Tears

Yesterday I got an email from someone very dear to me.  It almost moved me to tears, yet at the same time while reading through her struggles, fears, and frustrations, I had this overwhelming sense of joy that I wanted to share with her right then!  This is what God has been preparing me for.  Especially in the last week, after weeks of struggling with the chains of complacency, I have come to experience incredible joy, and I just want to share it.

Please pray for me, for God to give me wisdom while I have a meet up with her.  Although I love fellowship and my church, there is something different when talking with family, there is a deeper understanding that usually cannot be attained otherwise.  We understand each other and the quirks in our family, we take the good with the bad, there is no other choice, this is family.

A Year in Review

My year in review with the use of pictures, thank goodness for digital cameras as I would not remember half of these events and fun times!

[Games from the past year - Pictionary (Old & New), Life, Poker, Bang!]

[Farewell Eleasa! & Welcoming Baby Mah!]

[I'm a teacher!]

[Engagements & Weddings!  I forsee more to come this year!]

[Zoe - Fun, Food, & Fellowship.  Looking forward to another blessed year]

[Birthdays, birthdays, birthdays!  We are getting older and wiser =p]

[Thanks for blessing me this year with your time and frienship, I love you all!]

Joy

In addition to the peace that I was reminded of yesterday, joy and rejoicing has also been reverberating in my life of late.  This is the attitude I want to bring with me at the start of this new year, and dealing with my situation, and living out my life day by day, in all the circumstances that God puts me in.

God has told me that I need to be joyful in the blessings he has bestowed upon me.  I am truly blessed, I have a wonderful family, great friends, a loving fellowship, a guy that loves me for who I am, and brothers and sisters that are always there for me, encouraging and challenging me.  What more can I ask for?  There is more that I could ask for, but looking at them now, they are based on wordly standards and if I wait upon God he will provide for me.  Thus, for now, I am going to rejoice in what he has given to me now.

Further, the month of December taught me a number of things about being joyful and such.  After two awesome months where I was "on track," reading the Bible, doing my devotionals, spending time with God, praying, I fell of the ball.  It sucked.  However, as I shared with a fellow sister, even when I was on track, there always seemed to be a voice in the back of my head, that is obviously attributable to Satan, telling me that this awesome time is finite and will only last a while before I come crashing down again.  Why do we do that to ourselves?!  A devotional taught me that we need rejoice in what God has given to us.  Instead of letting that little voice get the best of us, I need to remember what God has blessed me with now, what he is doing is my life right now, how I am doing right now, and not worry about what is to come.

Vent

Thank God for awesome sisters in Christ who will just listen to me vent for a good half an hour!  And to remind me of the peace that only God can bring.  Tonight was a really good night, having someone to listen to me is so great!  And someone who will listen without interrupting is even better!  And after all my ranting and venting, she is still able to challenge me and to use this crazy situation as a learning experience.  A new perspective, something that I definitely would not have thought about!  And helped to grant me peace with the situation.  I can't really change anything, it is not my place to change or from my perspective to have an opinion on, thus why dwell?  So, continue praying that God can grant me peace about this situation.

I thank God for our relationship and thanks for listening!

2008

I don't know if it is because I'm getting older and losing my memory, but I really do not have much recollection of the past year with the exception of the last few months.  However, the last few months have definitely been quite significant for me.  They have been the months where I know that I have grown the most spiritually.  I know that is due in part with the people I have chosen to surround myself with, brothers and sisters that will encourage and challenge me.

Doing a reflection of 2008 for Saturday's Zoe program, I realized how God has changed me so much in the last few months.  I have come to rely on him more, especially with this job situation.  I know that he has divinely appointed a teaching position for me, but now I just have wait upon him to deliver.  And how he has changed my attitudes, especially about his people.  Some of the things I've done in recent days I don't think I could have done even 6 months ago, but it is only through the the refining power of his Holy Spirit that he has enabled me to become the person I am today.

In my reflections on Saturday, this is what I wrote down:

- Being able to see the people as God sees them and to love them

- Becoming hungry for God (for his Word, to spend time with Him, and to listen for him)

- Encouraging and edifying one another and also challenging each other

- Learning that God will provide opportunities to share if I live a faithful and conscientious life for Him

- Relying on the power of prayer

- Having a Jesus-centred theology in everything

- Being reminded of the costs of leadership

And these are the things I wrote down looking to 2009:

- Based on 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 || Being joyful always, to pray continually, and giving thanks in all circumstances

- Continue to be hungry for God and to have a Jesus-centred theology

- To GO.

Heartache

Among all of the awesome things that have been happening in recently, especially now that I am back on track so to speak, there is something that has also been nagging me.  I can't go into too much detail, because really it is not my place to talk about it or even gossip about it to an extent.  But yes, this has been bothering me.  I do not even know why it is bothering me, I can not pinpoint it exactly, it could just be because there are so many factors involved coming from all different angles and it is at a boiling point.

It is not really a bad thing, but this situation has shown me things about myself--stuff that I have known all along, but it is good to be reminded of.  I love my parents, and always want to honour them--but of course, that comes second to honouring God and what he has to offer me and what he is telling me to do.  However, I do not feel this situation holds the latter, but I could be wrong, only God knows, and I will only see this in time and retrospectively.  I know I can be selfish, but I find this situation frighteningly so--and at what cost?

I still don't know what to make of this situation, but my heart aches already.  The next couple of weeks are going to be interesting, and I can see the upcoming year being very trying in regards to this aspect of my life.  Please pray for me.

Prayers

Today was definitely a good day.  After last night, I do not think that today could have gotten any better.  Last night, I spent two hours just reading, mainly books on the Bible and theology, but I spent a solid two hours getting reacquainted with God.  It was so good!  It was mind-numbing, but so worth it!  I was also convicted last night for the need for corporate prayer in my life especially with the Zoe girls.  I messaged Vinci about this and she agreed and was very willing to come and meet up the next day.  This is one thing I regret from Monday night after having some time to reflect on it last night, that we did not share with one another and pray for one another.  Thus, I made it a point to email all the girls and hoped that they would be able to come out.  However, it only ended up to be Vinci who responded in the affirmative, but I was good with that.

Vinci came over around 1pm and we had a good hour of just chatting and talking about a lot of stuff that had been on our minds.  It is so awesome to see how God has placed some of the same things on our hearts.  I really enjoyed talking with her about so many things, we have yet to do this before, but I'm looking forward to more opportunities to do so.  

Although she is younger, she is so much more mature than I was when I was her age.  I did not feel the need to hide things from her, as I do sometimes with people.  That is what authenticity is.  This is a words that has always been floating around, the need for authenticity or transparency, however, far to often this is never achieved.  Only slowly have I been able to open up to certain people so openly, transparently, and authentically.  I know that we always talked and are sometimes still talking about these things, yet, I know that I can only be those things through the conviction of the Holy Spirit.  I believe that God puts people in our lives to challenge us, and in order to do so we have to make ourselves vulnerable by being transparent and authentic.  The Holy Spirit convicted me of this, and of course, I knew that I would not feel judgment or condemnation, only love, support, and rebuking when needed. I love you Vinci! =p

Bonnie showed up around 2ish and we had about another half an hour of talking/catching up and then we ended off this mini-prayer meeting with a time of intense prayer.  I loved it!  I can't adequately put into words how powerful it was and I am so thankful for these two sisters in Christ who are committed to prayer.  I love them!

Vinci then had to leave, and I ended up chatting with Bonnie about a number of things for another hour or so before she left at 4:30pm.  That was also a good time of catching up and seeing how God is working in her life and among lots of other things! ;)

Today was an awesome day!