I had originally prepared this for a Weds night sharing back in January, but thought it's a good way to start off the blog for this year! May all the glory, honour, and praise be onto God's holy name.
________________________________________________________________
Reflecting over the College Youth Spiritual Convocation (CYSC) I attended this year… it wasn't until I experienced it myself that I realized truly
how great of a blessing from God it was for me to attend this seminar. If I
could use one word to describe my CYSC experience, it would be abundance. So tonight, I hope to share
this abundance with everyone, and pray that God can open our hearts and let us feel
His presence here with us.
May I ask everyone to recall a point in
time that you felt closest to God? It
may have been when you first believed/baptized, or it may be the moment you
received the promised Holy Spirit. Or think back to the darkest and most
desperate times in your life – where God touched you and brought you peace and
comfort through that one memorable prayer. The times that you felt God right
there – that he was so close you can almost touch Him. That he was there in the
rustling leaves from the gentle breeze, that He was in the broad blue skies, in
the warm rays of sunlight, and in everything that surrounded you.
I ask this, because a sister had said to me
one night: “Annica, can we please pray together? I miss God.” And I thought…
you know, there are so many things in the world that occupy us, when the things
of the world seem so wonderful to us that we feel like we can’t live without
them - why would we miss God? But
once in a while, very rarely, when the glories of the world wear off for a
little bit and our hearts and minds quiet down - I don’t know if you ever feel
this way, that you miss God.
This was the closeness to God that I sought
coming into CYSC. I missed Him. It wasn’t that God wasn’t there for me, or that I didn’t pray every day. But even
during my daily worship and weekly services, I focused too much on me and on my
own life, and that hindered me from truly setting my mind on God and feeling God.
(Col 3:2)
What I mean is, sometimes prayer is a very
automatic or mindless thing that we do. We kneel down and pray in tongue, as
our minds wander to and fro from things that happened in our lives, or things
that will take place in the future. We pray for God to guide us. We pray for
strength to face dilemmas. We pray for blessings or for the things we need. We
ask for a lot, and indeed God gives to us. But too few times do we pause to
think or care about how God feels. That
yes, God feels. That yes, He is a living and jealous God; that because of His
intense love for us, His great jealousy is invoked every time we pick something
of the world, over Him.
Too few times do we try to see things from
God’s perspective. What does being a man who seeks after God’s own heart mean
to us? (Ex. David, Acts 13:22). To seek after God’s own heart means that you
care enough about God to WANT to understand what He is thinking/feeling. If we
love or value someone, would we not want to know what they think? Seeking after
God’s own heart not only means understanding God’s will and sharing His
perspective – but that we actually hold it as IMPORTANT to us what God’s heart
is. And if it’s so important to us that we hold it closely to our hearts – then
naturally we will integrate it into our prayers and actions. We do what He
wills.
Yet prayers feel long, because our prayers
are too one-sided or overly focused on our physical lives. (Having a 30 minute
conversation with yourself gets boring.) Prayers feel long, because we don’t
give God time, to listen to Him or to think about how He feels/views the
situation on hand. Prayers feel long, because we do not know EXACTLY what to
pray for or why we are praying, outside of the reason that we are told we
should pray and ask God to help when we need something. That also explains why
we are so much more diligent in prayer when there is a “need” or a sense of
urgency.
But prayer is alive. Prayer is both a
communication and cleansing process. Prayer is moved by the Holy Spirit. Like
Living Water, it is replenished and renewed every day. A prayer that’s filled
with life and power is not equal to repeating the same sentence over and over
again.
This CYSC, for me, was a testament to the
renewing and cleansing effects of prayer – and how God abided with me and
manifested His powers.
As I mentioned earlier, for quite a while I
was missing that zeal and power and direct connection to God. Sure, after ESSCs
or moving sermons, my heart would be inspired or warmed up a bit, but that
fades pretty quickly. On the 2nd day of CYSC, it was through the
classes and hymn 502 that we sang, that God helped me to realize what I
needed to pray for. “Lord to my heart bring back the spring time, take away the
cold and dark of sin…. O refill me now sweet Holy Spirit, may I warm and tender
be again.”
Time after time God moved and warmed my
heart from the outside, but my heart was cold & dark at the core. Unless I
cleanse the core of my heart, I would still return to my cold/indifferent state
after I returned back to life, because the world itself is dark. But if my
heart was filled with God’s warmth, tenderness, and the Holy Spirit – I would
emit goodness and generate good fruits while surviving in this cold world. And that through this process of spiritual
recovery, I dropped everything else that I was praying for (ex. cares of life)
like how Elijah ran away from everything and hid in the wilderness – to focus
solely on bringing back the spring time in my heart.
Through the rest of the CYSC prayers, God
helped me realize new things about our relationship every day, and so gave me a
new direction/focus that I should pray for each day. It began with seeing my
sins. Like a blood vessel connecting my heart to God’s, sins like selfishness,
pride, laziness hung like plaque against the artery walls, obstructing my
relationship with God. I realized how weak I was in willpower to actually do
God’s words, and that in order for me to be renewed and healed spiritually; I
had to repent and be determined to
remove these sins. So I prayed for that.
The next day, God showed His love for me.
There was this prayer session, where I just looked back in my entire life. From
when I had to be hospitalized at 2 weeks old, to my earliest childhood
memories, to attending church and elementary school in China, to immigrating to
Vancouver and meeting with challenges, to high school and my growth/discovery
of the world during university years. And I saw. He was there, every single
moment. And I heard, and took to heart the last verse in the book of Matthew: “I
am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen.”
Passing through the 4th and 5th
days, God encouraged me to deny myself and to make sacrifices (ex. of my own
comfort/pleasures) for Him. That’s actually my new year’s resolution for 2015,
to make more sacrifices for God, and to love Him more, whether it’s financially
or to obey and put His words into practice when it’s inconvenient or out of my
way. I wanted to lower myself, and to exalt God. Because God let me see - to my
shame and shock - how much I had received from Him, and how little I’d given
back to Him in our relationship.
The verse I left with and now cherish
deeply is 1 Thess 4:1 “Finally then, brethren, we urge and exhort in the Lord
Jesus that you should abound more and
more, just as you received from us how you ought to walk and to please
God;” One sister in my sharing group had stated:
“The enjoyment of this world isn’t going to grow any LESS sweet, that’s why we
need to let our enjoyment of God increase.” We may be comfortable with the
condition of our faith right now, but God wants us to abound more and more. Abound
more in love for Him. Abound more in love for others. Abound more in faith. In
spiritual knowledge. In wisdom. In strength. In power. In zeal. In obedience.
In submission. In humility. And most of all, in prayer.
There is so much more that I received from
this CYSC through prayer, and I thank God profusely for all that He has given
me. My soul was filled and satisfied because God uplifted me. That I felt God
right there – that he was so close that not only could I touch Him, but I was
IN him because He had descended upon me like a cloud. I felt that he was there
in the rustling leaves from the gentle breeze, that He was in the broad blue
skies, in the warm rays of sunlight, and in every single molecule that
surrounded me.
May God guide our prayers, may we truly become seekers of His heart, and may we always strive to abound more.
