Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Midwest College Conference 2012

Last weekend, there was 3-day long Christian conference down in Camp Tecumseh, Indiana. And I had the time of my life.

It didn't started out with much of a bang. I was pretty down from all the pressures of being back in school, and there was a huge snowstorm coming our way. Our original time of departure was 2 PM, but we ended up leaving around 3 PM due to the terrible weather. It took us another two-and-a-half hours to get out of Downtown Chicago, so we knew we weren't going anywhere. To be down right honest, I was not in my spirit for the first 10 minutes of the car ride. But there is something special about being with brothers in a confined space. Liiiiiiiife just starts seeping in here and there, and soon enough, I was warmed up to utter prayers desperate for recovery. It was kind of like a Romans-8:26-groaning. Probably by the eleventh of twelve minute, we were well-burned by our prayers. I felt so revived, that all the thoughts about missing the first night were drowned. We prayed to gain our enjoyment of the now-Christ - the Christ that was allotted as our portion that afternoon in our car ride. We prayed for the atmosphere of the conference. We prayed for the safety of all the saints. And we realized that all Satan could do was release more of the flow.

Eventually, we found out that the speaking brothers were also stuck because of the weather, so there wasn't going to be anything missed on Friday night. With that in thought, we decided that it was probably better to leave Saturday morning when the snow should have stopped and the roads cleared.

The Lord truly knows how to cherish us, as He led us to a home gathering in downtown to blend with some of the families that live close to UIC. This was a sweet time. Besides eating a LOT of great food, we got to spend some quality-human times with the saints, hearing about each others' day, telling testimonies, and sharing laughs.

Shabu-Shabu at Downtown Home Gathering


Saturday morning started out very early for us. Cold pizza, cookies, coffee, and icy roads. We left downtown around 6:30 AM and headed south to Camp Tecumseh. Again, I just have to say that all Satan can do is hold the flow, but what he doesn't realize is that when you hold a flow, it just want to burst out even more! So this 6:30 AM car-ride was not like any other 6:30 AM car-ride. It was a time filled with the exercise of the spirit. Singing. Reading the word in prayer. More singing. Pizza stuffing. Coffee sipping. Singing. Fellowship. More pray-reading. Our car spent some quality time in Colossians chapter 1, taking the Word in slow nibble-bites, squeezing as much as juice as possible.

Cold Pizza + Icy Road on the way to Tecumseh

Anyhow, we arrived at Camp Tecumseh around 9:30-ish? And the rest is history. I'll share a bit regarding the topic of the conference, which was Christ our portion. We see that the portion Paul speaks of in Colossians is our all-inclusive Christ portrayed as all the riches of the good land in Deuteronomy 8. He is the waters, He is the plants, He is the minerals, He is everything! And our share of the portion is that we get to explore this land! All these items are a picture, or you can say a shadow, of the real thing, Christ. If you can see someone's shadow, you can eventually follow that shadow to reach the real person. Well, all these marvelous pictures that we see around us, is to remind us that we should enjoy Christ! That's awesome that Christ is all these things, but practically, how do we receive, or where can we go to receive Him as all these items? The practical way to apply Christ as the reality of all positive things is in the Word. The Word is where we find Christ. Actually, we should never separate "searching the Scriptures" with "coming to Him", for the Scriptures speak concerning Him. We come to the Word to meet with a Person and converse with this Person. He has spoken to us through the Word, and we should respond to Him by our prayer. Well, what is all this receiving for? It's not for us to hoard all these resources for ourselves, but to minister it to others. Did you discover those streams in the valleys? You need to minister that to those who may find themselves in a low situation. Did you find barley in the land? You need to minister that to those who may be in a dead condition. Minister, but be wary to not minister letters, but the Spirit. Practically and humanly speaking, this requires us to have a genuine heart of care for the ones to whom we want to minister to.

This is my third college conference in the Midwest, and even in my short stay, I can see the progress and growth of life in the Midwest. Statistically speaking, attendance numbers have been increasing from around 150 to 200 to 260 this year. Of course, numbers don't speak everything. The exercise of the spirit has also been increasing more and more. Praise the Lord for the coordination of all the serving ones who are taking care of the college students. It's their coordination that brings in the blessing, and their faithfulness to sow and water that brings God to cause the growth.

Brothers - Midwest College Conference 2012

Sisters - Midwest College Conference 2012

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Winter Break Recap (2) - Winter Training One-Sentence Recaps!

So, to update you what had happened last week at the terminal... My flight was supposed to leave at midnight and arrive at Chicago the following morning at 6 AM. Due to some airplane problems, we ended up leaving around 4 AM and arriving close to 10 AM? I had a class at noon, which I was supposed to have caught, but I missed it. Funny thing is, this happened last year too.. and you know what else happened last year? The Wisconsin Badgers played at the Rose Bowl. And they lost. Hmm.. I wonder if there is a direct correlation here...

Anyhow,  I wanted to give a brief recap of the winter training in this post, and then hope to get back on to something old or new. I don't know what to say about the messages, except that the speaking brothers were filled with nothing less than the burden of the Lord Himself. There is no possible way I can recap all 12 messages, but I like to give one sentence that sums up or encapsulates the message. (Disclaimer: by doing this, I am doing no justice to these rich and overflowing messages. Please get into them!)

Message 1:
Christ needs to be properly appreciated by giving Him the preeminence, of which one way to do is to love Him with the first love and forsake all idols.

Message 2:
The Triune God became flesh to tabernacle among us (Jn. 1:14) not only so that He can dwell among us but so that He can become enterable!

Message 3:
God's heart's desire is for Zion - the overcomers - because Christ is in Zion!

Message 4:
To experience God in the highest and fullest way is to take Him as our habitation, which means to take Him as everything, and enjoy Him in all aspects of our living.

Message 5:
May the Lord Spirit operate in us and apply resurrection life to know Christ, build the church, experience the cross, deal with our natural self, comfort the saints in affliction, be a living testimony, produce a ministry in resurrection, and live in the realm of the Body of Christ.

Message 6:
The highest revelation of Christ is in Psalm 110 as the King, High Priest, Warrior, Victor, and Drinker.

Message 7:
Christ as the cornerstone is the consummate revelation in the Psalms and everything He has done and accomplished is found in this cornerstone for His consummate goal, the building up of the Body of Christ.

Message 8:
Christ is the reality of the law as God's living word, to infuse His living substance into His loving seekers.

Message 9:
May Zion and Jerusalem remain deeply in our consideration and concern.

Message 10:
Behold how good and how pleasant it is, for brothers to dwell in unity!

Message 11:
Christ is recovering the earth!

Message 12:
What left is there to say buy, Praise the Lord!

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Winter Break Recap (1)

I'm sitting at an empty Home Turf Sports Bar as I'm writing this entry. It's January 3rd of 2012 - the second day of a brand new year. It's 42 minutes past midnight, and I'm waiting to catch a flight that was supposed to have departed about an hour ago. I'm in Terminal 6 of LAX - the terminal with all the below average airlines. My mistake in scheduling to fly in one of these.. I should have known! Last year, approximately around the same time, I got stuck overnight trying to fly one of these airlines as well.  Hopefully I will not be missing class as I did last year.

Sorry I have not been updating for a while, but in reality, it's only been around 2 weeks since my last post, meaning I've only missed a week. I don't know where to begin writing, because either (1) I have too many options to choose from, or (2) it is really late at night and my brain is not functioning at tolerable capacities.

I do want to hopefully finish the Isaac series rather quickly up till the present moment. Then, I feel like I can share more ministry materials and conferences + trainings or special events. But I do think I will have to recap this past winter break because it was just AWESOME.

Winter break in itself started out really nicely because I got to go home a few days early. My winter break was super busy - I might have assigned myself too much work to begin with. I really wanted to get into some truth materials, so i spent some quality times on the ITERO messages from this last year (2011). Those messages were truly diamonds. I guess since I said that, I'm going to have to share a little bit, right?

The Lord's recovery stands on four pillars - truth, life, the church and the gospel. Many groups stand for just one of these, and a handful stand for two, but I really do appreciate that in His recovery, our focus is on these four pillars. By definition, pillars denote something steadfast, something unshakeable, something people can rely that structure will hold. This shows the qualifying importance of these 4 items. Just by missing one of these items, a huge loss can be afflicted to the building happening in His recovery. On one hand, these 4 pillars may be objective realities as seen in the Word, but take a look at Rev. 3:12: "He who overcomes, him I will make a pillar in the temple of My God..." On one hand, truth, life, the church and the gospel may be objective items found in the bible, but on other hand, these items are people. They are people whose fabric, essence, and constitution, is truth, life, the church, and the gospel.

It all begins with truth. Truth is the container of life, and brings life to others. And life issues in building, the church. The gospel cannot run without truth, because the word of the truth is the gospel of your salvation (Eph. 1:13). So, we see, truth is very crucial. And it is very crucial that truth must always come first.

For this, I really enjoyed something Brother Ron shared regarding truth. In order for truth to become a part of our being, fabric, and constitution, to the point that we ourselves become pillars of truth, there needs to be the shining of light. The apostle John, whose writings are in the nature of recovery, writes in the second chapter (vv. 7-8) of His first epistle - "Beloved, I am not writing a new commandment to you..." This is in the sense of innovation. In the Lord's recovery, we are recovering all the truths of the past. There is no such thing an a brand new invention to God. It may be a new discovery to us, but God has already given us all His truths. It continues "...but an old commandment, which you have had from the beginning; the old commandment is the word which you heard." Here we see that the words given to us by John are old commandments. These are the Old and New Testaments, the words which we have had since the beginning. But in the next verse, John mentions something contradictory: "Yet again a new commandment I am writing to you," I thought he just said that he is giving us an old commandment, what does he mean? This second new commandment is new, not in the sense of innovation, but in the sense of recovery. It is new, because, listen to this commentary by brother Witness Lee: "new, because in their Christian walk it dawns with new light and shines with new enlightenment and fresh power again and again." WOW. Isn't this really our experience? We may have known a verse for all of our Christian walk, but there is always that point in time, when it is struck with fresh light and the verse becomes something new to us. The verse continues: "...and the true light is already shining." The shining is the reaching out of the light, which is God Himself, meaning that shining, God reaching out to us, is the Spirit. The Spirit shines over our being and His word, then this old commandment suddenly becomes something new and it is constituted within our being.

This is why it is truly important that when we come to the Word, we also come with the following prayer the apostle Paul prayed in Ephesians 1: "Lord Jesus, grant us a spirit of wisdom and revelation, and shine on the eyes of our heart!"

Anyhow, yep. Sorry, that went rather longer than I thought.. because, that's what usually happens when I overflow. Here are some other things I did other than being a Bible nerd, which I'm not ashamed of being, over the break:

My sister visited from Spain! It's been a year and half since our family got together. It has been an overdue visit from her, and I'm really glad the four of us got to spend quality time together. We went to Avila Beach, which is about a 3-4 hour drive from Downtown, Los Angeles. Enjoy some pictures and I will continue to post regarding the Winter Training -

 Monarch Butterfly Grove - Pismo Beach, CA


Pier @ Avila Beach, CA

 Cal State San Luis Obispo (that's my true height)