revive 2010: day 1

"Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!"
-Jesus, luke 11:9-10

this is the promise we hold on to. that when we ask our good Father for gifts, He will be faithful, kind, and good to give them to us. but the key is, we must ask.
over these next 40 days, we will be asking. we will be asking God to give us good gifts. we hold on to His promise found in this word, spoken through His son Jesus.

God, starting today, and over these next 40 days, we stand. we stand before the Your Holy presence, in the presence of your angels, and we come before you as your children, and we are asking for the Holy Spirit. God, we stand on behalf of Intervarsity and UCSD, and we are asking for you to pour out your Holy Spirit upon your people. Give us the Holy Spirit. we are asking because You promised us that You will answer us when we ask. You promised us that when we ask, You will give us something better than we can ask or imagine, good gifts beyond all that we can comprehend.

so starting today, God, we will pray with confidence, knowing that every word we pray will reach the throne room of heaven. we pray with full assurance that each word we pray will not go unheard, but will be a sweet sound that reaches Your ears. we know that each word we pray will bring about change. we know know that our prayers will shake the foundations of the kingdom of darkness. we know that our prayers will shake the spiritual atmosphere of UCSD. we will stand confident that You will be faithful to your promise to answer our prayers.

God, thank you for your faithfulness.
in the name of Jesus amen.

His joy is our strength

Recently the Lord has been showing me how the joy that comes from Him is truly our strength. In Nehemiah 8:10, as Ezra rads the law and all kinds of people listen and praise the Lord and understand the Law and rejoice in the Lord, Nehemiah, the governor, says that the joy of the Lord will be our strength. and the people, the Levites and all the other people there, rejoiced because they understood what he meant when he said that.
what does that mean? It's beautiful. it sounds GREAT. the joy of the Lord sounds pretty nice, and strength is always good. but how do they go together?
we are in a culture and a generation that emphasizes personal greatness and striving. where if we work hard enough, if we do the right things, if we have the right connections, we will "succeed" and have a lot of money and have high status. we live in a culture that tells us this is desirable and this is what will make us happy. Follow the American dream and you will be happy. But here we are, a culture that pursues these things as the depression and suicide rates increase every year. where there is more money and more striving but less satisfaction. where is this happiness? where is this fullness we SO desire? of course the answer is not in what the american dream wants us to believe. but our joy comes from the Lord, from the confidence in His faithfulness and providence and goodness and mercy. that He is who He says He is, that He is good and that His mercy endures forever.
He is a GLAD GLAD GOD who is in a GOOD MOOD who is waiting to lavish all kinds of ridiculously good love all over you...if only you ask! In Proverbs 8, it says that Jesus is around the throne dancing because He is so happy that we will be with Him (proverbs 8:30-31). He is the delight of the Lord, and He delights in us too. and He will totally share that with you too.
And as we grow in the confidence that the Lord is ALWAYS good, as we grow in love of His joyful gladness, His exceeding gladness rather than believing that He is mostly mad or mostly sad (which is not a belief that has Biblical backing), as we grow to see God as He is without our cultural filters, we see that we can live in an overflow of love for the Lord. that He doesn't demand for us to strive to love Him, we don't have to try so hard not to break any rules and we don't have to fight to be disciplined all the time, and when we fall we don't have to come before His throne in fear and regret, but rather know that while we have a holy fear, He is not mad at us but He rejoices that we choose to come back to Him even in our weak love.
as we grow in just enjoying God because he enjoys us, striving ceases. Our hearts change to want to follow His commands, to want to spend more time with Him. where seeking first the kingdom of God and His righteousness becomes natural and we see that everything else follows. our hearts come alive to a living, passionate God and He shows us that abundant life He promises us now and He reminds us of the promises He is still waiting to fulfill in the future. And we become strong because we have confidence in who God is because we have the joy of the Lord in our lives.
that's a KIND AND FUN God to give us strength through JOY. hehehehehe.
i can talk and talk about this but it really comes down to psalm 34:8: O taste and see that the Lord is good. and you will be ruined for anything less than the fullness and truth of God.
and it's REALLY good.

Unity

Unity. It's no coincidence that as we make significant strides towards unity, the enemy chooses to attack our friendships, our relationships. Yes, he plays off the insecurities that we are not loved, that we are not worthy of having friends, that everyone is moving on without us. He plays off of the insecurities that we are destined to be alone, that no one understands us, that there's no point in having certain friendships. He tries to create drama, plant lies in our heads, bring disunity and division, throw everything into chaos. Yes, the enemy is going to attack. Yes the attacks intensify when we are working our way towards something our Father wants. But beloved, even though the enemy is always going to attack, that doesn't mean we can't or shouldn't do anything about it.

"Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity!" Psalm 133:1.

Look, even if you are not dealing with friendship or relationship problems at the moment, be cautious please. This is an area where I believe the Lord is revealing to be one of the enemy's targeted areas in these upcoming weeks. I had a vision several days ago of a chain that started to link together. But when even one link of the chain was cut, everything fell apart. Be watchful, for "the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour" 1 Peter 5:8.

Beloved, we need to take a stand against the enemy and say enough is enough. So "let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you" Ephesians 4:31-32.

Remember to love one another, knowing that when one part of the body hurts, the whole body hurts together. Open your eyes to see who is hurting. Remember that after you put on the whole armor of God, you are to pray for all the saints.

Watchmen, don't be caught sleeping please.

Why Pray?

It seems like things on campus have cooled down quite a bit since last quarter, or at least things aren't as much "on the surface" as they had been. When things are heated on campus, it is easy to pray and to think of all of the glorious things God is doing and will do and that is good. But when things calm down, sometimes so does our motivation to pray. For our campus, for our friends, for our families...whatever it is we pray for. When we feel like we aren't seeing the desired "results," when we feel like God isn't moving or listening to what we are pleading for, it becomes hard to still pray.

Let's go back to the heart of prayer. Prayer isn't just us telling God our wish list. It is so much deeper, so much more personal, so much more beautiful than that. We get to interact with the Father, listen to what He is saying, communicate with Him, and share emotions with Him. When we intercede, we get in touch with how He is already feeling about a situation He knows much more about and cares much more about than we ever could. We get tired when we just plead and plead, but we get energy and passion when we allow God to speak first, when we listen to what He is saying, when we remember that He is God, that He is in control, that He is Love, and that He is our hope.

Ephesians 3 reminds me of how URGENT and BEAUTIFUL and FREEING this gospel message is. How we will, with all the saints, understand the depth the height, the width and the length of the love of God. How when we pray, when we share what the Lord has done, God will do INFINITELY more than we can imagine. Because He is more creative and He has so much more love than we do, and so much more wisdom and knowledge. We pray because it moves His heart. It is our privilege, and He doesn't want us to get burned out.

If you are weary, take rest in Him. He is our strength, our redeemer, our deliverer, our Abba Father. It is a beautiful thing that He loves us just the same when we sit before Him as when we intercede, when we go to large group or don't go to large group, when we go pray for people or when we don't. We can come to Him first and let all things fall from there. :) mmmm

encouraging stories =)

"Once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens". The word 'once more' indicates the removing of what can be shaken- that is, created things- so that what cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore, since we are receiving a Kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire" (Hebrews 12:26-29)

I know that as intercessors, we pray in faith, trusting that things are shifting in the invisible realm- but we also need to be fueled & just... encouraged, by stories of what has become visible in the physical that are glimpses of the invisible. I wanted to share what I've been witnessing as God HAS BEEN starting to shake all that can be shaken on our campus-

1. On Admit day there was a physics professor who we got into a spiritual conversation with. He seemed very interested in observing what students were tabling for etc. but it was pretty obvious what he thought about the idea of God, the Bible, etc- it was interesting though because even though his main claim was that he's a scientist, one of the setbacks for him to accept the God of the Bible seemed to be one less intellectual (about his impressions of treatment of women in the Mosaic laws... something I really don't know much about). What's pretty crazy is that we found out through the girl sitting next to us that he was the professor who had funded The Koala after recent events. Let's pray for him! (Today I saw him again on Library Walk, again, engaging in conversation with students flyering for orgs)

2. There is a lady in one of the ResLife Offices who I became friends with after I prayed for her broken toe. There wasn't instant healing but she was very open and encouraged, telling me that she definitely believes in healing through prayer because she was healed of a disease previously in her life through a group of people praying for her. I got to have few more pretty good conversations with her and prayed for her daughter. Few days ago she told me that since we prayed for her daughter, her daughter has actually been doing very well (mostly emotionally, life transition things) and that she thinks it's because of the prayers. She even opened up to tell me about her experience in the past of hearing the LORD speak to her about her life (she has a Catholic background but what I've sensed is that she hasn't been engaging in her faith as much, she says that she misses having 'that connection' with God a lot)- praise God!

3. God opened up doors for deeper conversations with few of my friends on different orgs on campus in March with the protests and responding the events on campus. Since then they've expressed more interest in InterVarsity (not that it's about IV... but to have successfully represented to our best ability the things that Jesus is passionate about is worth celebrating! woot!)... Couple nights ago these girls and another friend were literally outside my door in our suite and I heard them literally saying that "I want to take my faith more seriously"/I need to know God more... ;asldfjkal;djs.

4. Did you guys see how many people on library walk were surrounding the preacher guy that came a couple weeks ago?? Even when there were other things going on on library walk? Even if a lot of them were Christian, people are hungry for something more. They're hungry for truth, to be encountered by Truth.

5. Last but not least... Events like Heartbeat, the creation of Haiti Response Network... This is pretty extraordinary!! For persons associated with the MSA, the BSU, the LGBT, etc. to come alongside us, to become friends with us, ;alskdjf;lj... All these boundaries/reservations/walls to be breaking down... Definitely not on our abilities, and I truly believe that this is just the beginning.

He is uniting the body of Christ on campus, He is instilling deeper hunger for Him, He is starting to shake the academia/the administration/faculty, He is making what He thinks about injustice known, He is taking His Bride to deeper places of surrender, He is pursuing each heart fervently... and He honors and responds to our heart when we agree with His heart, His plans, His passions.

the heart of prayer

as human beings, we are wired in such a way where in everything we do, we want to see results. we want to know that the time and effort we put into any task will make a difference, something that would not be there had we not participated.

unfortunately, we bring with us the same mindset into prayer. we enter into prayer knowing that prayer is effective and knowing an infinite God hears and answers our prayer. had we not known that we would not pray at all!

so we pray. and we expect our prayers to make a difference, specifically visible, tangible signs. so we begin looking for signs and any evidence of change, any sign that our hours spent talking to an unseen God made any difference. we look around our campus, which, at a glance, appears to be just about the same, and we lose hope. we give up. we get angry and upset at God, frustrated, tired, weary, and we lose hope. we question our decision of being obedient to God, our ability to judge and discern and follow the leadership of His voice in the first place, and if we are even on the right track. suddenly we feel powerless, and incapable of changing anything. unfortunately, that is true. we can't change anything when we forget about who He is and we realize we have forgotten that it is not by what we can do, not by our power our might, but by His Spirit alone that changes.

it's times like these where we learn the heart of prayer itself. intercession. prayer not to see physical, tangible, immediate results. but knowing the season of prayer we find ourselves in. yes. a season of sowing. and honestly, it isn't the most glorious season, where we see the fruit, the splendor and glory. but we find ourselves riding on a wave. a wave of the spirit of prayer that has been stirring on this campus for years past. a wave that has only gotten bigger and is still growing even now. we find ourselves swept into the movement of sowing to see kingdom come at UCSD not knowing when fruit will be ready, let alone what they even look like.

yet we sow. we sow because we love to be in His presence. because we yearn for the things on His heart. we sow not for the sake of immediate, tangible results, but to respond and engage in a movement of a wave of His Spirit that has touched our lives. we sow in confidence, knowing that in His timing, He is faithful to the end, to finish what He started (phil. 1:6)

spring quarter

it's hard to believe that the hatred on campus was over a month ago. it's interesting that the title of this article on my firefox tab goes like this: "San Diego Campus Awakens to Uneasy Race Relations". have we not been asking for a great awakening on this campus? oh would you send it LORD!

much has happened over the past month. after spring break, the intensity of the racial tension feels altogether...gone? now we may be feeling...apathetic? disconnected? weary? the Daniel fast feels like...an inconvenience, if anything? as we look forward to the excitement of spring quarter, asking God to send revival to UCSD may not be particularly the number one thing that is driving us. oh how we ask for more grace!

oh LORD, would you fill us. Holy Spirit would You fill us. there is no other way we can go on until we are filled with the knowledge of the Father's love for us, which empowers us with boldness, passion, and fervency. so we aren't going to move on until we are filled. we must have You.

fill us anew, LORD.
and devil, we aren't done yet.