spoken word

ok.. decided to put myself out there with my first “spoken word”… thanks Aaron Chun for the inspiration.  This is dedicated to Grace Na Lin Lee and Naly Choi .

Title: Yoked With You
As soon as I think, “I got this. I’m really good at blank”.
Fill it with “loving others”, “forgiving people”, “fighting temptation”, “being a Christian” – fill it with what you will..
I’ve thought it all.

As soon as I start thinking… that is the precise moment God says, “Wrong.”

Wrong.  In fact, I’ve been finding that it’s the opposite.
Maybe I thought I was good at those things because I was never put into situations that really tested by love, my forgiveness, my faith.

I am in fact petty, grudge-holding, easily derailed by trials and tribulations.

Yet in my becoming, Jesus You gently hold my hand.
“See how I loved, see how I forgave, see how I lived.”

You are the epitome of what I want to be.
Like a beggar falling off the edge of a cliff, my arm outstretched, fingers reaching with every ounce of strength.
With that kind of urgency, desperation..
I look to You to change me.
Knowing, if I can just grasp Your hand, You will pull me out of the depths of my depravity and into the glorious life worth living.

But how can I reach You?

I will always fall short.

No matter. You tell me I am yoked with You

As I carry my load, I find it surprisingly easy…
Then, look beside me to see -
My Savior holding up the weight of my burdens, every muscle tense, but kindness on His face.

My burden is easy because You are my Help – ever present in every season.
Oh undeserv-ed love, undeserv-ed grace, undeserv-ed death on that cross.

The battle is already won.
And as I set my sights on heaven
There You are, still yoked with me.

(Inspired by Matt 1:28-30, Gal 5, 1 Tim 6)

Moved!

You can find me now at http://blog.dandislee.com!

Thoughts on Worship… 2

Been thinking about this one for a while and was hesitant to post.. but will just share from my experience.

2. Mean what you sing.. or at least try to

I think throughout my younger Christian life, as a person who loves music and gets captivated by it, I rarely thought about what I was singing.  I would get swept up in the music and the “feeling” of worship.  But when Jesus talks to the Samaritan woman, He says that line we all know:

²³ Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. ²⁴ God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.” (John 4)

Throughout my Christian life, I knew I was supposed to worship “in spirit and in truth”.  But that seemed so obscure!  Yea yea, I’m supposed to worship in spirit and truth, but what does that mean?? I think I had a slight grasp on the “spirit” part.. to really put my heart into it.  Many times though, I would look “into it” so that others would see or think I’m “holy”.  Yea lame, but I think at one point or another we all do it.  We either feel self-conscious or proud. We raise our hands and think… “I wonder who behind me is thinking I’m weird?” or “I wonder who behind me can tell I’m super spiritual?”.

But anyway, when I catch glimpses of people worshipping, it is beautiful to see the heart and “spirit” people show. Sometimes people worship w/ hands lifted and sometimes people worship quietly, but you can see the intensity on their face in how much they want to love God.  In our grandiose and quiet ways of worshipping, I think God is pleased equally.  Both types of “spirit-filled” worship really encourage me to worship with all my heart too.

On the flip side though, we are to worship “in truth”.  This is hard, because this is the part that is unseen.  We are to worship in the Truth, that is God’s Word and not just get caught up in emotion. P. Min says that worship is a Word ministry and I didn’t fully understand what he meant at first.  Throughout my different seasons of life, I’m starting to see more and more how the Word is embedded in every single line of a song.  The more we know of the Word and experience God’s character in our lives, the richer every song gets.  I think this is the power of worship. God’s Word is Truth and resonates in our hearts as we sing.

So, the question is: do we mean what we sing?  There was a worship leader I knew who would change lyrics of songs, because we can’t sing “I give my life to follow everything I believe in” w/ a clear conscience.  I would challenge that to say.. even if we don’t mean every word we sing with 100% of our hearts.. that’s where we WANT to be.  Do we really have desire for these words to be true of our hearts and lives? When we sing, “Lord I give You my heart” – we can say, “Wow, a lot of my heart is given to this guy, this obsession, this worry”.  But if we WANT to give God our whole hearts, I believe He is pleased!  Maybe this is all elementary stuff to ya’ll :p, but for me.. this was revolutionary.  Do I mean every word I sing, with every fiber of my being?  If I don’t believe in God’s goodness, sovereignty, provision in the words I am singing, then am I asking for more faith TO believe those things?

Let’s not be mindless worshippers who only worship w/ spirit and forget God’s truth in each song.  This is my fight and struggle and I fail all the time, but at least I am fighting!  :]  God is always faithful to help us.

Update, Hold Fast to Hope

Quick update: Didn’t make it for the Opening Act Singing Contest.. but was blessed to record something anyway! Still trying to figure out how to post the song -_-* lol.

Really blessed by my QT today, so thought I’d share it.  Gettin geared up for Large Group.  We are such a blessed people to have avenues to worship God and be challenged by His Word.  What a great God we serve

Hebrews 6
¹⁸so that by two unchangeable things, in which^(AD) it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope^(AE) set before us.

Paul should be a lawyer.  His arguments are rock solid and so logical.  Observations and then my thoughts in italics.

1. Two unchangeable things: God’s character and His oath
I’ve talked abt this a lot in my past QT’s.. but the question is: do I really believe that His character and His promises are fixed.. and never change?

2. Impossible for God to lie about his character or go back on His promises
Paul is explaining further abt God’s character.  He does not lie.  As we are such dishonest people, it is a relief to know that our God never lies, esp when it comes to His character and promises.It seems as though Paul has experiential knowledge of this.

3. We are described as people who have “fled for refuge”
It’s interesting that Paul is calling us this.  People who flee for refuge are trying to escape from something, are desperate, in danger, want safety.  I think of prisoners from the Holocaust, who are running from the Nazis for their lives.  I think the danger for us is sin and death.  We are people who are trying to flee from sin and death for our very lives!  Our eternal lives!  We should be people who flee from our old ways, our old life, and yet we run back to it so many times.  There are other parts of the Bible where it admonishes us to flee from sin or even thinking abt Joseph fleeing from Potiphar’s wife.  We need to have that kind of seriousness of hating sin.  At the same time, we have to look at where we’re going.  We’re feeling FOR REFUGE, towards God.  God is our refuge and the one who forgives, frees, and helps us in this fight against sin.

4. We receive strong encouragement to hope set before us
The unchanging character of God leads us to be encouraged and to hope.  This encouragement is not any old encouragement.. but STRONG encouragement.  Because we can be so sure of God’s character and promises, we can have limitless encouragement in that.  We don’t just sit in happiness.. but this encouragement leads us to hope.  This encouragement lifts our eyes away from ourselves to hope in something that is to come.  We have a race to run and we can have hope in this life, for what God can do.  Not only that, we can hope in one day seeing Jesus face to face.  He is the ultimate hope that is “set before us”.  The hope that one day we will be with our Great Reward, the Lover of our Souls, the Author and Perfecter of our Faith, our Savior, our Good Father.

5. We are to “hold fast” to hope
So I guess my application is to “hold fast” to this hope.  Be encouraged by God’s character and promises, which will lead me to hope to run this race w/o getting weary and to hope in one day being with the One I love.  Jesus, You’re beautiful.

Part 2 – Opening Act Singing Contest

I missed blogging lol.  I’ve been thinking about things to write, but haven’t had time to put my thoughts down.  More worship thoughts to come

So for the opening act singing contest.. I did enter.. but I cut it close!  It was due Jan 23rd at midnight and that weekend was just crazy.. I had just sung at IJM (which was so blessing!  go IJM!), then met w/ my pairing (LOVE my pairing ), and then by the time things settled down, I realized I had like 20 minutes to record and submit this thing.  So at 11:40pm, in my bathroom, with my IPhone voice memo app, I recording an a capella version of “It’s All About You (Jesus Lover of My Soul” and submitted it at 11:57pm.. LOL.  That song has been the cry of my heart for some time.  I’m so self-centered like 99% of the time, but I want my life to be all about Jesus!

Apparently, they’ll get back to the top 10 people by Friday at the latest.  It’s Thursday and I’m freaking out inside.  The reason why I never do these contests is because I hate failure!  I’d rather not try then to fail.  But I’m really trying to surrender this to the Lord.  Your ways are higher than my ways Jesus.  If they never contact me – I am thankful the humbling experience this has been and I know I sang that song w/ all my heart.  If they do contact me – All glory to Him who gives us all things.  My voice is not my own – the ability to sing or even breathe comes from my heavenly Father.

If someone shows me how to put my song on this WordPress, I’ll post the song.. but I feel sheepish showing people stuff like that.. just email me or something :p

faith is elementary..

For starters, I won’t be posting QT’s anymore bc I feel inhibited on here haha.

Something I realized at OIL is my lack of faith.  During DA Carson’s first sermon, I thought.. “Wow, am I even a Christian?”.  Only because, I realized so much about the Gospel in such a short time that it blew my mind.  I’m sure God was working in a very special way so it’s not DA Carson so much as the Word of God being preached.  But, wow.. I felt like all my life I’ve been wearing layers and layers of veils over my face.  Each new spiritually epiphany abt faith removed a layer.  At OIL, I felt like 10 layers were stripped away and things were so much clearer.  Yes, I think I was a Christian before OIL, but the truths of God are that deep that it will take my whole lifetime to scratch the surface.  I guess in my analogy, heaven is the point where the veil is completely removed and I see Him in all His glory, splendor majesty, and I understand everything fully (1 Corinthians 13:12).  I get kinda carried away when I talk about heaven so we’ll just stop right here :p.

Anyway, my question became – what is faith?  why is it important?  I always saw faith as something “elementary”.  “Oh, when I became a Christian it’s because I had faith and now I’m moving on to the more advanced things”.  How wrong was I??  Faith is something that needs to be followed by action or attitude change.  I mean.. look at James 2!  James is pretty straight up about this.  The problem is, I always try to modify behavior and faith is an afterthought.  Faith needs to be something that affects every thought, emotion, decision that I make.  When things get stressful at work, do I just try to get through it?  Or do I pray to my sovereign Father who is in control of all things?  When I pray, do I believe that He will meet my every need, in His way, in His timing?  (James 1:6-8).  Bible verses start sounding cliche to me.. yes yes, I must believe and not doubt.. yes yes, it’s good to have faith and then actions to back it up.  But really.. when the rubber meets the road.. does the meditations of my heart reflect faith.. or worry?

I’m definitely a worrier.. and something that I admire about my mom is that she is a woman of faith.  And not just any faith.. simple, child-like, trusting faith.  She flippantly will say things in Korean like, “When I pray for something, afterward I don’t worry because I know God will take care of it”… “Just pray about it and then wipe away the worries” (she uses the word for “cleaning” in Korean– chee wuh?  I’m terrible at korean)… “I feel God’s joy when I work”.  Just random, unassuming things like that.  It’s not affected, premeditated, or pretentious.  She genuinely believes each of these statements and wants me to have that for myself.

At around the age of 10, I remember helping out at the cleaners and hearing/seeing her sing hymns while she was pressing some pants.  I was hanging up some shirts and I hear “Yes, Jesus loves me” being sung in Korean.  I look over and my mom has tears streaming down her face.. not just little tears… it was snot and tears and the whole nine yards.  With her voice shaky, but convicted, she sung her favorite hymn.  I tear up just thinking about it.  At that moment, I knew she believed that she was loved by an infinite Creator, her Father God who loved her unconditionally.  My mom has faith that GOD is her father.  Her earthly father was absent in so many ways, but none of that mattered.  She had faith and that made all the difference in whatever circumstances she was going through.  I know that to this day, she still has a soft heart that cries when she sings her favorite hymns and prays w/ earnestness.  I want to be a woman of faith like her someday.  Aigo. I’m tearing.

Opening Act Singing Contest!

Heads up for all you singers out there!  WBGL is having a contest that looks pretty awesome!  I always shy away from the idea of singing contests (American Idol and the like).. but this is put on by a Christian organization which is pretty cool .  Deadline is Jan 23rd!  I’m still struggling w/ whether or not to submit something.  Fear of failure I think.  I never thought I was good enough to be a professional singer or anything, but I know that if I could sing for a living, for the rest of my life.. I would be be the happiest person on earth lol .  If I can be a part of a worship ministry for the rest of my life.. I think I would be just as happy except for the working as a nurse part (God willing) :p.  All to say.. even though I’m not good enough, I always prayed that if God opened a door, I would go for it.  Every time I turn on the Christian radio station in Champaign (which is not often ).. this commercial keeps coming on the air.  Maybe it’s just coincidence.. but who knows?!  Only God.

check it out!

http://www.wbgl.org/opening-act