SA: II – knowing God’s provision by Faith

Ever since the first day, God has shown miracles after miracles in our venture. Beginning from the pairing of us consultants to the clients to all the reconciliation and marketplace miracles happened in the venture. Even the very roommate that we have, God has a plan for it and He is truly providing for us.

Looking back to the day I first joined the training, I believed I am one of the first people who went up to Dena, our financial person, to ask her about funding stuff. I was like “omg the training is sooo expensive and we have to pay for the trip too! I don’t think I can afford it” and Dena’s response was “ God will provide don’t worry”. I looked at her and thought “ya right, Is easy for you to say” :P

But still I felt that God had called me to go, so I kept on going with the training and started doing my fundraising. It took me a while to actually get started, at one point I wondered why couldn't God just put money in my bank acc haha!!, but He had better plan. If it was not because of fundraising I wouldn’t be able to share with so many people about my faith. And God has put many people through the past couple month in my life to support me and used my story to touch other people’s life in a way that I would never thing I could’ve ever done it, given the fact that I am not a well-spoken person or someone who know a whole lot about bible or life.

Other than financial provision, He continued to provide me throughout the trip. I remembered there were many times that I wasn’t sure what to do with my client, what to do with my co-consultant and what to do with my scorecard and other deliverable. Everyday, I would pray to God over my problems and the very next day, prayer answered. I had never seen God answering prayer so quickly and so faithfully. I remembered in one of the un-structure day, which we normally we would go to the client’s office and check out the company, meet the employees and work on our scorecard. But that day, my client had a meeting to go, so instead of visiting his company and scorecarding, I together with my co-consultant, went to the meeting with my client. I was going to take some note and observe how he interact with his client. However, due to the limiting space, we weren’t able to sit with the clients and ended up sitting on the other side of the room. I wasn’t able to hear all the conservation clearly, so instead of trying to take note, I started to pray and ask God to come and be present in this meeting. I asked that He will let my client feel and see His presence, He will give my client wisdom and strength on the work he is doing with his client, and He will be with him throughout the meeting. I kept on praying and praying, non-stop for 2 hours. After the meeting was done, my client came up to me and asked me if I were praying for him because he had never had a meeting run so smoothly that they were about to finish everything on the agenda in just 2 hours which normally would take them a day to go through. God, again, answered my prayer right at the spot.

There are stories after stories on how God provide for his people and I actually see that happened in me and also in our teammates on the trip.

Have faith and he will provide!

SA: I – Knowing God’s love by heart, at heart and in heart

The first week in SA was truly a thrill. SA was nothing like what I have expected. It was beautiful. A flat land surrounded by range of mountains. The sky is blue and clear with layers of clouds from low to high. The sun shine through the clouds and lays shadow on the mountain and the shadow follows as the breeze moves the clouds. Not to mention the beautiful coastline. Speaking of creation, how can one not praise God for such beautiful nature!

For the venture, the thing that really stood out in the first week was that I realized is not about how long you have been a Christian, how much you know about bible, (thought they are important) but do you truly know Christ in your heart, truly feel the love of Christ and know that He does care so much about you.

At first I thought I know what's God love is, I thought I feel his love but then I met people who is living in a different level of faith, experiencing a different level of depth in Christ's love. I realized how little I know about God and again I was blown away by that fact that his love can be so much deeper and He could be so much more.

I guess there are so many ways one can preach about the Gospel but nothing compares to those who truly love God, and embrace Him with all their heart. And even the simple conversations they make are much more powerful than all the theological explanation that people can come up with. The simple words of loving God, trusting Him comes from their mouth are filled with a depth of passion and experience that you can sense from their tone and the expression in their eyes. And when I hear them I know they truly know God!

I’ve also seen people who know so much about God in their head, know so much about bible, saying they know God's love but feeling nothing in their heart, having no faith and the same doubt and worries as though they were secular. Where have their knowledge of God gone? There is a saying that the distance between heaven and earth is just the distance between from our head to our heart. I guess that is really true.

One of the thing that we all prayed really hard on this trip was to let go of control and let’s God take charge. All of us were so stressed out in the first week because of intense schedule + jetlag and fatigue, and we all trying to make sure everything would work according to our plan, breakthrough and change would happen according to our will. Every single one of us was turning into a control freak and wanting things to happen in our timing in our way. But the Holy Spirit had spoken to us that it was not our work but God’s work to be done, and it was not about our timing but God timing to make things happen.

I couldn't help but wonder if part of the reasons (other that we really trying to help) that we were trying to control so much was that we were scared to fail, what if we couldn’t deliver what we supposed to for our clients. May be somehow we thought that our performance would define our worth, but the true is only God’s love defines us not our achievements. Our identity only comes from God alone, not other persons or other things. Paul came to understand that the greatest riches could not compare with knowing Christ and he considered all other material things to be mere garbage in comparison : "I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord" (Philippians 3:7-8).

Knowing Christ’s love for us and that we are His child gives us identity. Don’t just know it in our head, but trust in our heart that He loves us. Embrace His love and we will find Him in our heart so that we will have peace and joy in our heart.

(Matthew 22:37-38) Jesus Speaking - "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment.

I'm back :)

It's been awhile since I last posted. After two weeks of resting, getting over my jetlag, catching up with work and friends and , I am back on =)

Thanks for all your prayers and support, this SA trip has been one of the most amazing trip and really an eye opening experience to me. Being able to witness God's work and see changes in people life, that was priceless!!

Since I didn't get to upload my blog daily during the venture due to internet issue and intense schedule there. Here is the rep blog where all of us from the team took turn to write about the trip, if you didn't get to read it yet : http://repurposing.biz/cape-town-june-2009-venture

I will also share more of my experience in the next post =)