Choices

In every situation we are given always two choices:

do or don’t 
stay or go
wait or act
forgive or blame
fight or surrender

In these choices, there is no right or wrong as we all face different situations under different circumstances.  However, there is in each a choice that leads us closer to heaven.

There will be times we made a choice and find ourselves wishing we had chosen the other one.  Do not lose heart and know that after a choice was made, we are offered another set of choices. Life, after all, is a series of choices and the thing to do is learn to forgive yourself when you made a wrong one, to bounce back up and continue on hoping and praying and to never give up.

Prayer

Father, let me be the girl who trusts you so much that no matter how I feel and what my circumstances are I know You are there. Let my faith be steadfast and grounded in Your Love. Help me and strengthen me for I am too weak and always remind me to focus on You lest I speak and hurt others in my weakness. 

Help me to hold my tongue and help me to conquer my insecurities with Your love. I am unworthy yet You love me. May I conquer with Your love and stop the devil’s attack with Your truth – that I am forgiven, loved and important in Your eyes. 

October 19, 2018. Needed this then, need this now. Need this all the time.

Morning Thoughts on the 1st of April

 

This Lent has been about crucifying and crucifying – my affections, my weaknesses, offering them to God. I wasn’t always there, doing it right, yet God is patient and is keeping me.

On the drive, what I thought was people leaving me and people making life hard for me was simply my wanting to please people and my affection making things hard for me and that God do really keep people away from me not because they’re not good or that I wasn’t good but simply because God wants me to learn what it means that HE IS ENOUGH, and to understand how relationship works, that I do not need people to like me or talk to me to validate who I am or my worth because my worth is found in Him alone – something that I know yet fails to live by. 

When I live in this worth, of being found in Christ, there is peace and joy. Admittedly at times I still falter and wish for affirmation, validation, confirmation from other people – habits are hard to break. Yet I pray that slowly God will help me overcome all these affection that I may love fully and find love also in full. 

Amazing Grace

The overwhelming love of God for an unworthy being – me.  He initiated the love, and in response, what have I done?  I run towards it, and then shrink away from it with my sins.  I plunge into its amazingness and then withdraw and drown in my own misery.  It’s like that scene in Tangled where Rapunzel was finally out of the tower and she was celebrating her freedom one moment then feeling bad another moment.   Yet for me it’s celebrating how God has freed me and then going back to sinning then feeling bad for sinning.  And all the time, God looks at me with love and mercy, waiting for me to realise what I’ve been doing and return to Him.  That immeasurable patience God has for me, I have no words.

If only letting go and letting God is easily done as it is being said (in a span of few seconds).  Experience has taught me, and most would agree, that it is not the case.  I happened to read on this verse from Romans 3:23-25 last night and dived into the grace of God.  I knew that grace is God’s gift – God’s mercy, my salvation and the promise of eternal life.  Amazing, amazing grace.  However, last night led me deeper into what grace is and I encountered these words telling me to guard this grace, to use it wisely and make it increase.  How?

Advent 2018

A season of coming.  Expectation.  Longing.  Waiting.  A call to be vigilant and awake, to wake up from slumber and to be on the watch.  And yet the weather just makes you want to cuddle up with someone or with your blanket and take a nice warm sleep.

God is not asking us not to take our naps or sleep physically, obviously.  He created sleep for our bodies to recharge and regenerate.  To stay awake and not to slumber is a call for our hearts to be on the watch and more vigilant than in any other season because God is coming and He will surely come in a time we never expect.  Just so happen, advent is also a season of busy-ness, holiday rush, deadlines at work, ending the fiscal year, decorating homes, attending gatherings and dinners, holiday shopping – there are just too many things to do that our Lord is asking us to guard our hearts, our thoughts and our bodies lest all these to-do take over the yearning of our soul – the longing of the soul to see and recognize our Saviour.  That, for me, is to stay awake, to be vigilant, to be extra watchful.

I struggle in this season – concerns flood my mind and things happening around me affects me easily.    While the Christmas cheer rings around me, my heart moves along a roller-coaster that seems to drop farther than it lifts.  Outside it seems well, inside it’s a battle.  I grapple to hold on to something, anything, to keep my head above the water, to come to terms with events in my life, to understand the unknown (which is insane, I know) and to stay awake and keep watch for the Lord’s coming.

If there is one thing I am grateful to God, it is that He created me with a stubborn heart, very stubborn!  Some may think that is not a positive thing, but in this moment, it is for my good – that I refuse to let evil take over me, that I refuse to accept the lies of the devil in my life – to just drop everything and not fight because it’s futile, lies!  So I fight by surrendering and dying, in silence I fight and hope in the midst of confusion, in this waiting.  All these things I have no strength to do by myself, so I do the only thing I can and am asked to do – PRAY.  Even when at times I don’t understand my prayers anymore or the text I’m reading or what I am even telling God or that I need to rush because I’m running late for work.  In His faithfulness, He keeps me here in the waiting.  In my tears, He listens.  With every breaking of my heart, He picks up the pieces.

Advent is a season of expectation for His coming and this year I see that the Lord also looks at me and waits for me to approach Him in humility and surrender, and meets me in this very situation to walk with me.

The Cross & The Empty Tomb

We speak about the cross, about carrying our crosses, about laying down our worries at the feet of the cross.  The cross – the symbol of His infinite and unfailing love.

I stand beneath Your cross and I look up, I see Love, my sins, my unworthiness, and my redemption.  And then I look at the empty tomb – Love fulfilled.  The tomb of my sins washed clean.  The tomb of my failures, gone.  Your resurrection is my Hope fulfilled.

The cross, Your Love.  The empty tomb, Your victory.
The cross, my salvation.  The empty tomb, my Hope.
The cross, a reminder of the life in this world.  The empty tomb, a reminder of heaven.

Beneath Your feet my tears fall, outside your empty tomb my heart rejoices.  Lord Jesus, my God, unworthy as I am, Your Love overtakes me.  There is nothing more than I want than to rejoice in Your victory.

Help me.

1144 06.18.2018

How often I’ve wandered
And returned when I am wounded.
With arms wide open,
You wait and mend and heal me.

How often have I leapt
Only to fall and hurt myself –
And watched as my broken pieces
Are picked up by the hands that bled for me.

djane
05.15.2018

Spread the love! ♥

I will live through all the wrongs with Your Truth.
I will trust through all the wait with Your Word.
I will see through all the pain with Your Love.

•djane•
03.08.2018

Alone

Previously I have called Lent the “white space”, the “white noise” of God, the period where winter turns to spring and it becomes cold and eerily quiet, it’s beautiful yet eerie.  This time, the battle rages on but our God is ever faithful.

I have been struggling internally with all the emotions and delusions I have – of the deceit and lies the devil feeds my mind.  I am unwanted, I am alone, I am made to be alone in this world, I will not find love, I will forever be left behind – name the lies, the enemy has it.  Yet, God, in His loving mercy and almightiness knew beforehand what will happen and has sent forth the weapons and help for me.  Well, He could have just stopped it but He didn’t, like with Job’s story.  And as for me, I could let the enemy fill me with lies and not use the weapons God has been providing me.

Yet here we are, here I am.  Faced with all these lies and deceit, God has been feeding me with my dose of Daily Bread, with His Word of Truth and Mercy.  It’s not easy, it sounds 

Prayer

Never under estimate the power of a prayer.  At times, we need to look outside of ourselves to see how God works His wonders.  We tend to concentrate too much on our needs (humanly speaking) without realising the spiritual need that God is fulfilling in each of us every moment.  We tend to think that our prayers, to be fulfilled, has to be met in our conditions, yet God’s thoughts is not ours to fathom.  And in His great mercy, He doesn’t meet our conditions but always provide us our specific needs.

–

To be used by God to help others is not a cause for us to boast but it is humbling and unworthy of us to play a part in salvation’s history and what a grace that He finds us to do His will.

Even if we disregard the prompting of the Spirit, the other’s prayer will be answered in His ways beyond what we can imagine. Yet to be able to follow the prompting of the Spirit is not by our own strength but that which the grace that God gives us, the heart that He molds and moves.

All prayers are effective as God hears them and He moves heaven and earth to fulfil His will.

02.10.2018 00:09

 

Pray for the Books You Read

When I need some distraction from thoughts I cannot run away from; when I want a companion who doesn’t judge and just let me listen because at times I have no words left to say; when I want perspectives and life-lessons given me without even the hint of trying hard and or justification – I pick up a book and read.  And I am always amazed at the things I get out of it.  The things speaking right at me, telling me what I need to hear.  That when I put down one, I have the sense of a renewed mind and spirit.

The books we read, that we pick up, matter.  And it is as important to pray for those that we read as praying for other necessities in life.  Because what we read affects us, influences us, changes us.  May God lead us to more literature that will help us become better and not bitter, at peace and not tempted, joyful and not depressed, informed and not deluded.

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

Philippians 4:8

Living on a Prayer

So you should pray like this:
“Our Father in heaven,
may your name be held holy,
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread,
And forgive us our debts,
as we have forgiven those who are in debts to us.
And do not put us to the test,
but save us from the evil one.”

– Matthew 6:9-13

And this is how we ought to pray.  Not by memorizing the Lord’s prayer but by truly understanding what it meant.

To declare His glory and to make known His love; to submit to His will; to ask not only for the daily provisions of life but for the bread of life as well – the Word of God, the presence of Jesus in our lives; to forgive others and acknowledge that we are sinners and humbly lay down our sins at the feet of the cross; to pray for strength for we know that our flesh is weak; to acknowledge our salvation.

When we find it in our hearts struggling to submit to His will, or to forgive – let us pray for these struggles because we are weak and He is strong.  Let us not depend on our strength but rely on His.  And in times we do not know what to pray, or when we even cannot utter a single word to pray, a tear drop is a prayer that the Lord fully comprehend.  A deep sigh from a tired soul, a silence, a sob from a broken heart – all these and more the Lord sees and hears as our prayers.

The Spirit too comes to help us in our weakness.  For when we cannot choose words in order to pray properly, the Spirit himself expresses our plea in a way that could never be put into words, and God who knows everything in our heart knows perfectly well what he means, and that the pleas of the saints expressed by the Spirit are according to the mind of God.

– Romans 8:26-27

Pray, and listen.  The Lord delights in speaking to us when we pray.

I See

In praising I see
Beauty beyond compare
In thanking I see
Joy enough to share
In praying I see
Calm so resolute
In loving I see
Power that’s absolute

© djklmnopi 12.09.14 13:04

Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread

How often have we knelt down and prayed for God to give us this and that, to grant us our desires and wishes?  And how often have we judged God’s faithfulness base on whether He has given in to our desires and wishes?  Do we ever realize that most of our prayers, if not all, revolve around asking God to do things for us and grant our wishes, like He is some genie under our command?  It is good to realize that, and it is good to stop ourselves whenever we realize we are doing that.  Praying with our flesh will lead us to pray for things to satisfy the flesh, but praying with the Spirit will lead us to converse and communicate with God and to pray for things that God desires for us.

Today, there is a prayer/sayings of Agur from the book of Proverbs that moved me.

“Two things I ask of you, Lord; do not refuse me before I die: Keep falsehood and lies far from me; give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread. Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you and say, ‘Who is the Lord?’ Or I may become poor and steal, and so dishonor the name of my God. ~ Proverbs 30:5-8

To ask God for what is needed for the day, enough for the day.  More than that, I am moved by his awareness of his human nature – the frailty of our nature because of carnal desires.  To have enough – no more, no less.  Let us pray for our daily bread, DAILY – enough comfort, enough trials.  And be led by the Spirit to ask God for His will, to work His will in to our hearts, to attain true peace and joy. (:

Do Not Be Anxious…

Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you. (‭Philippians‬ ‭4‬:‭6-9‬ NIV)

If You’re Sad, Tired and Lonely…

Born out of a conversation I had with a friend… A different version of the nursery rhyme “If You’re Happy and You know It”

If you’re sad, tired and lonely clasp your hands, and pray
If you’re sad, tired and lonely clasp your hands, and pray
If you’re sad, tired and lonely though your face may never show it, if you’re sad, tired and lonely clasp your hands, and pray
©djklmnopi

Don’t Stop

No one can have it all figured out. But it doesn’t mean you have to give up with life’s mysteries and stop your yearning to understand.

Realizing leads to understanding which leads to actions that are geared towards improving your situation. Don’t stop looking for answers, for the missing pieces in your life’s puzzle, they are all out there just waiting to be discovered.

The best place to start your search is in the stillness of your heart. In the quiet, ask, seek, and you shall find. In solitude emerges self-discoveries that are vital to self-improvement. With the hustle and bustle of our world, it is a struggle to find that moment of quiet. Take the time, find the place.

I still have a long way to go as I am one who is easily and constantly distracted. Discipline. If ever you question why we need to spend so many years in school studying different stuffs that most won’t be used by us in the future, it’s all about discipline and perseverance. And these are what I need to keep myself from being distracted with the unnecessary. That also made me realize, the decade of schooling wasn’t a waste of years after all. (:

Bottomline: Don’t stop… Searching, asking, looking, finding answers, believing, praying, trusting. Don’t stop. It may take a while, maybe longer, whatever circumstance, wherever you may be right now, don’t stop.