as a living sacrifice.

Today. I moved into my dads house.
10 years have i lived with my 큰엄마 &큰아빠.
Long but short. hated but loved. safe yet so insecure. comfortable yet uneasy.
Theres a lot on my mind. I was a bitter child. I held such anguish toward them. The way I was, was their fault. Not mine. I was bad in school because of them. I was insecure because of them. I became who I am because of them. I was depressed because of them. My life was the way it was because of them. Things never seemed to be the way it should be. My life seemed to be in a mess, but it was always in a unneglectable order.
My routine of life revolved around that house. I thought of it as a habitat rather than a home. But boy sure do 10 years change things around. When I was first proposed with the idea of moving out to my dads place was very inconvenient. I didnt feel that total satisfaction. It wasnt that relief of mind. I didnt have that YES! FINALLY! But more like oh...

I felt that void, when i started packing at the other house. Literally it was bittersweet. I was in for the freedom but i wasnt ready for the change. I completely wiped out the house of my stuff and just left. I was to give 큰엄마 a call, but I had to go straight to work. Couldnt even unload my luggage. It felt so disturbing. 10 years worth of my life seemed to have been crumpled up in a paper and thrown in a garbage bin in matter of hours. Its a new start but for now i feel the way i feel.

큰엄마 said when she came home and found out that I was gone without a notice, she got a bit teary. Im sure she did. I'm actually gittn a bit teary about now. I dont know what I miss. The house? Her? Henry? My comfort?
She said 수고했어 내 아들 as she hugged me, when she visited the new place with my bedsheets. I hated with passion at one point and now I almost feel bad for her. OH MAN. This is weird.

My past 10 years didnt go down at once like a great toilet flush. It leaves its remnants behind. And here am I suffering from it. I feel like an infant stripped from my pacifier. The infants gotta move on to be a toddler. Hes gotta walk now, cant stay crawling sucking on a pacifier forever. Life goes on.

수고했어 큰엄마, 큰아빠, Henry. 사랑해.

older i get, i sense a stronger need for a good friend. a real friend. ive always been the "everyone's friend" figure. knowing everyone. the reality is that there is a level of great difficulty to actually engage in a great relationship with that one person or two. you are pretty successful at life when you do have that few friends. real ones. as we were just chatting away at mcdonalds today, with an ice cream, they were addressing that the problem was in me. i was the people pleaser of the crowd. never stuck to any clique because it sounded ridiculous. but as life gets hard to do, you do need the extra assistance.

 but as my heart is yearning for a wordly relationship, God is seeking a divine relationship with me. more than anything i do need Him more. His presence in my life. in the vanity of relationships, God still shines through it. He was, and is, and will be my friend for eternity and a day. amazing isnt it? A God that can move the planets at the push of his finger tip desires to be MY friend. in fact He's jealous when i dont crave Him.

I still am seeking great friends. but God will most definitely satisfy my needs of a friend. As David was a friend of God, I desire to be that friend with Him. in time, when i am in God's favor, He will find me a suitable helper/friend. For now, i need God more. more than the air i breathe. more than anything. I need Him more right now.

"If one falls down. his friend can help him up. But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up!"-Ecclesiastes 4:10

More.

Utah mission 09. it was one of the most amazing experiences of my lifetime. it was totally evident of God's power working through the people. our goal and the theme of this mission was "Let the Water Flow in the Wilderness". one of our mission was to dig a pipeline for the church at the Navajo reservation. from the first day that mission was to be forgotten for the church had to go through a government process and it wasnt easy at all. even though the physical water couldnt flow but there was something more to it: God's Spirit poured down the everlasting water on the souls of Navajos. physical water wasnt important when the the souls were so dry and arrid like the place itself. Monument Valley. a famous place for filming many western movies. very hot with desert-like temperature.
God had given me a verse before i had started the mission. before we got to our final destination, we stayed at a church in arizona. i woke up around 5 and came outside and started my daily devotionals. as i finished praying something poked me to look at the time. I picked up my phone and the screen displayed 5:06. as soon as i saw the time, the Holy Sprited prompted me to turn to Isiah 5:06. I got all hopes up for an amazing verse to encourage me. and it said:

"I will make it a wasteland, neither pruned nor cultivated, and briers and thorns will grow there.
I will command the clouds not to rain on it."

Lord Jesus have mercy. Arizona and Monument Valley is hot. it's a wasteland, you really cant grow much here. theres not much rain. theres thorns and briers. it's just like what it said. instead of encouraging words, it came to discourage me. I asked God what He's saying in the verse. and just now i have the answer to that. why God gave me this verse. God told me that He has made these hearts grow cold, so that they know what theyre missing in their lives. Just as I am so used to the perfect not too cold, not too hot California weather, when i went to utah and arizona i felt uncomfortable. i hated the hotnessm i wanted my california back. just as that, God has made their hearts dry so that they will seek God and we could lead them to the water. and truly it has worked. I thank God so much for His workings in this camp. the faces of the Navajo candidates in the camp has changed 180 degrees throughout the camp. hardened hearts were broken. new believers added to His kingdom.

my original intention to go to utah was for ME to change. i sought after that breakthrough in MY life. God didn't completely break my heart. i wanted it a lot. but now i see a reason in His doing. He said 'eddie, youre not here to be blessed, youre here to bless them'. i had to set my priorities straight. serving with the right heart mattered. i had to go back to the question why im serving. is for self-satisfaction or is it just following a command. you see, when you do something for self-satisfaction it would be a service. we werent there doing anything special. it really wasnt anything. we were suppose to be doing what we were doing. and therefore there was no need of getting any applause for the actions that we took. when we serve i think we must serve with a heart of servitude not service. servitude means to be in a condition of slave and to be under the complete control of someone. that someone is God. when we have accepted Christ, we signed our contract to be slaves of a master called Christ. we are captivated by the love of Christ and we cannot leave it. and we must follow the complete commands of our master. Jesus has commanded us to preach the good news to all creation. it is our duty to fulfull the Great Commission and Great Commandment. nothing special, just following the calls of our master. therefore we shouldnt think of what we did as something that is so great and think 'wow, i did something for God'. Silly one, ill tell you that you are suppose to be doing it.

I began this mission with the heart of wanting to gain something for myself but ended knowing the joy of serving the master. not with service but with servitude.

Hallelujah.He reigns.

i hate to see people get left out. i hate to be left out.
it is a dirty feeling. bondage with one makes isolation of the other.


_ill write more later. i guess.