pre-YHM thoughts

Why am I doing Youth Hostel Ministry?

I know that there is good reason as to why the Lord placed me to serve 8 weeks in the city of Amsterdam. I don't want to go into this city with my preconceived thoughts and perceptions - i want the Lord to show me his heart for this city. I want the Lord to show me the facets of Amsterdam that he delights in as well as the ones in which his heart is broken over. As I pray for this city and as I share the Gospel with the traveling community, I want the Holy Spirit to lead me. I feel like God has been preparing me for this mission in so many ways. In the last six months, God has revealed to me deep-rooted sins in my own heart. In a nutshell, He has worked his ministry in my heart and taught me more about my brokenness and what his death on the cross means in my own life. I wrestled with internal sins/slavery, but I know that the forms of slavery I'll be seeing in Amsterdam will be more explicit. I have no basis for condemnation. God, you've been training me even while I've been home these past two weeks. You've been showing me how you detest pride. and yes, opportunities to serve are lost when i place myself above others. I ask that you would humble me. Holy Spirit, lead me as I share the Gospel with others. I want to be so in tune with you during the entirety of this ministry.

It's the eve before I head to Chicago and then to Europe. Here's my itinerary:
May 23 - Arrive in Chicago, USA
May 25 - Arrive in Amsterdam, Netherlands
May 27 - Bruges, Belgium
May 30 - Antwerp, Belgium
June 3 - Amsterdam, Netherlands
June 25 - Hurlach, Germany (Midsummer Retreat)
June 30 - Amsterdam, Netherlands
July 31 - Haarlem, Netherlands
Aug. 2 - Chicago, USA
Aug.2 - Los Angeles, California

Lord, i'm sorry that I don't show more of your love to my sister. whenever i'm with her, my heart feels remarkably sad and heavy. Oh, Lord, i see this orphan spirit in her as well. her spirit has lived alone far too long. draw her near to you. i only wish that she would know of the love that you have for her. i only wish that she would taste the living water that you offer her. God, what can i do but pray for her? i can offer her nothing else. you alone can meet her where she's at. i cry silent tears yet my heart rejoices with the knowledge that God's restoration is near.

even when the people around me have moved on, i will be persistent in pursuing them. and if this is too much, i will make it known to them that i am right here whenever they need me. even when i don't want to love them, i will continue to ask God to first change me and have his love for them overflow through me. God is patient, and He is slowly but surely working in me. I don't want to be the kind of person to withhold love or compassion from somebody simply because I don't feel a certain type of positive emotion. Jesus calls us to love one another - i wish i saw more of this unceasing type of love for others in myself. too often my love for others is wrapped up in self-gain and an ego-boost. shallow, right? my perception of love is skewed. but i don't despair because God has shown me, has shown us love that is true and pure. God desires for me to have agape love towards those I encounter.

in contrast to what i see in myself, i see something beautiful in You

Wonderful excerpt from Mere Christianity

To become new men means losing what we now call 'ourselves'. Out of our selves, into Christ, we must go. His will is to become ours and we are to think His thoughts, to 'have the mind of Christ' as the Bible says. And if Christ is one, and if He is thus to be 'in' us all, shall we not be exactly the same? It certainly sounds like it; but in fact it is not so.

It is difficult here to get a good illustration; because, of course, no other two things are related to each other just as the Creator is related to one of His creatures. But I will try two very imperfect illustrations which may give a hint of the truth. Imagine a lot of people who have always lived in the dark. You come and try to describe to them what light is like. You might tell them that if they come into the light that same light would fall on them all and they would all reflect it and thus become what we call visible. Is it not quite possible that they would imagine that, since they were all receiving the same light, and all reacting to it in the same way (i.e. all reflecting it), they would all look alike? Whereas you and I know that the light will in fact bring out, or show up, how different they are. Or again, suppose a person who knew nothing about salt. You give him a pinch to taste and he experiences a particular strong, sharp taste. You then tell him that in your country people use salt in all their cookery. Might he not reply 'In that case I suppose all your dishes taste exactly the same: because the taste of that stuff you have just given me is so strong that it will kill the taste of everything else.' But you and I know that the real effect of salt is exactly the opposite. So far from killing the taste of the egg and the tripe and the cabbage, it actually brings it out. They do not show their real taste till you have added the salt. (Of course, as I warned you, this is not really a very good illustration, because you can, after all, kill the other tastes by putting in too much salt, whereas you cannot kill the taste of a human personality by putting in too much Christ. I am doing the best I can.)

It is something like that with Christ and us. The more we get what we now call 'ourselves' out of the way and let Him take us over, the more truly ourselves we become. There is so much of Him that millions and millions of 'little Christs', all different, will still be too few to express Him fully. He made them all. He invented - as an author invents characters in a novel - all the different men that you and I were intended to be. In that sense our real selves are all waiting for us in Him. It is not good trying to 'be myself' without Him. The more I resist Him and try to live on my own, the more I become dominated by my own heredity and upbringing and surroundings and natural desires. In fact what I so proudly call 'myself' becomes merely the meeting place for trains of events which I never started and which I cannot stop. What I call 'My wishes' become merely the desires thrown up by my physical organism or pumped into me by other men's thoughts or even suggested to me by devils. Eggs and alcohol and a good night's sleep will be the real origins of what I flatter myself by regarding as my own highly personal and discriminating decision to make love to the girl opposite to me in the railway carriage. Propaganda will be the real origin of what I regard as my own personal political ideas. I am not, in my natural state, nearly so much of a person as I like to believe: most of what I call 'me' can be very easily explained. It is when I turn to Christ, when I give myself up to His Personality, that I first begin to have a real personality of my own.

At the beginning I said there were Personalities in God. I will go further now. There are no real personalities anywhere else. Until you have given up your self to Him you will not have a real self. Sameness is to be found most among the most 'natural' men, not among those who surrender to Christ. How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been: how gloriously different are the saints.

But there must be a real giving up of the self. You must throw it away 'blindly' so to speak. Christ will indeed give you a real personality: but you must not go to Him for the sake of that. As long as your own personality is what you are bothering about you are not going to Him at all. The very first step is to try to forget about the self altogether. Your real, new self (which is Christ's and also yours, and yours just because it is His) will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for Him. Does that sound strange? The same principle holds, you know, for more everyday matters. Even in social life, you will never make a good impression on other people until you stop thinking about what sort of impression you are making. Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it. The principle runs through all life from top to bottom. Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favorite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end: submit with every fiber of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rags, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in (Mere Christianity, 224-227).

i just want a heart that is fully in love

Burn your love upon my heart like a seal
That in the floods of persecution it's real
Set your love upon my heart like a seal
That in the floods of your presence it's real
God I cry out for fire - Come set your seal upon me

(Come and take Your place in the center of our hearts
We were made for You Jesus)

it's only been a couple of days since I've been home but Satan has been quick to start his spiritual attacks. I am home and am definitely in spiritual warfare right now. My first night I dreamt that I was by my mom's side. She wasn't well, and I started praying for her out loud in my dream. At that moment, I felt something physically being stuffed down my throat that made it so I couldn't pray. I woke up from my sleep and my hands went to my throat. I know that during my time here, Satan wants to silence me. I need to be filled with the Holy Spirit and cling unto the Word every single day. Truth is so skewed here. The Bible is truth and I need to make sure I am spending time in the Word everyday.

My heart weeps because the church here is sleeping. I saw this at my church yesterday. The congregation is spiritually sleeping. Even during my time here, I know how Satan will try to get me to be ineffective. While I'm here for the next two weeks, I need to make sure to stick to a couple of things, such as going to early morning prayer service every morning, reading the bible/spending time with God everyday, obeying my mom and saying 'yes' to everything that she asks me to do, to name a few. this is all necessary training before i leave for amsterdam. at the end of the day, i'm not sure what will have been harder: my time here in utah or the 10 weeks in amsterdam. i feel like satan has put a spell over this valley and that everyone slumbers away oblivious to their current state. it's frightening. Awake, church. awake, people of God. awake, awake, awake.

i can conclude that with the end of freshman year, i am no longer the same person. 

O taste and see that the Lord is good. 

God: Be still and know that I am God.
me: Okay God.

one of those days

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

my heart)i am never without it(anywhere

i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done

by only me is your doing,my darling)

i fear no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want

no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)

and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart) -e.e. cummings