let love be the reason I live ✞

i am in awe at the fullness and completeness of god, from what i read in his word each day, to the retrospective takes on life that makes me learn, learn how to grow, learn how i have grown. and how fellowship in christ really helps you grow and be ministered to. and encouraged. so nice. everyone prays together, studies together, eats together - this is what i will miss so much about ocf! the close fellowship with each other. i know he will provide and sustain me even if singapore feels so different, and people are so different, i just have to trust. 

i’ve been subsisting on very little sleep each day, and i think i should sleep early before i really reap the bad side effects! tonight has been a nice night, because i got home really tired but a long hot shower and painting my nails to All Sons & Daughters and United Pursuit Band was so refreshing. especially singing to him with surely new sounds of the voice he has given me to sing! today was first day of blessing ministry. surely he gives me his joy to smile and talk to people and even the words or sensitivity to start conversations. i shared my testimony in mandarin today. sometimes i wish i shared my faith more but then again, even if it takes me 1 hour or 1 week or 1 month or even 1 year to meet that one person i can share to, or am brave enough to share to, i think i am willing to keep serving and see what doors he opens. i like what it says in revelations about the doors that he opens, cannot be shut. nothing can stand in the way of his kingdom, or in the way of me sharing if he has allowed the person to cross my path and conversation is led there - that’s his open door!

i think i have learnt how to let go and trust god in how he works in individuals or chooses individuals. because really, there is no point being frustrated or trying to correct for it all is the work of the spirit and i experience this for myself and god is the only reason i am who i am so why am i trying to make people how i want, even if i am after god? they need to know god for themselves and they will be like him in their own ways, as i am in my own ways. khong guan creamy chocolate biscuits and milk have been my two night snack buddies, they are so yummy. tomorrow will be a pretty long day - need to get to uni by 930, pancakes+prayer outreach until 11/12, blessing ministry at 5-6, apologetics class at 7. tomorrow will be a productive day! really need to get counting my articles. 200 articles to count. and make pie charts. i love making pie charts. 

yesterday (friday) it was my last OCF friday. after two and a half years. jon and giselle moved seats just to elbow me and eye me to say some sort of testimony/goodbye and i didn’t really know what to say, and i wished i could have expressed more thanks to god more eloquently. i said i had walked in a different person then and now am a different person now. i think i mentioned something about physical appearances even, but it was so much more.

i walked in, not knowing what it meant to worship him. i walked in, being afraid to pray because i felt like i always didn’t know what to say. i walked in, unsure of who i was because i had stopped going to church and had been running away from him. i walked in, bearing the weight of my sin in my heart. and then he took me to easter camp. he took me to a place of vulnerability to share about myself and where i have been walking before that point. he brought me to my irreplaceable sister in christ, nicola. i still remember that night where we left the room during ministry night. i don’t think we left the room together but somehow, we ended up spilling things out and crying in the bunk. i think that day was the first day i had ever said. dear god, what is standing in the way of me reaching you? he showed me my sin and i think i understood for the first time that sin wasn’t just something the bible told me off against. it was real and it stood between me and god. i knew who jesus was since i was 14. but distance and sin had just piled up between me and him. and i was 19, lost, scarred, broken. 

he turned my life upside down, he really did. i tried to start anew, but i couldn’t. the past was too comfortable. my love for hanif still stood more to me than my love for jesus. that year was a struggle to find myself again because my life told me i was something, yet my heart knew i was something else. my heart knew that i should have left, but i went back. my mind then told me i had failed and i was unworthy. i went back to singapore for winter break. i plunged into the sin i had struggled with, and had newly known was forgiven. i thought that i couldn’t be forgiven again. i didn’t know forgiveness never ends. i didn’t know mercy, nor grace. i thought i was less worthy, even less worthy than before. because not only did i know what i had to do, i went ahead and did it. it was really hard to live. it was a constant battle with guilt and shame. i couldn’t bring myself to tell my brothers and sisters that i had fallen. not after they had just rejoiced for me. eventually i told. i covered up for myself with justifications and excuses that loving as they all were, they just accepted. but i suppose, god really loved me too much to leave me as i was. or maybe my friends had just been praying hard for me.

back to australia. getting back into the rhythm of the relationship was so easy. slipping into a physical addiction was even easier. sin is always easy to slip into. but god always reaches out to save his children. he must have really believed in me. i began going for pre-bible study. and to be honest, until that point of my first year in ocf, the bible didn’t really mean very much to me. it was the same dead word that i had been ploughing through once a week since i was a teenager. but it was like a light was shined onto the words in Hebrews. it was like a hunger had developed to learn about the context, to learn about the cross-references, to learn about the words. then came LTC that i was invited to. pastor chee’s wife prayed for me and prophetically prayed that my guilt and my sin, like the prostitute’s, be removed. she prayed for his love to gush over me, and it did. like warm water poured over. she told me to never think that i was anything less. because he who has forgiven much, loves much. i’ve always kept that close to me. 


i don’t think i was the same ever since that prayer was prayed. i realised my salvation, over and over again. i realised the name of jesus, i realised forgiveness for myself, i realised that i wasn’t ugly anymore. i realised i wasn’t stained anymore, but i had to fight so hard to hold on to this, because hanif kept telling me i was. he kept me in so much fear of being alone forever, and he had convinced me that no one would love me the way he did because of my past. he was my stronghold. i tried breaking up. we briefly did. but we saw each other when i returned to singapore for summer. he made me contemplate. i didn’t want to be alone. i didn’t want to give up someone i really dearly loved despite it all, nor did i want to give him up if he was as he said, the only one who love me the way he did. i didn’t even care that he always used my past against me. i just kept seeing only the best part. that he even loved me. 

he pressured me to get back together with him. i couldn’t. so i ran away. i went for youth camp. god told me very clearly. i had only one path ahead. follow jesus, or follow hanif. it was ministry night. it was about declaring our lives for him. declaring like david to have a whole heart for god. i knew what i had to do. i had to leave hanif to have a whole heart for god, because with hanif came sin. with hanif came a stronghold of shame and a gulf that would require jesus to swim the seas for me. 


i am really thankful jesus swam the seas for me. that he sought the darkest forests and the rockiest valleys for me. he took his light, his face of shining sunlight and sought me out. then came the hard year of being alone, some parts of 2012 too. but god has been so good. what i have lost, i have gained ten, twenty, hundredfold. 


so i leave ocf now, as a completely different person with a completely different heart. a completely different mind. i worship him. i cannot live without him. i cannot stand any other life. two and a half years. he has sought to win me over, and he did. i love you, jesus. i thank you, for carrying out the father’s will in dying for me on that cross. i thank you for proving your promise to not lose a single sheep that the father has entrusted to you. God, you love me with an everlasting love. and today, i really am healed. i can shout on the mountain tops. that i have made it through the darkness and it has now become one of the pillars of faith. and now he’s building my next pillar of faith. the pillar of waiting for my husband whom he will call according to his purpose, the pillar of just waiting upon him in every aspect. 


and i will surely look back on my life as a young adult. and remember. i wish i had written this painstakingly in a journal. and dated it. so that i can look back, and know that the lord has kept his promises to me. a life of abundance with him, giving me all that i can ask for and imagine. i wonder where i will be. which part of the world. missionary in singapore? fighting for the vision to come true in indonesia? wherever it is. today i just want to give thanks to the lord for all that he has done for me. 


i really love every single person i have come to know as dear friends in ocf! you guys will always be in my heart, and i will never grow sick of hearing prayer requests, or remembering to pray together on Wednesdays, 4pm melbourne time. or fridays, 7pm. i cannot wait for reunions. i have to hug everyone goodbye in a month’s time :’) but you know what? i cannot wait for heaven. I CANNOT WAIT TO TURN AND REJOICE IN TEARS AND JOY THAT WE HAVE FOUGHT THE GOOD FIGHT WE HAVE KEPT THE FAITH WE HAVE STOOD STRONG. not many people from ocf will actually read this, nor do i think those who come here would have read through the whole thing but i feel a lot better writing my goodbye post. cheers in christ!