Struggles Humbles

So many things are going on right now in my life that is way beyond my ability to resolve, to bear on my own. Whatever the Lord is doing in me right now, I want to be ready.

God here I am, humble before You. Do to me what only You can do. I am ready to undergo strict discipline from You. Change me. Make me the leader You want me to be.

I am greatly challenged with what I have discovered about what my family is going through right now. I know that the situations are long been happening and now is just the time I started to really care. God I know this is humbling me but I don’t understand what is really happening, I don’t understand what my role really is in this whole mess.

I went home Monday night. Late night travel and four hours on the road, not knowing what to expect when I got there. I was so tired. There is a sense of unkempt peace every time I thought of going home. Somehow I always want to ignore who I am and shift gears when I come face to face with my parents, because I always want to escape the conversations we always have. This time was totally different. I manage my well-mannered mask before my parents, but I realized that I can’t do this forever. So I decided to expose myself.

God, before I go on, question: WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO SHOW ME HERE? AM I AT THE WRONG SPOT?

Tuesday morning, I woke up with the noise of my nieces and nephews waking me up, calling me, pulling my hair, telling me to go with them. Victoria, my 5-year old niece was pulling me out of bed, telling me to fix the computer, and I haven’t even fixed my hair! I wasn’t annoyed, I missed them, but I want to stay in bed. So I requested for another hour. They just won’t leave me alone so we wrestle in bed, played with them.

I got up out of bed just when it’s time to have lunch. But my Mom and Dad were talking at the table while preparing the food. I kinda always want to avoid this sort of conversation, so I went outside. I said I’m not hungry, I only want coffee. So I went at my Aunt’s just next door. This was supposed to be funny. Because I thought I have escaped from the problem-pouring out from my parents, but as soon as I entered my Aunt’s door, she saw me and she didn’t even ask how I am or how’s my life been. She automatically said that I may need to check the computer, the kids have done something and now it’s not working. So this is me back home. I always feel like whenever people saw me around here, they seem to always remember their problems, and always excited to tell me about it. Nobody cares to know how’s mine. I don’t feel normal around here. Or maybe this is the REAL me. Maybe the life I am trying to live back in the city is not really the real me.

So there I was, hungry and yet to have my coffee and it was lunch time and my breakfast was the “trying to figure out what the heck is wrong with their computer”. I thanked God for my temperament, having Phlegmatic as the dominant. That way I don’t feel uneasy at all. I just go with the flow. So I found out that the problem was the power supply, not the power cord. I tried to replace the power cord from the working monitor, but still it won’t power up. SO IT WAS THE POWER SUPPLY INSIDE THE CPU.

I realized that God was really showing me something here. Even if there is a power source, and the cord that connects to the power is not broken and still connected to the source, if the receiver of that power is messed up, no matter what we do it will not work. The same thing with me, no matter how I try to be effective in what I do with everything about me, even if I am trying to connect with God, but as long as my heart isn’t right with God, then everything still ends messed up. It was so personal to me. How God spoke to me in every bit of my situations, even in that hunger and annoying morning. I realized I am not alright.

So I stopped trying to fix the computer. It was beyond my ability to resolve it at the moment. I don’t have my tools. I don’t know what I was thinking that moment, I just decided to go back home and get myself a MUG of coffee.

So my Dad went out for work at the construction site. I sat at the table with my Mom and with the TV on. A few more sips and finally my Mom started talking. This was the hardest part for me – to always play my role as the absorber. My Mom was pouring out and I’m wide open. I was never prepared to hear what my Mom has to say about me. I never thought about my future like this before. I never considered what Mom thought about how I live my life and how she really felt about me. This was the very first time I really listened. God I never thought how bad my testimony was already before them. This was painful and heartbreaking.

She started telling me about how she talked about me to our family friend, Mr. Lacsa and how disappointed she was about me. For the first time I realized how exposed I am. I don’t know if I can even pour it out here. This is painful to me God. But if I won’t pour it out to You, then to whom? I have no one with me willing enough to sit and listen. Once again this outburst of emotion is numbing me. And I am in danger of having the tendency to hurt myself again to release the pain in my body. I am tempted Lord, to get an empty point-four pen and write on my arm again. I am tempted to write the pain in my arm again. I want to physically feel the pain now than keep this heart-burning ache I feel inside of me. I have lost appetite to everything else. My sight is blurred again. I can’t see clearly. I couldn’t sleep at all. I just want to get past through this.

Mom said her friend was just concerned with me. That they talked about me because they want me to consider what I have been doing with my life. They all agreed that the best I can do with my life is to work abroad, that the real success was out there, that what I have been doing here is not gonna be successful. Mr. Lacsa influenced my Mom that I am wasting my life.

I sat there, and my only concern at the moment was to finish my coffee and numb my heart. Mom was pouring out how disappointed she was with me, how she lost her hopes on me. She was actually telling me how she exposed me with all her disappointments with me to her friends. So I felt more like I have no more face to show up with them, that I couldn’t show up anymore. I realized that in our community, all eyes were on me, that my life was an open book to everybody.

God, question:  AM I LIVING THE RIGHT LIFE? IF SO, THEN WHY DOES IT SEEM TO BE SO WRONG?

Lord, I have always believed that You have chosen me to be part of something big and that You have placed me exactly at the right environment with all the optimum growing conditions that I need to surround me with. But right now, I am losing myself. I am hanging on by thread. I lost confidence with myself. You want me to be brutally honest now? You want to know why Mom was so disappointed with me?

I couldn’t be counted on. I’m not dependable. What’s the sense of having a degree in college and having to start our own company believing that all this was from You if this very thing is not blessing my family, if this thing is hurting my family? I couldn’t even provide enough for them. And yet I keep on making promises with Mom that I may need a few months to build my momentum, and she was hanging on to my promises, and I kept on breaking it at the same time breaking her heart. She always believed that it’s not a practical thing to do and that I am wasting my life with everything I do including the church stuff, the ministry, and the company. She said I am better off working for a company than running our own company. She said I am prideful because I don’t choose to work for an employer. No matter how I tried to explain to her that the reason I keep pursuing this life is because You have given me a vision and that all this is from You, they don’t understand it. They only see the present. And she always reasoned that the present is more important than what I considered our future. What I have been fighting for isn’t worth it.

I stood up and got dressed up. I decided to leave home and go back to the city. I can’t wait to leave home. I stood at the door looking at the sky behind the screen-door. It started to rain hard. I was just staring at the sky, my eyes wanting to cry, my lips couldn’t form a curve anymore. I breathe heavy. My Mom still sitting at the couch behind me, waiting for me to respond. I was thinking. I am considering everything she said. I need to make a decision.

Right now I am praying. God I need to unload everything that’s been in my mind to You. My heart is heavy. I couldn’t pour out everything here. I need to know if I am still on the right track with You. This is really humbling me. I'm broken and humbled. I need You Lord right here, right now.

Devotion

I wake up 4AM today, and remember to place everything in the hands of God, that I’m going to start my day this early, and see what God has prepared for me to do. I want today to be different.

Yesterday, during Sunday Service, I prayed to God to give me a different week. I don’t want to live the same old life I know. I don’t want the same old week. It was so amazing how God responded to my cry, how He filled my heart with His presence and His love. I felt loved. It was a day of worship. And while everybody sings praises, I in the crowd cried out a desperate cry. I couldn’t utter what the worship songs were saying; I can only groan a plea that I want God to change me. So there was this song our worship leader sings, my favorite actually – How He Loved Us by Jesus Culture. Then I was speaking personally to Jesus, I said, “Lord I don’t want to sing this song, I can’t utter the words, I don’t want to be standing here faking everything before You. I want to sing what’s in my heart. I want to speak what’s in my spirit….” And I was speaking to Jesus with my spirit, with words only He understood, with cries only He can comfort, with a broken heart only He can feel, and I was trembling before His presence. I felt pure JOY. I don’t care what the people around me were thinking about me, this is between me and my God. I will not withhold my worship to my God, that’s covenant sealed.

God gave me His words as if personally dealing what I have been overcrowding my mind and my heart.

John 6:5-15. I am the person like Philip in verse 7. I only look at the situation, and only look at the facts about my life, always calculating and analyzing how messed up I am on my own. But it is comforting what Pastor Oriel said regarding verse 6, “Sometimes we are so overwhelm by our problems that we don’t know what to do, BUT God knows what He will do. He already knows what He will do even before there was a problem.” “All of us are under testing. I hope tama ang response natin sa Lord.”

“I see Jesus in the middle of my situations.” – Pastor Oriel.

God want me to express my faith and not the recital of the facts of my life. God showed me Andrew’s character in verse 8, he see Jesus in the midst of the wilderness. I know that even in the most impossible situation, God can do miracles. “Don’t look on the situation, Tesa, look on the solution. I am the solution,” Jesus whispers gently. The miracle of multiplication happens when we placed something in the hands of God. Anything that touches the hands of God will bring multiplication.

So I prayed a prayer with a vow. My very reason and attitude in everything I do will be “for the sake of the KINGDOM of God.” I remember my family, my disciples, my leaders, my work, my future. I remember everything that I am trying to hold tight in my hands. I released them in God’s hands. And the hardest of all the things I did that day, is to place my heart under Jesus’ care. I know that my heart has been disarrayed and so full of longings. And right now, it’s not mine anymore, it belongs to God.

 So I thought about now how 4AM I wake up just before all my alarms go crazy, that today God moved. Today, God take the initiative in response to my prayer. My heart wanted change. So does God. And all it took was my willingness to place everything in His hands.

Today, I battle so many things and areas in my life but I thank God I remember to take this hour to place all things in His hands. It is fasting season for me, a time to give in to God and let go of everything.

I claim this promise that God gave me during my devotion this morning:

Psalm 18:43 “…You have made me the head of nations, people I did not know are subject to me.” I will stand up as the person God called me to be – a leader, a conqueror.

Prayer and Devotion

Lord I can feel my inner spirit crying out on the inside, and physically I am grasping for more oxygen. I am desperately crying out to get a glimpse understanding of Your will over my life. I want to see in my very own life the evidence of Your abundant love and mercy, the richness of what You can do to my life. I am crying out. Change me. Transform me. I have enough of me.

I know I must listen to Your word in a very simple sense but it goes too deep for me to understand. What keeps in preventing me?

Lord, I surrender. I surrender everything to You. From now on, I will not try to do it on my own way. There’s no way I can make or build what only You can make and build.

I only ask that You could show me my role in this whole process of change and transformation You are working in me. You already know that this is hard for me to JUST LET GO, but please show me how to do it with obedient heart and spirit. I want to learn SUBMISSION and total obedience in You Father.

I honestly admit I am clueless about this ministry I am claiming to live by. Show me Your will about the visions I’ve been allowed to see in my dreams. Show me my role, my part in the vision. Show me my purpose and how am I to live it in a very practical lifestyle.

Lord, show me the depths of Your love that gives abundant favor to my wretched life. I submit to the leading and initiative of the Holy Spirit in my life. Show me and teach me how to do the ministry.

Psalm 16

Meditating, defining, reflecting Psalm 16 in my heart. 

Psalm 16

¹ Keep me safe, O God,

for in you I take refuge.

² I said to the Lord, “You are my Lord;

apart from you I have no good thing.”

³ As for the saints who are in the land,

they are the glorious ones in whom is all my delight.^b

⁴ The sorrows of those will increase

who run after other gods.

I will not pour out their libations of blood

or take up their names on my lips.

⁵ Lord, you have assigned me my portion and my cup;

you have made my lot secure.

⁶ The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;

surely I have a delightful inheritance.

⁷ I will praise the Lord, who counsels me;

even at night my heart instructs me.

⁸ I have set the Lord always before me.

Because he is at my right hand,

I will not be shaken.

⁹ Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices;

my body also will rest secure,

¹⁰ because you will not abandon me to the grave,^c

nor will you let your Holy One^d see decay.

¹¹ You have made^e known to me the path of life;

you will fill me with joy in your presence,

with eternal pleasures at your right hand.

Psalm 16:8 -  I have set the Lord always before me. Because he is at my right hand, I will not be shaken. 

                   *Lord I pray that you search my heart. Is my heart still running after You? Are you still my priority? Am I really not shaken when I say to You that I'm not letting go? Pierce my heart Lord with Your love, and mercy. I am unworthy to claim verse 5 and 6. 

Its been a long time since I last pour out on my journal. I have no good thoughts to bring to You today. All I know is that I need Your grace desperately. My life and my commitment to You has been INCONSISTENT. I have been unfaithful even until this morning. I prayed that all my motives and intentions in WHY I DO THINGS in the first place, be align to what I wanted to believe I desire to live -- a Life of total surrender to You and purposely loving You and loving the people You have placed around me. But its not always that way. I was living in my addiction to the virtual world, like its the only thing real to me. It was like an addiction next to coffee. I am guilty. I wanted to come out of this life I have formed in me. I haven't been living the real life. I messed up the real life and now all I am is NOTHING before You. I could not bring up anything in me that is pleasing to You God.

I want to fight. Lord Help me. I am weak on my own. I want the strong man in me to DIE so that everything else that I am DEPENDS on You. 

Lord, You are my Lord, and my Savior; apart from You, there is no good thing in me.