What an Idea Sir ji!

“Among these we all once lived in the passion of our flesh, following the desires of body and mind, and so we were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind”

- Ephesians 2: 3

One of the most elementary prayers of our faith - The Our Father - contains things that, ironically, no matter how many times we say them, we forget to put them into action. For example, the line “Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

How many times have we actually let things be done according to His will? Without any grudges, hesitations and complaints..of course.

We all have this ‘idea’ of how things should be. How our future life should be, our future spouse, our education, our clothes, our lifestyles, our friends, and even divine things like heaven. All these ideas, or in other words, our expectations are what make us act or make our decisions a certain way.

But isn’t the fact that it is OUR idea/expectation a lot of times a hindrance to His will?

The desire to satisfy our flesh and mind overpowers us to an extent that we lower our expectations in regards to the people we meets, situations we encounter, goals we set etc. We keep our ideas too close to our hearts, often shutting off our minds to possibilities which might have resulted in the greater glory of God. The fact that the apostles had learnt that their Master was capable of doing great things must have surely encouraged them to expect greater things from life and from themselves. The fact that they believed that EVERYTHING can be made possible by God helped them to keep an open mind, overcome persecutions and do great and wonderful things.

How many times have we truly believed that “God can make all things possible?” It’s easier said than believed.

This innate desire of satisfying our flesh has given the devil an unbelievable advantage over us. In our times, rather than preaching the Word in the midst of persecution, our toughest challenge is to try and stay awake during the Rosary.

Our routine of feeding our minds with the dialogues and imitations of characters from TV shows and imitating their lifestyle has made us the children of this world instead of belonging to Him.

We are called to be HIS. It is extremely important that we shouldn’t forget that, especially since He makes us do things that are sometimes out of our comfort zone. In those cases, we need that kind of reassurance lest we fail.

Driving with God

“Could not the one who opened the eyes of the blind man have done something so that this man would not have died?” – John 11:37

Ever heard this saying, ‘Put God in the driver’s seat.”?

I prefer to have Him in the front seat. I think He does too.Isn’t that how we should be exercising our free will?

I have always thought of God sitting next to me and giving me directions and either I take them or I don’t.

He has always been giving us directions on this “road” to eternal life, but sometimes we just get too over confident and think we know the way better than He does.

You know what gets us even more?

When we hit some hardship along this “road”. Then we think we DEFINETLY know better than God.

We fail to recognize the fact that these hardships along this “road” are meant for the glory of God. They are there so that God can use us as instruments to remind the society around us of His greatness, awesomeness and every other positive adjective you can find in the dictionary.

Take the above verse for example. The people who gathered outside of Lazarus’s tomb murmured among themselves, “Could not the one who opened the eyes of the blind man have done something so that this man would not have died?”

Reflecting on this, I came up with 2 questions.

1) Did Jesus purposely come to visit Lazarus AFTER he died?

2) What would the life of Lazarus and the people around him be like after this great miracle?

1) The first question takes us back to the point I made above. GOD KNOWS WHAT HE IS DOING and often times we forget that, especially when we encounter hardships. If he would have come a few days before and healed Lazarus instead of waiting to bring Him back to life, how many of the people in that town would have turned their hearts to God? Through Lazarus’s death, God was glorified. If God used a DEAD body as an instrument to touch people’s hearts, imagine what He could do if we offered up our bodies as LIVING sacrifices.

2) What would life be like for Lazarus after his resurrection?

Besides the fact that he would be the talk of the town, something in his heart would transform. He would not be afraid to offer up his life as a sacrifice, or even die, because he knows that with God even death is possible to overcome.

What about the people who witnessed the miracle?

How was there life transformed?

Suppose if this happened to our own mother, father, brother, sister, friends etc, how would OUR hearts be transformed?

Would it be a come and go experience or would it cause us to “renew our minds” and make our hearts clean in order to offer it up to the Lord so that he can use it for His glory?

It not really following God unless you let Him lead right?

Pizza with God

“Blessed are the clean of heart,

For they will see God.”

Seeing God

A lot of times I have just wanted to sit and have lunch with God. You know, maybe by a little window in a restaurant, eating some pizza and talking about life. Although it seems childish and earthly, it would be something that would make me feel humanly close to my Lord.

But I have the opportunity to feel the same or even greater intimacy with Him without sharing a slice of pizza. We all do. But why don’t we?

Jithin Chettan said “I discovered that one of my paradigms was that personal prayer was not possible everyday”.

It was my paradigm too.

If personal prayer was something that would clean my heart each day, and allow the Lord to enter me, wouldn’t I do it? Isn’t it much more practical than waiting for a day to come when God decides to become incarnate again to go out for some pizza with me?

Then why is it that I avoided sitting a while with Him? Was it my laziness or that I thought that our conversation was only one sided?

Was our conversation one sided or was it that that my heart was too busy discerning my will that I did not hear His side of the conversation?

If I want to see God, It is my job to clean my heart.

When I go up to receive Him everyday, am I really clean enough?

Am I even a little bit worthy for Him to come inside of me and love me?

I know I am not.

But why is He is filling me up with so much love for Him, that I cannot stop myself from receiving Him into me, into my unworthy self, when I do not even give half of that love back to Him?

Knowing His overwhelming love for me, why am I giving importance to worldly things, thus depriving Him of the love that He should be receiving from me?

I have lunch with Him everyday, but I don’t even realize it.

Will of God

* It took me a while to update since I failed to realize that we had wifi in our retreat rooms.

Many a times before have I “offered” up myself to the Lord. The desires to know Him and to be fully His were always there. But whenever I tried, it always resulted in disappointment. I heard the priests say all the time, “Surrender yourself! Give yourself to the Lord! He will do miracles with your life, only if you let Him.”

But what was the meaning of all that? When I yelled out in my prayers before the Eucharistic Lord, ‘Lord! Have mercy on me! Use me for your kingdom! I do not want to live not knowing you!”, was that not a surrender? What more could I do to make sure that He answered my prayers? Why was it that every time I would get an emptier feeling after every surrender? Was I not worthy enough to work for the Lord? Or was it that He knew that I wasn’t responsible enough to handle His work?

I heard testimonies over and over again about the worst kind of people getting converted to Catholicism and doing amazing things wherever they went. But what about the
“regular” kids like us? Did we need a flash of lightning to strike us to tell us what the will of God was for us? Or did we need a vision, or a divine intervention to know what God required from us?

How do we tell what the He wants us to do?

How do we know that the decisions that we make are in accordance with His will?

‘I urge you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to offer your bodies as living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, your spiritual worship. Do not conform yourself to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect.” – Romans 12:1-2

- offer your lives as living sacrifices

- do not conform yourself to this world

- be transformed by the renewal of your mind

….so that, you may discern what is the will of God.

- Offer your self as living sacrifices.

What is a living sacrifice? Willingness to offer yourself upto the Lord even in distress, pain and hopelessness for the fulfillment of His will? Following in the footsteps of the disciples in giving up our physical and mental comforts? Living our lives with a smile in the midst of persecutions?

- Do not conform yourself to this world

Are we courageous enough to stand up for the Word of God even in the midst of persecutions such as the taunting of our “friends”? Are we willing to give up the addictions and ideologies of this world and instead fill our hearts and minds with divine knowledge? Even as we are doing things for His kingdom, are we doing it to please the world around us, or the Father above?

- Be transformed by the renewal of your mind.

Are we ready to align our hearts with that of our Father? Are we willing to give up our time and pleasures to empty out our minds filled with useless worries of the world, perversions, unnecessary thoughts, idleness etc. and fill it with the knowledge that the Spirit provides us with? Are we willing to strip away our inhibitory and judgmental nature and love one another like we are supposed to?

It is useless to discern the will of God if our heart, mind and soul are discerning our own will.

All glory be to the Father, and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit!

The day before

Its the day before the trip.

Just finished packing and extremely tired..but my excitement still hasn't leveled off. plans changed a bit so we are taking a bus tomorrow morning. i'll probably update then.

I haven't stayed committed to my prayers for this trip...which worries me now.

28 days left

During Rosary today, something came to my mind. The trip is supposed to be a life changing experience. How can it be life changing if it is not dedicated to the Lord. It got me thinking that maybe the reason why every fire died out in my heart was because I never bothered dedicating events to my Father.

I realize that if I want this trip to make something out of my unworthy life, it needs to be surrendered to God so that He can use my life to do His will.

Every time I am asked to surrender my life to Him, and each time I try. But it doesn't quite work out. Is it because I don't know how to surrender or that I surrender my life and then take it back...?..I don't really know.

I don't want this try to be another failed attempt.

On a more happier note, Advent preparations are going well. I have been able to stick to my promise so far (2 days!...pathetic but still a personal victory).

Maybe it will help me get rid of some negative vibes! *hopefully..*

"I find Your beautiful eyes see everything, so show me something beautiful please" -Kevin Max

Intro (by Theresa)

Indeed indeed, Theresa is up next!

-Right after the Conference me and Jolly will be staying in chicago for several more days to learn some and experience some and grow some as Jesus Youth.
-What're we gonna do? I believe we're just going to basically stalk the Jesus Youth fulltimer in chicago: Anne Marie =D

Feeling: Kinda nervous but excited

Thinking: Jolly only got the flip camera so she could videotape our first time driving six hours up north, getting on planes, then walking around downtown, and getting on buses with no parents/super responsible people... rt Jolly? ; D... it's gonna be pretty adventuresome ...*GULP*!

Pray for us =D

-Theresa
(blogging is so much fun =D)

btw there is still a month till the actions starts!