Go Forth and Be Fearless

James 1: 5-8, 22-25
If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.

But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.

I know for sure the following things:

• I lack wisdom.

I do not know what to do in life. Those things that I want to do, I do not know how to do, or how to do them well. So I tend not to do anything at all.

• My doubts toss me around like a rag doll.

I fear that the things I want to do may end up being the wrong thing to pursue. What if I put in all that time and energy only to find that I have been investing in an unprofitable venture? 

• I am slow to act. 

If I act, I act very cautiously, taking teeny tiny baby steps in my chosen direction. I take every single in-between step, evolving rather than transforming my life. 

This is what needs to be done:

• Determine my theology.

What I believe about God impacts what I do and how. I believe in His sovereignty. I believe that He has given me a new heart. Everything else I still need to learn.

• Determine my course of action.

I can trust the Lord to guide my heart. I can seek His face and His blessing upon what I will do, and then I must stick with it. 

• Go forth.

I must be courageous and not waste my life away scuttling around in fear. I must act. I must invest and bring a return upon the resources the Lord has given me. I must pursue ways to maximize the return. 

Help me be a faithful, fearless steward of the time You have lent me, Lord.

The Now and Not Yet of Commitment to Church Life

We are saved to serve. Indeed, serving the church is pleasant and edifying. I am in the church now but have not yet committed to serving and being active in church life because of my past, present, and future.

I hesitate to serve now because I want to hold onto people from my past. My transition in membership to Immanuel is recent and I miss my old friends with whom I grew and served for ten plus years. I struggle to grow relationships in Immanuel because I am trying to hold on to relationships from the past. However, perhaps God has drawn me away from the people I knew in the way that He drew Joseph out of his family or Moses out of Pharaoh's house so that they could accomplish the Lord's specific purpose for them. 

I hesitate to serve now because of my present season of serving my family and being in college. 

Whenever I think of serving the church, I always check mentally whether I am sufficiently serving my family, since one who does not provide for her family has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. Also, my family tends to schedule an event for the same time that a church event is scheduled so I am forced to make a decision about in whom to invest my time. Truly, I am more edified from the instruction and fellowship provided at Immanuel than I do from interaction with my family, and must bring a return on IBC's investment, but I have been acting upon loyalty to my family.

The necessity of diligence in my studies at college makes me step back from serving as well, though this is a sorry excuse because I do not actually care for my studies. In the spirit of efficiency, I work hard not for an A but for the best grade possible for the least amount of effort, which, by the God's grace, has often been an A or B anyway.

I hesitate to serve now because of an uncertain future, my own "now and not yet." Lord willing, I will graduate this semester and have applied for a fellowship program which, if I am accepted, will require me to live in San Francisco for nine months. After that, I must consider my profession and invest accordingly. I do not want to start work in a ministry only to uproot a few months later. If I put my hand to the plow, I want to finish the job. So I just haven't committed.

For now, I suppose I must weigh my options and make a decision about what I will pursue. Finalizing a decision will bring peace to my anxious mind.

Your Love is a Song

More than anything except my dad, I love to sing. I long to sing. My heart thirsts for singing. To sing beautifully with someone is like a sweet kiss.

 

I love to sing freely, without the constraint on creativity that comes with singing written music in a choir, though these pieces are in themselves highly artistic and are beneficial for improvement. I prefer to let my ear and heart and voice join together to create their own harmony. It is deeply satisfying to add my element of experience to the song rather than singing simply what another has experienced in his spirit and written for the world to sing.

I love to sing with people. There are two kinds of people with whom I love to sing: those who love to sing and those who can sing well. 

When I sing with others who love to sing, I do not feel pressured to please those who do not like to sing, which would mean not singing. 

When I sing with people who can sing well, I feel free to pursue a harmony of my own, to meander, to ebb and flow in response to what they sing, rather than dutifully singing the melody as the lead because others lack confidence or ability. When I sing with people who sing well, the synergy of spirit between us is exhilarating. It is overwhelming.

I dream that some day I will find people who love to sing like I do. I think I shall live in complete bliss forever once I find them. 

Democracy: Power of the People

Power in America depends on your status and/or occupation. Your status and/or occupation depend on your network. Your network is shaped by people you meet along your way through your education and opportunities. The level of education you attain depends on your natural abilities and your unnatural ability to pay for it, i.e. your wealth. Your opportunities depend on your access to different groups in society, which also depends on your wealth. And what does your wealth depend on?

Family.

No child is born clutching a trust fund in their little fist, which developed in the womb with them. If a child is born wealthy, it is because the child was born to parents who have accumulated wealth through their hard work and/or the hard work of their parents before them. We acknowledge that children are not born into equal amounts of wealth and so begin their journey with different levels of advantage, attaining consequently, different levels of power within their lifetime.

 

So, we must help increase the advantage for those who are born into families of little wealth. I do not propose the transfer of money from a generous individual or group to a family of less wealth. They would almost certainly waste that money away, not because they are bad or greedy, or will use it for bad things, but because many of them do not know how to use that money to generate more money.

So how do you generate money?

I'm still trying to figure that one out myself.

Wisdom 2013

With another year gone by, our sincerest hope is 2013's lessons coming to fruition and meaningful application in its successor. There is no feat worse than to live and not learn from it. So what have we learned?

I, for one, have learned that confiding in my dad is a sweet practice for us both. For me, because it lightens my burden and invited sympathy and advice. For him, because in his bosom stirs the noble calling of every father to protect and guide his daughter. And in so opening my heart to my dad, it draws us both closer to one another. 

A lesson that came with much difficulty to me was learning to push myself harder to make more of my life--to strive towards my potential, to press on towards the goal of the upward call of Christ. It is so much easier just to float along where life's current has you instead of moving on towards better things.

With grace and wisdom from the Lord, I hope to keep on with both of these lessons in the new year. May this be a year characterized by faithfulness, especially to the start-of-year sentiments which inspire so many of us to resolve to be better. 

And finally, there is no better wisdom than that which is gained from the experience of others. Those of you who kindly shared your 2013 lesson with me, thank you. These are the responses you gave.

 
    
Decision-making

• Even if something hurts, if the outcome will be valuable and worth it, do it. 
• Be OK with my choices and sometimes things just work out. 
• Follow through with made decisions. 

Dependence upon God

• With all the options my life could take, I doubted whether my commitment to Jesus would stand the test. But I remembered the verse that says, 

Psalm 139

Where can I go from your spirit, where can I flee from your presence?

• The more you depend on God, the better life feels. We had financial difficulty. God did not let us down. Praise God! 
• I've learned this year to set my hopes only on the Lord, that He is the light and the way, and whoever follows Him will never live in darkness. 
• Always trust God's timing. 
• Lean on God with all your heart and not on my own understanding. Everything is in His hands! 
• Try to trust God with everything and give all of the worries to Him. 
• Trust God, not yourself. 
• This year I really practiced in my patience and trust with what goes on in life, and what is and is not controllable. 
• Learning much about trusting God with change. 

Excellence

• If you're not scared to death, you're not challenging yourself enough. If I'm content, then I'm not being challenged enough.
• If you want something badly, you have to work for it because in the end it pays off. 
• The greatest lesson I have learned that will help me live and love to the fullest is to be excellent in all I do. 

Faith

• I learned the importance of having strong faith behind the scenes, not just when everyone sees you.

 
Faithfulness

• If we are faithful in the little, He will really give us more.

Fellowship

• Don't lose touch with the body of Christ and no excuse is ever good enough to get you away from good fellowship. 

Finances

• I've learned to definitely not live outside my means.

Gratitude

• I'm just grateful that we have a healthy growing baby with a strong heart beat.
• I learned to be grateful and happy all the time. 
• Be thankful for each and every person that ever crossed your path in life.  
• Appreciate all the things my family and friends have done for me since I've been living on my own this semester.

How We Relate to Others

• One thing I learned this year was to be careful to be too quick to judge people. I am constantly reminded when I make a judgment on someone and then am pleasantly surprised when they do something great. It has taught me that it is better to see the good in someone, than the bad.
• Not everyone is willing to listen to your opinion or advice... Sometimes it's better to keep it to yourself. 
• Wait when angry and not judge. 
• It's worth going out of the way to love someone! 
• Family is always the truest and they have your back no matter what, over and over. 

Living Presently

• I was reminded to appreciate every moment, never take a day for granted, and to rest in Christ.
• One lesson that keeps being impressed upon me is the reality of the spiritual life truly being a daily battle...the whole "not resting on yesterday's spirituality to get me through today" mentality...my temptation is to always be letting my guard down. 
• Treasure the moments you have to live. You don't know when something can go wrong.

Love

• What is useful for living is loving people no matter what their choices are.  
• God taught me this year that love starts with Jesus.
• What I've learned is recorded in 1 Corinthians 13:1-3. It's something I've always been short of and continue to learn to practice. 
  1 Corinthians 13: 1-3 
  If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.  And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.  If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

 
Miscellaneous

• Words to live by: Amos 3:7 and Malachi 4:5

Amos 3:7

For the Lord God does nothing without revealing his secret to his servants the prophets.

Malachi 4:5

Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes.

Patience

• What I learned is patience fueled by kindness. This has helped me to yield better results as a manager and human being.
• Learned patience.  

Practical

• I learned that it's a good idea to know how to be flexible and inventive in the kitchen, unless I have time to shop.
• Learned to make a perfect seafood cioppino.

Time 

• Use my time wisely because our days are numbered!
• Life is too short to waste doing anything you hate. 

Wisdom

• I've learned that I have much more to learn!