Intimacy - I Guess You Would Call This "Hitting a Wall"

For the sake of showing the progress of my journey, I'm going to post an entry that was not fully completed. I had started it a few days ago, but I never finished for whatever reason. Currently, I don't remember where I was going with this entry... haha And right now I actually don't feel this way anymore, so praise the Lord! :D I'll post on how this changed as well, but for now take this!

-------------May 19, 2010-------------

This past weekend with New Philly was so glorious! Saturday night's Joint Prayer Meeting was SO powerful! God showed up in a big way, and I know that most of the people there got at least a little shaken up! And at Sunday Service at NPCHillside, God yet again showed up in glory, and we saw several people falling under the Spirit and several more just manifesting under His presence! This weekend I saw more manifestations of God in one weekend than I had ever before! It was undeniable that God was present!

And yet, the most difficult thing for me was that during this time, I felt like I wasn't experiencing anything at all. And you know, that probably isn't the truth. During this time I was doing my best to just be prayer support for those who were ministering and being ministered to. But as much as I've been pursuing God in the past few weeks, and even though I was going fairly strong on my media fast, and despite doing my best to give God the worship during these ministry times, I felt nothing. I didn't feel the Holy Spirit leading me into things to pray, and I didn't feel Him moving in my emotions like He sometimes does. In fact, more than feeling nothing, I felt like I was getting drained..

After reflecting, and talking to Brady about it, I think I came to a few realizations:

• I think that rather than being led by the Holy Spirit to be prayer support, I took that action out of a sense that, as a member and a leader, it was my responsibility to be praying for these brothers and sisters.
• I think God was probably trying to do something on my own heart, but because of this sense of responsibility, I wasn't letting Him. I definitely felt a disconnect between me and God, and that probably should have told me I wasn't doing what I was supposed to be doing, but I was so intent on being prayer support.. I knew that while I was disconnected I wasn't going to be very effective, and so I was actually trying to follow the example of others and lift up praises to God in those times when I felt stuck. But I think instead I should have just stopped what I was doing and focused entirely on God. Thinking about it like that I think I missed out on what could have been a really powerful time of the Holy Spirit's ministry to myself as well.. Or maybe what I'm going through right now IS the lesson God wanted me to learn?
• Through this experience I'm coming face to face with how little I can really do in my own ability and power. And that brings me to only one solution, that being to rely the Holy Spirit. My prayers may be powerful, but I want my prayers to bring an encounter with GOD! And the only way that is going to happen is if I'm praying from the Father's heart.

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And that was that entry. More to come!

Speaking of Fruitless Pursuits...

Whoever works his land will have plenty of bread,

but he who follows worthless pursuits lacks sense.

- Proverbs 12:11

I'm gunna work my land Lord!

Intimacy - Knowing That It's Too Much

About 2 and a half weeks ago now, I had my Healing and Deliverance session at New Philly. For those of you who aren't familiar with what an H & D session is, it's a sort of counseling session where we ask God to expose the deep wounds of our hearts so that He can heal them by pouring His love out on them. It's good stuff. :)

I'm still in the middle of writing my full testimony, but I wanted to share just a little bit. First thing you should know is this: During my session areas of my heart have been healed, walls have been broken down, and chains have been broken off of me! Hallelujah! I may not have been able to sense these things occurring, but that doesn't change the reality of what took place! I'm taking them in faith!

And during my session it be came clear that the Enemy has been using a lot of my favorite pastimes to kill my time with God, namely video games. And in an effort to clear my plate for God, I went on what ended up being a 2 week video game fast, but unfortunately during that period of time, I ended up turning to anime and comic books to fill a good portion of that new free time.

Basically God's been pressing on my heart over the past few days that this is simply too much. I've been wasting too much of my time on fruitless things. So this left me with only one option to really counteract the Devil's schemes: a full-on media fast. For I don't know how many days. Basically until I feel the Lord telling me I'm good to go. This is going to be a challenge, but I know that God wouldn't convict me of this unless he knew I was able to push through. I mean, simply for you to hear me say that these things are fruitless out loud tells you that it HAS to be God! haha

I feel that it's important that I'm as specific as possible so that I won't be tempted to cheat. So my current fast will involve:

• No video games
• No anime
• No manga
• No comic books
• No webcomics
• No YouTubing random videos
• No Facebook or Gchatting in excess

Which still leaves me with a plethora of other ways for me to spend my time unwisely... so this list is probably going to grow if I start feeling like something else is taking up too much of my time.

But yeah, I'm going to be setting a lot of time aside to do these things specifically:

• Read the Bible
• Study the Bible
• Pray
• Read Christian books
• Play guitar and praise

The rest of my free time I'm only going to allow myself to do these things:

• Blogging
• Studying Korean
• Editing photos
• Painting (If I can actually work myself up to start...)
• Other things I need to do (Some side projects, clean the apartment, do budgeting stuff, etc.)

This is my game plan. I realize that there are SO many things I want to do with my time... In the long run, if I could really just stop all of my media things, I would probably have enough time to do all of the other things I want to do... -__- I'm going to have to find a way to budget my time...

But yeah, just so it's clear, my end goal for this is greater intimacy with the Father, and I honestly feel that this will come as I take these steps. I'll let you all know how it all turns out. ^^

Why I Am a Teacher

So, this is a writing sample I wrote for a new hagwon that I'm applying to~ I figured it sounded enough like a blog post that I could just copy and paste it here without any problems. :) This is a basic history of why I'm a teacher now!

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It was a little over a year ago when I decided that I once again wanted to try my hands at another career path. Originally, a career in teaching and education was never part of the plan. I had always considered it as an option, but it was never one that I wanted to explore until now. As a barely-mature teenager trying to decide college major, it never occurred to me just how much I might like being a teacher.

I chose to study chemistry in college, mainly because I was a math and science buff in high school, and chemistry intrigued me the most. However, it wasn't even 2 years into my program at UCLA before I realized that chemistry wasn't for me, at least not as a career. While it is true, even now, that I have an honest fascination with chemistry, when I looked at the students around me and observed their passion and determination, I knew that I would not be able to compete with them in the field. Chemistry isn't something that can draw that kind of excellence out of me. Yet, even with this realization, I wanted to stick with my commitment and finish my degree. There were still different aspects of chemistry I had yet to delve into, and I wanted to see if something in there might ignite my passion.

Shortly after making this decision, I applied for a part-time position selling computers at our university's student store. During my 2 and a half years as an employee at the UCLA Computer Store, I became more and more aware of my love for interacting with people. Whether it was my customers, my co-workers, or even my managers, you could almost always find me talking to somebody at work. Of course, the job was not always easy, but I found that I was enjoying myself nonetheless. Still, something about being in sales for the rest of my life didn't sit well.

I graduated with great conviction that neither a career as a chemist nor a career as a salesperson was going to satisfy me. So, I returned to my first love, art and graphics design. Ever since childhood, I had always loved drawing, and I had actually worked a lot in graphics design during high school. I believed that I was sure to awaken my passion in this field. With this hope set on my heart, I enrolled in a few classes at a nearby college, and took on an internship at a start-up film production company as their graphics designer. I enjoyed myself for a short while, but soon, the feeling of isolation crept in at my internship, almost to the point of suffocation. It was here that I really saw how I literally could not function without people around me. So as soon as I could, I left the internship, which brings me to early 2009.

It was at this time that a friend suggested that I try teaching. Initially the suggestion caught me by surprise, but over the next few weeks I realized more and more how perfect a job like that might be. Teaching means that I will be working with people throughout my day, and it gives me a chance to put my chemistry degree to good use. On top of that, it is a career path that would satisfy my deep-seated desire to influence the world around me. Looking back, the one thing missing from a career in sales is this ability not to just make people happy, but to really improve their lives.

As I am drawing closer to the end of my first year of teaching English in Korea, I can say that I have truly enjoyed this career path. I can see that there are many areas that I need to develop in order to become the best teacher I can be, but I see it as a welcome challenge. This being my first year, and as a foreigner, my impact on the lives of my current students feels extremely limited. I'm looking forward to the day when, after I have developed as a teacher, I will be able to guide my students to make positive changes in their lives.