no matter how hard you try to avoid it,
the Lord never forgets about the needs that need to be taken cared of in the heart.

some thing I realized is that He cares about my hurt a lot more than I do.
I think I've gotten too tired, though. I've been there before and His grace helped me fight through it every time.

Maybe in life God gives us the portion of strength enough for a trial and once we know it and becomes victorious over it, that strength we had to go through that trial becomes the threshold of the next trial. Then we become stronger and stronger- the more we lean on Him longer and longer.

Jehovah-jireh.

I think if it were possible, it'd be interesting to create a timeline that shows the moment when every person I've ever met first enter my life. I wonder if I'll be surprised at how perfect God orchestrated them into my life. I wonder what I'll think when I see those who stayed in touched with me long enough to pick me up when I've tripped up and when I've gotten weary. I wonder what I'll think and feel about the names I'd see starting to fade away. I hope I'll see those whom God had brought near to me, and reveal to me if I had received them well, along with those that I was too blinded or too busy to have recognized them. I wonder what I'll think about when I look at the brevity of 100 years spanned out before me. It certainly makes me recognize that every encounter is precious and is as meaningful as we make it. The things that people advise for those who are younger about loving boldly---I'm starting to see the reason behind it. And it certainly makes me realize that I need to and want to be always sensitive to the Spirit so that I may love most genuinely and not dismiss any chance to minister to someone.

Praise the Lord!

If our hearts don't have anything that it breaks for, there are still roads to tread between God's heart and our own. We must press in until we arrive there. Likewise, if our hearts don't have anything to hope for at the moment when tragedy and trials present themselves, it could only mean that there is a distance of sort in which we must walk, with the Spirit, to get closer to God's heart. It is crucial. This is especially for those who say they want to be or are a praying community. For those who have chosen to stand in the gap for others through prayer, perhaps the depth of both shall only increase together, until hope is all there is left.

--Entry from mid December 2014

My spirit grieves tonight as I recognize the disciplines I have neglected and failed to keep up. I grieve for a reason beyond this; it is the people I have neglected as a result. As a result of not having spent time in the Word, and carefully upholding it as the Bread of Life, I have as a result lost a kind of sensitivity and urgency of the saving grace of God and His will for his people. Lost touch with his purpose- to seek and save the lost. I felt the times where I have grieved the Spirit. I had just begun to read The Journals of Jim Elliot a few days ago. Even in his early entries it is evident how deep his convictions were. This neglect of the time spent with Him has led me to a perpetual state of rambling prayers that sort of, and sort of didn't, come from my heart. Deep down in me, I know sort-of's just do not, and will not, make the mark. Like Hendricks writes in his book, it is a sort of prayer that comes from someone who is "catching up on his prayer life, and scrapes the Milky Way and takes a tour of the mission field and reviews his theology." Which, he states the probability that Peter would've gone 20 feet under water had he prayed that prayer in the moment he was sinking into the water, as supposed to saying "the most beautifully concise prayer in the Bible: 'Lord, save me.'"

I grieved yet again as I read Amy's blog. She wrote of a few beautiful memories and stories of those on the streets of NY she had once ministered to. Those she mentioned have all past away as of today. I grieve as I think of many people on the streets do possibly die without anyone knowing their names, and particularly for those of whom with genuine desires for change in their struggles and brokenness, yet lacked the strength through the love of a friend to make that first step. There has never been anything as fulfilling than having met Chuck, Pyro, James, and others I have met when I was in Austin and SF. I grieved because I had forgotten how beautiful are the feet of those who bring the good news. I grieved because there has been little people, like those whom Amy ministers to in NY, to boast and honor lately. How long will they remain nameless? The only comfort I find in this is knowing that the Lord knows even the numbers on their head. But there must be something in us encountering these people, and obeying Him in this way, that the Lord saw was necessary as part of his redemptive plan for the world.

Lord, I only ask that you teach me, once again, to see with your heart. I do not want to see more familiar strangers whom I know you've moved my heart to love, yet I only stand, or drive by, in a distance. You are not a God of distance.

In this year and a half, I fear that I have watched my heart grown more lukewarm. For reasons that I have swept away or built walls to keep out.

Does my heart still know You well?

Perfect love drives out fear.

---
John 14

15 “If you love me, keep my commands. 16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever— 17 the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be[c] in you. 18 I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.19 Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. 20 On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. 21 Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them.”

22 Then Judas (not Judas Iscariot) said, “But, Lord, why do you intend to show yourself to us and not to the world?”

23 Jesus replied, “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. 24 Anyone who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me.

25 “All this I have spoken while still with you. 26 But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. 27 Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.

28 “You heard me say, ‘I am going away and I am coming back to you.’ If you loved me, you would be glad that I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I. 29 I have told you now before it happens, so that when it does happen you will believe. 30 I will not say much more to you, for the prince of this world is coming. He has no hold over me,31 but he comes so that the world may learn that I love the Father and do exactly what my Father has commanded me.

“Come now; let us leave.

So as I see pictures on Facebook the birthday parties my friend throws for orphaned children. I ask God, when? When will it be me that you will have me serve you in that capacity? I want to see the lame walk, to see the sick healed, to see the anxious find peace in You. When, where, how, what do I need to do?

Because I feel my heart struggling not to compromise, yet I don't know exactly where to turn. 

Then You reminded of something that came out of my heart over 2 years ago.

"I don't want to know my calling better than I know the One who called me."

Yet this is exactly what I feel like I'm trying to do now. I started a search to figure out what my life is worth doing for. It became stressful and more than often discouraging.

And you tell me first and foremost that I am Your daughter. A child of the King. Why does it sound so cliche? Yet I know and remember that the cliche sayings, when taken seriously, are among the most powerful things said on earth.

It seems like the few chapters I've read in the book The New Friars are yet again putting into words what my heart has been tossing and turning over. Feeling a call to live alongside the poor while going through a heart-wrenching process of trying to get my mom on board so that I may have her blessing.

The time I asked God to lead me where to go and he gives me ample amount of times "Micah 6:8" would come up in conversations or the not-so-random posters on the wall of my  second grade Sunday School class.

What do I do with all of this? I used to be so much more confident to take the next step.

I ask him once again about this whole thing and God says to me, "I want this to be where there is not." And by 'this', I knew he meant the worshipping on guitar, creative ideas, teaching sunday school, or anything of sort that would make him known. And I do not argue that that is his heart. To be made known as hope and Saviour to places and people that have yet to hear about this Love.

I read over the passage where Jesus said to care for the least of these. For caring for the least of these is doing it unto Christ Himself. I'm hoping to teach in a juvenile center soon and I'm really glad I was reminded to pursue Him first. That intimacy with Him is what will sustain me. I'm realizing more and more that I'm forgetful. But now I remember to not to chase after a calling that would deem me worthy and humble in the eyes of man. Because even that is empty if I am not fixed on Christ alone.

what does the straight and narrow look like 20 or 30 years from now? for those who have really been walking with the Spirit and abiding in Him?

all i have are loaves and fishes