unrushing flow.

back after a long time.

2007-02-01T11:10:00.000-08:00

It's 3 am in the morning and some things run through my head.

When it comes to apologetics I always think of the more technical side of things. The things that the people who consider themselves logical and intellectual tend to rely.

The logical and intellectual need evidence to lean on. To believe in God: no solid evidence, and peers may judge them foolish. To not believe in God: plenty of "evidence" available - although mostly generated by the selfsame peers - and a far more comfortable position to hold, since as human beings it's extremely unpleasant to go against ideas respected by others.

I can't sleep. Because the areas of contention keep running through my head.

Let's see. I read somewhere else, something along the lines of "How can people believe in a text that is obviously altered down the years, changed repeatedly according to agendas?"

Easy enough. The original manuscripts dating back to time of writing exist; it's not a long daisy-chain of translations going backwards in time. Originals are taken out, and examined, and retranslated each time we have a new Bible version. And the Aramaic and Greek are translated the same way hundreds of thousands of other non-related texts are translated, so not much room for argument there.

There's a huge list for Flood related points of contention. That includes strata deposition (reasons for uniformity); the reasoning behind strata-based dating (supposedly strata age->fossil age ->back to strata age, circularly, but what happened to carbon 14 dating (good up to about 60k years) and others. Here's a link :

http://www.godspointofview.com/public/answers/flood.html

Evolution? I always found there's one basic principle evolution violates the most badly. The principle of systems always decreasing in order of complexity and stability over time, not increasing.

Evolution requires that order and complexity of the global or smaller ecosystems and their subsystems (habitats, species, individual organisms etc) increase over several million years, purely by chance. I believe it's a fundamental of systems that

1) without outside intervention they, on average, steadily decay as time passes
2) decay decreases level of complexity and order.

Technically life consists of very very complex systems of energy and matter flow. Tiny disruptions over time are enough to decrease order and complexity significantly; increases in order and complexity by sheer chance are outnumbered by the decreases.

The Bible gives evidence for God's existence based on the level of complexity and order the world demonstrates. External influence is required to design/maintain complex systems. I believe that's an incredibly difficult observation to topple.

i want.

2006-11-25T05:04:00.000-08:00

I want to be like a willow tree with its roots firmly planted; planted in God, in the Word, in the Spirit. To stand tall and be happy when the sun is out; to bend but not break when the storm comes, my roots firmly in the ground.

I feel like - I feel like a vine on the ground, sometimes able to find solid purchase in the ground, but so often blown around, and then lying on the ground to wither and die.

My own desires blow so hard at me. My sins, my lusts, things like that, suck at me and pull at me.
It's hard to believe i can even someday stand firmly, every day, consistent and faithful.

Dear Father God; dear Jesus, who died for me on the cross that I might be free of slavery to sin:
tear sin's roots from me and write the Father's laws on my heart; engrave them there; discipline me, scourge me that I might learn.

I am so unteachable, my soul is full of black rebellion. Punish me that I might be clean; fill me with Your Spirit that I might walk tall; heal my wounds, cleanse the poison, fill my heart to focus on You.

Give me wisdom, Father. Wisdom to control myself, to spend myself struggling for mastery in every situation, to take up my cross and never put it down, no matter how difficult or tiring it becomes.

Cut me to the quick, cut me to the bone and the marrow and the spirit with Your Spirit and Your Word, God. Cut me down, help me to find death for my body, death for my sins, so that I can live in Christ alone.

to live in Christ alone; to live in Christ alone! To live and not perish, to bend but not break, to stand in the gap not just for a week or two weeks but day after day after day, a man focused on God, a man desperate and refusing to give way in pursuing God and the ways of Christ.

my dream, my dream, my only dream; help me to spend everything i am for it, God.

on my knees I pray. please let it be, Father.

amen.

youth camp shirt design

2006-11-25T04:57:00.000-08:00

A design for a orange coloured jersey-style shirt for church youth camp. Hope they like it...

The back:

and again, when

2006-11-22T20:09:00.001-08:00

when rest comes, put worry away.
when love comes, hold its hand in yours.
when life grates, look beyond the desk.
when the heart aches, hold His hand and rest.

when

2006-11-22T19:36:00.000-08:00

when confronted,
let your shoulders down.

when blocked,
uncurl your hands.

when hounded,
turn around slowly;
and in peace ask what is wrong.

when sad,
talk about it.

when depressed,
sing a song.

when burdened,
hand it over.

with Him, to Him, and to Him.

when trivial things lure you,
blow them away.

when with friends or with loved ones,
blow time away.

when work waits,
walk to it with a steady heart;
rush forward not;
flee not.

when loved ones wait,
run to them as the wind;
they cannot wait
forever.

what is life after all,
but listening to Him when He speaks
and waiting for Him when it is quiet

and taking deep breaths when He is here.

2006-11-21T16:10:00.000-08:00

Hey! Will you be free on 2nd December? Would you like to
visit my church?
Music sharing session..
I won't be playing,
but it'll still be fun!

end of my schooling life.

2006-11-20T18:27:00.002-08:00

I'm leaving NTU for good, at least the schooling life part of it, very soon. For those who want to see how I'm doing, to keep in touch, i've added a tag board to the blog.

I've decided to make this blog more introspective. It may be hard for anyone without interest in how I am to come back and read this blog regularly; but I think, perhaps I should let myself be okay with that.

I'm quite uncomfortable with ending my schooling life. The campus ministry in CCC seems to be growing, but I have to part with it now.

Some of it is regretting not being more involved in past years; but then again i had my own problems, which I hadn't learnt to really work out until lately. I'll be honest; many of my past years have been filled with a spirit of folly. But I can't say they're totally wasted either; just to deal with my own folly, i've had to learn a great deal.

Some of it is my own discomfort in not having a ministry to participate in, at least one that consists of my peers; church youth has a more diverse age group and culture, and it's much harder to gel in such a group.

But then again, I haven't really been involved with the ministry side of Crusade that much. It seems I took too long to learn enough maturity to be of real service, and the schooling phase of my life has passed.

I sincerely hope that there will be space in the working phase of my life for me to make use of what I've learnt so recently, in wisdom and spiritual things. At least let there be a balance; let there be times when what I have, in what i have grown and in what Christ provides, is enough to do the task well. At other times when i need to be stretched in order to grow; both to learn new skills and wisdom, and to also grow in trust in God.

There are some opportunities appearing in my church however. There's a music ministry of sorts growing, and it looks, in some ways, fairly solid. With some anticipation and hope in my heart, i'm planning to put aside time right after the exams to begin practicing songwriting, even while i simultaneously hunt for a job. Perhaps i can participate in this ministry, perhaps not - my church already has more than enough talent in many areas. But someone once said, luck is simply preperation meeting opportunity - of course, I don't believe in luck.

I think.. God-given inclination and/or talent needs hard work to mature into proper preparation; preparation that God can use, can provide opportunities for. To have a hope of being involved in a music ministry, I must have the skill set; thus I will prepare myself.

The years that have passed, I've done what I can and I've contributed in some ways to God's Kingdom - just not in the ways that someone more mature could have. But, at least part of the time, I did work as hard as I could, in blood and tears, and into God's Kingdom I've come into more.

The rest of the time that I was lost in escaping from pain in indulgences, in wasting my time away, in either letting go into despair or being unable to break from it - let my God who is the God of the past and the present and the future take it, and redeem it for His glory.

I was who I was in the past years, and the time has passed so nothing can change that; but I will be closer to Who I want to be like with every day from now on. And that is something worth looking forward to.

But. On a more sentimental, bittersweet note(but more sweet than bitter). Besides all these considerations of how i'm growing and proceeding; in the short term, I will really miss Campus Crusade in NTU.

Some of my fondest memories will always be of Campus Crusade in NTU.

Crusaders reading this: Abide in Christ, and take care, and I will keep all of you and the ministry in prayer.

2006-11-15T19:10:00.000-08:00

there's some things i want to try.

some things from a book i want to apply.

but it will take immense and long effort.

life is going to be hard, trying to face up to things i've never been able to face up to before.

if you're reading this and care,

please pray for me in this season of my life.

2006-11-15T08:52:00.000-08:00

I really want to give up.

Am I really useless to You, God?

i mean. what else can i try.

when will things turn around.

i'm so tired. i just want to lie down and die.

i don't know how to change things, God.]

i don't know how I can change.

and honestly. i'm sick of praying, asking You, asking for help, or guidance, or to discipline me, or to guide me, or teach me..

praying into the void, praying into the emptiness, praying into the cold and uncaring.

don't see a difference between my having prayed and my not praying.

don't know how to have more faith, i've already tried my best.

i'm so tired God. just so tired.

so tired, so tired, so tired.

just want to lie down and die.

but still i try again, because there's nothing else to try.

please help me God.

I have no one else to confide in, no one else who could understand, no one else who can help me;

sometimes i suspect, no one else who loves me that much..

i'm already half given up, half in the grave, half lain down and died.

please tell me, somehow, that there's some kind of progress, that under all this Your plan is still operating.

please God.

again.

2006-10-31T12:44:00.000-08:00

Haven't blogged in some time now. Just as a update, my spiritual life finally seems to be going straight again.

Began

1) doing quiet time every morning.

2) asking the Father to reduce my vulnerability to temptation, to increase my tolerance , to really do so by renewing my mind.

3) learnt to keep thinking of my eyes and my mind as belonging to God and not myself, bought at a price; thus i have no authority to choose what i want to think or see. Thus i have no choice but to avoid lust and avoid looking at anything that invokes it; and I give thanks to God that I do not have that authority over myself, to use my eyes and mind as i feel like it; my eyes and my mind are slaves to God, bought at a price, and I give thanks for it.

4) Commiting in my mind to focus on nothing but obeying, pleasing and following God.

Unfortunately, I didn't wake up and and come to the computer to write down the developments in my life. I woke up, unable to sleep, and came to the computer because again I find myself unable to manage my feelings for a sister.

It is very, very frustrating. Telling myself to let go, asking God to take away these feelings from my life, causes the feelings and the desire to solidify and to affect me harder. The act of acknowledging they exist make them immensely rigid and unyielding in my heart. This struggle really drains me; and once again I find myself losing sleep while attempting to deal with these feelings, in a period of my life and of the semester where I was aiming to learn to optimise my sleep and increase the productivity of my days. Such a draining paradox; I can do nothing with these feelings except work to reject and leave them behind, and bring them to the Lord in prayer, but doing so causes me to focus on them all the more.

I find it so hard to not analyse the situation and looking for adjustments I can make so that a situation where my feelings are mutual can come about. I keep looking for reasons why my feelings are not reciprocated; I keep finding myself thinking about this situation as if it was only natural that we should be together, and that it was simply a series of barriers that with enough effort and care could be cleared out of the way.

I find it so, so hard to let go. I find it so hard to be a man, to accept and convince myself that she is not someone special to me and that I am not someone special to her, and that in all likelihood we will never be so. I need to learn to be logical! How can I be so smitten over someone who has already in no uncertain terms rejected me in such a straightforward manner?

What is wrong with me, that I come back drawn like a moth to the flame, always about to burn myself to death on a dangerous flame of disappointment and shame.

I would try to focus on my shame from the last time, but I fear that would just cause scarring in my self-esteem, cause me to be that much less useful to God's kingdom.

Lord, I lift up my cares and anxiety and worry and pain and longings to You. Please do with them as You see best; please teach me what is real and what is not. Please teach me to stop seeing things that are not there; please teach me to stop seeing potential that is not there.

Jesus, please help me. In Your most precious name I pray.. Amen.

update

2006-10-12T08:25:00.000-07:00

hmm. forgot to update.

I told her, she rejected me after two days, heartbroken for a while, talked to her again, everything's fine. I've lost that infatuated feeling.

But. Still wistful. Still wishing. Still twirling like a nearly invisible wind in my mind, in my spirit.

Would that things were otherwise; in my heart it leans slightly towards little wishes that I could find someone here to be a little closer to.

Little dreams, little small wishes; the wind blowing about my ankles, the leaves swirling and passing down the little alleys of life, in the bright rays of the love of the Lord.

not so bad after all.

2006-09-26T02:56:00.000-07:00

It turns out that things are actually really good, really okay after all. even after telling her about it.

we're handling it in a mature way. thanks be to God, for His guidance and protection.

whatever happens we'll still be friends, and I think that's a good part.

thank you Lord for guiding us and looking after everything.

amen.

exhausted

2006-09-25T14:21:00.000-07:00

Lord, I'm so tired out from trying to learn your wisdom and your discretion. I just am so exhausted, dear God, dear Jesus, dear Savior; I just want to lie down and rest in your meadows and by your waters, Lord.

So much pondering and striving, and i'm still so full of want, so full of craving for things i cannot find; my heart is ill because of desire that is not met, Lord, like it says in Proverbs.

Lord, there is something wrong with my heart, and I lack the wisdom to cure it, to heal, to walk easily and enjoy your burden that is light and your yoke that is easy.

I crave five things, Lord:

to be close to You,
to bring people to You,
to be someone who builds up others,
real fellow-servanthood with my brothers and sisters in Christ;

and a helpmate in this walk.

It looks like my heart is going to be ill, to break again, over the fifth, Lord.

Pent-up desire to be with a girl; to confess it to her directly; to know for sure that there is nothing there.

My heart is going to break again, Lord, but there's no way forward except through and past my own pain.

I need you with me, Lord. I need You, Father, to comfort me and be my friend and tell me what to do next, tell me where to go, tell me how to serve You.

This part of my life is ending, and I need you to hold my hand as i cry, and then stand up again and walk and run the race into the next part.

I'm sorry for not having wisdom enough to manage the past part; teach me Lord, your wondrous ways, the plans you have for me, and comfort me with your assurances of a many future uses you have for me.

it's like.

2006-09-06T08:20:00.000-07:00

It's like you can never catch your breath.
You're always breathless.

You smile to yourself without control;
the thoughts come like naturally,
like rivers flowing in their streambeds.

Hopes spring up like flowers from the mud.
Anything, anything, just for a little more of
What you desire.

Whenever life's pressure lets up,
your longing uncoils up again.

If she is not there when you expected it,
something inside wrinkles and twists.
aches, curls up, tightens up.

Knowing there are others longing for the same person;
like little spears stuck in your heart.

Anything, anything, for a little more dose;
of the opiate that causes blissfully painful addiction.
To see her briefly is pain, but you want more anyway;
in her presence is an expanding heart;
outside of it, a aching one.

Will I ever show you these words?
Or will these longings simply fade away, without even the closure of dying.

The christian life; a life of opposing extremes.

2006-09-05T09:04:00.000-07:00

The paradox of extremes must be tasted for it to sink into our understanding and our hearts.

We MUST burn ourselves up in our sheer efforts to fight to please God; we MUST also admit, daily, our complete powerlessness and inability to please Him except for the grace and power God makes flow into our lives.

Work out our salvations with fear and trembling, for it is God that works in us. What is this? This is a paradox! We live a paradox, and that is the way it is meant to be.

Every account by a saint, strong and enduring in his pursuit of seeking and pleasing God, speaks of this. This is the basic principle: that we live out lives of paradox. Some churches only teach one extreme; total grace without painful effort, or painful effort without grace to make it have more than a mundane effect. As a result, so many people lose their way; trying to walk the road of a follower of Christ with only one leg.

A strong Christian must live out both extremes, remembering that His understanding is beyond our understanding; His ways are beyond our ways.

Simply because it is difficult to understand does not make it false. If so, then faith has no meaning and only what we understand is real; and that is obviously not true - at the end of the day, we understand so little about the world.

We must trust in what the Word says, and do both. We need to sacrifice our whole lives to Him day by day. At the same time, we need to daily cry out to Him for his mercy and grace, because we are in essence powerless and weak.

The weak are strong; the poor are rich; we are both wonderfully created and recipients of the birthright, and the most horrible and unworthy of creatures, sinners to the core.

Live out the paradox. Take joy in being created wonderfully, and, at the same time, day by day, accept having contrition and brokenness and humility, because we are such terrible creatures - from which we have the wonderful gratitude of knowing the grace of the Son of God dying on the cross for our sakes.

CARZ!!!!

2006-09-03T21:24:00.000-07:00

Made by running 1000 replays of racing down the same track at the same time.

Mesmerising.

actually.

2006-08-28T05:06:00.000-07:00

not that bad.

she's a wonderful girl and it feels good being around her. with no odd feelings in the way, it'll be great to enjoy her company when the chances come up.

yup. :)

perhaps it's

2006-08-23T20:05:00.000-07:00

another awkward poem.

perhaps it’s just
that I’m a dreamer;
that sometimes
I see things that are not there,
hope for things that have no
starting place
to start hoping from.

but this seems
too incandescent for me;
I don’t know what
lenses
my own personality and
my heart
tend to put into place
but the brightness of my hopes
seems to burn me.

simple things cut me deep;
the sound of a voice and the words it would speak –
a smile that I could make appear,
it beckons unforgivingly to me,
this idea;
that perhaps my pursuit could be sweet to who I seek;

that it could be part of what makes her eyes shine brightly.

i approach God again;
for in the end it is
He that yet allows the ache to flourish;
and it is the only place I can find
a helping hand in this tightly personal regard;
power and love, enough.

My prayers
are simple enough;
to find the strength
to chase what the heart hurts for -
or wise enough to let go
of what is sought
if it is not meant to be.

but at the end of the day
it is not itself that the heart desires to see happy –
although it seems more a matter of life and death than simplified feeling.
a man lives to take wounds,
our lot in life.
rather, what is
truly unacceptable
is to have to watch her eyes shine less than brightly.

L.S.

2006-08-23T07:24:00.000-07:00

sick to the heart again.

it doesn't ring right with me, Lord;
why the desires are there so strongly
to be with someone in particular.

It cuts me up inside, God;
that I cannot be what
she is to me.

tis racking to me
stretching my heart over the flames
desiring what I cannot reach

not the first time Lord;
but I can't remember what the past times were -
it feels like a novel pain.

she smiles and my heart aches
she speaks and my heart breaks.

she walks away and she takes my heart with her.

does my heart idolize, Lord?
what can I do
to cut my heart loose.

but I don't know how, God;
please save me Lord,
for I cannot save myself.

reach Your hand to me
give me comfort again.
teach me anew that the answers I seek
lie with You.

it feels like I'm dying
not me, my heart;
dying from the inability to be with who it wants to be
speak to who it wants to speak to
love who it wants to love;

my heartache is like
a sword cutting into my chest;
how long can it be, before i break.

Lord, release me from the longings
or tell me where my sin is
or break the spell over me
before I really die inside;

because these pains will dry me out
and make me turn to stone again;
Lord, save me.

writing

2006-08-22T03:43:00.000-07:00

My writing's raw and unrefined; it needs more polish and practice. There's some substance to it, but it still tends towards cliches and rhetoric. It's difficult to read more than a little of it, unless someone really has a more than ordinary interest in the subject.

Jesus, I look to you for opportunities to improve my writing skills, and to use what I love to do for your purposes and your glory. Please bless me with the outflowing of your power from where you are in me into my life.

dear adrian.

2006-08-19T06:56:00.001-07:00

Dear Adrian:

Your past is filled with wounds. Your past is filled with memories of fear and of losing. You spent a long time in the darkness. You were unable to remember who you are.

You became a Christian early in life, but it did not change the things that were broken down inside. You had no father in your life, and no one to tell you of being brave or fighting for something more than yourself.

You lost yourself fighting to stay afloat, fighting to think clearly. You were fighting to claw your way to someone better than your memories said you were. Some of your peers fought to have a purpose by fighting for themselves. You saw the futility, perhaps, or perhaps you never had the confidence to take that road. It doesn't matter; that was not the road to salvation and glory.

You found yourself abandoned amongst your peers, unable to stand upright. You were lost in the pains of what others had told you you were; they did so in no uncertain terms. You were hamstrung, crippled, shot in the heart where your strength was supposed to be.

When you were young, the enemy feared what you would become. So they attacked what you were and what you were made to become.

As you grew without a purpose, your heart ached for that which your compatriots did not. You looked for something more in the wrong places.

Your heart desired to fight for your Father and your Lord, but fear reigned in your heart. Pain spoke the loudest in your mind, and you doubted what your worth could possibly be. Your spirit laid crushed and withered under the lies.

You grew more layers of pain and doubt while in the Singapore army; the Enemy did not relent and did not cease their assault. They attack what they feared. It was not what God had made you that caused your failures. It was what the lies made you, when they bolstered up each other and buried you six feet under.

You saw no way out in university. You could not stay on the Way. No one can, with all the burdens that you did not know how to put down. It was that the lies kept you from using the strength of the Spirit to find freedom. That strength that could toss aside those burdens like the lion shaking its prey.

You tried to set your feet on the Path, and found yourself crumpled and dying. You found yourself following the temptation to seek purpose in an Eve, and it broke your heart and your back again and again. It piled more lies upon those you were drowning in.

And all the time the enemy whispered.

The enemy whispered that a son of Christ that has failed for so long is no son of Christ at all.

But you always knew inside you what the strength you had was. You always knew inside you what the glory you wanted was. But no one had told you what the Enemy was doing, until now.

You are a son of the Lion of Judah, the Lord of warriors and of warrior kings. Made in the image of His fury, of His strength.

Your birth-name is Brave. And you have yet another name from the Father. The name whose myth God made you in. The name that is the one that will be written on the white stone at the end of days. The fiercest of all names, as fierce as God desired you to be.

You were wounded greatly so that your strength will be great. You had brokenness so that your strength would be humble. While you were in the darkness you could see nothing. Now you see clearly that the fights you lost, you lost because you were crippled by a great enemy.

You saw the glory God made you for occasionally, but you fell to the lies and drowned again. There were times you held the sword and the shield and cut and bled for your brother and your sister. But often the traitor in yourself robbed your feet away from under you.

Write this on your heart: God is not beside you just as a friend or a comforter. He is beside you as an ally. The Lion of Judah and the Lord of the angels of death stands by your side. His Spirit that breaks the proud, heals the lost and sets the captives free lives within you. What you really are in Him is a brave and deadly lion - if only you would shun your condemnations and embrace your courage.

You see the lion in your heart from time to time. You read a story, hear a prayer, understand something that your mind cannot comprehend. You find a little freedom but the world rolls in again. And with it, all the desires and all the things designed to keep your heart from following Him.

You looked for your name.

You are good. You are good. You are good. Simple words that mean so much if you could build your heart on them. The Word says you are circumcised in the heart by the Spirit. God has put His law in your mind and written it on your heart.

Stand on Scripture. Pray to your Father to speak personally to you, breaking the power of the lies that came with your wounds.

He knows your name.

Everything you do wrong is your flesh and your sin. Like Paul, what you are delights in God, but your flesh delights in the sin. But that is not your true heart. That is not the heart God gave you anew. That is not the heart that He replaced your old heart of stone with, the heart He wrote His law on Himself.

Now stand firm against everything that will rob your strength. Cut yourself off from sin not to just be moral or to be safe, but because it saps your strength and your fierceness. Cut yourself off so that you might fight hard and fight like a savage lion in this War you long to deliver your blows in.

Be your name.

Stand firm, unafraid of dying, unafraid of shame amongst men, unafraid of the thousand little deaths you have died before for the most selfish of reasons.

Beware of being seduced. The temptress is not God; where God will satisfy with His beauty, the temptress will drain of your strength, of conviction, of your heart that is God's gift to you.

Beware of the rat race. The rat race is not God; where God will fill you with fire to fight, the world will break you under its whip and leave you empty as you fight your false battles.

Most of all, stand firm against your memories. What you remember is not what happened. You remember being a failure, but what happened was you being crushed under the enemy's blows. You remember always losing, but what happened was an enemy landing the fiercest attacks it could make. Those attacks were made out of the fear of what God has made you to be and wants you to become. Your faith is what you are. The Lion's promises have already been delivered.

The road of faith goes to glory; the road made of those memories leads to nothing.

The war inside you is a civil war. You fight a traitor. Cut his legs off and kill him swiftly. Let not sexual temptation, or the easy way out, or the arena of fear raise him up. Do not ever again let him eat you alive. Kill him brutally. Take the hardest path. Speak when speaking kills you before men but raises you before God. Cut your temptations off at the roots. Carve any condemning guilt from your heart with a sharp sword.

He is the eye that fills you with darkness, the hand that dips itself in filth, the liar and the deceiver that castrates and emasculates and takes away your strength. Give him no mercy.

Do not sabotage yourself. When angry, speak out in firm control of your tongue. Do not let your anger steal your control of your strength. Neither crush it under your fears.

When the iron is needed to burn out your sin, be the one holding the handle.

When sexual sin comes calling, remember what it is you want - God's beauty, and His beauty embodied in the one He will bring you. Not the one on the screen, or in the magazine, who devours men alive by abusing the beauty of infinity God has given to Eve. She makes you share in the pot of delicious poison with the thousands of others she has ensnared.

You must strive. Strive long and mightily. What does not kill you makes you stronger - this is no tired cliche. That fire that those words cause to burn in your heart is the fire that lights when you recognise what God made you to be.

But never strive for yourself. Never be the mercenary, the one whose road only goes to the empty heart and the hollow spirit. Fight only and always only for Him. Hold nothing back for yourself. Do this so that for Him and in Him you might become everything - more than you could have ever dreamed of.

You have many wounds now. You will have many wounds to come. Enter into every wound that you have now, when they ache. Enter into every wound as it comes. Jesus will bring you in, and through, and out again - in this you will gain the strength of the broken heart. Remember this: you cannot ask Christ to heal your wound and stand back and watch. You must go in there with Him, and die again in that wound, and come out truly alive.

Always remember that the strength flows from your Father to you, and then into the battles you fight and the war you wage. Give yourself up. Not just your gifts or your talents or your time. Give yourself up. Do the admitting of things that feels like killing yourself. Say to Jesus the confessions to Him that feel like cutting your own throat. Find your true heart in that marvellous pain that heals the broken and sets the captives free.

See the future. See how bright it is. See your brothers and sisters free with you. See your Father there, their Father as well. See your friends there, saved and free and with you. See your Saviour and your Friend, your Father and your Shepherd there with you and all the people you ever loved, you ever bled in your heart for.

See Him beside you, and know how He was beside you all the time.

See God's joy there; see Him glorified.

These hopes will not fit in your heart. Force it inside anyway. You will lose it sometimes; fight your way to it again and grasp it with both hands. This is what you are fighting for. This is what you are losing your life for every day, and in doing so gaining more than you could have ever dreamed. Fight for it, because this is the Life that you need more than food or water. This is the Life that you put to death your old life in exchange for.

Remember that nothing that cuts up ministries and brotherhoods and unions of the servants of God is ever purely because of the true desires of the members. What there is of our true selves, for us reborn in Christ, can sacrifice everything in the world to see God glorified. Thus everything else is of the flesh and the world and the enemy. Always turn and seek His face when a ministry has broken or a fellowship has lost its way. Seek healing, seek reconciliation, seek without rest for the restoration of what you know is good.

Be steadfast always. Never stand your ground on your own. Stand your ground with God's word, the sword of the Spirit, and with prayer. Stand; stand; stand. Satan will cut you hard and to the quick in the times where you stand the strongest. He will call you poser, loser, faker, make you tired and weary, turn you back from doing that same good you lit on fire with not too long ago. Stand, and take up Scripture, and fight back, and press on upwards towards the goal of following that fire you took up.