Ministry @ home

Yesterday I had a bad case of nerves. For the first time after years of giving tuition, I suddenly had a case of 'I hate my job' nerves. On the outside, I was teaching the students calmly. More calm than usual. The lesson dragged on for an extra 45mins, and I didn't seem to mind at all. But in my head I was screaming. At why I didn't seem to teach as energetically and as enthusiastically. I was just going through the motion. And everytime a student has a question, I heave a big silent moan.

It was like going through a very slow dying process and I felt like i was being strangled. I wanted to yell and burst into tears but of course I didn't do that. I simply msged lao gong to tell him how I felt. It was worse than what I'm describing now. I just felt so wicked and so hateful.

Thank God lao gong quickly rushed back home to attend to me. He sensed that I was under a spiritual attack cos a few days ago when he was praying, the LORD led him to pray against spiritual attacks on the family.

Anyway he rushed home and took out his guitar and sat beside me while waiting for me to finish my lesson.

After lesson, he said, "Come let's worship together." I didn't feel like singing or praising God at all! But I knew that was the best thing to do so I followed him into the room. As he started playing the guitar, he told me to speak in tongues. He must have sensed my reluctance to do anything remotely spiritual at that moment so as he strummed, he went into tongues himself and started prophesying about the importance of tongues.

It worked and I went into tongues but I was still feeling lousy. Lao gong then started leading me to sing the worship song 'I will run to you'. As I struggled to sing, I realised that I was angry at God. Very angry. I was angry at why He took away my passion for my job and why He took away my love for the children. But as lao gong made me sing, I realised deep down I missed Him. And i wanted Him to come minister to me and though I was angry and didn't want Him to come, I really wanted to be with Him. And I started crying and crying and crying. Lao gong continued to minister with the song and I only managed to sing the 1st line cos after that I was just crying and crying. In between those tears, I said to God, "Why? Why did you give me the passion for tuition and then take it away?" I've always felt that to have passion for life, one needs to have passion for the job that they're doing. We spend most of our waking hours working, so if we don't have passion for our job, how are we going to be happy? How are we to be servants and ministers of God when we can't even thrive in the marketplace? I didn't want to be a Sunday christian and be in God's presence only on Sundays but I wanted to be someone who's always in the presence of God. If I don't feel a fire for my job, how can I say that God is in my life? And as I ranted and raved away, this was His silent response.

"You have answered your own question. You lived for your job, not for me. The fire in you depended primarily on your passion for your job, not me."

And I finally understood. I had indeed depended on my passion for my job to be the fuel and drive of my everyday life. And that had taken away my passion for God. Tuition had come into my life from a pursuit of God and His will for my life. But somewhere along the line, I had become so immersed at trying to be good at what I do that I had stepped across the line and the passion had switched over. For a long long time, the passion was on being good at teaching, not on chasing after God and His will for my life.

Two things can happen when God gives us a gift.
1) Instead of enjoying the gift and trusting in His provision, we worry about losing the gift. What came from faith leads us into a loss of faith. Fear and worry defintely does not come from faith and it saps our energy and natural gifting, making us dry and depressed.

2) Instead of thanking God for the gift, we enjoy and dwell into the gift so much that we forgot the Person we had initally been chasing before this gift came into the picture and took our attention away. The enjoyment and bliss of the gift had left us so focused on it that we gradually turn our eyes away from the actual Gift.

He was indeed the light of my life and my everything. I had allowed worldy distractions to come into my life and turned my eyes away from Him. I had depended on my own strength too much. Though I pray for my tuition everyday, and commit my work to Him, the reliance was more on myself than on Him. I didn't trust Him enough to be positive or wait for Him to direct me.

Finally the tears subsided and lao gong started to pray for me. He prophesied that I had allowed unconstructive comments and situations to get to me and the accumulation of it had caused my morale and drive to go down. Though I may have had comments that weren't always positive, God was encouraging me and telling me that He felt I had done a good job and will continue to do more.

As lao gong prayed for me, I started crying again.

Later on as I was doing some work related to tuition, I felt that something was different. I felt energetic again and much more cheerful. Something had definitely been released in the afternoon. Lao gong says that I have to keep on releasing my hurts and disappointments so that they wouldn't accumulate and get me down again like this.

That was my own personal encounter with God at home. I pray that He will continue to rekindle my passion for Him once again, and be even more passionate about pursuing Him every single day of my life. Today I realised another benefit of having a marriage that is under the authority and protection of God. I have my own personal counselor and minister at home to constantly pray with me and for me and help me overcome trials and tests. Hee Jesus you are so good. Lao gong you are so good =)