Twenty

So I sit here at my computer about two hours away from turning twenty and many things come to mind. Specifically how fast these past two decades have come.  I am just thankful for being alive it makes me so happy to have been well just living.  I just think back to the past years when I grew up never knowing from day one what type of man I was created to be. Striving always to win to be the best that I could but also being scared and timid. These past two decades have been full of mistakes and blessings but man how blessed I am to have met EVERYONE on my facebook (as cliche as that may be) but man every single friend going from elementary school (i still remember the third grade play, youth soccer with all the guys, field trips, handball battles, pokemon cards, and just growing up) to middle school (playing on the school team, the 8th grade lip sync, getting cool with DK, breaking out of my comfort zone, going to church for the first time) to high school (dumplings and samosas, to all the teachers, to leadership, to moving churches, to coaching soccer) finally to college (meeting the homies for the first time in the suite, the IV video where I found an awesome community, getting sick, anxiety attacks, God moving, newfound friendship). 

Events as the time where I got sent to the ER after a guy landed on me in soccer and missing my spinal cord by 4 inches and if he landed there I would have been paralyzed. To being so lonely at school having really no community until I was invited to CCIC and where I found acceptance. To me being scared of having jerks as suitemates or just guys who party and dislike me, but instead I found the best group of guys I could have ever lived with.  To playing music with a group of four guys in high school where I just had a great time just fooling around and having companionship.  To being lonely in middle school and just trying to fit in with the rest of crowd acting like everyone else when I realized that the guy next to me trying to get "cool" too would be my best friend.  To being timid, quiet, and nervous of meeting new people but putting on a mask in high school that showed the opposite so I could be the person I "wanted" to be. But then just receiving acceptance to be the quiet calm person I was created to be. And that people want to get to know me and that I am cool :).   

So many blessings but I think back to every single person, people all the way from elementary school, kasha, rosa, tyler brown, margaux, daniel and michael lu, jason yang, becky yen, hermes huang, kenta, matt whitehill, matt wilson, john adams, dylan gantely, max stager, kathy hu, ram sachs, DK and more.  

To middle school, justin bui, derek chen, andrew kahng, jiwan, omid, alex chieh, trevor, serena cheng, tim jon, conroy tam, bobby mclean, tal yogev, ben kohl, sameer tharakan, matt marshall, alice jih, kevin bernstein and more.

to high school and then onto college where so many people came into my life. Just a few names came to mind but man thank you whoever reads this for being a part of my life for a second, a minute, an hour, a day, a week, to a lifetime.  Man I love you guys and I am so happy to have met every single person. I am so happy to be blessed with such an awesome group of people to have traversed life with. You all changed me, molded me, shaped me, helped me, grounded me, taught me to fly, encouraged me, more than you will EVER know. Thank you Jesus for life to the fullest, thank you for love to the fullest, thank you for friendship to the fullest. I hope everyone has an awesome winter break continue to pursue friendship and companionship to the fullest you all have great futures in store I KNOW IT! It is going to be a great next twenty years and more :)

Princes and Princesses

So I was reading The Supernatural Ways of Royalty by Kris Vallotton and Bill Johnson...man and that book is really dense I could not even get past the first prologue it was so good. So pretty much he mentioned that we all were meant to be princes and princesses in God's eyes. He used the example of Moses and how he grew up in the kings palace so he could learn how to behave in front of royalty. He grew up being respected, listened to, and most of all with confidence. With that confidence he did all the amazing things that he was called to do because he of that confidence in who God made him to be and become.

For me I have felt semi-bad growing up in a house where I was listened to, loved exceptionally well by my parents, encouraged, supported, and well of in terms of money. I looked around and saw my friends and peers without that stuff and I thought I couldn't be a good person or Christian or something because I had it too well. I had this image in my head that a follower of God had to be suffering and laying it all down before God and that like the person had to live in poverty and stuff facing trials and pain everyday.

But now it is becoming more and more clear that God has created me to be a prince and that just blows my mind. I am created to share love with the people around me and that I am meant to walk in confidence not in despair waiting to be punished or to suffer. I am created to walk around just being who I am with all my quirks good and bad. And well heck God wants to use me to do cool stuff and that is just pretty cool. I still need to think about this concept of royalty and stuff but man its definitely a new fresh thing to "chew on". (pun with my last name)

So the on top of this mind blowing topic of being royalty and not like a slave who walks around disheartened (thats what I kind of related humbleness to in the past, just suffering and pain) I went to a Christmas party the other day for my church. And well I just love little kids, or youth in general :). And they had a kids choir ranging from ages 5 all the way to 6th grade which I think is eleven or so. I saw some of these little kiddies two weeks ago during thanksgiving but it was another story to see them on stage. It was not the fact that they were harmonizing (which was pretty bomb) but man when they were just singing about love I was like dude....those are the next princesses and princes CMON now! I was almost brought to tears, those are the kids that God wants to touch, he wants to be their best friend, their daddy, their homie, their playmate, he wants to treat them like ROYALTY! For some reason that blew my mind completely... God sees those little children as world changers...they are five but man I can already see the potential. I was so encouraged I just wanted to walk over to them and just be like HEY YOU ARE GOING TO CHANGE THE WORLD.

So the main part of this post is talking about a little girl named Faith who is a daughter of one of the moms at the church. She is a little cutie and was really shy before, well at least to me because I am such a towering intimidating figure :P. But yeah so yesterday she sat down next to me and we had a conversation which for one I was thankful for and secondly was surprised she opened up so much to me. She shared that she saw me walking in and also that she knew all the kids in our youth group by name and she was talking about the new people at the Christmas party that were sitting behind me. I NEVER knew she observed so much of what was going on because she was so quiet. She told me about her life and reading and doing things at school and man it was pretty sweet. Then I asked her what she would like to be when she was grown up. And guess what she said......a princess....that BLEW my mind because I was thinking about royalty and how God sees his daughters as princesses. And it hit me that as little kids well alot of little girls want to be what? princesses of course. God sees her as a princess who is loved, important, and is going to do great things and I got an awesome glimpse of that last night. And cool enough thats who she wants to be HAHA.

So lets continue loving those little ones so that they can be crazy world changing royalty when they get older :)

The battle

These past few days have been so humbling in ways that I cannot describe. I pray daily for freedom from evil thoughts and fight through lies but in the end God always delivers. So recently I have been dealing alot with pride. Yesterday it felt like a normal day with me going through the motions and such and just being tempted with things of this world which happened a while back. I was sort of surprised because recently I have kept my eyes to the heavens but yesterday I struggled alot with just loving my apartment mates, people around the campus, and just my friends.

The struggle recently has been dealing with authenticity because that is the one flaw I DISLIKE in myself is when I am not being who I am. However, when I see others just spending time with God I judge them which sucks because it says in Romans that we are ALL sinners including myself which of course I try to validate myself by saying "At least I actually go to God with an open heart" or "At least my prayers are honest" look at them they are not like me.

So during Intervarsity worship two days ago I was standing in the back next to a guy and I saw him and heard him pray and stuff and to be honest my head was judging already because I think the way I feel if I am on the right track is comparing myself to other people. However, there is no standard of how you are doing in your life with God all that matters is that you love being with him. Which I guess in my head always has been a trippy subject because I feel like things should be earned. Anyways later God just tells me to get rid of my pride and go ask him for prayer which I end up doing. I get blessed even though I went outside not expecting God to do anything. Afterwords God told me to humble myself and just ask people for prayer in general. One of the hardest things for me to believe is, after seeing some crazy conferences and just the amazingness of prayer, believing that God will work the same through a random person who may not even believe their own prayers. MAN it is such a trippy idea that God of crazy conferences and crazy God-loving people is the same God for the meek and the posers. I cannot limit God to just a certain group of people or a certain church or whatnot God is God of the world he can use whoever he wants too, to bless me , heal me, or just love me. I need to learn to remain humble and be open completely to ALL my brothers and sisters no matter where they are in their journey for I could missing out on some great fellowship and blessing.

So yesterday, I was feeling spiritually attacked with just negative thoughts and lies about myself the bible, and God. I discerned that they were not from God and I called a couple people to pray for me and come intercede or just pray on my behalf. However, alot of the people that I thought could help me did not pick up, people that I looked up to in a spiritual way and that I thought God could easily work through and deliver me. But he had a different plan, in my somewhat panicked calmed state one of the older brothers from IV called me back and told me to go call people to pray for me because he can come see me in 3 hours. Knowing now that what I would call "reinforcements" for this attack would not be there to later in desperation I started to text people who I knew would pray for me and I put down the idea of pride that I thought certain peoples' prayers were "stronger" or something. And I just told God I will just ask all these people God. And as I was texting people I felt lighter and lighter and that the evil presence was lifting. I actually got prayed for and I just believed that God could work through anyone WHICH he can. I later met up with one of my friends from Intervarsity and she prayed for me and man at first I was sort of skeptical to be honest. However, God spoke through her into my life and I realized I need to deal with jealousy and anger issues and that sometimes I just want to fit in and not be left alone. On top of that being left out of groups of people in my past made me want to prove that I can pursue God by myself and that "I" can do crazy things for the kingdom without a group. Pretty much I just wanted to prove myself to everyone that I am strong.

However, God told me, "Marc you need to learn to run with the pack", when I was praying I saw and wolf and the interpretation was that wolves travel and hunt in packs for protection, effectivity, and bonding. I have been the lone wolf for too long it is time to put aside that pride and jump on a team with brothers and sisters. God told me that on a championship team it takes every player and sure I might not be the kobe bryant but pursuing God is what matters and his kingdom matters not my own personal accomplishments. For a single player in basketball could score seventy out of eighty of his teams points and they could still lose. But another player could only score 10 points and he backs up his teammates and together they could score 100 points. I am ready to join a team guys.

Time to be open, time to be honest, time to be humble, time to love, time to be authentic, time to just be who i am :).

Prayer request: Spiritual protection, authenticity, an abundance of love, courage, steadfastness to obey and read the word

Divine Favor

Hello Orchard Valley and friends :o) i hope all is going well for everyone and that hey you are down to just see how I am doing. That is really just awesome and I really appreciate it. Anyways before I talk about the crazy just intense moments that have been going on in my life I am going to start by just telling you guys how great God is :). Every story I tell give the glory to him, there is no "good job marc" or "marc you are so cool" there is only "Thank you Jesus for what you are doing" because it is God doing the work here in SD. So blessed be the name of the Lord.

So the story of the day has been just divine favor and listening to the Lord. These past few days have been just crazy filled with stuff you would only hear about in the bible BUT that is not what I am going to talk about right now. The Lord has such great things planned for everyone but man I have just started to listen and God is totally reshaping my idea of blessing and being blessed. I am learning how to love in college I have made one extremely big mistake which hurt quite a few of people this past week and God has told me that i need to come back to love.

As it says in 1 Corinthians 13

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, [1] but have not love, I gain nothing.

4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; [2] 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

And the bible says that God is love so even if I can do crazy things like prophesy, speak in tongues, or give to the poor but I have not love it does not matter. So I have been asking God to just show me more about love.

So today it was quite tough because I was emotionally and physically drained from the events of this past week. Not only that but I was behind on my homework and I have not done alot of things around the apartment. I was just not ready for the day today and when one of my apartment mates asked me to do some stuff to serve others I just got kind of fed up that the responsiblity was given to me and I was expected to do all this stuff. There were times when I was well rested where it was easy to serve others joyfully but today was one of those days where I didn't want to serve and I was upset because I wanted to love them and serve them. So I decided to bounce out and study at the library, but to my dismay the library closed early as I was about to find my studying rythem. So I walked all the way to a desolate study location in Eleanor Roosevelt college and I finished my studying there. I kept repeating the verse

"Now there is no condemnation in Christ" Romans 8:1

And as I finished I asked God to just teach me how to love others. Then I left to go walk to a dining hall because it was quite late and I had not eaten dinner yet. As I was walking i bent down to pick up some trash and a girl walking by asked me if I had seen a cell phone I tolded her no and I offered to help her look for it. (sadly i forgot her name now ><) We introduced ourselves to one another and I asked her where she left it. She told me that she dropped it somewhere between the place I was studying and the dark forest at the top of rimac hill which in my opinion is very sketchy. She then told me it was cool and she was like I will see you later. In my head I was debating how awkward would it be for me to ask her to help her look for it when the chances of finding it if she lost in the forest are like 1,000 to 1. I was like man but I was down to just love on this girl so I offered my assistance and we walked down to the forest after checking the walkway.

In my head I prayed that God would give us divine favor and that he could help us find this cell phone even in this forest where I was scared to walk into. It was so dark I was like what if someone comes out to get us or she is trying to mug me of course merely just scare tactics from the enemy. So she uses my cell phone to call and I am just praying that God would just give us a blessing and out of the corner of my ear I hear a ring. It is ridiculous at first I couldn't belive it. I told her what I heard and then she heard it too we contiued to call and follow the ring until we FOUND it in the forest. Man glory be to God I just gave him thanks and was astounded, the girl was so stoked that she found it she was literally dancing and jumping up and down. So I was now really far away from the dining hall I was going to eat at because I helped this girl but it did not matter because it God had a different plan. However as we were walking down this hill a car coming the opposite direction pulled up next to us and asked for directions to Muir college on the opposite side of campus.

Rather than just kinda give vague directions because I was not sure I asked if I could come in and just kind of show them the way and strangely enough they were down. I found out they were from LA area and that their daughter was a freshman and that they could not get back in the night. I showed them the way back and as we were passing the dining hall I was going to go to they stopped and dropped me off. I was astounded that God would use these things just to get me where he wanted me. I just laughed at the humor of God and how funny he is to put certain things in my path to teach me about love.

Thank you Jesus for what you have taught me.

Prayer Requests: For humbling me, teaching me how to love, fall more in love with Jesus.

hello world