Brothers =]

apppppps

Why is it so hard to write a personal statement?? I think I've been working on it for 2 months or so... but I think I've got it now. The pieces seem to be coming together =]

Influence

I want to be an influence to other people. Not only through my actions... I feel like I am a person who says little and does much. But there are times where words could make big impact. There are relationships I feel become wasted because of my lack of initiative in conversation.

God, give me the ability to speak your words and give me the strength and power to be your lips.

He is Risen!!

God is VICTORIOUS over our sins! Jesus has BEATEN death! There is nothing to fear in death, nothing to hope for in sin! Let us live knowing that death can do nothing to us, that human hands can only take away our bodies, that the SPIRIT OF GOD IS ALIVE WITHIN US. Seriously, how empowering is that? So let’s go heal the sick, raise the dead, preach the gospel, cause the world needs it =].

예수님, 주의 이름을 경배 드립니다.

神様、息子さんが私たちのために死んで下さったから感謝しています！

¡Alabanzas a Dios, quien mostró su poder en el amor que tenía por nosotros!

Nous sommes très joyeux pour la vie que nous avons en vous!

God will be praised on this day throughout the Earth!

(Corrections in grammar/spelling/word choice in any of the previous statements would be greatly appreciated =])

"Click to embiggen"

Our culture has embraced technology so much, even our language reflects it. We've adopted new words into our language that technically have no meaning, but because of the power of the internet, we are able to adapt new words, acronyms, slang into our speech that they become almost universally accepted. Think about how the leaders of tomorrow will be raised up on language like "lol," "wtf," "meme," "failblog," etc. Haha I wonder what kind of impact this will have.

Jumbled thoughts

It's funny how just writing what we think becomes a jumbled mess of words. When we type, we think it sounds a certain way, but the reality is so different. How can the same words, expressed in two different way convey such different feelings?

Anyway, I've been really concerned about the future of our nation. We've never really thought about it, but how blessed we are to have peace and security in our nation. How for granted we take it, expecting it to last for eternity. But Rome fell. Babylon fell. Jerusalem fell, even though when Solomon was king no country could rival its wealth. The life we live is such a blessing from God, which can be taken away at any moment.

I've been hearing stories like, our Government is pretty much useless right now because of its complete inability to actually take action on things. It's paralyzed by the decades of wasteful spending, and there's not a thing it can do about the massive health care reform needed, it's forced to spend billions on war, etc.

When Nineveh was about to be destroyed, the people repented and fasted and turned from their wickedness. Pray that USA would do the same.

Look at the signs of the times. Do not be complacent. Put your faith in God and not in your money, your power, your job. Store your treasures in heaven where rust, decay, war, tyranny cannot destroy.

I am an INTJ

That means i think vividly, but I think abstractly. My thoughts are hard to organize because they're not linear, not concrete, but that's what allows me to synthesize so many things together. So to get by this weakness of mine, I will continue to spew out my thoughts so that they can be organized in a concrete, organized fashion, that can be further used as a base to construct upon. (Wow, as I was writing that, I realized, no wonder I love brilliant writing that describes exactly what I'm thinking! It's because I have such a hard time verbalizing it myself that when someone else puts it together for me, it's so relieving!)

It's so interesting how the most random people can be used by God to encourage you. I recently met a Bryan at UCLA (I actually met him several times, and I kept calling him Robert for some reason). He was a normal person, albeit friendlier than most. But what really got me was when I saw his tweets. In them you could see such joy at knowing God; the pleasure that Bryan got from knowing Christ was so evident, that it made me reconsider whether I myself took joy in knowing Christ. I realized I didn't, but since then I've been making it a point to rejoice in Christ, whether in my own thoughts, or to others, or on my own tweets. "It is good to praise the Lord." "Be active in sharing your faith so that you may have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ." Thank you Bryan, even though you don't read this blog. Your simple act of faithfulness to God has pointed me back to my true north, my God and my savior.

Of course, there are a lot of factors leading to this point. My friend at my church reminded me that before God, we are righteous. Why? Because "he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." We are righteous. And that is the gospel. That Christ died on the cross in love, and took on the sins of the world. We are now justified, and are now being sanctified, and this is true for all who believe. =].

Yatta!

I love blogging! I love writing! But I hate taking the time to do it! I'm so lazy, but whenever I write, I realize how weighty my thoughts are. There is so much to be unpacked in that little chest of secrets called my brain, but just as I hate unpacking in real life, I hate having to sort out even my thoughts. But as I sit here spending an hour on one paragraph of my personal statement, I've realized things about my life that I never really took the time to notice.

I used to believe that failure was a terrible thing. At a young age, I would see my brother and sister fail my parents’ expectations and so in turn, I strove to be the perfect child that they were not. Unfortunately, this is what led me to become so critical of failure—in others, yes, but especially in myself—that the fear of failure gripped me. So I hid; I quietly excelled and never boasted outright. If there were ever an opportunity to try something new, I shied away unless I was immediately talented, and because of a fear of rejection, I rarely reached out to people, but rather waited for people to reach me. But after four short years of living as a college student, I’ve experienced for myself the lessons that come from failure and trials, and the maturity that follows. And through my trials, I’ve come to understand that the best doctor I can be is not one that graduated at the top of his class, but one who can truly empathize with and care for his patients.

This most likely will be the first paragraph of my personal statement. I will edit it a little, but for now it works well.

A preview

This is the result of 10 min of brainstorming in bed, after spending a whole day at imperial spa trying to think of how to write my personal statement.

I was a person that used to think “avoid misfortune and failure at all costs.” I believed that having a foolproof plan encompassing my extent of study, my career goals, and marriage would ensure that I would have a happy life. But if Jesus Christ did not die on the cross, we would not know his grace. I have learned in these past four years that misfortune is often a blessing in disguise, because it pulls you away from all that you’re comfortable with, and forces you to deal with yourself. You come to realize your shortcomings and grow as a result. Failures, once perceived as a curse, truly do become blessings in disguise. I want to become a doctor because I’ve come to understand this; to remind people that it’s only when they’re broken that they can then be healed.

Hmmmm, it seems that my essay writing has become a little bloggish. A little overly poetic, I feel... I'm still trying to decide how much of God to include. I want to give him the glory, yet I don't want to be preachy... It's a start, and a central theme, at least.

The return of my blog (again)

"Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind."

A sermon(seminarish) I've listened to recently was saying that the extent of our transformation is linked to the extent of the renewing that our mind has undergone. Something I've felt these days is that the sins I've yet to let go of is the root cause of my inability to really take off in my service to Christ. I'm held down because I hold on to my old pleasures and desires. Until I let go of my fleshy desires, there's no way that my life can really exemplify what Christ's own life was like. So die flesh! Die self! Die so that Christ can truly live in me!

A dangerous prayer to pray, but necessary.

It's so hard to spend time writing all my thoughts here. Hello world. I wish you could just read my mind. Haha, but I guess that even sharing things with other people takes practice.

God has been awesome lately. So much grace and love. Yet he never runs out, and I still haven't seen anything yet. =] Box has been opened

In One Day

In one day, you can forget so much about being humble. You forget that it is only through the Love of Christ that we are worth anything. It's so easy to think that because we begin to understand the Love of God, that we are better than others; the second we are taught to be humble, we become proud of our humility. The Love of Christ is not something we obtain because we have some secret knowledge, but is given to us when we, with all our hearts, run after Jesus for his love and compassion because we are so sinful that we can't even hope to save ourselves. But we come to know that the blood of Jesus paid for our sins, today, yesterday, and in the days to come.

What has happened to our contempt for wickedness??

I am

a broken and fragmented person, who longs to be whole.

Too much respect

Just because you respect someone spiritually, doesn't mean that they are always spiritually strong. Don't just keep on assuming they are doing well.

Something I've realized

It's not bad to use ideas from other people.

Depending on God

After a run in with sin this morning, I must keep reminding myself that in these times where I feel ashamed and unworthy, I need to run toward God in surrender and dependence, and not hide in the shadows as Adam did.

Today's passage was the prodigal son!

(un)fortunately, I've heard countless sermons on this parable, and I know it well. But because of that, I don't usually find the hidden treasures that may lie within.

But I'm reminded of the fact that when the son decides to return to the father, there is hint that the son may not even have been sorry, that he was reciting an apology in order to find food and protection. Of course, he may have been genuinely sorry, and the passage just doesn't reflect that. In ANY case, it is the FATHER who pours down love upon the son. Whether the son was sincere or insincere, the father was gracious and overflowing with love for his son.

God has such a scandalous love for us. How could we ever deny that love?

Plastic

I want my life to be plastic. I want to be constantly be molded by God, never complacent in the securities of the world. If I experience tragedy, I want to be shaped by it and rise up above it. If I find blessings, I want to live in such a way as to spread those blessings to all those around me. I want to yield readily to God so that I can become whatever He desires me to become.

Day 2

Definitely harder to wake up today, although I was trying to wake up 30 min earlier. Had an interesting dream though.

Luke 13:6-9 was pretty crazy. It was about how God keeps the wicked and unfruitful alive, even though they produce nothing. The owner of the vineyard asks to keep the tree a little while longer, but will cut it down if it does not produce fruit. We have no idea when our time is due. Maybe we are complacent with our lives because we live comfortably, and we really don't see a change coming. But God could just be letting us run our last stretch, to see if we really are worth keeping around, and if that's the case, then we need to repent immediately. Who is this passage for? Mostly the unrepentant... I think, but as Christians, I think this is a reminder that our friends, family, etc who don't know Jesus may be on their last stretch. We should always remind ourselves of the urgency of the message of Jesus Christ.

Luke 13:31-35 reminds me a lot of what LP's commissioning service was partially about. Basically, there is no reason to fear death, because God will not let you die until you fulfill your purpose. In any case, Jesus' ultimate purpose in this world was to die on the cross and save the whole world.

Psalms 110 today was a big connection to God. It was the "Lord says to my Lord" and the "Priest in the order of Melchizedek" passage. It's amazing how even David prophesied the coming of Jesus, and it's very interesting to see both Jesus and the author of Hebrews using this passage.

New Start

As second semester begins and all the work I have to do piles up, I have decided to break from unnecessary media until my MCAT date, and am determined to be committed to that. So I realize that I will have to draw a lot of my strength from God this semester... and I will be doing my devos each morning (except wednesday) and writing my thoughts here. I hope you can keep me accountable for that.

"Give us aid against the enemy, for the help of man is worthless. With God we will gain the victory and he will trample down our enemies." Psalm 108:12-13

Psalm 108 and 109 talk about evil men who rise up against us and in each the psalmist calls upon God for the victory, asking him to save him. In each, the psalmist praises God among the peoples for his love and his goodness. God alone gives us the strength we need and the clarity we need. Now, I don't have enemies that are rising against me, so I feel like I can store that application away for later when I really do feel persecuted, but this passage reminds me to trust in God alone. God is the one who creates our path in life. The people around us can help give us encouragement, or some guidance, but in the end, we must trust God fully to lead us through seasons of trial and blessing. And Praise. Praise God for who he is, and exalt him amongst your friends, family, coworkers, classmates, etc.

It is good to praise the Lord.