Interesting and frightening things from my Old Testament class

"The Levites, however, were not counted by their ancestral family along with the others. God had told Moses, "The tribe of Levi is an exception: Don't register them. Don't count the tribe of Levi; don't include them in the general census of the People of Israel. Instead, appoint the Levites to be in charge of The Dwelling of The Testimony - over all its furnishings and everything connected with it. Their job is to carry The Dwelling and all its furnishings, maintain it, and camp around it. When it's time to move The Dwelling, the Levites will take it down, and when it's time to set it up, the Levites will do it. Anyone else who even goes near it will be put to death.

The rest of the People of Israel will set up their tents in companies, every man in his own camp under its own flag. But the Levites will set up camp around The Dwelling of The Testimony so that wrath will not fall on the community of Israel. The Levites are responsible for the security of The Dwelling of The Testimony."

- Numbers 1:47-53

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Turn the Levites over to Aaron and his sons: they are the ones assigned to work full time for him. Appoint Aaron and his sons to minister as priests; anyone else who tries to elbow his way in will be put to death.

God spoke to Moses: "I have taken the Levites from among the People of Israel as a stand-in for every Israelite mother's firstborn son. The Levites belong to me. All the firstborn are mine - when I killed all the firstborn in Egypt, I consecrated for my own use every firstborn in Israel, whether human or animal. They belong to me. I am God."

- Numbers 3:8-13

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"The Levites are mine, I am God."

- Numbers 3:45

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"The Levitical priests - that's the entire tribe of Levi - don't get any land-inheritance with the rest of Israel. They get the Fire-Gift-Offerings of God - they will live on that inheritance. But they don't get land-inheritance like the rest of their kinsmen. God is their inheritance."

- Deuteronomy 18:1-2

Cutting out little pieces of fun.

Fingers dancing across the blacks and whites.

Sharing the moment.

One's sleeping, the other thinking, the third smiling.

Lying down, leaning back, sitting still.

My limbs are still but my heart is flying.

Opening gift boxes.

Expressing love with alphabets making up words on a card.

Reading and remembering.

Sentences of conversation bringing up distant forgotten memories.

Milk at 1 a.m.

Genesis?

Life is sunny, life is grey.

We move on; He remains.

Written in Summer 09, Vancouver

This isn't a profound epiphany, nor is it founded on profound realizations. It's just one of those larger than life facts that hits you and slowly sinks in. Just because you believe there is a God, and you know that you are only a (wo)man.

Sitting across the table from my bald aunt who has just gone through a round of chemotherapy, with the novel I'm reading which just mentioned leper slums in Delhi where they call them the "undead", along with my revived camera which started working again after a 10 second short prayer, I realize that the only reason why we are all alive and breathing at this moment is because He is watching over and keeping us. This simple thought helps me want to seize the day more than how I'm spending my time now.

He is God and I am not.

random journal entry

I want to teach my kids how to fly. I want to teach them to remember to look out the window on long haul flights, when it's dark in the cabin and everyone is sleeping, and find a nightsky full of sparkling stars, so intimate a moment that you can only share with a lover or your God. I want to teach my kids romance, how to be free on green grass fields, how to laugh and mourn, and how to live life to the full when He's entered your life and is expressing Himself through who you are. I want to teach my kids how to be jars of clay, how to know that they are dark yet it is still okay.

Sometimes I find that I never really forgot anything. If it was a really ugly memory that I had, He just took away the sting of the pain. The pain might still be there - oh it takes time - yet it's alright, for it has lost its sting, and thus have become a part of the past and wisdom that forms you.

stuff to work on

One of my friends who know me really well made some really true comments about me being deeply impacted by my mom today. Those comments freaked me out because they were so real and I was completely unaware of these influences in my life. For example, I generally prefer walking slow or prefer people walking slower because my mom walks super fast and always seems to be rushing or rushing me, and this I associate with being tense - which i do not like; so walking slower to me is a sign of being chill, which I take on a lot. This also makes me generally dislike walking fast. I don't think any one of my friends closest to me walks fast either.

This is a scary revelation!

Today during class prayer time, God also revealed to me deep places in my heart where I need healing from, so that I can open up my heart again to the people around me. I didn't expect such impacting and powerful prayers coming from someone I didn't know well, and how I could freely explain to her why I might be hurt in the past in the short span of 3 minutes and how she understood immediately. I guess when God wants to do His thing in that perfect timing of His, He just does it. Funniest thing was that at the time, people all around us were warring for God to kill their flesh and praying in tongues fervently while two women (my group) were gently praying for healing in the midst of all that spiritual commotion. God is funny; life in the house of prayer is funny. A lot of these moments in a day makes life very, very funny.

it is war.

Lately, so much has been happening. It's only been a week into 2010 and God is not slow to what He said He would do. His timing is always, always, and always ... perfect.

Tonight, there is a cry for no compromise. It has been boiling over at the house of prayer (www.anhop.asia) for a week right now. First day of the new season of internship and the staff gave us a big and very much needed hit on the head. It knocked us awake. Attitude towards the Word, spirit of performance, punctuality, sense of responsibility towards everything (not just big, important or spiritual things), being faithful to our calling, steadfastness, alertness... To conclude, we are being trained to become mature forerunners with a life message from God, not just young people who are spiritual and passionate but immature - kind of the state we are starting from right now. It will be a quick work, He says. Praise God.

Yesterday was a day filled with God outbreaks and fleshly struggles. From the moment I opened my eyes in the morning, I felt like one moment I was at war with my flesh and the next moment He was releasing intense breakthroughs in the spirit through me. When the devil tried to tempt me (which was often), I had to use all the spiritual strength within me to side with God and utter a barely audible but firm NO. At the 1-3pm set which I led, God broke out near the end and issued out a war cry among the interns. I know that God is up to something when the 30 people inside the chamber were shouting at the top of their lungs to these lyrics:

"The battle is raging, the devil is raging, and I don't want to be sleeping, when the battle is raging, wake me up! I don't fight as one who beats the air, give me eyes to see and ears to hear. I put on Christ, make no provision for my flesh, I put on the whole armor of God, leave no open door for darkness. I take the scroll, I eat the scroll, I open up my mouth and let Your word come forth, I take the sword of the spirit. Blessed be the Lord my rock, who trains my hands for battle and trains my feet for war!"

After being a little bit down and dejected that same afternoon, Clara and I hid in a darkened room, locked the door, and sang our hearts out. I saw His children walking on a rainbow of promises. First, it was a little boy and a little girl. Then came a bunch of orphans with laughter spilling from their mouths. (I don't think it's a coincidence that we were in the "children's room" at anhop). When I finally saw all the different broken people in the world running joyfully on the rainbow of promises, I knew that He was telling me it is possible, though there is so much hurt. Clara and I kept getting revelations, I kept writing songs, and she kept seeing visions. What finally blew us apart were the following few lines which reminded us of what we are truly living for, so deep, so gentle yet assuring: "I'm more than what these ashes say, for they will fade away when He comes for me; My love is real before His eyes, He's ravished by the sight of one glance from me."

As for tonight, it was a power encounter for me. Towards the end of the day with my head to the ground and 5 hands on my back, I cried out for a life of no compromise, of purity in the deepest places in my heart. I cried out for a life that embraces holiness and the cloak of humility which brings divine protection. I cried out for patience and unending love for the prophetic musicians God has given me to train. He is releasing the apostles today. He is confronting the spirit of religion which brings control and fear into the Church, robbing the Bride of all her most valuable identities - of sonship and of being a lover who will reign and rule with Him. I know that He is searching for hearts completely yielded to Him, and as long as there is a weak but willing "yes" in my spirit, His grace will cover me. Someday, not too long from now, His apostles will be brought before not just spiritual principalities but physical governments that side with the kingdom of darkness, and they shall tear them down with the fire and the power that comes with the spirit of Elijah. But first, we must cry out for refinement and for Him to turn the fires of the furnace a few notches up. We must live a life of no compromise, starting this second. I refuse to believe that it is not possible. With Him, nothing is impossible! I will fall again, again, and again, but I will still repent, get up, though bruised and battered, and keep walking. We are all but weak and broken vessels. The moment I think I've got it, I am doomed.

Release the war horses Lord!

to create

It's easy for an artist to dream of creating, and hard for him or her to find the discipline and space to do so. It's easy to enjoy the results of your artistic laboring from a piece of creative writing, a self-written song or a painting, but it's hard to go through what it takes in the secret places of your soul in order to produce such artwork. Whatever comes out of the heart has gone through the yet fragile but strong strings of tears and laughter, wild untamed and unapologetic emotional experiences, aching or bittersweet memories that make up a person's heart. Every time I write a song or a poem - especially a song or a poem that i write with the intention that no one but God will see (or with the intention that they shall be uncovered the day I die and my grandchild ransacks my dusty old attic boxes), it means so much more to me than things that are 'for the public'. Every time I sing with my heart - especially a song sung in an empty empty vacuum-emptied prayer room or when i'm hiding at home in front of my own little nest of a keyboard, it means so much more and i am able to pour out every single thing that is in my heart through that song. Sometimes, those 5 minutes are when I am most alive and when it feels like I am doing what I was made to do, one of the main reasons why I am breathing today.

Recently, my artsy friend and i met up and hung out for a morning in an empty prayer room in a random church. I love it when prayer rooms are empty and I get to enjoy the selfish privilege of soaking in His presence all to myself at odd hours of the day when others are busying about. When you meet up with one other friend in an empty prayer room, it is like having a 3-person date. So, my friend sang one of her favorite songs, "Moon River", in that vacuumy heavy Presence of her, me, and Him. I know that it's so easy for anyone to sing this song, it will take only 2 minutes. But then I know how much it takes for my friend to sing this song from the depths of her heart in the Presence because the heart-wrenchingly sweet lyrics somehow portray the journey that we are called to walk on. So, here it is.

Moon river, wider than a mile

I'm crossing you in style, someday

You dream maker, and heart breaker

Wherever you're going I'm going your way

Two drifters, off to see the world

There's such a lot of world to see

We're after the same rainbow's end

Waiting 'round the bend

My huckleberry friend

Moon river, and me...

Reasons Why I'm Free (because i can't sleep)

One of the main reasons why I am free is because I do not need to prove myself. Whether it's to my biological family, my spiritual family, friends, my church, or to strangers I first meet, I can be who I am to them, truthfully. Being me means me with all the flaws and incompletion, brokenness and weird character quirks, all my lacks and all my gifts. I am free because I do not feel the need to prove myself to God or to anyone, or to myself.

Another reason why I'm free is because of the joy of the Lord. As defined so clearly already, it is the joy of the Lord and therefore, not mine. I think this joy is called the "joy of the Lord" so that we would always remember that it is His joy that sustains us, not our fleshly joy which is sometimes mixed with vanity. With this in context, no matter what happens to me or around me, no matter what kind of circumstance I am facing, God is always joyful, hopeful, and victorious. This is His nature. He grieves and mourns, but He is still joyful, all at the same time. He scoffs at the enemy, laughs in the face of the storm, and rejoices over me continually with singing and dancing. Because I feel a continual delight from my Father towards me, I am continually in delight. And that is a huge huge huge source of my freedom!

I am free because of creativity as well. Creativity is a gift to dream that is straight from the heart of God. We, as human beings made in the image of God, have options to choose from. We can choose to accept reality as it is, with all its lofty high mountains as well as arduous low valleys. With our eyes set on the problems, potential setbacks and soon-to-be failures, we will never soar. However, God's gift to us is the ability to dream. Dreaming is inborn, and it comes from the fabric of God which includes within it the power to create. Creativity is the creation of the new and unseen through dreaming. When we are released to dream, no setback will be able to pull us down, no difficulty will be too big for us to cross over, and no limitation over circumstances and situations will be our stumbling block any longer. Our very beings were formed when God first dreamed of us. When I dream with God, there is nothing - absolutely nothing - that will limit us from pulling whatever's in His heart down to where we are. Heaven on earth. I am free because I dream :)

And I don't know why I'm writing this, and it's ok :)

I am free because I don't need to know the exact details of where I am going, and I don't need to know what the step after next is. All I need to know is that I am on a straight road towards His heart, and take the immediate next step according to what He has revealed. It's a little bit like enjoying being led when dancing with a partner, knowing that my partner loves me is a more than enough reassurance that it'll be a wonderful, exciting, sometimes surprising dance. Oh, what a wonderful otherworldly reality that is more real than this present realm that we call reality. It is when I close my eyes and feel the breathe of heaven, when I can almost smell the scent of the perfume of love that I just poured out all over Him again, when my whole being is swept away towards the direction of the winds made from the wings of the Spirit, that's when I know I am free.

And even when I close my eyes and see nothing, sense nothing, feel nothing, I am still free because there is something called faith, which is like an exciting journey into a darkness, which is only a shadow. For in His reality, there is no darkness at all.