Where U At?

By 2012, in Korea, every 2 out of 10 guys will not have a wife.

At first glance, women might say, “Oh, this is wonderful news, I have a lot of choices in marriage!”

However, this is, in fact, terrible news!
Coming from a Christian woman’s perspective, it means that the chances of finding a MOG or a Man of God is slimming.
MOGs, where are you?!?!

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So I’ve been looking at what is keeping Men of God from being everywhere!

Imago Dei was one place I found some type of answer to this tragedy.
Masculinity, Christianity, and our Asian culture are being attacked constantly in the world we live in.

So for a male, who is a Christian in a sex-driven world and living in an Asian society, where some men are prettier than some women, it is discouraging to be “manly”, be asian, and be strong in your faith all at the same time! Such pressure from the media about how to have the perfect body, the perfect face, the perfect personality; from an atheist or agnostic  society, how Christianity is a “construct in which to have good morals and have order in society” or that it is for the weak; and from friends, the casual talk of sex, can only lead to such a horrible fate as the decreasing number of MOGs.

Obviously, this is not only a problem for MOGs, but also for Women of God (aka WOGs). If MOGs are decreasing in numbers, WOGs will not be able to establish relationships with strong MOGs to testify to the world what a Christian relationship is or what the relationship between the Church and Christ is.
We must protect ourselves from the worldly things so that the Glory of God can be seen in this world!

MOGs!! Fighting!! I’m rooting for you

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One thing to praise God for is seeing many MOGs being molded in His Image in Koinonia. I’m truly excited for God’s plan for each of them and in turn, for Koinonia ^____^

Imago Dei: Finding Who We Are by Kutless

“Finding Who We Are”
by Kutless

In You we’re living
In You we’re moving
In You we’re finding who we are

In You we’re living
In You we’re moving
In You we’re finding who we are

And I worship You
Father of lights, spirit of truth
And I worship You
Jesus, we call on You, yes we call on You

In You we’re living
In You we’re moving
In You we’re finding who we are

In You we’re living
In You we’re moving
In You we’re finding who we are

And I worship You
Father of lights, spirit of truth
And I worship You
Jesus, we call on You, yes we call on You

And I worship You
Father of lights, spirit of truth
And I worship You
Jesus, we call on You, yes we call on You

We come to worship with our voices
And know the love within Your skies
We lift our hands and seek Your presence
And find ourselves in who You are

And I worship You
Father of lights, spirit of truth
And I worship You
Jesus, we call on You, yes we call on You

And I worship You
Father of lights, spirit of truth
And I worship You
Jesus, we call on You, yes we call on You

God, I’m Running Back to You, Will You Catch Me?

My Prayer to You, God.

Let me empty myself of me, and fill myself of You, God.
Let You be my desire, my life, my all.
Remind me that You, above all, love me, and that I need no one else.
I will find my identity in You, and be complete and whole.

You are the light that finds me.
You are the light that leads me.
You are the light that reveals me.

Let everyday be a journey for You, and not for me.
Remain beside me and never leave me.
Thank You for loving me, forgiving me, and reminding me when I lose sight of You that You are there through the people You have put around me. Thank You for all the people who are currently in my life through all the pain and grit.

God, You know what burdens I bear, and You show me in remarkable ways that You ALWAYS provide and ALWAYS care for me.
The truth is there is NO ONE LIKE YOU! I’m sorry for being forgetful and not seeing You in the daily things like You have taught me. Teach me again!

Empty my cup filled with my desires, my suffering, my selfishness.
Pour Your love, grace, and mercy into this empty cup so that I overflow, and serve for Your glory and for Your name.
Feed me with Your word, and Let me hear the Words You say and listen and obey.
Ready me for Your work, and prepare the way.

You are so good.
Let me receive Your love with great joy,
and Let me rejoice and give Your love to others through this joy.

Thank You so much for just being You.

In Your Son’s precious name I pray,

Amen.

Visions for the Year 2010

Two days ago, my dad caught the flu. He seemed very weak, but he chugged on to prepare for the New Year’s message.

Early morning today, I was in a New Year’s service, and heard this message that he had prepared with God, and could hear his earnest cry to our congregation members. It really made me want to listen. He said, “Listen and obey the Word, and be fruitful.”

My dad said, “Don’t stop reading the Word and start over. Keep reading the Word once you’ve started. Don’t keep reading Mathew 1!” Something I think we’ve all been through.

He continued on to say, “If we keep on reading, we will find that we have a lot of pride, and often, take credit for what God has done for us. He gives us failures because when success does come, we know that it is truly Him who did the work. God recorded history in the Bible, not just as a reference to what to do when so-and-so happens, but so that we can stop making the mistakes others have made. Even so, we should realize that when we avoid one mistake, another awaits us because we are not perfect. That’s why we should sincerely and earnestly ask Him for help when we know we cannot do it ourselves.”

Another point my dad brought up was “Find happiness in obeying the Word. Don’t do it out of obligations. We should develop a natural love for obeying the Word. That’s why failures are important. The more failures you have, the more you give up part of yourself to God happily because you know you, yourself, cannot do it.”

My dad advised, “Ask God for help, and watch it happen and glorify God. God takes responsibility for what’s going to happen. He does this because we are sincere and earnest.”1 Samule 16:7 says, “The LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.” God is moved by our faithful hearts.

It all comes down to this: Knowing that YOU are NEVER enough, and that HE is ALWAYS enough.

In receiving this message I wrote down several visions,

For Koinonia,

1. Boldness in reaching the lost

2. Change into a more Christ-centered community, where our relationships with each other reflect the love of Christ to the outside world.

For myself,

1. Boldness on an individual level, being able to take the initiative in my relationships with other people for Christ

2. A loving heart towards strangers, enemies

3. Healing

For my relationships with others,

1. Be a trustworthy and reliable sister and friend

2. Let our relationship leave a fragrance of Christ whenever we interact

3. Honesty and truth in love

4. Growth in Christ

5. Accountability

6. Prayer

My visions for this year are big and maybe impossible, but I believe it: EVERYTHING is possible with God!

Vision

by BY

A dream I say

A goal He says

A success She says

A win They say

What I thought was not

What He thought, nor

What She thought, nor

What They thought.

We all have our different views

We have our opinions.

But one thing that unifies us

is the LORD God Almighty

Who has a VISION for all of us

Becoming a Body of Christ…

What does it mean to be a body of Christ? I’ve pondered on it for awhile now…and I came up with this image (not to prove that I totally am a geek/nerd in anyway…hehe :p):

We are like a cell. Cells have many organelles that function according to its structure. Cells respond to chemical gradients. When his occurs, this is called chemotaxis. In order to move, cells have ligands that attach to the ECM molecule of the cell and are able to propel itself forward or backwards. Without it working all together, a part of it would be left behind and it no longer will be whole and thus, is a damaged cell and necrosis can occur, hurting the entire body.

I think we, the body of Christ, are very much like a cell. All of us have a role in the body, whether one is the mitochondria (powerhouse of the cell) or a ligand that propels the body to move. We ALL have a PART and we ALL have to move together and work together! We really need to be able to forgive and love one another, all the while speaking the truth. This is so difficult, but Ephesians 4 makes it pretty clear that we need to be one spirit, one body believing in one God.

Having a strong community is great, but what do we do from there?

Well, we can let chemical gradients like our ethnicity, our friends/peers, our desires, our thoughts and emotions pull us apart or as the body of Christ, we can be influenced and only influenced by the Trinity: Christ the Son, Holy Spirit, and God the Father. We should move only according to His will, and a desire to KNOW His awesome and perfect will for Koinonia. I don’t know what to call this: theostaxis???? haha..as you can see I’m not very good with Greek, but you get the idea

Let’s roll with God!

Knowing God’s Heart in Relationships

Too often, members of the female species struggle with one major problem in life, which does not seem to dissipate, even as we get older and “wiser”. We watch movies, dramas, and other forms of entertainment to fill our heads with fantasies, and the Ideal Man. Now, it really is harmless to think about boys, but the disguise here is this: boys = relationship troubles (and vice versa, don’t think I’ve forgotten about you guys ), whether friendship or the other kind. This is because the boundaries between male and female relations is so vague and undefined. This being said, most people have the tendency to overstep those boundaries.

Honestly, I’ve fallen into this trap way too many times in the past, and still struggle with it now. There were so many instances where I thought to myself, ‘What are you doing? Get your head on straight!’ Satan is such a trickster, always whispering into our heads things we want and telling us that we can’t wait for them, we need them now!! BUT I can tell you that God gives you things in His time, and His timing is unpredictably perfect He ALWAYS KNOWS what’s best for us!!

God has shown me a new way to deal with boys: as brothers-in-Christ. Of course, it is a very slow moving process…I am so lacking, but that’s ok because God is not lacking in anything =]

In the beginning, I wasn’t really sure what this meant. Did it mean that they would protect me from “bad boys”? Did it mean that I had to treat them specially? Did it mean that I could tell them everything??

What does it mean to treat boys as brothers-in-Christ?

I know the questions I asked myself and God were shallow questions, and I was probably just looking for a simple and quick answer, but boy, did God have something else in store for me! Recently, I have been reading a book called, “When God Writes Your Love Story”. You can only guess why I started :p

In this book, I learned 3 lessons.

1. God is Love. I know this might sound strange, and not new, but to me, it has opened my eyes! Let me tell you about it. Why do people not let God control their love life or why are they afraid to?

One major reason is that they don’t believe that God is interested in such trivial issues as our love lives…BUT THAT IS SOOOO WRONG! God loves us! He wants to know everything about our lives and wants to hear about it from our mouths. He loves it when we share our lives with Him, even our love lives =]

Another reason is that most people believe that God is old-fashioned. How can someone so old know anything about the “New Age” Love? However, did we forget? God is Love! No one, and I mean, no one knows more about love than He does! That’s why He’s able to write the perfect love story for you and me. One thing, though, God is not only the perfect author of the most amazing Love Story of all times, but also the most amazing author of writing our life stories =D

Do you see what I mean?

2. God’s Provision. This is also old news. God knows our needs the best, and his timing…can only be described as flawless. Now, in terms of relationships, since God is love, He easily provides the perfect match. He knows the stories’ ending. Why, then, are we so intent on finding our match, when it is only a matter of time, God will reveal him or her to each of us? Often times, we are too impatient to wait for His timing to happen. We let our selfish desire to drive our flesh and we sin over and over again, but God is so merciful and gracious to us that He forgives us when we repent and gives us second chances, chances we need to be with Him. Let’s try our best, brothers and sisters -in-Christ, to wait on Him patiently, as we would wait on our Groom

3. Love your future husband/wife now! Now, this was a new step for me!

When I heard this, I thought to myself, ‘Say what? How can I love a person I can’t see and don’t know?’ But then, I realized, isn’t this God to us? We can’t see Him, and really don’t know everything about Him. We can know His characteristics, His attributes, but we don’t really know Him, but we are able to love Him. How? Let’s see. First, we are faithful to Him. Ask questions like ‘Will He be pleased with what I’m doing right now?’ Second, we share a love of Christ with Him. Through this connection, our relationship grows. Isn’t Christ the mediator between Him and us? Christ died for our sins because He loved us. Don’t forget that! Third, we trust and wait on Him, serving and purifying ourselves for Him.

Sound familiar? This is EXACTLY how we should prepare for our future spouse! We should be faithful to him/her. We ask ourselves, ‘Will he/she be pleased with what I’m doing right now?’ We share our love of Christ with each other as brothers and sisters -in-Christ and as a community and reaching non-believers because then, we are preparing ourselves to love “the one” when they come into our lives. How can we do anything without practice? And lastly, we trust that he/she is pure and wait on them by being pure ourselves.

I titled this blog, “Knowing God’s Heart in Relationships”, and this is obviously, difficult, and I probably don’t have the answer, but I did see a glimmer of God’s heart beating through this book. It makes me want to know God more to love Him more.