Friendship

*'Rafiki' means friend in Swahili :)

"Better is open rebuke than hidden love. 

Wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses." (Proverbs 27: 5-6)

It's time for me to stop holding back my love. It's time for me to be a true friend. It's time to freely give what I have freely received. For this to happen I have choose love over fear (fear of rejection/ fear of being misunderstood/fear of standing out). And it's time for us to stop judging each other (Romans 15:7) in order to receive love in it's different administration (loving is not just giving a pat on the back, it's also correcting, rebuking, teaching, when the occasion comes (2 Timothy 3:16).... Jesus is the perfect example :)

Let's stop running from Truth. It is the Truth that sets us free. Free to be ourselves. Free to love God and to love each other. Especially for us Christians we have to realize that the Truth keeps on transforming us it's not just a one-time encounter, it's a relationship! :)

I can't call myself "a true friend" if I can't tell you the truth and please don't call yourself my friend if you can't do the same for me. A true friend is not one who watches his/her friend falling for lies and says nothing. A true friend is one who actually cares. One that loves not just with words but with actions and in truth (1 John 3:18). Let's be real friends. Tell me the truth even if you are afraid it will hurt me because I love the Truth, Jesus is the Truth, so why should you hide Him from me? Why should we hide the Truth from each other because of fear? Fear is selfish. Love is not selfish. Let's be moved by love and not fear. "There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear." (1 John 4:18a) :-)

P.S: You may not want to be a real friend to me and that sucks for me but I won't let it affect my response to this message. I'm not holding back my love anymore. And you can be my enemy but even then we're still family haha and I'll still give my love.
Related Post: Family Matters.

I will be grateful in the end :-)

Other related Posts: Words of Truth and Remember who you are :)

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Update: 10/24/12

Ah! You're such a light!!! God bless you Jessica!!! :-) <3

Thanks Jessica Wu for being a good friend! :) Thanks for telling me the truth even though it made me uncomfortable. Jessica and I were housemates my Junior year. During that year she was torn about going to study abroad and she was also torn about what fellowship God wanted her to be part of since she was involved in a lot of them. So one day she went to Paul to get prayer. She really wanted to go study abroad that year but when Paul prayed for her he felt like she should stay and he kept getting "your roommates, your roommates." So for some reason, God wanted her not to study abroad that year as she had originally planned but to stay in SB for the sake of her roommates. 

So I later figured out what that reason was. God really used Jessica to wake me up from my sleep. As you know by now, since I keep repeating it in my posts, I haven't been myself for a long time and there's a quote: "if you don't define yourself for yourself you'll be crunched into other people's fantasies for you and eaten alive." (Audre Lord) And that's pretty much what happened to me. I let the world define me, I conformed. When I stopped using my voice, I accepted everything that I was being told and taught even though it went against what I believed. I became like a robot and I wondered why my life sucked. So God really used Jessica to help me remember who I am and what I believed in which made me realize what made me turn into robot, hypocrisy-> my actions didn't line up with what I believed in. That realization was harsh but it was liberating because I knew the solution and it was simple: stop it and change. 

But all that didn't happen over one conversation. We talked a lot and InterVarsity would come up and she would challenge me about some stuff in structure/tradition and I would defend it with my life using words that were not my own but what I had been told and had come to accept. And this kept happening whenever we talked (you see being friends doesn't mean you have to agree all the time about everything). The day that made me break and fall from the standpoint I held onto oh so fervently, is the day she got personal. It was easy to argue about things such as structure and tradition. That's what we had been doing and I always got defensive. But that day we talked about people and that made all the difference. She shared her story which reminded me of my own. You see if I'm the only one suffering I can just persevere through it so as to not inconvenience everyone else, I'm used to that. But if someone else is suffering I just cannot stay silent and not do anything about it. It would totally eat me up if I did nothing. So that's what woke me from my sleep. Now I'm longer a robot but a free bird :) (well I'm still working on my flight lol). Related posts: My Voice, Advocacy and Just Be.

Thanks so much Jessica for your bluntness, honesty, persistence and vulnerability! I really thank God for you coz I needed all that. You don't know how much it means to me... you helped lift up a huge load that had been weighing me down for a long time. You played a big role in my journey to freedom. Thanks :')

So yeah, friends all I want to do is be a good friend. I don't want to meet up to argue about things. Things don't matter but people do. I wanna share my story. I want us to get personal. So please don't judge me (by settling for your assumptions and misconceptions) until this happens. I just want us to care for each other for real. That's all. To be: Rooted in Love.

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LET'S WAKE UP CHURCH!!!!