Thy Will Be Done

"My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt." - Matthew 26:39

We cry out, "Abba, Father," which really comes close to the translations of the first instinctive words as an infant, to remind our selves of our position to God and to get in to a relationship with Him. The understanding of God as our Father is not only crucial because Jesus directs us to this title when we approach Him with our prayers, but also because it is healthy for our spirituality - the position of God as our Father and us as infants humble us to see that He knows all and we do not. It is really when we forget or do not know of our infancy, we are not able to surrender to His will. How often do we come to our heavenly Father, who knows what is eternally healthy for us, and ask/demand the desires of our heart? I'm not supposing that as Christians we should not petition, because we should. However, we should not petition without recognizing God as our Father, and without surrendering to His will. As Jesus faced taking the burden of humanity, He petitioned to God, but never forgot the importance of carrying out the will of the Father. Tim Keller puts it perfectly when he says, "The child who acknowledges that he is a child is ironically more mature. The more childlike you are the less childish you are, spiritually speaking. And the more the parental heart goes out to that child." It is only when we understand this Father to son/daughter relationship, we are humbled, spiritually more mature, and God is able to show us and give us things He couldn't have possible done so before. As a parent would trust a child who is more mature, God is also able to trust us with greater things of His realm when we acknowledge our infancy and are humbled. We, too often, ask and want the greater things of God, without readying our relationship and our character for Him. And this sinful nature is simply the byproduct of misunderstanding or forgetting of who God is - Our Father.

John Wesley prayed a powerful "Thy will be done" prayer:

"I am no longer my own, but Thine.

Put me to what thou wilt, Rank me to whom thou wilt.

Put me to doing, Put me to suffering.

Let me be employed for thee or laid aside for thee.

Let me be full, Let me be empty.

Let me have all things, Let me have nothing.

I freely and heartily yield all things to thy approval and thy disposal.

And now that I have settled this,

O glorious and blessed God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,

Now thou art mine and I am thine.

So be it! And the commitment now I make on earth,

let it be ratified in heaven, Amen"

Are we able to speak these words as Christians? Do we really mean what we say when we recite the Lord's Prayer?

I believe one of the most beautiful thing about Christianity is that when we surrender, we actually do not limit ourselves, but free ourselves to the workings of His Kingdom - God is able to manifest Himself in us! And this has been His plan all along - to be manifested in us. However, without surrendering, our pride will only fill our hearts, our natural reality will take priority over His supernatural realm, and we will not be able to experience God. I pray that our church becomes a body that will honor God as our Father, will seek to see His face with true humility, and will surrender our hearts to carry out His will in every department of our lives.

Our Father...

“How many pray the Lord’s prayer a thousand times in a course of a year and yet if they were to keep doing it for a thousand more years they would not have really prayed or tasted it at all. In a word, the Lord’s prayer is the greatest martyr on earth. Everybody tortures and abuses it; so few get comfort and joy from proper use.” – Martin Luther

Unbelief

"And Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. But when he saw the wind boisterous, he was afraid.." Matthew 14:29-30

"The wind was actually boisterous, the waves were actually high, but Peter did not see them at first. He did not reckon wit them, he simply recognized his Lord and stepped out in recognition of Him, and walked on the water. Then he began to reckon with the actual things, and down he went instantly." - UMTH devotional

"Fear attacks the foundation of our relationship with God - our faith. Fear is faith in the devil, it is also called unbelief. Fear and faith cannot coexist - they work against each other." - Bill Johnson, Heaven invades earth

When we are not consumed with the fullness of His glory, our immediate reality takes priority over the spiritual, invisible reality. Naturally, we become more aware of the devil's dominion over earth: we become fearful (worrisome), filled with anxiety, and without even realizing, we enter into a state of unbelief. We no longer act as ambassadors of His Kingdom and release His presence into the environment, but turn faithless and allow the environment to dictate our decisions. We begin to react to the system instead of allowing His reality to dominate the system.

As we can see from the above scripture, our weak, rationale minds often overpower our faith and lead us in to darkness. We acknowledge darkness over His Kingdom power, and instantly become overwhelmed by our circumstances. We forget the Lord and we begin to doubt. And at this point, when our faith is tested, there is a mental process that happens extremely quickly in our minds. We give permission for our immediate reality to take over. Similar to how Adam and Eve gave up their authority to have dominion over earth to Satan, our immediate reality cannot have dominion over God's true reality (in our minds) unless we give it permission. Our faith fights against unbelief, and in an instant, we determine the winner. It may seem as if "nothing much" happened, but in the spiritual world, a violent war is waged. Two realities fight and only one has dominion over our minds.

We truly need to perform reckless abandonment for God to realize His reality, and to pull it down in to our reality. We need to have our faith anchored in the unseen realm so that our God may win all the wars fought in our minds/hearts - no matter the circumstance.

On Earth, as it is in Heaven

"That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us." John 17:21

Jesus prayed nothing less for us than absolute oneness with Himself, as He was one with the Father. And from reading what Jesus spoke, it's clear that God's ultimate desire is for His son to be manifested in our mortal bodies.

Lord, manifest Your Spirit in me. Come, be in control so that I may reflect your love, grace, and humility. There's nothing good that dwells within me if it is not your Spirit that drives me. I desperately need you to raise me up, so that I can live - and ultimately live to glorify you. I cast out, in Your name, the imageries of worldly life when I think about the word "living". I wish to live to gather and join You in Your harvest. I wish to live to worship You without departmentalization. I wish to live out my original purpose and subdue the earth with Your glory. GIve me the supernatural strength to yield each step so I allow your will to be done through me. Manifest Your Spirit within me, as you desire. I wish to be one with You.

Lord, without Your manifestation in me, I am powerless and cannot represent You the correct way - I cannot display the raw power of Your glory. It is disgusting that I call myself a christian, and I falsely represent you constantly. I need to show your power so that I can correctly represent your reality! At times, I am tricked to think I am being "realistic" and "humble" when I do not believe I can perform the miracles You performed in scripture - to heal the sick and cast out demons - but I realize that this is false humility. I am without true faith. Get rid of my unbelief so that I can walk on water. Get rid of the "fairy tale" ideas of your word, so that I can get closer to your superior, spiritual reality.

"Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on water and came towards Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, 'Lord, save me!' Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. 'You of little faith,' he said, 'why did you doubt?'" Matthew 14:29-31

God! Cast out my sin of unbelief! Get rid of all my doubts! Build up a supernatural faith in me, so that I may bring down Your reality, Your heart, and Your will on earth. Constantly remind me of my identity - that I am an image of You. And as this thought crosses my mind, hit me with Your revelation and the power of this meaning.

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name,

your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven...

In Christ, Amen.

Love = Fear

As I get deeper with God, "fear" has taken on a new meaning. The idea of fearing God had been set in my head since I was a boy, and it was always some sort of a just punishment for my wrong doings. I was terrified of His eyes that were always watching me, making sure I knew when I did something wrong. However, I didn't realize how much God really loved me, and the things I had considered "punishments" were merely a curse I had brought on myself (which implies true justice), or a phase of inconvenience to strengthen my character.

"Fear" really took a big turn when I started to love God. I've found that two different kinds of fear exist in this world - fear in terror and fear in love. The former form of fear makes us live in anxiety and insecurity, while the latter makes us live with joy and respect (for God, others, and ourselves). It was hard to understand that we are supposed to love and fear God at the same time. But from understanding the deeper meaning of fear, It's now clear that I fear because I love.

I also believe fear from love and respect is where true accountability lies. It is when we practice this type of fear - to be concerned with the thoughts of God, our parents, and our friends - we are able to have deep accountability.

I fear the impression God has of me. I fear the impression God has of my actions, my heart, and my thoughts. I fear God because I love Him. I always want to deeply, maybe obsessively, be concerned with what He thinks of me.

Puffed Up - Pride

I had written this article for my first Trumpet submission, but after today's small group (where Pastor Jae taught a bible study on pride and ego) I thought I should add this article to my blog...

The root of all evil is Pride, the exact opposite of Humility. “According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil is Pride. Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison: it was through Pride that the devil became devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind” [CS Lewis, Mere Christianity]. My prideful mindset was unconsciously satanic and it was the main reason why I (and many others) could not accept or get closer to the God. I stuck proudly to postmodern worldviews, defended moral relativism, and refused to dig deeper in to these philosophical meanings. I proudly believed in pure logic, failed to see the actual source of logic, created delusions that everything must be proven, and attempted to solve the mystery of God. Even when I tasted a drip of God’s wisdom and grace, I suddenly began to act righteous, compared myself with others, became more judgmental, and failed to understand that the core of Christianity is humility. I proudly thought (rather than just executing) of performing righteous acts, pointed fingers when others did not behave the way I believe we ought to, instead of completing erasing myself from all equations so comparisons could never be drawn. It’s understandable that nonbelievers would be prideful, as this world preaches competitiveness and the “survival of the fittest” is the way to live. However, It’s truly mind boggling how having faith in the Lord can make people become such prideful beings, especially when God is asking us to “kill” ourselves and to fix our eyes only to Him. “It is a terrible thing that the worst of all vices can smuggle itself in to the very center of our religious life. But you can see why. The other, and less bad vices come from the devil working on us through our animal nature. But this does not come through our animal nature at all. It comes direct from Hell” [CS Lewis, Mere Christianity]. From my experience and meditations, I’ve drawn the below conclusions of pride, but hope to continue to discover how this cancerous vice makes people (including myself) delusional, and forces our thought process to be outside in.

1. Pride is based on competition in nature, as man can only feel Prideful when comparing himself to another. The form may be different and subtle for everyone- wealth, looks, cleverness, etc. And if everyone were exactly the same, Pride would not exist. But, as we all know, we live in a world that stirs Pride as our first instinctive, humanistic, delusional nature. This does not give us excuse to barricade ourselves from practicing the Truth- Love and Humility. We can easily tell how Prideful we are by seeing how much we hate it or how much we fight it. Think how much you hate it when someone brags about their large bank account or when someone talks “smack” towards you. In the absence of Pride, you would think that person is actually just plain silly, and would not feel any type of disgust at all (some may even play along). However, Satan works in deceiving ways. We hate it when others are Prideful because we immediate calculate how righteous we are compared to them, which is all a delusion, as no one is purely righteous. Although Satan persistently uses this vice, God has blessed us with a sword to fight the battle- Humility. I strongly feel that Humility is just as contagious as Pride, as one cannot continue being Prideful if the other is openly accepting all the blows- the Prideful man will quickly be able to see his own Pride in the presence of true Humility and will feel immediately foolish to continue. For example, when friends wrestle/fight (even for play), because of its competitive nature, as a winner and a loser will mostly likely be drawn, Pride will be stirred in both parties. If just one of the men chooses not to wrestle/fight, there would be none, and better yet, there would be no loser. The feeling of superiority would not be accomplished. I’m not saying to give up when someone challenges you. That’s not the point. Since you know the emotion of superiority is inevitable, the entire act in general should be avoided- mainly because you should care about the other person.

2. Pride also leads people to be self-centered. Instead of orbiting around God and our neighbors, we, due to our insecurities, grab the wheel and force the orbit to spin around ourselves. Naturally, it prohibits us from loving others because “everything is about me”. If we could only shun our prideful mindset, stop thinking about ourselves for once, and orbit around God and our neighbors, we would realize true freedom- freedom to forgive, freedom to serve, and freedom to love. Only when we stop orbiting around ourselves can we actually love another literally as ourselves. Don’t we always forgive ourselves for our own idiotic acts? We should be able to do exactly the same for all our neighbors (Criminals, Muslims, Atheists, etc), as we are all created in God’s image and to judge, we’d be essentially be attempting to play God. You can say it’s idealistic, but I say this is what it’s meant to be. We just lack discipline and are weak- becoming disciplined is a whole another topic.

“When we discern Jesus moving forward us and encircling us with an infinite, self-giving love, we are invited to put our lives on a whole new foundation. We can make him the new center of our lives and stop trying to be our own Savior and Lord. We can accept both his challenge to recognize ourselves as sinners in need of his salvation, and his renewing love as the new basis of our identity. Then we don’t need to prove ourselves to others. We won’t need to use others to bolster our fragile sense of pride and self-worth. And we will be enabled to move out toward others as Jesus has moved toward us” [Tim Keller, Reason for God]

3. Pride is a tricky vice. It’s used to crush other smaller vices and Satan laughs at us! “Be the bigger man and just say you’re sorry”, I remember saying. Obviously I didn’t realize I was falling in to one of His tricks again. He makes us believe we are performing the righteous act, but gives us cancer instead, as we quickly begin to clap ourselves on the back and collect our Pride. However, the more we become delusional, collect, and build on this vice, the harder it becomes to let ourselves go and see the Truth. Even when God blesses us with wisdom, it comes soaked with pride, and must be handled carefully. No matter the amount of wisdom gained, if a man judges another (and it’s easy because as Christians we believe we know what other men do not), he has underestimated the depth and breadth of God’s wisdom. For God’s wisdom is endless and no matter how much we strive, although we ought to, we will only merely eat crumbs of His wisdom. It’s like a child bragging to another child that he can ride a bicycle, while the other child is still on tricycles. As adults, we know this is silly, especially because the former child is bragging about his skills on a bicycle while there are incredible people that fly airplanes! These humanistic urges should be contained and we should constantly be in a struggle, as Satan relentlessly plays tricks on our minds and makes us think, “I’m being humble”, when we actually are, which immediately creates pride- pride at our own humility. CS Lewis describes how Satan speaks to his minions, to trick men even when they are attempting to be humble:

“By this method thousands of humans have been brought to think that humility means pretty women trying to believe they are ugly and clever men trying to believe they are fools. And since what they are trying to believe may, in some cases, be manifest nonsense, they cannot succeed in believing it and we have the chance of keeping their minds endlessly revolving on themselves in an effort to achieve the impossible” [CS Lewis, The Screwtape Letters]

I end with this last quote, which is my favorite:

“How is it that people who are quite obviously eaten up with Pride can say they believe in God and appear to themselves very religious? I am afraid it means they are worshipping an imaginary God. They theoretically admit themselves to be nothing in the presence of this phantom God, but are really all the time imagining how He approves of them and thinks them far better than ordinary people: that is, they pay a pennyworth of imaginary humility to Him and get out of it a pound’s worth of Pride towards their fellow-men” [CS Lewis, Mere Christianity]

I pray that, if we have not yet realized, we no longer serve a phantom God, no longer force the orbit to spin around ourselves, but forget ourselves completely and swim in God’s glory, wisdom, and love.

Lukewarm?

As God chipped away my bricks of pride and my self absorbed ways, I was able to yearn to understand more of His heart and His will. And as I meditated to get my heart to be in sync with His heart, I was hit with a revelation regarding my false humility - I'm constantly praying for cleansing (feeling humble as I seek Him) but then standing back up to go on with my own subjective ways. It hit me that true humility is not when I simply pray for forgiveness. This is only half of the process, and without the latter, it is false humility - a delusion, and a lie to myself. I realized I need to seek forgiveness, and right away, live out my repentance - resurrecting and dying to myself so that I am able to carry out His will, not my own.

One thing that sharply struck my heart, as I dove deeper into Him, was my lack of concern for humanity. It's so easy to go about my own business and not care of others who can really benefit from just a moment of my time. And it's so easy to fool myself to think that I care about true equality, when my actions prove otherwise. It's funny now thinking of how I had wanted a softer heart for humanity while not doing anything about it. This world really does a great job of blinding my eyes so that I cannot see, taste, and hear the Truth. It likes to keep me in my comfort zone and tell me I'm doing fine - that thinking of loving is enough. I realized my hesitation to serve and "get dirty" evolved me to be more and more self absorbed and jaded from realizing real beauty, and experiencing true joy. Even my prayers were constantly focused on myself - "God help me to understand" instead of "I want to serve Your kingdom". It looks like I've been pleading to God to serve me, and not the other way around. I repetitively forget that This entire story is about Him!

Forcing myself to turn my revelation into action, I went to New York City to serve at Feed 500. I have to admit, it wasn't easy getting up early to head in to the city to spend time with people I didn't know. And I had always wanted the passion first, so that I can serve. I didn't want to fake it. If I was going to serve, I wanted the desire to be there. I guess I really underestimated the power of sin in this world, and how it calluses my heart to suppress and destroy the desires to be righteous. But really, it was just as it's written in the Bible - like the crippled that initiated the healing process by reaching out for Jesus before actually being healed. When I finally obeyed first, and served, I understood God's will and it stirred the passion in my heart. Although it was a struggle the entire way up to Harlem, as soon as I got there, the Spirit started to steer the wheel. And John, the director of Feed 500, really set the stage for my heart to yearn to serve.

"We are not here to feed as many people as possible. We are here to love them by listening, spending time with them, and showing them that we care. Thousands of people walk passed them every single day. If this happened to you, wouldn't you murmur and talk to yourself? Wouldn't you be just as consumed with loneliness and fear? You all have two lunch bags. One for you and one for a person that is homeless."

As John spoke these words, I was finally able to relate. I started to imagine thousands of people walking passed me as I desperately asked for money for my next meal. I started to imagine a world without family to watch out for me. I started to imagine being tortured because I was vulnerable, without anyone to care about me. Why didn't I do anything to care for humanity before? How can I be a Christian if I cannot get out of my head and genuinely love like Christ loved? Talk is cheap. I never cared for humanity because I never chose to get dirty, understand, and gain real perspective. This event truly opened my heart to love people a little more.

The day went great. I hung out in the open near Penn Station with a couple of people that were homeless at the time, and we had a blast eating lunch together. They were so happy to just have someone listen. And when I asked if I could pray for them, they were estatic! The cost of all this? Just a moment of my time...

This experience allowed me to understand how to love. It is never just standing there and romanticizing to love - nor is it just loving those that we believe are "worthy" of our love. But to love is exactly like how Christ loved - how he gave up all the glory and comfort, limited Himself to time and flesh, got dirty in this sinful world, and died to raise all of humanity. I need to love by breaking my comfort. I need to get down and dirty. I need to die to myself - my will and my subjective ways - so that others may know the Truth. I want to serve with this love.