I distinctly remember Friday of orientation week at CMU at my first-ever ACF info session. Kevin was introduced as the coordinator of ACF, and I had this little thought in the back of my mind “I want to be coordinator someday.”

Why did I desire that? Somehow, after all those years, I can remember that distinct thought, as well as how I did end up being coordinator 2 years later and how it was uncompromisingly difficult and crushing for me. The same type of thoughts have been consistent in my life as a Christian, wanting, whether secretly or overtly, to be the “leader” of something, or feeling qualified to do leadership. Each time I engaged in some type of Christian work, ever since high school, I’ve somehow aimed for leading something, and usually have. In my mind, I’ve always pictured myself as a pastor or preaching in front of many people or something.

By God’s grace He’s shown me the extent of my misplaced aspirations in the past few days. Deep down I looked forward to the day that I would be the leader or something here at GFA, when I would be recognized with a position for my skills and talents.

Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.
James 3.1

I look also at the qualifications for overseers in 1 Timothy 3, and it’s a strict, difficult standard. I’ve a ways to go walking with the Lord before even approaching that level. Through all of these things, I feel like God is saying to me “Hey, I’m not looking for men who want to take on the title of minister or pastor or preacher as soon as they can. I’m looking for men of character, to be steadfast in their daily walk with Me. Men who will submit to My will at all costs.”

Am I willing to follow God’s leading, putting aside my aspirations of recognition and setting all my sights on God-centered character and surrendering to His will? What if God never let my name be known, and let me die barely seeing any fruit of my work on earth, but have me be fully and utterly devoted to Him in that? It’s hard for me to say that I would accept that happily.

Is it just me, or do others have a problem with constantly substituting knowledge of God with actually knowing Him?

I find I tend to approach my walk with Christ the way I learn a new programming language. I’ll read good, challenging, Christian books, talk about Christian stuff, think through thoughts about God and Scripture. I feel like I’m trying to get as much information as I can under my belt, kind of like when I was (and still am) learning Python by going to the conference, reading through tutorials and documentation, writing down notes. I was in it to absorb as much information as possible to code more effectively.

Whereas there’s nothing wrong with these things themselves, there is something wrong when my pursuit of these seeps into my times with the Lord, when all the time spent with God becomes another avenue to glean more information and add it to my database. I forget that He was the one who sent His Son and allowed me to have a relationship with Him as an adopted son, and He was the one who drew me to Himself and continues to do so. Why in the world would I put all this pressure on myself to figure it all out?

A brother from CMU sent me this question over a month ago, and I apologize for waiting so long to get back to it. The process of settling down and finding a “rhythm” is still happening for me.

The short answer for me would be yes, for me, being at GFA and working on their website is more beneficial than being bi-vocational. I find it hard to devote myself to praying for and giving of myself to the lost world when in the background I need to worry about making money and having enough, thus also being in the business world. It’s possible and doable and is often done when it’s necessary, but my effectiveness in ministry is greater when I can give it my all. Also, at GFA I can see how the skills God has given me are able to be fully utilized for the Kingdom. Sure, I can’t be as effective as a national missionary at preaching the Gospel to unreached villages in languages I don’t know, so I trust him to do that. But on the same note, that same brother couldn’t be in the office taking care of the websites as the Lord has allowed me to do, so I’ll focus on what I have now. Possibly, God might move me onto something else later. For now, this is where to be.

A bit longer of an answer would start with this verse.

For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
1 Corinthians 1.25

In context this verse is speaking about how Christ is a stumbling block to the Jews who demand signs and the Greeks who seek wisdom. But the concept I see in this verse is that God understands and knows what we don’t even know that we’re ignorant of, and His thoughts are so much higher than ours (Isaiah 55.8-9).

I think of when I first started at Web here at GFA (and in a way I’m still starting), but there was a time when I would try to fix something on the website and it would work, but I would break something else. The problem was that I had enough knowledge to change a few things, but I didn’t realize that these changes affected something else. So I’d happily go and make a change, push it to the site, and be notified minutes or hours later that I had taken down another section of the site by that change. I was oblivious—I didn’t know that I didn’t know something.

Looking back at the time when I graduated and was trying to figure out where to step next, I see myself like that, seeing just several things that I wanted to do in life, but in reality having no understanding on how that would affect the rest of my life. I had no idea what the effect of moving to California would have on my life, or working at Yahoo, or becoming homeless… way too many variables, and no way to accurately predict how everything would turn out.

So do I know enough on the GFA website to stop breaking things? I don’t know that I know a lot, but I have learned this: I will probably break something if I’m not super careful and ask my lead before I make any changes. It’s not more knowledge of the site that helps me stop breaking things, but realization that I don’t know it all, and I should probably confer with somebody more knowledgeable than myself to get anything done. It’s a humility of thought in a way, doing the best I can, but realizing there could be a lot I don’t understand beneath the surface. Asking for a review of my work and more questions during the process has helped me break fewer things recently.

I think this idea goes into our life decisions also. The most important thing that I have to realize is that I don’t know my future, and no matter how much I sit here and plan it out, in the end, it’s not going to be my careful planning that brings about the fruit that I desire to see in my life. It’s going to be my being faithful in thinking everything through, and then laying it out before God, saying “OK God, this is all I have. Please make this work because I know I’ve forgotten some things, but I’ll offer myself to You if You take over.”

It’s funny how the only thing that can hinder God’s work is not our inability but when we staunchly insist on our own way. Conversely, God can only work in our lives as much as we have yielded to Him, realizing that we can’t do it.

All I can say about my current situation of being here at GFA is that it’s a result of yielding my plans to go overseas and live in a slum to God on that fateful Thursday, 25 October 2012. Each day there’s lots of things to once again yield to the Lord, seemingly small things but important ones. And as a result of that, I’d say that there’s no place I’d rather be than right here.

Today was spent planting trees in the Texas sun, and upon returning to my apartment I had an warm shower to get the grime and dirt off. A shower rarely feels so cleansing and good.

As I stood there thanking God for it, I remembered the brothers and sisters, the national missionaries, on the field all over Asia who would not come home to such a luxurious shower, but instead return to their village to intense persecution and are lucky to have a dirt floor to sleep on. And the thought went through my head — should I feel bad for this, that I have access to such resources? In the past I have, and have purposely taken cold showers for this reason. I think it is a good thought, and helps oneself to focus away from the gratification of the flesh, almost like fasting. But look, nobody is following Jesus because I took that cold shower. Instead, let’s take a look in Scripture to Luke 12.

And that servant who knew his master’s will but did not get ready or act according to his will, will receive a severe beating. But the one who did not know, and did what deserved a beating, will receive a light beating. Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required, and from him to whom they entrusted much, they will demand the more.
Luke 12.47-48

Jesus speaks here about how for those who have been given a lot, a lot will be required of them. For the missionaries on the field facing persecution, they have not been given as much as I have in terms of material possessions or college education, and hence I would say that because I have been given more in these respects, more is required of me.

I don’t know about you, but that is a ridiculously scary thought. I look at the blessings I’ve been given in terms of family, opportunities to know the Lord, financial and material possessions, education, physical health, and realize that these were given to me fully and completely for the Lord’s purposes, not to have a higher reputation in front of others. One day, an account of these things will be required of me in front of God.

Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw – each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.
1 Corinthians 3.12-15

One day, all the times where I used God’s abundant blessings to make myself look better in front of people (even if it was “spiritual” in some way) will burn up like wood, hay or straw. All that I did in this life apart from the purpose of building up God’s kingdom will burn away.

These past 2 weeks were spent praying and working over a website at Gospel for Asia for the radio program. The intensity of the work was like CMU, learning a new framework and all, but honestly, at the end of the day, the Lord gave me so much peace that what I was doing was helping to bring the news of what God’s doing in Asia to those who have been blessed with the resources here in the West to support them. Basically, as a (very nerdy) part of the team planting churches in Asia each day, and a lot of them in areas who have never ever heard the name of Jesus. Never in the world did I think it would be what I would be doing, but right now it’s where God needs me to be to use what He’s given me for His Kingdom. No idea what’s going to happen in the future, but it’s time to be faithful with this small task God’s given me.

My problem most of the time is not that I have too many big, crazy ideas. We have a God who has told us that with things that are impossible for man, such things are completely within the Lord’s ability. No sweat on God’s part. But my problem is dreaming small. I see one aspect of life, probably important, probably spiritual, and throw myself and my energy into making that one area of life happen like I think it should. And sometimes God will give me grace to get there. Yet more often than not, I think God had so many bigger plans and incredible works He could have done if I had stopped, come before Him and desperately seek His work as I placed my own plans at His feet.

For example, as I’m in this new place, I could focus a lot on getting to know people and developing deeper relationships so I’m not lonely. In itself, such fellowship is a good thing. Yet I can imagine the Lord telling me something along the lines of “Look, if you trust me with the relationships with the people around you and stop seeking your own ways of getting to know people, I could use you to be such a blessing to others in ways you could never have imagined. Cast your cares and loneliness on Me, because I care for you.”

I pray that I would learn to step aside and let God replace my small dreams with His bigger ones.

It’s been a little bit less than a month spent here at GFA. There’s been a lot of new faces and names, and a completely new environment to understand. To be daily surrounded by many people who have left everything to serve and reach the least reached in Asia is not anything I’ve ever experienced before. It’s like being a freshman again at ACF, where there are a bunch of people older and more mature around to learn from. Except that these people have been walking with and serving the Lord longer than I’ve been alive.

One of such people, or families rather, is the Bales. I just returned from the their place, where the family, who has four kids of their own, invites a bunch of the single guys over each Thursday night for dinner and fellowship. It’s a blessing to spend quality time with many God-centered families — something that’s beautiful to see and I don’t think I’ve really experienced too deeply after leaving for college.

Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies.
1 Corinthians 8.1

Sometimes I come before God and look at the mass of knowledge I have acquired about spiritual things in church and school and stuff, feeling pretty good about myself especially when comparing myself to others who have not learned these things. Yet this one thing brings me to my knees, that it doesn’t matter how much I know about God — it’s no substitute for actually knowing Him. And in terms of that knowledge and how deeply that translates to my being able to allow God to take over all of me and have His heart become mine, I can honestly say it’s a woefully small amount of that knowledge. My understanding of the need to be authentic and loving doesn’t actually make me authentic and loving, even if I know all the verses and details. Rather, the time spent with God as he flushes out the sin in my life and teaches me the way of servitude in the footsteps of Jesus does grow those traits in my character.

It’s scary and dangerous as I think of how much I think I know and how much I’ve told others and taught, where I don’t really understand these truths deeper, and they haven’t wrenched my soul into deeper relationship with the God of the Universe and brought me more into awe and submission to Him. In a culture that often worships looking godly and smart instead of actually being God-centered in the secret parts of our lives, we run the risk of being in a position of teaching and influence, while on the inside our spiritual lives are eaten away by sin, bolstered by our intellectual ability to impress others. Instead, let’s focus on being a good tree before the Lord, since He knows our hearts already.

You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit.
Matthew 7.16-18

If you sign in to your Yahoo! Mail account, you’ll see a new and fresh UI that was recently pushed to production. This UI “refresh” project was where my last big contribution to Yahoo! ended up, as I had the opportunity to rework a lot of the HTML+CSS that underlies the new interface. Several months worth of coding are now live for somewhere around 200 million users (depending on the state of international rollout). As a programmer, this is pretty much a dream come true, right? Your code, on millions of computers being used by people to make their lives easier.

Today marks one week being here in Texas with Gospel for Asia. There hasn’t really been too much craziness, just getting started with some small projects to familiarize myself with the system. Last week I put a few dozen lines of Javascript to automatically fill in the city and state when a zip code is put in for an internal web tool used by some of our staff. This tool would be used to keep track of Christian literature sent out to encourage the Western church to support the thousands of national missionaries in Asia, serving the billions of unreached that live without knowing the hope of Christ. The code will probably be used on less than 10 machines in the GFA office, but the effects of time saved and efforts placed elsewhere are what’s important, as well as the encouragement it hopefully brings to staff who know that as the web department, we do care for them and do our best to support them

The contrast of these two worlds struck me as I walked back to my apartment to get ready for prayer meeting, where the entire staff gathers to pray for requests here in the USA as well as overseas. Intellectually, I would obviously be more proud of the work put in over several months on a new Yahoo! Mail deployment that is (hopefully) well received, but my soul is much more satisfied by even this small change that goes to support the staff and national missionaries. When, at a tech company, does one of your users come up and give you a hug like Aunt Betty did because she’s so happy that the city and state are “magically” filled in with the zip code? When does “dogfooding” your own product mean that you spend hours reading stories of missionaries overseas serving the Lord, and then find your heart humbled by the Lord’s work in their lives? Don’t get me wrong — I loved working with the people on the Y!Mail team, but I was always hesitant to breathe in the company goals and purposes and have that be my motivation. Here at GFA, the more I read about the work overseas and process through what God is doing, the closer my desire gets to those of the Lord and my work is able to be done with humility and a servant heart. Programming in such a manner is something completely new to me, but I’m pretty sure it’s the way it was meant to be.

Oh, and here’s a link to the stories I was reading today at work: GFA Features/News Archive

Just heard from GFA — thanks to the Lord’s work, my funding has reached 100%. Wow! Looking at the past month of fundraising, I feel so humbled by those who have contributed, very often not out of abundance but a willing, servant heart.

In the past 3 weeks that I’ve been home, the 5 opportunities I’ve gotten to share at church have not been the result of my own asking but rather others asking me to share, not about GFA but Jesusmobile ministry. It’s as if the Lord knew that I’d need these meetings and made everything happen for me beforehand. Despite my broken Mandarin service sharing (rated a C- for language fluency by my mom) as well as a process of learning to share in Cantonese, the message of the Lord got conveyed, not through eloquence but just straight-up honesty.

And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.
1 Corinthians 2.1-5

The exciting thing is now I get to share with people just about having a heart for unreached peoples and not having to worry about finances any more! That was the point the entire time anyway.

The core of the entire fundraising process, I believe, was prayer. Coming before God daily, submitting myself to Him and letting Him know that I couldn’t do this on my own, that it was all His work in the end. No strategies or sharings or blog posts could do the work of time alone in the presence of the Lord.

I imagine walking onto a huge field on a sunny day. I know from God that my task is to build a house on this field.

I look in what I’ve been given and see what looks like a mess of items. A 5-pack of shingles, three 2×4 beams, a jar of nails, a box of screws, a few sheets of plywood, and a hammer and a screwdriver. I know I need to build a house, and I’m quite a committed person, so I get started, carefully sorting through my stuff, planning where each piece is going to go, and how I can make this house work out.

A week later, after working really hard each day, I’ve got three walls up, all pieced together from the plywood and precariously balanced with the beams. That afternoon, a huge thunderstorm rolls by, and the rain and wind pelt my ramshackle hut until a huge gust of wind takes down the plywood and my entire week of work is demolished to the ground. “Why, God, why!!?” I cry out. I know He needs me to do this, and yet I feel so helpless and underprepared. I go at it next week with more determination, and not too long afterwards, even my best of efforts are blown away. Maybe I’m in the wrong place? Maybe I need to find a place with less wind and rain.

As I sit there in despair, telling God I won’t make it, I dig around in the box in desperation for anything that could help. There’s a small card for “Joshua’s Contracting Company” with a faded phone number, which I call. Not too long afterwards, trucks start rolling in with materials and workers start laying the foundation. The foreman tells me to nail some beams on one side of the house, and I find in my pile of supplies I have just enough. I happily nail it in, and I get so carried away that I put up some plywood too, just to start the walls off, you know?

The next day I watch the workmen start putting up the walls, and as they get to the plywood I nailed up, they start taking it down. Horrified, I run to the foreman and tell him that they’re undoing my hard work! “No, I told them to do that,” says the foreman. “Unless you do exactly what I say, you’re going to be working against me.” I spend the day drilling some of the screws I have to reinforce some beams, and by the end of the day, you can barely notice that I did anything. Definitely not so impressive.

But you know what? A few months later, I can step back and look at a beautiful house that has been built. Each item I had fit perfectly where it was supposed to fit. It was never ever “my work” or “my plans” that got it accomplished, but simply submitting my own ideas to something that is so much greater. I needed to scale back my own ideas and follow the directions of my foreman, and even though I might not be able to say “I built this house” by the end of the day, but I can definitely say that “This house got built, and I was a part of it.”

For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me.
John 6.38

Even Jesus, who had great wisdom and power, submitted to His Father’s will. Who am I, an imperfect person, to say that I know how this is all going to shake out and how to get it done? This lesson has been impressed upon my heart since going to Texas. I remember waking up one day and telling God “OK God, I’m fully committed to you today” and it was as if He was saying back to me “I don’t need you to be committed. I need you to be submitted.” It’s gut wrenching. My commitment is ultimately self-centered, focused on my own achievemets, whereas my submission is fully God-centered, with no glory in it for myself. Submission is when, deep down in my heart, I say “Lord, what do you want me to do?” and whatever He says, to say “Yes Lord, OK. I’ll do it.”

This seems so counterintuitive, but I believe it’s the only way to do God’s work. As I was driving back home tonight, I imagined the road lined with the 80,000 people who passed away in South Asia today without hearing the name of Jesus, and each soul cries out to me to tell them about their Savior. If I tried to tackle the task myself, out of my own commitment, I would surely be daily discouraged and frustrated. But when I can cry out to God and ask Him to send laborers into the harvest, to work mightily, and let Him know that I will do whatever He needs me to do, I’m at peace. I know the foreman knows what He’s doing, that in the end it’s going to be more stately of a house than I could ever have imagined or built just myself.

Does he thank the servant because he did what was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say “We are unworthy servants, we have only done what was our duty.”
Luke 17.9-10

And at the end when I can see everything, all I can say is that I am the bondservant of my Master, and I have just done what I have been told. The only place to ascribe glory is the One who was doing everything all along.

There’s a lot much less pressure on life when I can fully be submitted to God.

P.S. Fundraising is currently at 41%, praise God! Raising the $1878 of monthly pledges is God’s work in the end, and I rejoice in my little part of it.

“The scariest thing God could do right now is call me to move to Dallas.”

Such were my words almost exactly a week ago when I had my first appointment with one of the leaders of Gospel for Asia, where I was visiting for last week. Culture shock rocked my world when I arrived in the suburbs of Dallas. Everything was so nice, so middle-class, so rich! It reminded me of all that I had once been so consumed by, that which I left for the streets of San Francisco and the Jesusmobile. Also, I had no intention of staying in the United States at all, as my heart was always for the overseas field, where I saw the need as so much greater. I was only at GFA for the week because they offered to help me figure out where God was leading, and that’s it.

“The question is not ‘How will I reach the lost?’, but ‘How will the lost be reached?’ Oftentimes we have the independent American mindset that if anybody’s going to share the gospel with them, it’s going to be me. But what if that’s not the most effective?”

Such a question was posed to me on the first day by one of the GFA leaders, and struck deep down inside. I knew that it was true, and there was no response except to repent of my prideful attitude and move on. Over the course of the week, I got to see how each GFA staffworker had a burning passion for the unreached of Asia. There was no room for complacency or self-comfort when daily being faced with the reality of thousands dying without Christ. This is reality, and this is the one they live in.

In my meeting with the guy who runs the website, God redeemed for me the use of computers. I had become so frustrated with selfish use of technology for profit, and I had all but given up on using computers for good at all. Yet seeing how the code that was written directly supported and allowed for the planting of churches in Asia by national missionaries blew my mind. Possibly, just possibly, these skills that I had spent 4.5 years building up at school might actually be able to be used for good.

So many conversations, so much insight. My last day was Friday, and I had a meeting with the founder, KP Yohanan, that morning. Thursday night I couldn’t sleep, trying to process all the stuff that had been going through my mind. So much unsettled-ness had hung over my head since quitting work, and those few days were spent crying out to God. As I wandered around an Asian supermarket to mull over this lack of peace, I asked why God didn’t just answer me already and let me know whether I was supposed to go to GFA or not. Then I realized that the actual question of whether I joined GFA staff is not too important, because that which God really wants is utter and total submission to Him. That’s what matters in life and will continue to matter for the rest of life, and from such a state decisions are not too difficult.

In that parking lot, I finally let go and said, “God, whatever, whenever.” Before, I had been doing what I thought God wanted when I wanted to do it. But following Christ means dying to self, and even things that I think are a good idea. So I let go and as I was getting to sleep that night, I had this peace about stepping forward to GFA, knowing that my commitment was not to any organization but the God of the universe, and at this moment He was leading me to submit and serve with this group of people.

The next morning I met with Brother KP and we spoke about that which God had done this past week. He confirmed what I felt like to be called by God (I use this term super carefully because in this case it seems so unmistakable) and I acquired a staff application form.

Today at prayer meeting they announced me as the newest staff member of Gospel for Asia family. If you told me this would happen a week and a half ago, I would have told you you were crazy. But God, my friend, is a God of the impossible, even if that means changing my stubborn, prideful heart.

It’s time to book it back to California and start the fundraising process. Can God provide $22,500 in continuing, annual support? He called me into this, and I rest upon His promises.

My GFA donation page