slow and steady wins the race

You know how everyone says “all Asians look alike?”…Well i just realized that you can say that too about white people. I think i might be a tad bit racist. I think all white people look alike. I cant tell what they are…german, irish, italian, etc. I think they’re all just… white. is that bad? -___- lol

God,

Allow me to be obedient to you and only you. Let not the world distract me, but allow me to be totally consumed by you. Please grant the heart to love everyone just as you have. I know i cannot love like you, but if i can have even an ounce of the heart that you have, than i know with that i can still do wonders for you. God, please give me patience. Patience so that i can learn to love those that are hard to love.

Amen.

So i have been rereading purpose driven life with some of my girls, and i came across something interesting. It talked about the importance of the church. That as Christians we arent just called to believe, but we are called to belong. To belong means to fit in, devote, and  genuinely love your church community.

***note: all quotes come from The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren

“You can spend a lifetime searching for the perfect church, but you will never find it. You are called to love imperfect sinners, just as God does.”

Isn’t that the truth? I feel like so many of us (myself included) look for the perfect church, and often times when that happens, we become disappointed. I feel like we set all these expectations on how the church should be, but fail to see how unrealistic that is. Only God can be perfect. We can strive for perfection, but we are meant to fail. We fail so that we can depend on God alone. There are no perfect people, therefore there is no perfect church. We need to stop being disappointed, and start being real by simply loving God as He loved us.

i feel warren best desrribes the important of church and community here:

“God designed his church specifically to help you fulfill the five purposes he has for your life. He created the church to meet your five deepest needs: a purpose to live for, people to live with, principles to live by, a profession to live out, and power to live on…

God’s purposes for his church are identical to his five purposes for you. Worship helps you focus on God; fellowship helps you face life’s problems; discipleship helps fortify your faith; ministry helps find your talents; evangelism helps fulfill your mission”

if you think about, church is beyond just a building. It’s a lifestyle. If you attend NewSong church in irvine, then this is not new to you. NewSong uses the term CWOW (Church without walls). This is the idea that “doing church” is just not a sunday thing or even confined to a building, but that church is a constant thing that can be done anywhere.

So how does the term belong fit into this picture of church? We need to belong in the church we are in. Whether it is loving the people in it, or serving there faithfully. We need to be devoted to God’s family. To belong means to fit in. I also associate belonging with getting along. Thus we need to learn to get along and love those who we live life with. I’m not just talking about the poor, the homeless, orphans, widows, etc but i’m also talking about the annoying ones; the ones who we are in constant contact with but find it hard to love. How can we go out to love the world, when we can’t even love those that are close to us? We are called to live a life of love and do it together, as one body and be one body.

haha. sorry my thoughts are all over the place. This is what I did instead of paying attention to my chinese society class. lol

Been reading My Utmost for His Highest lately. It’s quite interesting. If you need a devo book to read, I probably would recommend this book.

Matt. 25;14-30

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=matt%2025:14-30&version=NIV

“Never allow the limitation of your own natural ability” to prevent you from reaching your fullest capacity but if we have hope in His promises then we can achieve anything - nothing will be impossible for us. (refer to matt 17:20-21)

He replied, “Because you have so little faith. I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”^[a]

-matthew 17:20-21

“We must never measure our spiritual capacity on the basis of education or our intellect; our capacity in spiritual things are measured on the basis of the promises of God” - My Utmost for His Highest (day April 20)

If we have hope in the glory of God - if we believe in His promises - if we believe that Jesus is our savior, then the term impossible should no longer be in our vocabulary but instead be replaced by the term possible. There is not impossible feat.

Knowing this, we should be fearless. But then why the heck aren’t we? What stops us from reaching to out fullest capacity? How does that even look like?

 ”There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear…” - 1 John 4:18

If we have perfect love in God, then there is nothing to fear. Our love with our God is what gives us the strength to reach our fullest capacity with no hesitation. We become so madly in love with God that nothing else matters in the world because in the end it’ll just be you and God in heaven.

“We don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are”                            -AnaIs Nin

God,

Let there be more of you, and less of me. Let me be obedient.

“I meet so many people. I don’t even know some of my friends’ names.”

– Paris Hilton

Hah. Isnt that sad? It’s sad that it’s true. Sometimes we are so caught up with making friends and being friendly that we end up with some many “friends” where it’s almost impossible to keep up with all of them. Thus our “friends” become acquaintances, and then in turn they became the “nameless ones” that we forget. What happened to actually building real friendships and sustaining them by investing and being intentional? What happened to community? When have we started to become so self-serving? Because as sad as it is, some friendships have experation dates: only meant to serve a purpose.