This morning I was in my early morning prayer as usual in my 1 hour prayer, although this morning was a little bit short ,but it was profound experience. I’ve been struggling to do things for God, to serve God , to reach a height that I’ve ever seen before to glorify him not to glorify my ministry per se.  Although they always have a linkage between the two.

God promise to make Abraham’s name great

As a matter of fact God spoke to Abraham, “ I will make your name great and I’ll make you to be father of great nations. All nations shall be blessed through you. I will bless you and I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you.” This is making Abraham’s name great, not for Abraham’s sake as he is in no way asking for anything of that sort from God, but its really him trying to understand, trying to serve God in his calling in a humble way. But astoundingly God promise to make Abraham’s name great!

In our days it is hard  to imagine that you want to ask God to make your name great and they’ll be self-centered, self-egoistic! But this is not that case, this is actually God wanted to make Abraham’s name great so you might understand that’s how I pursue God for all this longest time of period because I want to proclaim his Name make his name great. 

In the midst of all this, I feel worn out, tired mentally and spiritually because I’m not seeing anything substantial from God in my drive and zeal to plant church for God. I remember there was a tremendous session taught in our movement before on the chapter called the zeal of Paul.  Zealousness is one of the clearest characters in Paul’s life and is displayed as his passion for Christ and he even said, “Woe is me if I don’t preach the gospel.”  So I’m zealous by my own nature and passionate and it seems to be a grinding to the ground.

God blessed me to start a work bible group

In fairness by God’s grace, He has blessed me to start a new group Bible teaching group in my office which is truly remarkable because it has never been done in the existence of out company for the last hundreds of years as far as I know!  All these are very exciting. I started it in August last year and now it’s about 8 to 10 people and it’s about half a year now time flies. I graduated last May and I have determined in my life I want to be somewhat like Paul when he got converted literally after three days of prayer and fasting when he was liberated from his blindness as he was struck by the Lord Jesus, the minute he opened his eyes he started preaching the gospel. And he was so powerfully effective and anointed and it seems doors are opening all over the place for him. I mean he could just literally walk into a synagogue, and they will invite him to preach. I wish modern day synagogues and churches would do that to me as well today, but there is a dream that never will happen. It’s a laughingstock. So I wanted to start quickly. Time flied pass….it was June ,July I was really seeking the Lord for direction what to do Lord I’ve spent seven years very rigorous Master Divinity (MDiv) in NYC and Orlando, and now am totally ready to blast it out for Jesus. And guess what? Nothing. In fact I was able to preach once a month during my two years of seminaries schools the last two years, and after I graduated last year the strangest thing happened, I was not invited to preach in that church in New Jersey anymore. And prior to that I was like preaching three Sundays a month in Long Island as an interim pastor and that was intense because I was studying in school having a 40 hour full time job and I have a family, although empty nested, and in the midst of juggling all this I was really stretched and I did that for one year the Lord has done a beautiful thing in my life. So it is in that context that I hear nothing, I got nothing. In the church that my wife and I attending, I finally put myself forward and asked by the pastor to teach theology class once and now preaching in a quarterly fashion which is really far from my intensity, but very thankful.  And thanks be to God that I am able to teach the word of God bi weekly in my office to a group of 10 people. O Lord may you bless their group the Lord bless the folks who come to my teaching.

The Vision of a Pizza Cutter

So this morning as I was praying so hard I recognized that I have something I can relate to from the church planters forum I attended with  for.NYC organization. They were telling us that one of the pastors after seven years of pastoring, he felt the internal state of his soul is worn out, it’s not ready to continue to do the intensity of pastoring. That phrase caught my attention about the internal state of your soul. In fact there were like the lead pastor of this organization shared that he had even experienced: his three church plants were blasting away growing well while his marriage was falling apart. But thanks be to God the grace of God he rectified that and his has great marriage ever since. So I thought to myself maybe God is doing something about my internal state of my being during all this period of searching and knocking at the door and with my zeal for God and passion for the ministry of the gospel, and as I was praying suddenly I saw this vision of something like a metal roller cutter like a like a pizza wheel cutter thing and just rolled over the edge of a metal. And this is like the cutter is cutting off the edges of the metal. I immediately understood and dawned on me that this is God telling me, “You are right, I’m doing something in your internal state and I’m cutting off the rough edges in your life.”

God is real

That means the world to me at that moment and I said, “Lord thank you now I know God is real.”  When I say God is real, I mean I always know that God is real, what it means God is real at that moment to me because God can be very silent even though you know he’s there. I’m feeling so much better and I do think that God cares very much how we feel inside our hearts but it takes a while for God to communicate that because it is precisely through this process of the moments we experience that God is actually transforming our lives, transforming our state of our inner being so they will be ready for the calling years for us.

Praise to God!