hands.  But, I know He is doing a good thing despite all the emotions this process is stirring up in me.  He is beginning to break my understanding of who He is, giving me new wine and new wineskin. This is waaaaaaaaay uncomfortable and I feel confused and silly a lot of times. Pray for me please : )

 

God has been showing me how I unconsciously hold back negative feelings I hold towards Him. I was tired of being me and blamed Him for it.  I was tired of being “broken and contrite.” Tired of offering broken things to the most high God all the time.  I wanted to give Him something perfect, something beautiful and worthy of His glory and splendor.  As I broke down in tears crying out painfully, facing disappointments I have toward myself, my Abba began to speak.  He told me as His friend, I should to be honest with Him. Real friends tell each other how they honestly feel rather than conceal their brokenness and pretend everything’s fine when it’s totally not. The revelation of the truth of how God knows my weaknesses so intimately yet love me so deeply, pursues me SO relentlessly gives me strength and desire to love Him. (Psalm 139, 1 John 4:19 “We love because he first loved us”)

 

Another area that God has been shaking up the false foundation in my heart is in the area of how He receives my gifts.  Through a conversation with a friend, I realized just how much God is moved by my heart. What I conceive as trifling insignificant sacrifices I bring before Him, He highly esteems. I’ve walked in the deception that God feels that He is entitled to everything I give Him and is constantly demanding more from me. I began to cry as I realized how He carefully records everything I give Him, how His heart is touched by my heart’s desires for Him. He is touched, GOD IS TOUCHED that I moved away from my family, my friends, all that was familiar, that I gave up my teaching job because I love Him and know He is worth it all.  He hasn’t forgotten anything I’ve given Him. This encounter has transformed how I approach Him and how I pray.  I’m now a bit more confident before Him and want to pray even more because His love compels me. 

 

God has designed each of His children uniquely. Rather than appreciate every detail He has carefully chosen and sewn into me, I’ve been trying to run this race in someone else’s shoes.  I’ve been trying so hard to quiet quirky things He has put in me in my pursuit of holiness. I have bruises and disappointments from running in the wrong shoes.  During these past months, God’s been revealing to me what His fullness looks like in my life.  What He has shown me looks dramatically different from what I imagined.  I feel Him stretching my faith through this because I have to go to Him and wait on Him.  I can’t just settle for answers from people anymore.  Even if I do go to other people whom I respect and honor as spiritual and holy, their answers can’t satisfy me no matter how much I want them to.  God has awakened this longing in me to hear His heartbeat and I can’t quench it!

 

Every time I ask Jesus for the map of my life, He only shows me the next step.  In His kindness, He gives me my daily bread rather than the ginormous storehouse I am asking Him for. He is SO so so dedicated to transforming my heart to one that communes with His daily rather than every once in awhile.  He is committed to helping me live totally dependent on Him in every way.  Funny how this is exactly what I want, yet I rebel from God giving me the deepest desires of my heart.  Thank You Jesus, for Your commitment to me obtaining the fullness of joy both now and for all of eternity. 

 

Theme song of this season:

Leaning on the Everlasting Arms

What a fellowship, what a joy divine,
Leaning on the everlasting arms;
What a blessedness, what a peace is mine,
Leaning on the everlasting arms.

Leaning, leaning,
Safe and secure from all alarms;
Leaning, leaning,
Leaning on the everlasting arms.

O how sweet to walk in this pilgrim way,
Leaning on the everlasting arms;
O how bright the path grows from day to day,
Leaning on the everlasting arms.

Leaning, leaning,
Safe and secure from all alarms;
Leaning, leaning,
Leaning on the everlasting arms.

What have I to dread, what have I to fear,
Leaning on the everlasting arms;
I have blessèd peace with my Lord so near,
Leaning on the everlasting arms.

 

Leaning, leaning,
Safe and secure from all alarms;
Leaning, leaning,
Leaning on the everlasting arms.

 

 

Taiwan Missions Summer 08

This summer I will be taking a team of five FMA (forerunner music academy) students with me to Taiwan to spread the message of intimacy and support the houses of prayer there.  Please read our support letter and pray about supporting us through prayer and finances. 

in Christ alone

I love this song…

In Christ Alone

Words and Music by Keith Getty & Stuart TownendCopyright © 2001 Kingsway Thankyou Music

In Christ alone my hope is found;

He is my light, my strength, my song;

This cornerstone, this solid ground,

Firm through the fiercest drought and storm.

What heights of love, what depths of peace,

When fears are stilled, when strivings cease!

My comforter, my all in all—Here in the love of Christ I stand.

In Christ alone, Who took on flesh,Fullness of God in helpless babe!

This gift of love and righteousness,

Scorned by the ones He came to save.

Till on that cross as Jesus died,

The wrath of God was satisfied;

For ev’ry sin on Him was laid—Here in the death of Christ I live.

There in the ground His body lay,

Light of the world by darkness slain;

Then bursting forth in glorious day,

Up from the grave He rose again!

And as He stands in victory, Sin’s curse has lost its grip on me;

For I am His and He is mine—Bought with the precious blood of Christ.

No guilt in life, no fear in death—

This is the pow’r of Christ in me;

From life’s first cry to final breath,Jesus commands my destiny.

No pow’r of hell, no scheme of man,Can ever pluck me from His hand;

Till He returns or calls me home—Here in the pow’r of Christ I’ll stand.