(August 26-27, 2011)
The past few days for me have been all about the Women’s Conference (which explains all the FB statuses and the photos I’ve posted). But aside from being the most recent event in my life, there are more reasons which explain why it has been and has remained the central theme of my life up to now.
This would be an understatement, but simply put, the VCA Women’s Conference was life-changing for me. I came to the conference expecting to receive from the Lord. But being the amazing God that He is, I am not too surprised that I got so much more than what I’ve asked for or imagined (Ephesians 3:20).
As early as the 1st session, the songs we sang were the very words that my heart was singing: “You’ve overtaken every part of me" (So Beautiful). Indeed, in God’s presence, we are stripped off of everything about ourselves. We learn that our own wisdom and strength are nothing compared to His and we are left with the truth that “All is grace” (taken from Keep A Quiet Heart by Elisabeth Elliot). This is how powerful God’s presence is. It transforms us radically. During that time, I was also reminded of the verse 2 Corinthians 8:5 saying, “they gave themselves first to the Lord”. Undeniably, an encounter with God brings about no other response but surrender. Not just that, but a “sweet surrender”, where letting go of ourselves becomes a delight. According to this passage, this is such a powerful thing because it causes us to “give as much as we are able and even beyond our ability” (v.3). Giving ourselves fully to the Lord is the first step to “going beyond our limits”.
Worship time during the night symposium stirred God to move in an even more tremendous way. His presence just melted me. The feeling was unexplainable. It was a mix of a sense of peace, security, joy, excitement and awe. Then as the people started singing “We wait for you, we wait for you, to walk in the room”, in my heart, I saw Jesus - so real and so true - walking along our midst then getting closer and closer to each one. At the sight of this, I decided to place both my hands close to my heart because I felt like how the two people walking and talking on the road to Emmaus felt - “They asked each other, ‘Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?’” (Luke 24:32) - My heart blazed as Jesus “came up and walked along with” (v.15) me that night. But rather than being satisfied, it left me wanting more and so it was with everyone else. For the rest of the night, our fervent anthem was “Lord, more, more and more”. Truly, the more we experience Jesus, the more unquenchable our thirst for Him becomes. Without a doubt, it is this thirst which sets off all of heaven to be widely (Isaiah 54:2) opened, empowering us to “go beyond our limits”.
One of the things which keep us within our limits though (as discussed in the conference) is fear. “Fear is the thing that grips you” (Dr. Hazel Hill). God knows we are fearful and this is why in the same passage, he commands us, “Do not be afraid.” (v.4). Towards the end of the preaching that night, Dr. Hazel prayed that the Holy Spirit expose what particular fear each one had and to lay it at the altar. As I was agreeing with the prayer, the Holy Spirit revealed to me that I had a “fear of poverty”. I have known so many fears in my life but this was the first time that I knew about this fear in me. My family and my church’s main ministry have always centered on the poor but I never thought that I had this type of fear. But “God is not man that He could lie” (Dr. Hazel Hill) so as soon as the Holy Spirit spoke it to me, I could not deny its truth.
As some of you may already know, my dad is a pastor and there was a time in our lives when he served full-time. As he felt God call him to the ministry, he resigned from his job, leaving our family with no other source of income, other than what the church could provide. Our church was very small and financially incapable then so our everyday needs were barely met. During this time, all 4 of us, kids, were going to school and 10-15 church workers were living at our house. So even without going into the rest of the details, I bet you could already imagine how hard life was for us during this time, especially money-wise.
During the women’s conference, I found out that this experience had created a negative impression in me. I realized that I have wrongly associated serving God with poverty. Though this has not stopped me from serving Him, it had definitely created a limit to what I was doing. It had prevented me from enlarging the place of my tent, stretching my tent curtains wide, not holding back, lengthening my cords and strengthening my stakes (Isaiah 54:2). I was serving God but there were still aspects in my life where I needed to have control. I always made sure that something was left for me and for my family. I could not let poverty strike us once again - that was my biggest fear.
“We need to be set free before God could use us to help set others free” (Dr. Hazel Hill). If God were to continually use me as His hands and feet to the poor, then I definitely had to be set free first. All these years, the fear of becoming poor has successfully concealed itself through other fears. But praise God for He is surely the God of breakthrough (Micah 2:13). He has not allowed that only the branches or the stems, which are only manifestations of the main fear, be snuffed out, but the very root of it all.
All glory to Him alone.
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