나 원하는 것이 너무 많다.

un sospiro

ちょっと大変だよ。だけど、私は仕事をするのがきらいだからやぶけるね。

にっき

これから私は日本語のあたらしい文法をれんしゅしたいのでここに日本語で書こうと思っている。時々ここで書いたら私の日本語がよくなると思う。よくなるならがんばらなければならないね。だらか、がんばる！日本語が分かる人がいるの。手伝ってくれない。じゃあまた

Love. Love on.

Expectations

We pretend our lives are good. During our "blessed" times, when all is going well, we think in our heads that we are so close to God, and that we are serving and following him so faithfully. When our faith wavers, and our strength fails us, we curse ourselves for being so unfaithful to him. So we hide it. If we're following God faithfully, then we should always be joyful to him right? And when we are weak in our faith because we're so busy, and when we start to turn our eyes from God, we tell others that we need prayer, and that we need to meditate in the word more, and that if we become closer to God, then things will amend. Our deepest struggle is that we are unable to share the gospel effectively to our friends and roommates, and that we feel judged by other people for being a Christian.

So we go to prayer meeting and share. We receive prayer.

We talk to a brother, or sister, and they give advice and prayer.

But all we share is what we're expected to share. We rarely share what we really feel, and when we do, we package it into the most candy coated shell, so that it seems that a little prayer and focus will help us. But we are desparate people, DESPARATE. Even as Christians, we are still WRETCHED, SINFUL, DEPRAVED, and only through God can we be made well. We have to latch on to God with everything we have, with every bit of power in us.

We don't want people to think that we aren't in control, so we don't let them know. We don't tell people that we have zero desire to seek God. We don't tell people that our sexual lust consumes every second of our thought. People don't know how much we hurt. All we tell them is that we have thorns in our side, when we actually have gaping wounds, death creeping closer to our heart.

But we're expected to be a certain way, and even to suffer a certain way, so we expect the same from others.

And when we pray, we pray, not because we care about them, but because it's what you're supposed to do to help people feel better. Because we've learned that "prayer is power," and prayer will magically heal hurts, and that God will just fill our hearts with good feelings and burning desire to seek him. And when they share, we don't probe further to see if there is more hurt beyond the surface pain, because it's too awkward to see more pain than we're supposed to have.

Is your future worth more than your suffering brother? Is a steady job more important than your struggling sister? Are you aware that the person next to you is hurting deeply? Or are you satisfied with their confession of a lack of dedication in reading the word?

Change

I have a xanga. It's II_Pakman_II. It' s a relic from a younger time when I was still foolish and lost, but thinking that I had everything all figured out. I sometimes wonder why I don't just keep writing in my xanga. I probably joined blogger because of the whole blog fad revival, but I think that my xanga just shows so much of my immaturity and my very man-centered view of Christianity. It also reminds me of how I used to blog about Jesus just so that I could seem more Holy than I was. Too bad I wrote utter CRAP... and people agreed with me. I hope God has since done damage control. I feel terrible for trying to be all godly and ending up potentially leading other people astray. I'm hoping that the separation of blogs is kind of a symbol of the separation of my old life from my new life in God, with a greater, but definitely not complete, understanding of his message of grace and salvation. I'm glad to leave behind that old self, trying my best to appear humble yet still being so self seeking. I'm reminded of the proverb that says something to the effect of "As a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool returns to his folly." Only a fool would ever want to go back to the life he had before, without God.

I don't really ever know how to end posts, so I'll just stop writing

Closeness

I'm feeing a little empty. I like having the physical closeness of a brother or sister, and being able to share things with them. Sometimes I lose the conversation, just because I can't guide the conversation well. Sometimes I don't know how to initiate. I wish living in the world didn't make us so busy.

Faith in Faith

I've realized that I have very little faith in other people's faiths. If they are in high school, if they attend the churches that I've used to attend, If they have not been on KCM missions...etc...I often have the view that they do not really understand the gospel. I don't want to judge them for what I perceive as their lack of faith, but I hope to encourage them to seek Him with real desire to know and to meet him.

Loving Life

I am more confident. I enjoy life more. I LOVE KCM, I LOVE USC. I feel as though I can do so much more with my life, and with all the blessings God has given me. I hope though, that this is not just because of the people I have developed relationships with (although the friendships I have made here are just AMAZING), but I hope that my new found strength and passion to live to the fullest is from God. "For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline." 2 Timothy 1:7 (Props to Linda Mun for showing me this verse when I really needed it sophomore year). =]. God is amazing. Have you spent time in the word today?

Amazing how I have to be taught the same lessons over and over... cept in different ways. I guess it's all because of my pride that I think I've reached a certain point, and so I don't need to worry so much about keeping up with QTs or maintaining my relationship with God so strongly. But even so, I'm glad that I still find immense Joy when I am able to put aside my laziness and distractions and spend some quality time in the Word and in Prayer.

Lifeless

It's the strangest feeling to see a body that once had life to lie there with no breath. You begin to realize what a mystery life is, how when the cells of the body can no longer function the way they should, the person is just gone. The body is there, but that's not who they were. The person you loved, whom you think of fondly whom you were afraid of, whom you had grown distant from, whoever you remember, was in the life they had, not in their body.

It's amazing how from the moment of birth we breathe the very breath of God that he breathed into Adam. As long as we live, we hold this piece of God within us, and when it's gone, our life is Gone... Another testament to our desparate need for God.

Ordained Evil

[Edit] Man, in no way did I capture the spirit of the message. I'm just so bad at reorganizing and communicating thoughts. =[

I was trying to finish up the rest of the resolved messages today, the only problem being I don't remember which sermons I listened to. But anyway, seeing as how I forget everything as soon as I stop hearing about them, I decided to finally blog some thoughts, because I've got time and I finished a midterm today =]. So I was listening to John Piper's "How Sin serves the Glory of Christ" (go to resolved.org if you want to dl the sermons) and it was more about God's sovereignty over all things, in this case over the sins that we commit. So, remember when Joseph gets sold to Egypt by his brothers, and like 20 years later or something his brothers come back to buy grain. Joseph, second in command of all of Egypt, had all the power to imprison them for life, or anything...exact revenge...whatever. But he says that while they meant it for evil, God meant it for GOOD.

Now, that just seems so crazy, that God could use even someone's sins to do a GREAT work, even a GOOD work. I feel like when I sometimes read the Bible, I read it like a story, especially the history parts, and the gospels. When I read the part where Solomon begins to turn away from God because of his wives, I just want to yell at him, "HEY FOOL! CUT IT OUT!" And then when I read through the crucifixion, I imagine that if only I had a time machine, I would go back and stop that from happening. Is it sinful to think that? Because what I've done is forget all about the fact that God is Sovereign over ALL things, and then will the cruicifixion not to happen. The Bible is filled with flawed people, messed up things, because People are MESSed up. Ever since the fall, we've all been flawed, every one of us, but the one person who is perfect is GOD. Even before Adam's fall God had perfectly planned out the crucifixion on Calvary, and through all of man's sins, he was able to set up the only way possible for us to escape the grasp of Sin and Death. God did not simply use the evils that we committed for his Good, but he had meant the WHOLE time for all of it to happen.

So I realized, this calls for me to look at life and the word with new eyes. I'm going through Ezekiel and I've been going through the prophets, and reading about all the sins of Israel and Judah and God's plan of judgement and salvation upon them. It's a little depressing reading all about impending doom and destruction coming upon a wicked people. BUT, now I need to see that even with all their wickedness, God intended to use it to show his power, grace, sovereignty, and judgment all along. Isn't it crazy? Judas committed the most heinous of crimes by betraying the SON of GOD, and yet, God meant to use that so that he could make his love and grace manifest through Jesus' sacrifice for the whole world! And so? Even though the world is filled with evil, and we experience so much of it, we shouldn't ever despair, but instead, Give thanks in ALL circumstances, and be joyful ALWAYS, like it says in 1 Thess 5:16-18, because we know that He is sovereign, that His plan is Perfect, and there is nothing that goes on without the approval of his Good will.

8 Grievances against Macs

So I've come to use CSULB's iMacs every time I come to the computer lab. And I know that actually having your own macbook or whatever is different, but these computers make me want to never own a Mac in my life. Of course, this may be because these are not actually my computers (not to mention retarded restrictions because it's a school comp), and I am a little biased, being a Windows user, but there are little navigation problems/hotkey issues I've noticed that just bug the heck out of me. Let's start with the more minor ones first, shall we?

1. Buttons. Why do they have to be on the left? They're supposed to be on the right!
2. The taskbar has to be on the top of the screen? it makes more sense just to put it on the window itself
3. The stupid CSULB mice keep zooming out the screen on me because I keep clicking the side buttons. Also, these mice can't scroll because they're broken. BOO

4. I just like the way Windows looks better. It's glassy and pretty! But Mac does look smooth and uniform, and every window has the same Mac feel to it.

Ok so these are just issues with me getting used to the system, and problems with the school's sucky computers. But the next ones actually cause me problems.

5. KEYS! Ok, so I've done this at least 5 times writing this blog. I keep pressing command delete to delete a word, because on Windows ctrl delete does that, and I've figured out that command pretty much = ctrl. But NO! Command delete deletes my whole line, and makes me write everything all over again. They don't even make this uniform on the Mac Word (probably because it's made by Microsoft (I just did it again)) which makes me even more confused. And then control has no apparent function to me. Why is it there? It's useless! It doesn't do any of the things that it does on Windows. And why are there three function buttons anyway? I thought Macs were all about simplicity.

6. Why does double clicking on the top of the window minimize it? Not only that, why can't you maximize to the whole screen? I want the window to fill the screen, but then it just extends it to the bottom, and then the dock is there so it doesn't even do that properly. Windows 7 deals with this so much better. It does both! But here you have to drag the partially maximized window over to the side, and maximize it manually (is this just because it's the school mac?) which brings me to my next point

7. Ok so the thing that REALLY bugs me is that you can't resize the window anywhere but on (I deleted it again!) the lower right hand corner. It's SO inconvenient! Let's say I want to make a window smaller, but i want to make it smaller to make room on its left. Well let's say the corner is slightly off screen. That means I have to move it into view, resize it, and then move it to the place I want, when normally I can just resize the left corner.

8. Also, home/end/page up/page down are just for viewing purposes? They don't move the cursor while typing on the internet?

All in all, Mac's are nice to use. They look nice, have cool animations for minimizing windows. But I think I like them as a novelty. I'll keep using them at school, because I don't own one, but as long as the OS stays the way it is, I don't think I'm ever going to own a Mac myself.

I want to actually make an update soon, instead of posting these facebook-like one liners. Curse my unproductiveness.

A Prayer, short and simple

O Lord, please let me see what sin really is. I've seen the evil it can do, and where it leads, but what does it look like to You?

This week...

God has punished my vanity.

Score = 20

I'm almost 20 =] No more teens, no more naivety. Time to start taking responsibility of my life and to leave childish ways behind me.

A quarter (hopefully) of my life is gone now, what will the next season of life hold?

A bit...

...tired...

...disappointed in myself...

...lonely...

...in need of God...

...in need of Love...

...hungry...

Wanting a bit more out of life.

Perfection

I notice that I don't do certain things because I want them to be done right.  Like, for instance, happy birthdays.  I don't usually facebook happy birthday because I think that it seems insincere, the easy way out.  I would rather call them, or say happy birthday in person.  But then I forget that I usually won't see them, and when I actually do see them, 2/3 times I just forget that it's their birthday.  And I forget that I feel happier when I get birthday wishes on my birthday.  

I suffer very strongly from this false perfectionism.  Because I want things to be done in the best way possible, and when i find myself unable to do that best, I give up completely.  

Maybe if I invested a little more time into the little things in life... A happier smile here, a bigger welcome there... someone might be blessed a little more.  And maybe they can bless another person more too. 

Faith

信

This is the character for all the words related to faith.  In Japanese, it's incorporated into the words: faith, belief, to believe, etc.  It's made up of two parts.  To the left, is the radical for person, 人.  To the right, the radical for speak, 言.  

Faith, a man who speaks.  Because what good is faith when you just keep it in, all to yourself?  Faith is not real until it is lived out and shared.  We all know the passage that says "In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead." (James 2:17).  However, there is another passage in Philemon that says "I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith, so that you will have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ." (Philemon 6).  Not only does faith manifest itself in our actions, it is also good for us to gain a better understanding of what God has really done for us.  As we share, it becomes more real to us, and we begin to truly understand the awesome things God does in our lives.  We stop sharing, we stop remembering, and we begin to lose sight on the goodness of God.  

Talk.  Speak.  Man was meant to converse.  So whether with nonbelievers, or with fellow brothers and sisters, talk about God, and what he is doing.  

Japanese Project Test

先週の週末にソフトボール・トーナメントがありました。このトーナメントは毎年KCMをするトーナメントです。KCMはかんこくのクリスチャンのグループで、いつも一年に二度スポーツトーナメントをします。去年に私たちがかちました（Won）。トーナメントに大学がたくさん出ました。大学生はUSCとUCLAとUCSDとUCIとUCRから来ました。このトーナメントは八時から四時まででしたが、はじめからおわりまでたのしかったです。USC はチームが二つありました。USC AとUSC Bといいました。私はこのUSC Bチームにいました。

これはBちーむです。 

わたしたちはあまりつよくなかったです。UCIのチームが私たちにかちました。でも、プレーオフで

私たちはUCIにかちました。そのあとで、とてもうれしかったです。UCIにかつからじゅんけっしょう（Semifinals）に行けました。USC A もじゅんけっしょうに行きました。でも、USC AとUSC Bがまけました。私たちのUSC BはUCLA Bに２０たい０でまけました。とてもはずかしい（Embarassing）ですね。でも、だいじょうぶでした。でも、USC Aのじゅんけっしょう

のゲームはWorld Baseball Classicのけっしょうのようでした。USC Aはアウットが一ついりましたが、UCSD A のせんしゅはまんるいホームランをしました。ざんねんでしたね。でも、かたなかったですけど、たのしかったです。

この人は私じゃないですけど、私の名前がありますね。パクはたくさんある名前じゃないんですけど、トーナメントにパクさんがたくさにましたよ。

そして、これはUSCのKCMです。

Friends

I always have that wish, that all my friends could somehow meet each other, and become friends themselves.  I wish KCM friends could meet church friends, that STSM friends could meet USC friends, etc.  But I realized, for all of us who have accepted God's gift of love, we're going to have an eternity to spend with each other.  And then, in our glorified bodies, without awkwardness, we can really have true fellowship.  We'll have eternity to get to know each other, and to really love each other as we were meant to.  I can't wait for that.

Easter

God is Risen =]

The Gospel Message is amazing.

It's been a month...

...I feel like this is a trend, with my blogs, with my journal.  Everytime I attempt to log my life, I end up recording about once a month.  

Which is better than never, I guess.  I realized that I haven't had one of those crazy bible reading moments in a while... the kind where you read a verse, and all of a sudden all of life's questions are answered.  Maybe it's because I don't seek it?  DT reading is awesome, and it keeps me accountable, but I realized that I'm depending on the schedule to find God in the word, instead of seeking him through the words.  

It's funny what people write in blogs.   They expect Nobody to read them, yet they expect Everyone to read them.  It's uncomfortable for a person to be reading over our shoulders as we type, yet we expose [some of] our secrets for the whole world to see.  I wish, the things that I would write in a blog, I could easily share with another person.  But blogging too much gets you used to monologuing; you forget the intricacies and profundity of a dialogue.  

It's interesting, isn't it, that we rate the conversations that we have, not based on the content of what we say, but on how we feel.  We seek intellectual, emotional, spiritual, etc etc  stimulation from the words we say and hear.  Maybe, if we seek, not the stimulation, but the words themselves, if we could truly listen to what a person has to say, then we could learn a lot more, and care a lot more.  Which actually brings me full circle, without me knowing it... hahah crazy!

Do I seek stimulation when I read the Bible?  Or do I seek GOD?

Do you care for the fun people, or do you love them?

Do You love emotion, or do You love GOD?

And so, there goes another, self-thought based blog.  Recalling verses has been hard to do lately, being out of touch with the bible.  I guess it's now time to get my sword, sharpen it, polish it, equip it...

CHR[l.o.v.e]IST - my new signature.  Don't just read it, think about it.  We love, but not by ourselves.  We love because Christ first loved us, and in his love we are able to love.  

Be in Christ!

-Joseph S Pak

There is thankfulness...

...And then there's clinginess.  I can be grateful for the lovely weather in Southern California, for the calm, safe, quiet atmosphere of the suburbs of Laguna, etc etc.  But if I'm not willing to let it go, it's an idol to me.  I should learn to love the things I have, but remember that keeping the good things in life is not all that important.  If God calls me away from everything I know and like, then so be it.  I should be willing to listen.  

Silver

It tarnishes.  I opened my drawer, and I realized that I had amassed quite a number of collectable spoons in the years that I had been collecting them.  I unfortunately had not found any in India =[ but, I still had a lot.  Buttt..... looking at all the silver plated ones, I saw that they were all black and yellow and blue!  =[ Stupid 7th grade me for forgetting that silver will eventually tarnish.  Even though I didn't notice it then, I for sure see it now...

gotta clean them up now

Caring is Sharing

...in each other's burdens and trials, etc etc.  I realize that I don't really care for people as much as I want to.  I've noticed it in the way I interact with people, and with the information that I remember about people.  I'm self seeking in all my relationships, wanting to have fun relationships, and making sure I meet the cool, fun, good looking people.  =[  I do it to make up for the lack of self confidence in myself.  I look down on others who I think are less than me because I feel like I'm worth it.  

Love is... 1 Corinthians 13.  That's where it's all at.  That's what love should be... and I'm nowhere near that.  I want to really love other people, and be excited for their presence.  I distance myself way to easily, but I just need to open myself up I guess.  

To care and to love, that's what I need to pray for.  

Time

It's so precious, and wasted so easily.  

I had forgotten what I was really going to say...