A Heart- Felt Confession

(Message I shared with InterVarsity on Nov. 8, 2011)

Introduction

"All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work." (2 Timothy 3:16-17)Like I always say, I like to share what God teaches me from His Word. So if He teaches me, rebukes me, corrects me and trains me, I like to pass that on. It comes naturally to me to want to share what I learn with you guys so that I don't benefit from it alone and also so that we can help each other apply God's Word. (That's why I always say "we" in my messages since God is speaking to me as well.) Freely I receive, so freely I give =)

My Obvious Problem

As you already know that my method has been problematic with the purpose and use of this page (not the gift of teaching or writing). I'm not apologising for the length because I think God is the one who leads me to say all that needs to be heard by different people in different situations. But I didn't like how it filled the whole page and I had resolved to use my blog in order to avoid that. So why didn't I do that? Why didn't I start using my blog immediately??

The Not-so-obvious Problems: Issues with PRIDE and LOVE

The thing is, I had been slacking on writing stuff that God had been revealing to me from the beginning on the quarter. [No, I don't hear a loud voice from heaven nor do I get crazy visions or get caught up in the 3rd heaven or anything like that....For me, God usually speaks to me through my thoughts. I just get a thought/feeling that I should share something or do something, and I have come to learn (through experience, disobedience mostly) not to ignore such thoughts (that line up with God's Word) since God speaks to me that way.]

So since I hadn't shared that previous stuff, more stuff kept coming up that was more relevant to the present time so I felt like I had to share it before it lost its relevance. So I didn't start to use my blog since I knew I had to write that previous stuff first in the order that God gave me and so I kept using this page for the recent stuff.

But God really convicted me this past weekend that I was being proud. I was really confused because I knew He is the one who told me to say that stuff and He had confirmed that to me in different ways. And I thought I was not being proud because I was not "trying to exalt myself above other people," which is the definition of pride that I'm used to. But God showed me that there is a different way of being proud, but it still is what it is, PRIDE and He hates it. -> At church this Sunday that was the topic (Daniel 4). God made me see that not putting Him first was a form of pride. Because when He would tell me to share something (when that thought came up) I'd put it aside and decide to do it when it would be most convinient for me (which was usually never), since I knew how to manage my time better than God's suggestions?! (oooooooooh! that spells out P R I D E ! ! !)

And as you know Pride comes before a fall and yeah last week I got to experience that for myself. So God's been telling me that the stuff He told me to say was from Him but since I did not say it in the order He told me, that was disobedience and it was not received well by most of you since I said it in my own order not the order God gave me, which is the order that works. (If you want, check out the Trust/Love Issues anyone? post. It's a call to abide-> That's the first thing I felt like God was telling me to share but I have been putting it off (not putting Him first).

And yeah I also have issues with love.

One thing about that: To love God is to obey Him.

And He actually commands us to love Him and love each other as ourselves. Those are the 2 greatest commandments (not suggestions) so if we don't we are disobeying Him :( But thank God for His grace and mercy for us!

So yeah, staff confronted me about all these problems that I brought onto myself by disobedience (not following God's order, not putting Him first) and now I know, its much easier to obey God in the first place instead of not obeying Him and then trying to clean up the mess that comes up after (conflict resolution is no fun!)

But thank God we can learn from our mistakes! And I really learnt a lot from resolving conflict with Marissa. Our conversation really opened my eyes to that fact it's not just me with problems, we all have problems, and we are, in some ways, responsible for each others problems (or lack of application of the solution).

"Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for your brothers, love one another deeply, from the heart." (1 Peter 1:23)

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Thanks for reading. Sorry for any way that I've hurt you. I didn't mean to. If there's anything in specific let me know and I'll apologize and clarify. Let me know if you have questions. Love you guys (I want to love you more though, let's work on that together and encourage each other to Love God first and with our all:)

On Nov. 11, 2011:

Thanks for the encouragement Shirley! :) Yes its easy to fall for the devil's discouragement to try to change myself to conform to people's opinions of me and to keep me from speaking out what God teaches me (I fell for that before, God delivered me & I don't want to fall for that again).

I don't want to tone down the Holy Spirit's fire coz the Word says I shouldn't (1 Thess. 5:18). Yeah I don't want to do that!

"He must increase, but I must decrease.” (John 3:30)

That's what I want to do. Especially because of this verse:

"Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly." (James 3:1)

So I will keep sharing what God teaches me. Truth may be hard to hear most times so I want to improve on communicating God's truth (teaching, correction, rebuke) in love (emphasizing God's grace, mercy and love because in Him there is no condemnation; rebuke may sound like condemnation but it isn't; its calling out the devil's schemes with the aim of leading us into repentance ...so I wanna try to make that truth more clear).

We are all to use our gifts for the body. Paul says, if it's teaching then teach. But for the rest of the body on the receiving end, we also have a responsibility to listen, not to take Truth lightly, and to test whether its God's truth or not so that we can keep each other in check and not be misled.

"Do not treat prophecies with contempt but test them all; hold on to what is good,reject every kind of evil." (I Thess. 5:20-22)

Have a great weekend! =)