My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.
2 Corinthians is not a delightful letter to read.
A year ago, I found comfort in the piercing Word of God:
For we do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, of our trouble which came to us in Asia: that we were burdened beyond measure, above strength, so that we despaired even of life. Yes, we had the sentence of death in ourselves…
I was in China when I first read that. I was comforted by the Word of God, yet at the same time, I wished I did not understand 2 Corinthians at a visceral level.
I wish—even after all this time—that I were a lukewarm Christian.
I wish I could be happy enough just to not go to hell. I wish I weren’t so detached from the world and its lusts. I wish I could settle for a church that is merely a social club.
My understanding of Scripture comes from experience.
I lived the Scripture; therefore I know.
When I first got in touch with the church and Christian community, I thought I had finally found home. That was correct, but not accurate. Soon I discovered that people don’t want God as much as I do. In fact, my desire for Him is an inconvenience to their carnality and lukewarmness. Few people are inspired by my desire; instead, they hold onto the way they live, content with the Jesus they’ve imagined Him to be, having no appetite for the Word—which is God—whom they claim to love.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” John 1:1
A few weeks ago I posted that podcast on the Vagabond Spirit—maybe I don’t have a vagabond spirit, but I certainly feel like a vagabond wandering through this world that is not my home.
Since I was a little child, I knew without wavering that I was from above, from heaven, from somewhere ethereal and eternal. I grew up with a homesickness that no one was able to acknowledge. I grew up watching out the window of my bedroom in the dark, and the lights of the city—down the building or in the distance—became the anchor of my imagination. I waited for someone who could fly to knock on my window and tell me who I truly was—that I was a fairy or a princess of a magical land, and that it was now time for me to go home. And I would be able to fly that very night and disappear into the air.
This is why I followed Jesus immediately, unwaveringly, and never looked back. He was the “supernatural” Man I had been waiting to knock on my window. I had waited for His revelation all my life.
He is the way, the truth, and the life.
Life was hopeless before Him. I was never a passive person—if anything, the opposite. Indeed, I was too competitive and ambitious. But I never truly had hope—
And what is hope?
It’s not the destination. It’s not that you will get what you want in this life. It’s about eternity. It’s having the peace, the gentle and quiet spirit, knowing that you have eternal life—eternal joy, eternal abundance, eternal love.
That’s hope.
And I can’t settle for anything less.
Everybody seems to accept the fact of death and separation and heartbreak and the loss of loved ones and loneliness and diseases. I never accepted those things—not in my heart, not in my spirit. It was repulsive to me to hear about people getting divorced or breaking up for various, romanticized, bowing-to-the-world reasons.
I never accepted death or separation from loved ones, whether by death or by life.
It was as if I remembered the culture of heaven—where I came from—and the principles of this world made me sick. I hate romance with tragic endings. I hate divorce with passion. I hate that families no longer make an effort to gather together at least once a year.
When Gatsby asks Daisy to tell her husband Tom that she never loved him, Daisy breaks down and says that Gatsby wants too much; she loves Tom and she loves him too.
Gatsby is shocked: “You love me…too?”
That’s what I’m talking about. I want too much, too. And in fact, the things I want can never be found on earth in man. Only God is able to give me truth and eternity, and that “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”
And He fulfilled His promises to me. He never left me nor forsook me. What the enemies meant for evil, He turned for good. What the enemy stole, He restored double. There’s no year the locusts have eaten that God cannot redeem. After all, He made all things in six days, and your life can’t compare to the vastness and intricacy of Creation.
I had a good prayer time this week in my sickness. I didn’t pray in tongues, but everything I prayed in English was in the Spirit, and somehow I believe the fever helped. It shuts off your reasoning. It weakens the flesh and humbles the heart. Many people have had a genuine encounter with the Lord and were transformed during their hospitalization. Not that God wants you to be sick, but, just like dreams, you will only listen when you lack the strength to be a busybody, carried away by the things on earth.
I met people who drew near to God during their hospitalization and immediately went back to their vomit. I knew people who went back to the hospital many times, humbled, and came out remaining who they were.
Is it still repentance when you only repent because your flesh is too weak for you to live in the flesh? If this is you, don’t be surprised that God may allow you to be sick over and over throughout your life until you truly repent. If the hospital is the only place where you will listen, then He will let the devil get you in there.
Derek Prince said that people’s faith problem is always about unrepentance. If you truly repent—come to the end of yourself, give up your way, and are humbled enough to obey Him, to live your life for Him—you will not struggle with faith.
I’ve been to enough churches across the West to know that most church-goers never truly repented. As a result, their hearts are never changed. They may deceive themselves and others when things go well, but the heart issue will be exposed when trials come, when conflicts happen, when inconveniences exist.
And my experience taught me: an impure heart is unable to recognize, let alone appreciate, a pure heart. It takes one to know one. And what you attract into your life is a reflection of your hidden strongholds.
You don’t get what you want—you get who you are. And who you are is not who you consciously think you are or who you physically appear to be, but who you subconsciously are.
✨You don’t know what you don’t know until someone tells you✨:
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If you have the humility and courage to sit down and reflect on the things you attract into your life, you will discover a pattern, and that pattern reveals a problem God wants to deliver you from.
You don’t know what you don’t know until someone tells you.
God revealed to me problems I was unable to acknowledge or recognize—and therefore unable to solve—over the past three years. I know most people go for therapy, but I also know that if things aren’t addressed spiritually, they aren’t fully addressed. Psychology is only the daily hand-holding part. The root is in the spirit.
In my sickness, I was finally able to slow down—not just in the body but also in the mind. It was a rest, when the ability to overthink is choked and the only thought left in your mind is the one deposited by the Holy Spirit: soothing, enlightening, liberating. Though the body suffers, the soul is freed. I realized I’ve spent too much time bustling around when the things that truly matter are few. I only need to focus on one thing a day, one thing at a time, do it well, try my best.
I suffered from chronic anxiety all my life until I was delivered through my first spiritual fast. The anxiety was not mine—it was added unto me by my mother. The nagging voice still rang in my head whenever I was at peace or resting. I fought against her all my life, first face to face, then in the mind and in the spirit. I realized all my problems, troubles, and strongholds originated from her and from our relationship. All the bad decisions I made and the good decisions I failed to make came from her. I saw a glimpse of this after I went to America, but it was not enough to set me free.
People who lack a father figure grow up confused and insecure. People who lack a mother figure grow up harsh and tough. Research shows that kids growing up in a single-dad household are just as successful as kids growing up in a complete family, while those raised by single mothers have much higher rates of anti-social behaviors. They used to say, even in the church, that the father is more important. I agree—but reflecting on myself, I would say that you can’t afford to lack either. Maybe your father will teach you discipline and shape your character, and a father may be enough to make you successful in life—
but true success is happiness and peace. And I believe a mother gives happiness. A motherless child grows up unhappy, no matter how excellent they are.
(Though I dissed the Tate brothers a lot, I see without researching that these two angry boys must have despised their mother.)
I finally understood why, even in the happiest hour, I was sad, and why no validations from accomplishments could change the keynote of a motherless soul. You shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free. But you don’t know what you don’t know—until someone tells you.
Until God told me, I didn’t know what I didn’t know.
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And now that I know, I understand everything—the final missing piece to be whole in Christ Jesus. Through His stripes, I am made whole; through His poverty, I am made rich.
I understand now, even more, why He died on the cross for our sins, why He loves us.
We are never terrible sinners in His eyes—He made us good—but the world, with its lusts and pains, has bent us out of shape. We are too occupied with our own way, crooked from our upbringing and past experiences.
I never take “the Blood has washed me clean” as a metaphor—
It’s never a metaphor, just as pretty much every verse in the Bible. Now the paradox is:
You will never know you were dirty until you’re clean. You will never know you never truly repented until you truly repent. You will never know you were still in bondage until you are truly free.
“It’s not your fault.”
That’s the Word God has for you today. He loves you—not like what sentimental Christians out there say, that He loves you even though “you’re unworthy”—you are worthy. He knows who He made you to be.
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