Waiting for God

The last few weeks have been vexing, trying and busy all at once, but it is really rare to say that work is not the source of my pain this time round.

Praying for personal direction in my campus ministry next year has taken me on an intense journey with God the last fortnight or so. I have talked to so many people I've lost count, and at one stage, I think God was rather specific in telling me it's useless to talk to so many people when it's really just between Him and me.

But I knew I had to talk to 2 more people at least -- A and G.

There were/are two questions that God posed. The first questioned my motivations for service, with the passage from Matthew 6:5-14 concerning prayer, in particular the section on public prayer. This came in the first Thai Bible study group I went to a few Fridays ago. It's really amazing when and how God speaks.

The second came at service last week, where Pastor R expounded from John 1:35-42, examining Jesus' 3 responses as his central theme. Jesus' first response, "What do you want?" really thundered so pertinently into my being it was startling to even begin to recollect the whole episode.

While I was initially concerned about not doing anything next academic year to "rest" since doing nothing is also doing something, the not-doing-anything option has since morphed into a pretty much self-serving one.

My initial concern had got to do with my memory of how I have "gone back" on my word to reserve 2006 as a period of absolute rest in order to find spiritual rest in God. A form of sabbatical of sorts. But this grand plan was crushed when the newspaper project came along.

But I guess at the end of the day, while this might be true, A reminded me that finding spiritual rest does not necessarily involves absolute rest. It is more important to be able to find that place in your heart and your time, to seek His presence, only then would God's promise be manifest. It was basically a reminder of another church sermon a few weeks ago.

But what happened after that was unprecedented. I started considering the possibilities of being free of a year-long committment to a cause in my final year. I was enthralled by how I could pursue ad hoc projects like HCAP and be able to go to Harvard for conferences.

And of course how committing to what I am thinking of doing, would necessarily mean there is no point in applying to HK for that internship. And it would affect my local internship since I can only start late May and would not be able to end in time for me to complete 8 weeks and to go on that summer conference conference in Virginia, if I am selected that is.

On Saturday, all that myriad of thoughts came to pass. What do I really want? Why am I taking matters into my hands like this again? Whatever happened to trust and not fretting about doing the strategic things to get to the place I want to be?

I am no closer to a decision on what I am going to be doing yet, but my application to go on the church music team to do back-up vocals got KIV-ed mainly because of my current state of confusion uncovered during the pastoral interview.

I would just have to wait and see.