day 19 or something – sermon notes on asking

“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you”

Really struck by the sermon on Sunday given by Lawrence at Epicenter. This church is shaking me up and I think that’s a good thing.

From the sermon:

We live in a society where we don’t like to ask for favors from other people. We don’t like to ask for bargains, we don’t like to ask for promotions or for things. Personally, I don’t ask because I don’t like the thought of burdening someone else. I don’t ask because I like to think of myself as being self-sufficient. And of course, I don’t ask because I risk being rejected.

One of the most humiliating moments is when I walked around LAX back in college looking for someone who had a motorola phone charger. I had to contact someone I only met a few times to pick me up and unfortunately her number was on my phone, which had run out of batteries and I forgot to pack a charger. I ended up spotting an older man using the same model of phone. He was extremely suspicious of my request, but reluctantly lent me his charger to power my phone and allow me to make the call.

“Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion?”

The biggest difference between those who get things and those who don’t is that those who get things generally asked for it. And yet, out of a self-destructive pride, I still don’t want to ask even though I know this.

Lawrence spoke about how the bible was written in a middle eastern culture of asking, of this expectation of asking for things. I think of my former roommate who with her husband engaged in such riled up sale when purchasing a used car from a Persian salesman that in the end, the salesman was delighted and threw in a handbook with the car just because he was graced with such a formidable opponent.

“Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think…” 

When we ask people big things, we present this posture where we acknowledge their influence and power. Yet too often, we ask God for petty things. In doing so, it is almost like coming before the president and asking if he could do us the favor of validating our parking. The only difference is that we’re coming before the sovereign king.

I think of two questions G asked our small group girls over dinner: what are your prayer requests for the upcoming year? (These are the petty requests we all have, that are safe to ask because they don’t require much faith) Ok now more interestingly, what are your impossible prayer requests for the upcoming year? (These are the impossible requests because there is no foreseen humanly way possible to attain them. They require dependence on an all-powerful and generous God)

Sometimes we’re afraid of asking God for the wrong thing. Maybe I’m being stubborn to ask God that R and I can have a restored relationship for example. Maybe that comes from a selfish heart that is unable to trust God. Even so, God can handle our poor requests. He’s God after all. Through the process of asking, He can mold our requests and we can learn something about His character–but it begins with asking.

“If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

Finally, it seems like a big thing to ask for is the Holy Spirit, which is meant to convict us of sin, guarantee us of our salvation, empower us to live as Christians as the Church, and propel us beyond the walls of the church.

And all of this begins with the invitation to ask.

day 16

“I love the Lord, for he heard my voice
He heard my cry for mercy.
Because he turned his ear to me
I will call on him as long as I live.” 

Because today for the first time, I woke up and I was ok.

waking up – day 15

It’s passed the two weeks mark and I still wake up with a broken heart. Through the day, the wound heals over gradually and by night, I have the faintest sense of hope that things will be ok without him in my life and with him now probably involved in her life. But then the dreams come and he’s there, so close, just almost in my reach. 

And so I wake up to a fresh wound because in dreaming, I’ve torn through the  sutures.

How many days until this dead soul rises from the ashes?

God, I want to move on but to what, I cannot imagine.

Faith. Hope. Belief. Grow these in me.

day 14 dad-isms paraphrased

me: but why can’t he just tell me that he’s sorry for lying to me and for hurting my feelings?

dad: don’t you see how that’s an impossible request?

me: no.

dad: you’re demanding an immature person to do a mature thing. if he were to do the mature thing, then he wouldn’t be an immature person. it’s like asking an orange tree to bear apples–it can’t be done.

me: but I thought he was a good guy. other people thought so too.

dad: now you know you can’t judge a person by how he appears on the outside. only God knows what’s in his heart.

me: then how do i know if the next person I meet is a good guy or not?

dad: you pray to God

day 12

Jesus draw me close

let the world around me fade away

our broken world – day 9

“We cannot make sense of what has happened, but we can come together,”

-Rev. George Felder Jr., pastor of New Hope A.M.E. Church.

——————————

Sometimes asking “why” leads us down a destructive path of hate, confusion, and depression that utterly immobilizes us. Maybe I need to acknowledge as the Rev. did that from our limited human perspectives we simply cannot make sense of what happened. There is no way.

At the same time, I also appreciate what the Rev. said that while we cannot understand, we can come together. Maybe tragedy reminds us that we cannot rely on ourselves, in fact, we are easily swept up and devoured.

But we can bear each other’s burdens.

(Thanks to everyone who bore some of my crap this week!)

upsides of not being in a relationship nomo – day 5

I had been desiring a community of believers around my age to do life with in a church body and at the same time, my…ex…had recently been looking to find a church to go to closer to his new apartment. He suggested going to EpiCenter in West LA and we went there together for the first time two weeks ago. It hit many of the criteria he was looking for in a healthy church (his criteria being – biblically sound, God-centered, cross-generational, big on discipleship and expositional preaching) and it definitely exceeded my criteria for a church, namely, does this church make the Word come alive in its relevance to and centrality in our lives and does this church make me love Jesus more?

And so it was ironic that this Sunday I went alone to the very church that we had been hoping would bring us closer together. Nonetheless, being there with the body helped me reflect on some advantages to being dumped and being single.

1) I seek out relationships with my Christian friends/fam more intentionally, because I realize that I need their support. And with this comes greater intimacy and connectedness.

2) After reaching a point of such great vulnerability with someone (my…ex! so weird to write that) and then being dumped by him, but receiving love from others and God, I see how there’s new life after death. I have nothing to lose and nothing to fear. I found it much easier to introduce myself to those around me, join conversations and exit them.

3) I can talk to people better in the sense of being more presently engaged with them. When I’m talking to people with a bf next to me, I’m automatically considering his thoughts/feelings too and maybe he wants to talk about something else or go somewhere.

4) I have more time to spend with other people because I’m not spending all those key free times (i.e., the weekend and weekday nights) with my bf.

5) Instead of spending my efforts being a good girlfriend, I can spend them being a good friend and roommate.

The end. Although, to be honest, as I’m writing this I still miss him DANGIT! If I could get an abortion to extract those memories out of my head, I would. That would be a significantly better  use of the operation.

mostly stable – day 3

I went through this day drifting to thoughts of him and having to make a conscious effort to live in the present. There’s appropriate moments to drift and there’s the inappropriate. At one point today, I found myself sitting in the front few rows of my friend’s graduation next to her mom, a few feet away from the beaming graduates. I had just remembered something he told me when we broke up and was trying to hold back from crying. It was kind of a comical moment with an organist playing, my friend’s mom soon to sneak me some cherries and pistachios, the graduates, the clapping, the pomp and circumstance. Definitely not the time to start bawling.

Anyways, I’m seeing how sometimes I allow myself to relive the trauma of that day over and over again by picking apart the details, hoping to find evidence that he’ll come back to me. It’s fruitless work though because he left me.

The next step is to forgive him and not harbor this vengeful desire for his downfall–that being a failed relationship with the proverbs 31 girl he wants to marry. He’s a good friend to others and serves them lovingly. He’s analytical, thoughtful, and a storehouse of knowledge. He desires obedience, discipline, and fulfilling obligations. He upholds the centrality of the Word and exposing of truth. He leads others in difficult hiking situations and sees them through it. He’s lyrical, poetic, and a musician with a dead sexy voice. Sorry, but it’s true. To make matters worse, he’s intuitive in the way he plays sports and he looks real good doing it. If he’s an amazing boyfriend to someone he doesn’t even truly want to be with. I can imagine he’d be an even more amazing one to someone he does want to be with. If I ever run into him again in life and there’s an awkward moment for awkward talk, I hope I can say to him with love and a smile: “do you”.

I feel better right now after writing that for some reason.

“You have put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and wine abound” Psalms 3:7.

reflections from my dad

“I like him, I think he’s a nice person. I don’t think he’s evil. but personally for me, I don’t think a man does that. I mean a man with capital M. A Man puts the past behind him when he starts a new relationship. A Man knows what he wants.”

re-stabilizing – day 2

I’m really glad I had this day to spend with other people. Thanks to their encouragement, I ate three meals today. I started a to-do list of things to get done before returning to the Bay Area and it felt good to see some possible order in seeming chaos. I invited a former classmate to crash on our sofa to get to school tomorrow morning for graduation and being a host of some kind took me out of the grieving state.

When I got home, I was told that my new roommate had just been broken up with by her boyfriend who cheated on her. That also shook me out of myself. Break-ups happen to us all, whether with friends, family, or significant others. We live in an imperfect world of imperfect people.

But, there is grace. Grace in the form of loving friends, opportunities, answered prayer, new life.

All I can say right now is that I’m blessed. God, let me use these blessings for good.