Worship Painting

Lately I've taken to painting Jesus while meditating on His goodness. Here's a beautiful piece that I just finished, just like to share it with the you.

Hope you love it too. ^^

Loved

by James Fung
May 1, 2020

We are loved by a God so mighty
He loved us first
He loved us second
He loved us every day to Sunday

We were never an after thought
We are the Thought
His plan for humanity surpasses serenity
His plans for us..

How magnificent, and yet simple
Majestic, not sinful
Our Creation so complex, at times just so subtle
Our freedom, our journey,
Our breath, our life

Thus, we must never, and I say never
Let the complexity of life bedazzle us, distract us
From the simple Gospel, the simple truth
Of His love, His plan, His grace for us

We must focus, we must trust
We must surrender our lust
For things above and beyond
Distractions so carnal, so withdrawn

We must step back, retreat
Trace our steps to before we lost it all
We must go back
Take a deep breath
Examine our hearts

Drop our scales and open our eyes
To see...

A life
Most connected with Christ
Before the world
Stole us away

Breathe now, my friend
Breathe in, sigh out
Set your sight on what is right
Re-trace, re-step, re-ignite your Fight

For Victory is here, it is won
It is in the depths of our hearts
By His scars and His stripes
And the pounding in our heart

Cover your eyes, cover your ears
Return to your knees
At the feet of the throne
At the foot of your bed
In the darkness
With your pleas

My God, my Savior
My Jesus, my Friend
I've returned, please hold me
As tight as can be

I've sinned, I've wandered
I've ran and got lost
But I never left You, never... in my heart
You've always been with me, right from the start

So here I am again, back to the start
Will you hold me, and guide me
And be with me in this dark?

My dear, my child
My precious beloved
Of course I'm with you, we're never apart
I'm your Parent, I'm your Shelter
Your Comfort, your Healer
I'm also your Friend, your Brother
We're in this together
Be free to wander, be free to fall
I'll be here when you get up, when you choose to call
Don't worry your little head, my dear and precious one
I'm here for a fact, I'm with you till the end

I'm here because I love you
First, second... and ever
You're my Prize
You're my Cherished
You're my Betrothed Forever.

My Engagement Story

There’s been slight changes here and there, almost too subtle to be discovered, and yet, the collective result is apparent. We’re engaged! Though we went through what seems like a transformational few days, from proposal on Thursday night to being congratulated by family and friends on Good Friday and suddenly, we’re already at Easter Monday, and the days seem to have gone by in a blur. And yet, at the few unofficial family and friend gatherings and in our time alone, I have noticed subtle changes to which the only analogy that comes to mind is the oh so familiar feeling that I experienced throughout doing group projects in university. That subtle but significant shift from when you finish brainstorming and allocating roles, and shift into intentional project planning and execution. That sudden lack of uncertainty, and our united pursuit of marriage and life ever after. This shift, though subtle and brought about by a brief 30-minute proposal has been somewhat shocking for the both of us. Going from boyfriend-girlfriend to being engaged is such a big deal after all, and unlike our dating story, this only takes up 5 minutes for retelling, and yet the significance of it is life-changing in so many ways. Now on the last morning on my Easter weekend, I am still at daze about what had transpired at the beginning of it, that last Thursday when I got on my knees, seeing my girlfriend for the last time, asking these delicate little words: “Will you marry me?”

Or rather, I asked like a true romantic, “Veux-tu m’epouser?” To which she said, “What?” Then I asked again in English, and she screamed, laughed, cried, laughed, and continued with a mixture of these for what seemed like half an hour. It was quite funny for me to watch, all her different emotions and expressions, and new ones, as she was completely blown away by my surprise, and was in so much shock that I think I shocked her twice. Which was again, hilarious for me! But also a breath of fresh air and relief for me, because I had prepared for this for a long time. Truth be told, this goes back to our dating story, most of which I will have to tell you at another time, but the important thing is we were two peas in a pod, and we became quick friends, then best friends, then soulmates all in quick succession, in a short journey from meeting her on October 22, 2017 to asking her out on December 15, only 6 weeks later. And I had already known on December 15, that this was the girl that I want to spend the rest of my life with.

So after dating for a short 3 months, I started researching about the ring. A friend of mine jokingly told me that at a certain time in life, every man suddenly becomes a diamond expert, and that was very true, because shortly 4 months later, I had all the C’s and had examined everybody’s ring, but still could not confidently find the one ring that was meant to be. So I looked further, and with the reminder that one of my close friends got an unconventional rock, I started to look, and pray, for the one stone that God has set aside for my darling. And with that belief in my heart, I started into much uncharted territory, where I meticulously searched for and found 3 months later, a stone that my girl would love and marvel at every so often for the rest of her life, the centerpiece of the ring that would signify our growing and ever-changing love. A beautiful black-teal moissanite, about 0.8 carats, and shone with rainbow fire, more sparkly than any diamond due to its crystalline structure. It was a black gemstone that shone with violet, blue, light blue, green, orange and brown, depending on the angle that you hold it and the amount of light present. An ever-changing fire for her to wear and marvel at all the rest of her life. When she asked me about it, I gave her one hint that I quoted back to her these few days, that “it would represent the many facets of our love, and she will grow to love it more and more.” In fact, when I saw the stone samples myself, I had prayed hard for the jeweler to use the specific one that God had set aside for Carmen, and to bless the whole selection and making process, to bless the ring with beauty, protection and an infinite display of the love that God Himself had for her. Seeing her with the ring now, I am 300% over-satisfied, and what stuck out the most for me was that I had imagined her sitting marveling like a child with a crystal, and she did exactly that, several times over the last few days to my satisfaction. I have definitely given her the stone God set aside for us. This blessing was insurmountable! And I had also thought at the time, her favorite color was green, so I must have it set in such a way to bring that out. And with the help of the lovely business representative at Midwinter.co, I settled with the greenest stones I could find, the blue-green topaz, and set it on rose gold, which brought out the green further. Though incidentally it did not occur to me that green and rose gold were almost opposite colors, which I learnt later was a technique many artists use for bringing out contrast, because at the time, I was just concerned with durability, and the 14K copper-gold alloy was the strongest ring setting other than platinum, and platinum just didn’t feel right for the black stone. I was glad that it all did turn out so beautifully, as I had ordered this custom ring from looking at pictures, videos, and had squinted over, and measured meticulously to ensure that it was the ring that I wanted. Well, I can truly say in this that I had done my best, and God really did do the rest. Best looking ring in Hong Kong! Of course, I’m biased.

The ring came in November 2018, and I was psyched, but I still felt something was missing, and seeing that Carmen’s family was going through a time of mourning, with God’s prompting, I dedicated the following months to loving and getting to know each of her family members, as my Momma always said, marriage is a family matter, who you marry isn’t just the girl you love, but you also marry her family. So I grew to love each member of her family, getting more familiar, and being concerned with what they enjoyed, and started conversation and even made her quiet brother laugh, which I felt was quite an accomplishment. I enjoyed their company dearly.

Then, time came when we started discussing about wedding venues, and the pre-marriage course that we signed up was about to start, so I prayed again and asked God to see if it was the right time to propose, as previously I asked, and it felt like He said I should wait for Him to choose the right moment. And with repeated prayer, I felt this time the answer was, “Ready when you are, Son!” So I started to plan and strategize, and brainstorm for how to pop the question. Funny enough, Carmen is a hard one when it comes to surprises, there are specific types of surprises that she would love, and many types that would cause her to feel too shocked to enjoy, so over the course of our relationship, I tried to suss out which works and which doesn’t, and though I had gotten really good at surprising her, I had never proposed to her nor to anyone else before, so this took some careful planning and discreet questioning to make sure she doesn’t guess it in advance. She also seemed to expect that she would just laugh at me when I propose, but that kind of expectation also didn’t make it easy. How was I going to make her laugh? After a few headaches, I realized, I should just try my best again and just leave the outcome to God. So I started..

I thought the best way to make her laugh and surprise her was to catch her completely off guard, and so I thought, I should somehow hunt down or buy a magic show popup bouquet, because I do a lot of magic tricks with children and that magic generally make people laugh. But all the places I rang up told me that I had to order at least 100 or they won’t stock it. That’s a bummer. And so, I proceeded to do the only thing that I could do, and that was to make it myself. I spent a couple of hours studying videos on Youtube of magicians using this type of bouquet, and found one that wasn’t too skimpy and also one that I would be able to engineer if I experimented a bit and so lo and voila, long story short, I had a holiday weekend, and I spent 1 entire day making this paper bouquet. It was pretty awesome that it looked exactly like what I saw, except that it was made of paper, and paper is much thicker than the industrial plastics that the original show prop was made of, so you probably can imagine my displeasure, when I realized I could not just hide this popup bouquet in my shirt pocket where the magician could, and had to find another way to carry it. That’s where God came in, as I had just bought a foldable keyboard a week ago and I had a case for it, the case was perfect for carrying the bouquet AND the ring! I was set! My proposal-in-a-bag was ready for action. This was two weeks ago.

These two weeks had been a trial for my character, faith and patience, as I ended up carrying the pouch with me everywhere, and could have pulled the proposal any time I liked or felt impatient, but I waited and waited and waited so patiently for the time that I thought God had given me, which was Saturday morning on Easter weekend. As I had also been planning to go camping with Carmen, it was perfect, our annual camp and sunrise worship was going to be the perfect time for the proposal, thus I earnestly prayed for a beautiful sunrise for such an occasion, trusting that God would come through for sure, as proposing this weekend felt like a confirmation. Well, for those of you from Hong Kong, you must already know that this past weekend, there was a sudden storm that took care of both Friday and Saturday, and since the raining started on Thursday night, we decided not to proceed with camping. I remembered having dinner with her, but my brain was constantly praying to God asking, “Now what? Should I propose tonight? Would that be weird? How do I change my speech? Help me, Lord.” Though after a few prayers, I left it to the Lord to sort out as I know He already has a good plan for all of this, as He had promised in Jeremiah 29, and continued with dinner.

As it was raining and we haven’t been camping or hiking for a while, we were a bit restless so we settled with choosing a good movie and watching it. We paused the movie to chat, because it didn’t turn out to be half as good as advertised, but that was okay since we enjoyed each other’s company and enjoyed chatting. So I excused myself and went to the washroom to pray again. “Is now the best time?” I felt peace in my heart, so I thought, “Okay, it’s all on you, God, let’s see how this will go.” Then, I went to hide my pouch under my shirt and tucked into the back of my pants before going back, and in one smooth motion, slipped back next to her and hid the pouch out of sight. Game on! So I called her my best friend, because she was, but also to start easing into the proposal. Then I started an unplanned conversation about all the fun we’ve had over the last 18 months, as well as remembering all the surprises that I have given her, then I turned my head away to cough, but also to pull out the bouquet that I had prepared. She was so shocked! I told her that I had made this bouquet for her, and started my proposal speech, but apparently she was so shocked by the bouquet that she did not realize I was proposing, until I brought out the ring! That was hilarious, and all the while, she was still screaming. “Aaaaaah! Aaaah! Aaaaah! What’s happening? Aaaahhh!!!” After about 10 minutes of this, she stopped for a bit, thought, and realized she probably didn’t hear any of the things that I said, and told me to start again. At which point, I took out my phone, because I was also so nervous that I had forgotten what to say, so might as well that she didn’t hear most of it. So I read, with a few improvs to ease and digress, the proposal speech that I had planned, and we were sitting comfortably across from each other, cross legged like we always do, and I asked again, “Carmen Bethel Chow, will you marry me?” and she said, “Yes.” And though at that moment, I remembered having a fleeting thought, which was, “Oh my word, I forgot to rehearse how to put the ring on!” but I steeled my nerves, and remembered just about every romantic film I had ever seen, and let my unwavering fingers do the rest. And at that moment, all the adrenaline and shock took the both of us, as she cried and expressed her shock and the emotional significance of all this, and I was coming to terms with what had just happened, she suddenly had a bright grin and shouted, “We’re engaged!” And a wave of joy came over me too, and we celebrated a little. It was a bit late so we didn’t get to celebrate as much, and it wasn’t until after everyone’s passionate best wishes at the Good Friday evening service that we realized we hadn’t celebrated and that was why this celebratory mood that everyone else was in did not hit us! So we went out and celebrated in grand style, having a nice dinner, a bottle of wine, and bought the Nintendo Switch that we had wanted to get, because after all, we really did just “Switch” up our relationship!

So right now, I am still dazed, and still have no final thoughts on being engaged, it’s simply still too fresh, and I haven’t had quite enough time to process it yet. We’ve set a date to start planning the wedding and a deadline for submitting forms, but other than that, we will both take a couple of weeks to process what it means to be engaged, so that we can move forward to enjoy this new adventure that God has given us. I know that this part of our journey will always be special, and will provide much wisdom and insight for us as we continue to prepare ourselves for the rest of our lives together. So despite being in the middle of this transformation, and being quite seemingly open-ended, I have peace and will continue this journey with the best foot forward, just one step behind my Shepherd as He leads me.

“I know the plans that I have for you,” said the Lord. “They are plans for good, and not for evil, and will give you a hope and a future.” --- Jeremiah 29:11 (NIV)

Created to Give

In the past few weeks, I kept hearing of this idea from different sources, and as I continue to meditate on it, it does bring fullness and joy to my heart to learn of this realization. It is this: We are Created to Give.

When I surrendered my finances to God, I realized that He will provide all my needs, because He knows what I need more than I do. So when realizing that I am created to give, then I know that He will also bless that which I set aside to give, which gladdens my heart. Because there is a certain joy in being able to give, and it said in Acts 20:35 that it is more blessed to give than to receive. I truly believe that, and so I have started to meditate on how to take what little I can set aside, and multiply it for the sake of increasing what I can give, and not take any penny away from it. And in the process, also explore and learn more about what God has gifted me with, and to embody that in the blessing that He pours through me. Because I feel this is the true directive for Christians, not to just have a job and life and family, but we are so uniquely designed, we should embrace what we are gifted with, and take extra time and effort to share that with the world, and because it is God that gifted us, it is in our very "DNA" to use these gifts for His glory!

So I meditated over what gifts I have developed in the past year of offline soul searching, and I have thoroughly enjoyed myself applying and learning two things: (i) artistic expression, and (ii) plant care and propagating. And so, with confirmation from the LORD, I will proceed to investing in propagating plants with my gifting budget (which I set aside on a monthly basis), and just give them to people as gifts. From my year of plant caring, I have experienced great joy and healing through the experience of taking care of and understanding plants, and I feel that it will become such a blessing for many others, especially as there are a lot of agricultural metaphors used in the Bible. It will be physically, emotionally and spiritually filling for those that I bless through these baby plants that I will grow for their sake. In terms of art, I will create art specific for edifying others, just little tiny pieces of art, through the different forms of sketching, painting, and sculpting that I have learnt in the past two years.

Looking forward into 2019 and onwards, my heart is filled knowing that I can be blessed through giving, and knowing that I will get to see what God does with it.

Be blessed.

2019

Dear friends,

It's been a while. In the past year, I have been blessed to be offline and had spent time in developing relationships, a reflective and God-centered lifestyle that enabled me to embrace my gifts and to take them to a new level. That enabled me to have plenty of rest, to fuel my heart to connect maturely and grow with other deep-thinking individuals, and to be creative in learning and creating new gifts in life.

I continued my meditation of the Word throughout 2018, and have read/listened/meditated through mostly the first 3 Gospels 15-20 times, and it has given me more wisdom and clarity, especially in exploring and establishing deeper connections with people that are like-minded, and deeper understanding of myself. This year, I will continue to do this and enjoy the fruits that I reap, as promised in Joshua 1:9, a life of prosperity and success. And though I don't particularly ascribe to any prosperity teachings, I do believe that when we follow closely with God, He will bless our hands and our works so that through the prosperity of wisdom and financial management, we can build His kingdom through giving to and blessing others, and creating lasting change in the world.

And so with that, I have stepped into 2019 meditating on how I can use my gifts and provision from God to gift and to multiply it to create bigger and bigger ripples starting by investing in the smallest things, for it is written in Luke 16:10, "He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much: and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much."

Thus, I step into 2019, hopeful for God's gifts to multiply through my creative thoughts and ideas, with the goal of blessing others and building the Kingdom.

Blessings,

James

How Perfect is His Love for Us

by James Fung (Dec 24, 2017)

Every time I shut my eyes

All I see is His Love

How deep

How wide

How low

How high

How rich

And beautiful

How perfect is His love for us

And it is us that He loves

Not just me or you

How wonderful

How lovely

How sweet

How joyful

This peace

This compatibility

How perfect is His love for us

Wrapped in perfection

We’re perfectly speechless

How free

How true

How easy

How fun

No bullshit

All freedom

How perfect is His love for us

He is the Vine

That entwines our branches

How natural

How nourishing

How filled

How connected

We overflow

This House of God

How perfect is His love for us

Philia Love

The first love you learn about as a Christian is probably Agape Love, the love for all people, Christ-like love, unconditional love. But a lesser known word for love that Greeks also use is Philia, family love. It is also a word that one would use with friends that they are intimate and vulnerable to one another. And so lately, I've been learning about becoming open, honest and vulnerable in my love for those around me. With family and also with others. And it's been refreshing.

The thing is, most people have an open personality up to a limit. They let you know what they are comfortable with letting you know, and always seem to have a wall, and you can spend years at the wall and maybe never ever get inside, because inside, we're all vulnerable. But that's how misunderstandings, gossip and broken relationships come, when you can't see further than a certain point, and you start questioning, judging, losing understanding for that person.

And so, even though it might hurt initially to open up and become vulnerable to people, it won't hurt as much as not being vulnerable in the long run. Open, honest relationships help you to see, to love and to relate. That is why it's called family love, because you're more likely to have this type of honesty with those that you grew up with, that you have nothing to hide from.

And in the process of becoming more open, I find that after we grow up, we often try to build a wall around our choice of lifestyle and block important people out, people in our family even, and it's a sad choice that I have made in the past, but I've been brought to see that it doesn't help me or anyone to keep these walls, and so I'm tearing them down and investing in family, in philia again. Ultimately, family is a Gift from God, an unconditional source of love that empowers you and supports you to experience more of the world God's created and also helps you to love and live more at ease. It's evident that people with great love with their families are more joyful and have more peace. When you're not at war with someone so close, you don't lose energy in that fight every day in your heart, but rather gain every day that you are loved, and it's where it should be.

Of course, some families are harder to love, but every bit of love is a choice, and an investment, so I would encourage you to redeem and restore your relationship with your family with the love that you receive from God. It's a worthy investment, and it will help you to learn to love even more, and to be able to do even greater things once you have peace inside of your home, the very first community that God gives us, and the closest one at heart even when you don't feel it. Then you can understand even more what it means to love, and it will be a blessing to all your relationships outside the family.

As I'm also starting to take up this quest, to restore the philia in my life to which God intended it to be, I expect to gain much from it, more understanding of love, of God and of what life is all about. I can't wait. I know it will be difficult to restore, but the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is far too bright to not desire it. I want to have open, honest, loving connections with those in my family, and I sure will put in the effort to restore and build them up again. I can't wait!

Here's a prophetic picture of what I feel God is going to do with the hardened hearts and broken relationships in my life. The sword of God is going to strike down on the hardness, and we will all have breakthrough, and glory after glory. Painted by someone in the Incubator Ministries. 

Side note: I find that I might become a bit more vulnerable on here as well, since I'm being renewed and transformed in that direction. Which isn't a bad thing at all.