Confession:  I haven't "poured myself out for God" for years.  Not since 2003 when I left the Nav ministry in utter and complete, immobilizing exhaustion.  What a sham of a Christian life I have been living all this time and nobody even knew it.  These last few years, I haven't refused to serve God, but I have been the one to carefully pick and choose what I will do for God if it seems good and safe to me.  I've held back from him, had an inability to surrender, because I just haven't trusted Him.  He didn't protect me last time.  And feeling like I can't trust Him has probably been the most painful part for me.

Looking back to the season of my life that started it all, I realize now that I had really high expectations of what I needed to do.  There were a lot of sheep to shepherd, and I felt a personal responsibility to care for them.  It was all motivated by love, but it was also motivated by a desire to control.  Things could have been different if I had asked God to make it different, but I didn't because I wanted to do it all, and I thought I was the only one who could do it.  It was my own fault, not God's.  But I've been running from Him ever since -- and finding that it is far more exhausting to run from Him than with Him in the way He wants me to go.

And these are the lies I've been believing since then:
1.  God will not protect you from exhaustion and pain.
    - He doesn't care about you.
    - He is impotent to help you.
    - You're on your own. 
2.  If you surrender yourself to Him, He will take advantage of you.
3.  If you pour yourself out for God, you will become so exhausted, you will be immobile.
4.  It's not worth it to love other people.  There will not be any reward for it.  You will be tired.
5.  Don't commit yourself to anything because you're just going to get tired anyway or change your mind AND disappoint those people you made a commitment to.

These are the truths I need to embrace:
1.  God will protect me.
    - He loves me.  I can trust Him.
    - He is powerful (able and willing) to save me.  I can trust Him.
    - He is with me and "for" me.  He is not against me.  I am not alone.  I can trust Him.
2.  If I surrender myself to Him, I will experience greater things than I can imagine.  He will lead me to amazing places and He will fill and satisfy me.  Surrender = Satisfaction.
3.  If I pour myself out for God, He will pour Himself out into me.  My cup will always be full to overflowing; I will never be dry.  (Just need to stay under the faucet.)
4.  It is worth it to love people.  This is the only thing in life worth investing in.
5.  I need to commit myself to the thing that God tells me to commit to (and not all the things I think I should), and He will give me the strength, energy and wisdom to invest to the end.

It really all comes down to believing that God loves me.  He loves me, therefore, He is trustworthy.  I can trust Him.  And when I surrender myself to Him, He will not take advantage of me.  Instead, He will take me to places that are beyond what I can fathom.  This is what I need to believe in order to move on beyond the pain.

[Edit:  God has taken me deeper since I posted this entry.  I need to change the first part of Truth #1.  God loving me does not mean that I will never experience pain.  I should never make that correlation.  Sometimes He will not shield me from pain.  But that doesn't mean that He doesn't love me.  This is a hard, hard truth.  But here it is:  God loves me.  Period.  I can trust God.  Period.]

In the context of celebrating Black History month at chapel tonight, Theola asked a very poignant question, "Will your history be one that only includes your ministering to, loving and caring for those who look like you?  Or will it look more like Jesus where you cross cultures and break down barriers?  Are you going to have a history worthy of being remembered by Jesus?"

Good questions to ponder.

I used to be racist.  

Though at school around this time every year, we learned that the color of one's skin does not determine a person's value because all people are equally valuable, I still heard a different message over and over again more often repeated than that one.  The message said things like Ethnic A were all lazy, Ethnic B were all gangsters and murderers, Ethnic C were all backstabbers and gossips, and people who had a certain look were bad people and had no ounce of good in them.  The message said that I should be suspicious of all people.  And all these judgmental thoughts were ingrained in me.

Sometime after I became a Christian, God began to do a massive overhaul in me to purify me.   One of the things He convicted me about was the appalling truth that I was prejudiced and racist.  And as I walked across my college campus, I begin to catch myself having these self-righteous, wicked thoughts for every other person who walked passed me.   It was awful!   I had been so used to being so judgmental that I hadn't even noticed it up until this moment in my life.   As the reality slammed me in the face, I got on my knees and confessed my racism, my prejudice, my constant sin of stereotyping others...

and though God forgave me for my sin as soon as I confessed them (1 John 1:9), it did not completely destroy the broken record in my head.  Every day, I was continually confronted with my wicked thoughts until I was begging Him to help me stop them.  I realized that I needed to take captive every thought and make it obedient to Christ (2 Cor 10:5).  Every time a racist thought begin to form in my mind, I said, "no!" and gave it to God.  I had to be vigilant in my effort to not let one thought escape, because I knew my whole life was on the line.  How could I ever be a missionary if I did not believe that all God's people were wonderfully made?

This went on for days and weeks until one sunny and warm day that I still remember very vividly when I was driving past a bus stop near campus.  I saw two girls who were wearing some traditional garb and I involuntarily thought to myself, "Those girls are so beautiful."  And just as soon as the thought materialized, I began to weep because I realized that I had finally stopped seeing people from a "worldly point of view" (2 Cor 5:16) but instead, I was seeing them through Christ's eyes as He would see them.  What a victorious day!  I felt this dark, oppressive weight inside of me melt away.  I was freed at last from the racial prejudice that had been a chain on my soul for far too long.

Today, I can't imagine ministering to only people who are Vietnamese or to only people who are Chinese or Asian or middle class.  I can't imagine being so close-minded and unChristlike as to shun others for the color of their skin or the difference in their dress or education.  What a sad history I would write for myself if I only loved those who looked like me.  Thank you, Jesus, for setting me free to love and by it, to experience joy.

Posting my sins (previous entry) reminded me of a poem I wrote last year.  Here it is:

Simple Enough
Mary Ann Nguyen
Feb 21, 2003

Lord, I pray that you would take me
from where I am to where you want me to be.
Cleanse me, wash me, set my guilty heart free.

Delete my deleterious iniquity.
Crush my critical spirit.
Steal away my selfishness.
Rob me of my rebelliousness.
Fight off my fears.
Nail my need for comfort

on the Cross, on the Cross,
where Victory reigns,
where Freedom dances,
where Truth triumphs,
where Life laughs in giddy overflow.

Lord, I pray that you would take me
from where I am to where you want me to be.
Cleanse me, wash me, set my guilty heart free.