I recently traveled to the US for two and a half months mainly for the purpose of taking care of some family business. It was very busy time while I was there. Due to the nature of this trip I was not able to see a lot of friends. Thankfully all was done according to plan. Because it was a longer than usual stay in the U.S., I had much trouble adjusting back to my life in Taiwan. I finally had some slower days to think and face my feelings of being back. I discovered that I had thoughts of wishing that I didn't have to come back because the U.S. was what I knew well and was so used to. It felt so familiar that I got to be around my kids again. I loved the cool weather and clean air. And yes, I ate too much good American/Mexican food. I got to experience everything that I missed when I moved. So being back, I had some miserable days when I poured out my heart to the Lord.
You may say that my suffering is self-inflicted. I don't have physical illness or personal catastrophe right now. I have many reasons to be grateful. The weird thing is that my mind knows that but my heart doesn't listen and it still wants to whine and complain. I had experienced a very clear call from the Lord a couple of years ago and I knew Taiwan is where I must be fore now. My mind knows that but my heart was at war with what I know. In my quiet time, I was reading Ezekiel about God rescuing Israel, an orphan girl abandoned on the streets and wallowed in her blood. God did everything to restore and love her and bestowed such honor and favor on her, but yet she turned away and had other lovers. God was furious. Why was God so angry? Because He gave us so much and He expects our love and obedience in return.
There is another parable that God brought to mind, the parable of the wicked tenants. I read this one many times, and often thought it was talking about those who wanted to kill Jesus, the Pharisees and Sadducee's....etc. But thanks to our wise pastor Tim who pointed out something else. God owns and did all the work for the vineyard and the vineyard belongs to Him, not the tenants. The tenants wanted to claim the vineyard as their own, but they were mistaken. It wasn't theirs in the first place. God paid a great price for our sins on the cross, and our lives don't belong to our own, it belongs to God. God has the right to our lives. Sometimes we forget, and we acted like the evil tenants who put to death what God wants to do and attempted to put ourselves on the throne.
When we say like Peter, "No, Lord!" That's the biggest oxymoron. When we called Him Lord, we need to act like He is the Lord of our lives. There are plenty of times our heroes in the Bible didn't feel like doing God's will or felt very afraid/confused, but still acted and moved forward in faith anyway. I was also reading about how the Angel Gabriel was explaining to Mary what's going to happen. Young Mary didn't know exactly what being pregnant by the Holy Spirit and having to raise the Son of God required of her, but she obeyed God. There were many other examples like her. The heroes didn't know why God called to to do something, Joshua walking around Jericho, Gideon sending away all the perfectly good soldiers, Abraham sacrificing Isaac..... and yet, they acted in faith because they recognized the lordship of Jesus Christ in their lives.
Obeying God isn't always going to be easy, even Jesus the perfect Son of God struggled to obey and asked God to remove the cup from Him. Struggling isn't a sin. God sees our struggles and He always finds a way out for us when our desire if to obey Him. I am thankful to say that God also helped out of my miry pity pit. I had taken on a new sponsee and was meeting with her. She is a mature Christian and has served the Lord faithfully full time for 10 years with this Christian organization, but she had recently felt a great discouragement and wanted to give up. You know what's funny? We often see other people's problem clearly and not our own. I did shed some light in her situation. I told her if God is calling her to be there clearly, then she needs to change her inner dialogue. Then a light bulb went on!! My advice to her turned out to be exactly what I need to do in my own life! Haha....God is funny that way.
"Change my inner dialogue" is what I needed to do. Wow, I didn't even see that until I told my sponsee. So I did change it. Now I tell myself this inner dialogue:
"I am at peace with where I am now, and I'm open to God's wonderful plan here."
In the beginning, I didn't quite believe it, but I kept saying it with faith and soon I felt much better. The inner conflict disappeared and God's peace returned. How funny that is! I noticed most of my inner dialogue is negative so to start saying positive things in faith was so foreign, but it really is a game changer. 😊
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