Something’s happened within days I went back from the Winter Camp. You remember in my previous note, I wrote that I wasn’t disappointed I didn’t ‘feel anything’ during the Camp. Yet I was expecting something happened especially during the Sunday service!
I couldn’t come on the Saturday when they had revival night at church because I had to be at Lilo. I was envious towards those who could come, especially when I heard stories about ‘bizarre manifestations’ that some people experienced that night. I know, I have written and said that it wasn’t the manifestation I’m chasing after. But I feel as if the world (if not Satan) was trying to challenge my faith! Am I really OK just by knowing God is real in my heart (by faith) rather than seeing & feeling the manifestation of the reality of God and His Spirit (believing by physical senses)?
Am I really convicted to walk by faith than by sight?
I feel I am challenged by my own statement! When I said I wasn’t disappointed, is it true? Or was I just trying to comfort myself?
It was true during the Winter Camp!
However, after hearing ‘cooler testimony’ from my church friends, I couldn’t help not to want the same thing (the manifestation)!
I even stayed back after the first service to be prayed by Ps. Mark. I was hoping he would come specifically to pray for me, prophesy for me like he did to some others! But again, nothing happened…
I said to God once again that even He didn’t touch me there, I wouldn’t be disappointed. Yet when it was over and still God didn’t ‘perform’ anything, I silently got disappointed.
“You said that you won’t get disappointed even though you don’t feel anything, right?”
“I know, God, but…..”
Now this is the time my logic was clashing with my heart!
I know in my heart that God is real, He can speak to me anywhere, anytime, He can touch me wherever and whenever He’s willing to, through any ways, any people (it doesn’t have to be Ps. Mark, at that place, & at that time!)
Apparently I only know, but I don’t believe.
My logic was expecting something that is ‘more real’, as in something that my physical senses could feel that God is real!
It was very rare God speaks to me through other people’s prophesy (within 5 years they happened only twice, and only during my beginning walk with Christ – and how these two events were very meaningful to me even until now).
Mostly (like 90 percents) God speaks to me through His words in Bible that seems to come to me at the perfect time when I need it as well as through His Spirit’s small, still voice inside my heart!
Yes, God knows what I need best, and the best way to deliver His message.
Said the Lord to me: “Why do you need other people prophesy for you when I Myself can speak straightaway to your heart (secretly, yet you know it is Me who’s speaking)…?
Are you trying to get people’s attention directed toward you (“Look! She must be special to get that special prophesy by, say, Ps. Mark”)?”
Why?
Vanity, oh, vanity….
The Holy Spirit truly searched through the deepest of my heart!
Then two days ago I also envied my friend who got an opportunity to serve the Lord in the way I’ve been longing to!! I even cried at night before I slept, “Why it wasn’t me, Lord?”
I felt like a child crying and telling honestly what I was feeling to my Dad in Heaven (I rarely have a heart-to-heart conversation with my earthly dad but I know in front of God the Father it is different, I can be what I am without being afraid to be judged or scolded for being honest)
It doesn’t mean that I don’t love my friend, I’m also happy for her, but I just want what she has!
There again, my covetousness for things that other people experience!
Then when I was crying, my fiancee pointed on what I wrote earlier that morning on my “365 notebook”, about how God works in the same way as a silversmith does to the silver he’s shaping (the silver is us), it’s taken from one of devotionals by The Vine.
Malachi 3:3 “He (God) will sit like a refiner of silver…”
I’m just gonna share what the devotional is about because it really blessed me!
A woman who read this verse at a Bible study wanted to know how it related to her walk with God, so she made an appointment with the silversmith. Without mentioning anything other than a general interest in the process, she sat and observed him work.
She watched as he held the silver over the fire, explaining that in order to burn away every impurity he had to keep it in the middle where it was hottest. She asked him if he usually sat in front of the fire the entire time. ‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘not only do I have to hold it, I must watch it. If I leave it there too long it will be destroyed.’ After thinking about that for awhile she asked, ‘How do you know when the process is complete?‘ Smiling, he replied, ‘That’s easy; I see my face reflected in it.’
If you’re in the refiner’s fire today, remember:
a) He knows what He’s doing, so trust Him
b) He won’t allow you to be destroyed by the circumstances, or take His eye off you
c) when the process is complete, you’ll be more like Jesus and less like your old self.
Isn’t that what you want? Isn’t that what you’ve prayed for?
I sat there in silence and read again what I wrote, the last a-b-c points at above. “He knows what He’s doing so trust Him”, I repeated that in my heart.
There must be a reason why God gave the opportunity to her not me, it doesn’t mean that God doesn’t want to use me, His own words saying that I am the light of the world that is glowing like a city on the top of hill, do not hide the light under a basket! The opportunity to serve Him is by grace alone, it’s not like a competition between us believers!
There must be also a reason why other people experience His manifestations and I didn’t, it doesn’t mean God doesn’t want me to experience Him!
He just simply works personally in my life, His works are unique! What a privilege this is, isn’t it?!
Well, the next day then I got a news, something that I didn’t expect, I got my own opportunity to serve Him!!!
I’m so surprised by how God works, I literally smiled after I got the news while telling my fiancee, “you know, God is funny!”
Funny in a way, many times I don’t understand or even agree to the way He works, yet eventually He always bring smile on my face, His ways are just way more creative than mine!!!
I envied, I cried, I expected God to work with my way – I was acting like a child who knew nothing! I imagined God was smiling or even laughing to watch my childish act! >.<
He might be in His relaxing, cool move, saying “I know what I’m doing Nat, just trust me!”
Isn’t that what God has told me in Winter Camp, “Just follow Me, I will lead you”!?
Wow! I surely have to walk by this revelation, not enough to just receiving it!
Thank You so much, Lord! Truly Your way is not my way, and Your way is simply the best! In the end I just Your face to be reflected in mine… 
). We’re all familiar with each other’s ‘history’ (especially in terms of relationships haha..)
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