Dear God,
Words can’t describe the gratitude and the joy I have for allowing me to have a chance to serve in short serve. Indeed, it has been an assuring yet humbling experience for me each time I serve You. Assuring because I know I am serving not for my own glory but for Yours alone (that is right in your eyes), humbling because I see how much more a better servant I could have been and how much more I could have done to live out the gospel.
I am always constantly renewed with the passion to live for Christ whenever I surround myself with people burning with passion for the gospel, somehow it is the only way I am spurred/compelled to think harder about the Christian life and about scriptures, for my passive nature forever wants to find an easier way out and ask how much is too much (when it’s never too much but always too little).
The sinful nature constantly tempts me to return to the wasted life I once lived, the life before I knew the gospel with much clarity, the life when I was still fighting for my own glory, in pride and self-centeredness, for that seems far easier, and more ‘natural’. Sometimes I wished I never knew SYFC, never knew knowing Sebastian and Alwin, never served Mimby, REW and SWAT, even wished never knowing You, because it is because of your revelation of Your Word to me that started this struggle in the first place, to keep me wanting to stop living in sin and yet prone to sinning, because I know I have to account to you for every deed under the sun. But on second thought, it is pointless whether I had these opportunities to know you or not:
Romans 1:19-20: For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.
Therefore, even if someone was born without any Christian background, they have no reason to justify their ignorance to You, what more me, a person whose mother and brother are Christians, who have learned your Word enough to know the gospel, and served alongside with many role-model servants who died to self daily? After all that has been said and done, how can I continue living a sinful life and justify myself before you? How can I still enjoy sinning when it is clearly wrong and an abomination to You? How can I choose not to struggle to live out the gospel?
“The corruption of sin is far-spreading, evident in all parts of life. But the redeeming work of Christ on the cross is so complete, that the Christian can be freed from the bondage of sin, to live and to die for the sake of the call.” – Seb Kwan
Will I still be able to have any reason for indulging in sin, after what you have done on the cross to save us from domain of darkness into the kingdom of light.?How can I take for granted the very fact that my life was bought at a price? It’s a costly price, not just a life, but Your life! To save us from living in sin, you humbled your status as God and made yourself NOTHING.
II Corinthians 8:9: For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.
After all that you have done to undeserving people like me, to say that I want to live a sinful life would make me deserving of eternal punishment and suffering in hell. The thought that I had actually did that in the past, makes me want to put myself in a punishment far more worse than crucifixion and eternal separation from God. Because that is utter foolishness, to been saved from the fire and yet want to go back in to get burned.
Indeed Lord, I foresee that the days to come will be one that is so difficult to keep my focus on you, will be days that will be stormy and dark, days that will be sometimes lonely and sometimes hard to live. Lord I’m still very hesitant to go back to school, to go back to face the world of sin, to be distracted by the things my sinful nature desires that never fails to correspond with what the world has to offer, for it is sin that causes me to stumble and fall.
But yet it is sin that Grace is then so precious and so wonderful, for your grace never fails to pick me up when I fall to sin, grace that not restrain me from sin, but also allow me to draw closer to you
The days would be tiring as I continue to struggle with myself to try to serve one master which is you and not my passions. Nevertheless, I know Lord that this struggle is worth it. For You are far greater than what my sinful has to offer, far greater than recognition and fame, far greater than wealth and riches, and far more satisfying than making a name for my own glory. Lord, I want to continue to struggle to live for You, so that I can appreciate the rest and peace you give even more in my weariness and heavy burdens, so that I may naturally give you the praise you deserve when I can truly experience enjoyment in you. For You are most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in You.
By Your Grace,
Leon
