A Young Man in God's Plan - Chapter 1

I remember many of the young people's conferences were on the "young heroes" (ie. Samuel and Daniel) when I first entered high school. The statement "God always uses young people when He wants to make His move" became all too familiar. And so I read this book for the first time early in high school. It's always fun to go back on a book you read many years ago and see what new light the Lord sheds on you now that you've had an additional six years of life experience under your belt.

The word seemed so applicable at the time. I was a fourteen year old boy with a high pitched voice, and I had yet to break five feet, so the definition of young seemed to fit perfectly. I can still recall all the serving brothers telling us that our teenage years were the golden years for the Lord. Upon reading chapter 1, I examined my own age and chuckled. Suddenly the big two zero wasn't so great anymore.

"To be old means to be set, settled, and occupied. Sometimes some of the saints would refer to me as an old brother. It seems that this is a respect to me, but actually I do not like to hear this. I do not look upon myself as an old brother. I am not set, settled, and occupied. We always need to exercise to be young, to be new, to be renewed, to be fresh, and to be living all day long."

In the grand scheme of things, there is absolutely no doubt that I'm still a young man in God's plan. And I will continue to be one as long as I remain open to the Lord. I realize I have so many concepts on what is going to happen in my life, or even how the Lord is going to work through my environment in the coming years. But I'm glad to see that we need to be released from all of this. My prayer is that I would have no concepts about my future, and no preconceived notions on how the Lord is going to work through my environment. Rather, I pray that the Lord would clearly reveal His way to me, and give me the grace to follow Him.

"We need to give the Lord the way to go on in His progressive move through us. I hope that you will be a living, fresh, and new channel for the Lord to go on in His own way. This will require you to offer yourself to Him, to cooperate with Him."

Make me an open channel, Lord! Be living, fresh and new to me everyday; never grow old. Break through my nature and make me a clear channel for You. Lord, make me so willing to cooperate with Your heart's desire.

its a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord

ive been good. really. those words havent left my mouth in months. the Lord has been so good to me this semester. he came into parts of my being that i never would have expected. i feel like the lord answered all of my prayers, and he honored my prayerful and diligent spirit. the Lord loves us, and he is sovereign over all things, even when we feel otherwise. all i can say is praise the lord.

i was reading 2 samuel the other day and i came across the story of bath-sheba. the footnote noted that david committed that sin in the midst of all the victories that jehovah had given him. this shows that it is easy to fall into sin and temptation when our outward situation is working in our favor.

i feel like the lord shined on my own situation. things seem to be going well right now. and i just prayed that the Lord would guard me from any stumbling. guard me Lord, for this i pray.

i've found a friend in Jesus

i had an phenomenal experience yesterday. something was really bothering me and weighing me down. my usual reaction is to vent and to try and excavate myself out of the situation.

but today, i just stopped. something inside of me told me to stop. and i had an amazing sense of peace as my inner being said that it'd be ok. all i needed to do was to take it to the Lord in prayer the next morning. and somehow there was this amazing faith inside of me that knew everything would be ok as long as i did just that.

and so i did. ive come to realize that the Lord is the only one that can change us. sometimes i try to change myself, only to find myself glancing back with each opportunity.

when the Lord releases us, there is no looking back.

clear every avenue

the Lord needs to be the primary factor in our living. i realize i set my hope on so many other things in this world. this world is fraught with distractions.

often i find myself saying that id be happier if i had this.
but the lord convicted me tonight that he needs to be the primary factor in my life. break through my nature, mighty heavenly Love.

we often think we are virtuous before our virtue is actually tested. i mightve thought i was a patient person before i started living with the brothers. a lot of times i feel like i backslide when my own capacity runs dry. but i was touched that these failures are nothing new. its merely an open manifestation of our fallen condition. it's actually a blessing from the Lord; He's finally exposing me. and once the exposure is there, the Lord has a way to come in. The God who said "Out of darkness light shall shine" is the One that shines in our hearts to illuminate the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

this is where ill be

i remember one night i took a long walk from the campus in Berkeley to the middle of Oakland, and i felt like there was something wrong with my spiritual capacity/appetite. ive been reflecting on that since then, and ive come to realize that those kinds of thoughts are just lies from the enemy. this may sound obvious, but i realize that when i am in my spirit, the things of the Lord really do become enjoyable. sure, sometimes i am frustrated and not in the mood for it, but there are also so many other times where i feel like ive really been kissed by the Lord. and i really do enjoy the Lord on a regular basis, and i need to stand on that fact more that i stand on my negativeness. its just amazing how our mind and our thoughts are strong enough to convince us otherwise; thank God im still learning :)

anyways, i had a chance to go to msgs 3 and 4 of the thanksgiving conference and msg 3 really touched me. the topic was on how we are the testimony of jesus, and that we need to be plucked out of this evil generation. brother ron really made a plea to the young people, not to set their hope in this world, but to realize that we've been put on this earth to be the testimony of Jesus. he was so burdened that we'd realize that the church life is where we really belong, even if there may be frustrations, obstacles, and other sources of affliction. that really touched me. i feel like the Lord really gave me a song that very moment:

Sometimes there are situations,
And many frustrations,
That stumble you in subtle ways,
And nothing seems okay....

It may seem like Satan might win,
Our patience may run thing,
What we need is His supply,
In His arms we lie.

Many times we are discouraged,
Our spirit disheartened,
Just ask the Lord for everything,
To strengthen our spirit.

Put aside your opinions,
Just take Christ in as life,
Come again to the altar
For the Lord's cleansing blood

How do you want to sepnd your days?
In God's house that's the way,
Let's make wants reality,
To gain Christ corporately.

The church life is not perfect,
But it is genuine,
This is where our God dwells,
This is where I'll be.

ironically enough, fremont was going over psalm 133 this past weekend in the MR. Psalm 133:3 says "Like the dew of Hermon/ That came down upon the mountains of
Zion./ For there Jehovah commanded the blessing:/ Life forever." here, the mountains of Zion represent the local churches, where we dwell together in oneness, so we see here that this is the place where Jehovah commanded the blessing of eternal life. my mom's sharing on the Lord's day really touched me. she really emphasized that the oneness of the church is where God commanded his blessing. a lot of times we may look at the church life through our own eyes, and immediately we get frustrated and turned off. but this is something in the divine realm; whether we like it or not, this is the location of God's ordination. if we want the blessing, we need to dwell in oneness with all the saints.

i felt like there was really a response inside of me. i love the Lord on a personal level...but something inside of me always wants to remain an individual christian. brother ron gave us 8 practical ways to be the testimony of Jesus. i made an acronymn to remember them and i already forgot what half the letters stood for. but one of them was that we need to consecrate daily to the Lord, realizing that it is a narrow way and that it costs everything.

that almost made me cry. i really came before the Lord this morning...and consecrated myself to Him, and prayed that i would love the church as much as He does.

day by day we.....hold to the spirit

its interesting.

my academics are lived out in weeks. im always looking ahead, planning for the future. seeing what is coming up next week, keeping a long term view of my semester.

but with my relationship with God, i live it out in days. it's a daily matter with God. all that matters is today. not yesterday. not even tomorrow. all i care about is that God would gain me today.

praise the Lord. we can live our christian life one day at a time.

when we reach the end of our hoarded resources

i feel like a lot of things that my parents told me when i was younger are beginning to make sense:

me: why do people do that?
parents: because they don't have the Lord

i guess id usually feign understanding, only to scurry off moments later and realize i had no idea what that meant to me...

but i guess this semester has been a mini "coming of age." not trying to sound holier than thou, or super-experienced, but i feel like im beginning to learn the meaning of that statement.

im beginning to realize that id be nowhere without the Lord in my life. yuck. that sounds so spiritual. i still have a lot of confidence in myself, but i feel like the Lord is breaking me this semester. spirit soul and body. without the Lord, i turn to those same things that so many others try to draw satisfaction from. and more and more i realize that the Lord is really what matters.

not outward forms, not how many meetings i go to, not superficial spirituality, not organized religion, not obligation, not good morals, nothing. just the genuine experience of Christ as life.

i feel like i just want the Lord, the Reality, the Way. thank God im starting to learn.

Praise the Lord for starting. we're learning to turn, learning to take, learning to feed upon Jesus. thank God for the learning.

Lord, teach me the wondrous secret of abiding in you.

our Father's full giving is only begun.

a desperate prayer

its amazing how many spiritual experiences of mine go undocumented. i once heard in lecture that "its easy to be stirred up about something in the moment, but actually doing something about it is another story." i chuckled, and took note of how similar it is with my spiritual life.

yet something inside of me longs to instill permanence into these spiritual epiphanies. maybe i want to look back and see how real the Lord was to me, even if i was in a spiritual slump at the time. and something deep within wants all of these memories to remain, so that id be able to shepherd younger ones in the near future through my experience rather than just plain doctrine.

thy mighty love, o God, constraineth me,
as some strong tide it presseth on its way,
seeking a channel in my self-bound soul,
yearning to sweep all barriers away.

its nice that the Lord always comes to us through his love, but is he really taking advantage of any remote opening in my being? sometimes i doubt that, but my prayer is still that the lord would find a channel in my self-bound soul. Lord, find a channel, and flow through today.

i was touched that we need to trust in the Lord more. "in order to trust this One, we need to spend time with this One, and get to know this One." something inside of my being said amen when i heard that. i feel like ive had a rough rough semester, and my emotional state has been unstable and for the most part, depressed. not trying to sound super spiritual, but most of this semester has been just me and the Lord. i guess some of the people id always turn to in the past arent always available anymore, and sometimes i just grow weary of the corporate enjoyment. but my God has never left me. no doubt im in a slump, but somehow i feel like the Lord is more real to me now than He was during my problem-free freshman yr, or relatively simple sophomore year. ive spent a lot of personal time with Father, whether it be walking to class, or first thing in the morning as i slump over my desk half-asleep. it's become a means of survival, really. just telling Him everything that's on my mind. and being completely honest and open to Him. its a special type of personal time that i felt ive never shared with Him before, and something about it is remotely comforting. at least some of the time.

i don't feel like i worry about school-related things that much. usually it's just the weariness that creeps over me as the day wears to its close. but there are other things i may not trust the Lord in. my prayer is that i'd trust in the Lord in all things, that i'd learn to surrender all my fears, all my anxieties, and all my concerns fully unto the Lord. Be real to me Lord. I feel like I dont even care about anything else anymore. I just want to touch You. I want to touch something living, something real.

and i guess i can have the assurance that the more time i spend with the Lord, and the more i pray to him what's on my heart...eventually the trust will come.

frosted mini-wheats

after corporate morning revival, a herd of brothers rushed the cereal shelf in the front house kitchen. there were many choices: honey bunches, cherrios, cinnamon toast crunch, and frosted mini-wheats. upon a quick look at the box, one brother noticed that the following advertising gimmick was printed across the top of the box: "clinically proven to increase attentiveness by nearly 20%"

the immediate consensus among the attending brothers was that frosted-miniwheats was the way to go. after diving halfway through my first bowl of cereal, i saw a tiny "1" etched at the end of the advertising statement, so cleverly concealed to the left of a cartoon mini-wheat figure that graced the cover of our cereal box, so that the "1" was barely visible unless the box was under close inspection.

must be a footnote, so i frantically searched the rest of the box for the explanation of the footnote. during this time, we had a good time joking that the increase in attentiveness was probably compared to students who ate no breakfast.

i stumbled across the footnote. It read: "Children who ate one serving of frosted mini-wheats demonstrated an 18% increase in attentiveness 3 hours after those children that didn't eat breakfast."

well, that's great. the control group was a group of kids that didn't even eat breakfast. something tells me that the increase in attentiveness is no longer so unexpected.

advertising: 1. front house: 0.

fear, the foundation of religion...and what we must do

im kind of bitter over the fact that i never got to provide an immediate reflection to either the summer training or the college training. perhaps it will find a way to intercalate itself into my subsequent posts.

and so it passes. it was really enjoyable. i only wish it had more saving grace to push me out of a slump once and for all, so that i'd be guaranteed level ground for the remainder of the race. but i guess as humans, wounds take time to heal, just like how our afflicted earthen vessel requires an entire lifetime to be fully restored. and it's always that we may gain Christ.

i was doing mcat verbal passages the other night when i stumbled across an interesting article titled "Why I Am Not a Christian." it was written by Bertrand Russell: yes, THE acclaimed philosopher, social reform activist, inquisitive logician, and Nobel laureate in literature. seems like a guy with a lot of authority, and someone that I would have respect for:

"Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown and partly, as I have said, the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes. Fear is the basis of the whole thing -- fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand. It is because fear is at the basis of those two things. In this world we can now begin a little to understand things, and a little to master them by help of science, which has forced its way step by step against the Christian religion, against the churches, and against the opposition of all the old precepts. Science can help us to get over this craven fear in which mankind has lived for so many generations. Science can teach us, and I think our own hearts can teach us, no longer to look around for imaginary supports, no longer to invent allies in the sky, but rather to look to our own efforts here below to make this world a better place to live in, instead of the sort of place that the churches in all these centuries have made it.
We want to stand upon our own feet and look fair and square at the world -- its good facts, its bad facts, its beauties, and its ugliness; see the world as it is and be not afraid of it. Conquer the world by intelligence and not merely by being slavishly subdued by the terror that comes from it. The whole conception of God is a conception derived from the ancient Oriental despotisms. It is a conception quite unworthy of free men. When you hear people in church debasing themselves and saying that they are miserable sinners, and all the rest of it, it seems contemptible and not worthy of self-respecting human beings. We ought to stand up and look the world frankly in the face. We ought to make the best we can of the world, and if it is not so good as we wish, after all it will still be better than what these others have made of it in all these ages. A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men. It needs a fearless outlook and a free intelligence. It needs hope for the future, not looking back all the time toward a past that is dead, which we trust will be far surpassed by the future that our intelligence can create."

something skeptical inside of me wants to think that the test prep writers slipped this passage in for a reason. i doubt it, but i have yet to see a passage that is pro-God in all of my practice.

either way, i still feel like Russell's understanding of the Bible and of God is dreadfully shallow. i decided to google the rest of this excerpt and came upon a paragraph in which Russell tries to elucidate Christ's defects. he makes an interesting statement. remember when Jesus told the disciples that they would by no means pass away until they saw the kingdom of God come in power? Russell states that this proves that Jesus thought his second coming was going to happen before the death of his disciples, and i guess the fact that im still sitting here writing this blog post is only more support to Russell's argument that Jesus was wrong.

well, maybe. i guess Bertrand Russell didn't have the luxury of realizing that Jesus himself was the kingdom of God. and the whole "come in power" portion refers not to His second coming, but corresponds to the very next set of verses, when Jesus was transfigured.

i am thankful for the unveiling that has been granted to me in today's age.

twelve days and a small fraction of more to come

a couple days ago, my dad noted that he is currently the same age as my grandfather was when they first moved to this country.

life passes you by. just like how my summer vacation is already a month over.
so maybe that's not a valid comparison.

im halfway done with college? getting closer.

im turning 20 in a week, which means i will no longer be a teenager. now i think im starting to see it.

i remember when i was still nine years old, i dreamed of the day when i would finally be thirteen so that i no longer had to accompany my parents whenever they ran errands. i dont noe if i ever looked forward to getting a license all that much; it was more of my parents pushing. turning 18 so that i can vote? seemed cool at first but to this day i'm still not registered. so what makes me think 20 or 21 has anything better to offer?

foolish inconsistencies

i tossed my postdoc's cells on friday....before incubating his own samples. you can add another point under jeremy's name for stupid mistakes in the lab. as if i didn't have enough already. just like the time i thought polymerase enzymes could survive at room temperature, or the time i put PCR tubes in a room temperature thermo-cycler even though i had been working on ice for the last hour.

i've always felt like my accomplishments on paper never seem to correlate with the amount of common sense i possess in real life. then again, it's not like my sense of achievement is even something to drool over. i guess that shows just how much common sense i must possess. and i guess i never understood why i can be so absent-minded, or do such stupid things without thinking beforehand.

with that in mind, i look at myself in the mirror every morning and wonder how i accomplished what ive achieved the last two years. and quite frankly, i still haven't come to a substantial answer. im not trying to compliment myself. i guess i continually impress myself with the dichotomy of foolishness and success that characterizes my lifestyle all too well.

can you believe im aiming for an MD degree from a prestigious university? just the fact that im still in the running for it must show that the Lord has some mercy on my own sanity.

today, i had the same old cliche question thrown at me again, resulting in an all-too-familiar self-propogating bout of self-introspection, only to result at the same frustrating answer. if only i accepted the fact that i cant do everything in life.

life comes in discrete packages of humor and irony

i was in the men's restroom in LSA a couple days ago, going about my business. and then professor schlissel walks in.

i thought back to the beginning of spring '08: when i sat in the far back rows of pimentel on the first day of bio 1a, i looked past the sea of students sitting in front of me, and fixed my gaze towards the front of the room and beheld none other than the immunologist himself. little did i know that one day i would be standing next to him by the urinal. it's just weird peeing next to your professor.

fine...so i was actually washing my hands when he came in. but it still made a great story.

it kind of reminds me that time i was passing out gospel tracts on campus, and i suddenly saw my ochem professor approach. the mere thought of being able to preach the gospel to my professor took me by surprise. my face suddenly lit up and i uttered an excited "hey!" upon which his face broke out in surprise and he looked at me awkwardly, only to become more cautious of his own safety as he strode on past me. only after he passed me did i realize i was only a single student in a class of eight hundred. and that he had never seen my face nor exchanged a word with me. i guess im still not a true berkeley student.

today i dropped off my samples at the DNA sequencing lab. as i approached the facility, i saw formidable gray machines encompassing the majority of the room, with their loud fans and motors running tirelessly to generate needless amounts of noise. this is where pretty high tech stuff happens. i walk in and i find no one else in the room except a 10 year old boy. yes, he was the one manning the facility. i gave my samples to him and he told me "he'd take care of it."

yeah, i laughed after i walked out of the room.

it just felt unnerving handing off my precious samples to a 10 year old. did that really just happen? did i see it right? is uc berkeley's primary dna sequencing facility run by a 10 year old kid? i guess so.

then again, he was taller than me, and i probably looked just as young as him, so i guess he was just as surprised to see that i myself was a researcher. and yes, im positive that he was actually that much younger than me.

clockwork

its amazing how things you never expect always seem to come at the least favorable time. but it's also an opportunity to gain the Lord when you least expect it.

im so natural, so...

im going to write this down so that i can come back to it and see that it was acutally real.

i was in my spirit tonight, and i guess i know that because i see things in a totally different light when im in spirit.

the testimonies were really encouraging. it was just so genuine tonight.

and for some reason, when im in my spirit, the Lord suddenly becomes the most precious thing in this universe to me, and nothing else seems to matter.

unforunately, im just not in my spirit most of the time, and i care about everything else in my life more than the Lord, but take my spirit's word for it.

i guess i just need to keep loving the Lord more:

"We must continually tell the Lord, 'Lord, keep me in Your love! Attract me with Yourself! Keep me all the time in Your loving presence!' If we will pray in this way, we will see what love we will have toward the Lord and what kind of life we will live. We will simply live by the Lord Himself. As long as we love Him from the deepest part of our being, everything will be all right. Whatever we need, He is. Do not try to get anything else; just look to Him that He would reveal His love to you. Song of Songs 1:4 says, 'Draw me, we will run after thee.' We must ask the Lord to draw us, and then others will run after Him with us. To take Him as our life, we must love Him in such a way."
-Life and Building as Portrayed in the Song of Songs (Ch. 2, pg. 24)

because my short term memory fails...

if we learn to invite the Lord into the small things in our life, then it will be much easier when the big decisions come along :)

if only i didn't treat every little thing in my life as if it was a big decision.

it really bites when for once you miss something, and u feel like that something was exactly what you needed all along. i guess i can find joy in the fact that technology exists.

anxiety. the driving force of human existence. where else would people get their sense of urgency, their desire to succeed, or even their willingness to carry out their responsibilities?

i feel like i have a lot of things going on in my life. for the most part, i handle it quite well. i don't consider myself that anxious, just busy. but this semester's just been bad. i dont think ive ever been bothered by so many trivial things all at once, and i don't think ive ever been in my mind as much as i have this semester.

o, the anxiety. it's not like i havent enjoyed the Lord though, i feel like He's been extremely real to me this year, but it just seems that Satan always finds a way with me. even right now he's making me feel bad.

saying "no" sounds quite abstract to me. i think i just need to invite the Lord into my life more, and to quit thinking id rather just handle things on my own, cause it only seems to get me more upset. i need to bring him into every aspect of my life. while im brushing my teeth, opening the door, and even when im studying. now thats a big one. who ever said i cant bring the Lord in when im studying, or when im volunteering, or when im playing basketball, or when im teaching. i guess no one ever said that, but for some reason i act as if they did.

if we learn to invite the Lord into the small things in our life, then it will be much easier when the big decisions come along :)

a senseless contradiction

it's amazing how sometimes the Lord manages to find a way to meet us where we're at, even when we're so wrapped up in whatever we were doing.

it's not like i was cold towards Him. the reading was done. so was the morning revival. but i just didn't expect Him to be all that real to me this week.

and then i had one spiriutal experience after another today.

why do some faithful prayers remain unfulfilled while other fleeting prayers are answered so fast? we prayed together last night. and it didn't take long to go into effect: the door was more open today than it's ever been, and so i took the opportunity to enter in.

i came across a strong statement today: "If we do not contain God and know God as our content, we are a senseless contradiction." now that's a strong statement. senseless contradiction. say that a few times inside your head and u'll realize the brilliance of the diction. now that sounds like the ultimate insult.

i guess i just realized that God still has to have the first place in our being, regardless of the other earthly entanglements that we seem to get ourselves repeatedly stuck in one too many times.

but senseless contradiction seems to apply to anything. like how i didnt expect to have a true experience of God this week. or how our life never turns out the way we think it will. after all, life IS a senseless contradiction.

i prayed with someone over the cell phone today.

and then i prayed with more people at night.

hopefully all the prayer did some good.

no longer a nuisance

i've always been told that you must be introspective if you ever hope to make it to med school. and so i took that piece of advice to heart; maybe even too seriously. i feel like sometimes im too overanalytical about my situation, to the point where i examine myself to death.

but i've always been told that just keeping those thoughts within my head will never suffice, and so i find myself starting up a blog at 12:20AM.

i highly doubt ill be able to update this on a regular basis; my schedule is busy enough as is and i really don't want another thing to do...i hope this blog doesn't turn into another outlet through which i can complain about how busy i am, and i really hope that excerpts from my academic life don't manage to creep their way into this thing...

...though i feel it is inevitable...

nevertheless, i experience too much personal memorabilia over the course of my busy day, and they always find a way to elude me before my long-term memory has a chance to do its job.

it's been a long time since i've been home. i talked to my parents last week about how tough my semester's been, and just about all the personal conflicts that ive had to endure over the course of the school year.

they called me today, the both of them. simultaneously. on conference call.....

just to talk. what a relief. i thought i was in trouble the minute i heard both of their voices at the same time. but it was just to shepherd me according to their own past experiences.

that's one thing ive always valued about my life, and it's something i wish many other teenagers had the privilege of having. not just parents that they are on good terms with, but with whom they can confide in.

from the time i was in 1st grade, ive always been taught that the fifth commandment is to honor your father and mother. this was chiefly theoretical and unnattainable from a young age, but has gradually turned into reality as i've gotten older. i've always believed that this commandment became easier as one matures, and i have yet to be wrong. parents are no longer a nuisance.

my tuesdays start 8 in the morning and go non-stop until 9:45PM...then my day begins... or should i say studying. that's when my parents called. typically, tuesday nights are off limits for anyone that wishes to talk to me, but for some reason i wish my conversation with my parents could have lasted the rest of the night. ive had a deep longing within me this entire semester to have soul-to-soul talks with people, and in one marvelous way after another, i found too much wisdom and comfort in their words to the point where i felt like i was more than just two hundred feet away from all the endless schoolwork and stress that was left behind...

...if only it couldve lasted longer...

back to reality. the academics never cease to exist...

a call, and that was enough.

maybe the Lord was out there interceding me, meeting me where i was at.

its 12:33AM and that means i am thirty-three minutes overdue on my desired bedtime for tonight. after all, another day begins tomorrow when i get out of bed...at 5:15AM