Grrr-attitude

Wow…I haven’t been here for a long time.

Last last week, YPF had the second week of preaching practice. It was my group’s turn; our topic was ‘Fruit of the Spirit’. Actually, since the week before that I had already been feeling His leading to speak on ‘love’. I also felt Him slowly opening up my understanding of His meaning of love. But He wasn’t going to pour it out until I really decided on the topic ‘love’. So…I decided to take on the challenge.

That’s when He slowly revealed more and more. I realized that Eph 5:22 doesn’t say ‘the fruits of the Spirit is…’ but instead, it says ‘the FRUIT of the Spirit is…’. Then I saw that love was the first one mentioned. And THEN I saw that love was so much more than I had thought it was.

Basically, my teaching was on the ‘perfect love’ that the New Testament alluded to every time it mentioned ‘love’. Based on 1 John 4:7, I wrote the equation ‘loves=knows God’ and challenged the youth to rethink the ‘love’ that they find in the world. Then I proposed the ‘perfect-love theory’ and went through 1 Cor 13:4-7 digging out what this ‘perfect love’ is. I drew lines pointing out from a huge LOVE on the board and wrote all the ‘definitions’ like patience, kindness, blessings, humility, selfless, etc…

That was my the ‘perfect-love theory’–that love is actually such a multi-facected, complicated, extensive, incomprehensible aspect of Christianity. And yet, it is the most important, most crucial aspect of Christianity. In fact, Christianity revolves around it.

I went on to show how we could have that perfect love in us, using 2 John 1:6: Walking in complete obedience to His commands. Then I shared on my experiences during ThePlan09, how I actually felt like hanging out with others on the last night instead of retreating straight to my room to rest. I realized why I acted so out of my normal behaviour–that night was the closest I’d ever been to total surrender, so that night was also the closest I’ve ever been to perfect love. It was such a huge revelation to me. And with that, I challenged the youth to pursue this perfect love, because if they do, it requires total submission and obedience to His commands.

Before I went up, I actually was REALLY nervous. I don’t know why, I just became really nervous. One thing that came into my mind was, “What if they don’t get it? What if it doesn’t hit them?”. All these questions came into my mind while I was waiting for my turn. But when I got up there, my nervousness just went poof! Out the window. I wasn’t nervous anymore.

After I was done, I stood at the side and waited for the audience to critique me. I knew I had done a pretty good job, but I’m always bad at taking criticism, so I said, “God, help me”. They started telling me all the stuff they thought was good and not a single negative comment was made. Philip asked me to sit back down and I hadn’t heard any criticism! I was shocked. I sat back down amazed. Seriously? No constructive criticism at all? Wow…

Later, a few people came up to me or SMSed me saying I did a good job. I was just happy I could impart a revelation I had received. As I went home that day, I was riding high on this ‘success’, but I felt such gratitude to God for using a wreck like me to speak so deeply into people’s lives. I myself struggled with what I was talking about, and I see so many flaws within me, but still He could use this guy, full of weaknesses, to teach others about love. Seriously, I felt so thankful He could use me. =D