2 weeks! And Being Honest to Yourself

Hello there, my voice is back and my health is pretty much back to 100%! Thanks for the prayers!

Can you believe it, theres only 2 weeks till I leave on my triple missionary trip to HK, Philippines, and Cape Town!! I have a much more clearer picture of the plans in these places and I really look forward to learn and experience the wonderfulness that God has prepared. Here are some goals that I shared with the team that I want to achieve in the trip.

Goals for mission trip:
1. Get out of the house within 30 mins of waking up to dntG
2. Read the Bible everyday
3. Pray for one person by name everyday
4. Drink one full bottle of water everyday

Team goals:
1. Take leisure walk with God after meal
2. Have singing break

I believe that I should try and start doing these goals now. Because ultimately I want to achieve these in my daily life, not just on missionary trip. Often when I am on a missionary trip, I am more alert and I am pretty much able to achieve all my goals, but I have to admit that when I come back, I relax a little, and do not have that much of a motivation or drive to achieve my goals, and everything just goes downhill. Which actually to me, means that I didnt actually achieve my goals. So after all that being said haha...I want what I achieve through the missionary trip to be integrated into my daily life.

I also want to blog about a topic thats been in my mind a lot this week so far. Its about honestly facing yourself. I find that the more people open up to me about their problems and the more I realize my weakness, I saw the importance of being honest with yourself and accepting it.
Often the result of not facing yourself honestly is not good in the long run, and will harm yourself and others around you. I can think of many examples of mistakes I've made in my life, and if I was just honest to the reality of things and to myself and made actions that fit it, I would have avoided it.
One huge example in humanity is sin actually. We discussed this in cell group today, and sin is doing something against your conscience. When you know something is wrong, but you still do it, or if you know something is right and you dont do it. If oneself faces themself honestly, I believe that they will actually not sin  at all, because they will refrain from doing things that they know is wrong, and do the right thing. From this I see that God is very fair, He gave us a choice, but He also gave us a conscience to know what is right and wrong. It is truly man's responsibility to face the consequence of sin, but it is by grace that we are saved, because we didnt have to do anything, but accept God to enjoy freedom from sin.

I believe that most people know deep inside when they are doing something not right. But many just keep doing it because at the time it feels good or even that it feels right. However, our feelings fool us all the time. If everyone acted upon feelings, the world will be quite disastrous.
This is one thing I am trying to breakthrough. To overcome and feelings and see my true self, and to act upon  reality. One common example is drawing near to God. There are days that I simply do not feel like drawing near to God. When that happens, I get accused and feel bad, because I know that drawing near to God is good, but I feel like I dont want to do it, or have no motivation to go to Him. However, my true self actually loves God. I know for sure that I love God, and if I love God I would like to be close to Him and spend time with Him. This is the reality. I need to help myself to see the reality and live in it, and also live it out!

I have also been listen to a message and the brother shared about exercising faith. Actually sometimes, what we feel may be just the opposite of the truth and what is most real. When we have faith in God, we trust and rely on Him. Exercising faith is letting the truth affect you. When we draw near to God we are accepting the effectiveness of the truth and letting it affect you. We cannot just know the truth, but we must accept it. Just like when we preach to others, some may understand the whole gospel, but until they accept it, then it will have the effect in their lives. (wow i just summarized the message for you)
Of course the truth that we are seeing and that which is the foundation of our faith comes from the Bible. I give thanks to God that we can have the Bible! The truth in it really points us to the right direction and lets us see the reality of all things, so that we dont have to be deceived by our feelings or the concepts we have in our minds!

So in conclusion, I just see so clearly now how important it is to honestly face yourself according to the truth in the Bible. But we cant stop there, we must live in what is true and accept it so that our actions match what we know as right and true according to the Bible.

And there you have it. I know that sometimes we may stumble, but give thanks that the Lord is always with us to remind us of the truth and how we should choose our actions accordingly. We just need to be sensitive and obedient to Him, and it also helps to know more truths! (Thats why one of my goals is to read the Bible everyday, because I want to enrich myself with more truth!)

Sorry for being so preach-y in this post, but I just want to record the lessons and insights that I've gained this week, and hope that it helps! Ha, but most of it is for myself to remember!