Right now, the turns of events in my life completely affirms everything I've said about Free Will and How Prayer Works. Basically, when you love the Lord and the Lord loves you, His desires are your desires and when you bring them back to Him, He Will ALWAYS Say YES! This is the partnership that we have, this is the Will of God. This is how He envisioned our involvement in His work.
As you know, I have been job hunting. And for my job hunt, my criteria are simple. Either 1 of the following: i) the curriculum taught at the school should be outside mainstream, it should be something special that I can take with me when I go and open my own school (a desire that God has driven deep into my heart, to give not just AN education to his orphaned children, but THE BEST education), ii) the school should be close to my home, I want to spend more time with my parents, and iii) the school should be a REAL Christian school, not just a school based on "Christian values". Now, each of these respond to a core value that God has put into my heart, and so I would be okay to have just 1 of the 3 criteria to begin with, and will slowly work towards my two goals: i) my calling and ii) happy parents who are saturated with my love, and are willing to let me go on my calling.
Yesterday, I received a call from the Principal of a school that would fulfil all 3 criteria and more. It is a school that works with children that cannot fit into mainstream, and it is a school that pursues a curriculum that is the first of its kind in Hong Kong. A school not only focused on holistically healthy children, but also spiritually healthy children. A school that believes in inner healing and includes that in the education. For children to have inner healing and spiritual fortitude at such a young age, I am beside myself with tears and laughter. I couldn't stop crying even at the fact that they were considering me. Now, I knew they were a good school, but I didn't know about the inner healing bit until they called me. They wanted to know if my faith in God with similar to theirs, so they sent me a sermon to respond to. In the words of my friend, "even the selection process is Godly."
There is so much power when we say YES to God, because ultimately, it will lead to God saying YES to us. As I answered my phone, and the principal's voice came up with "Hi, this is Grace Christian Academy..", God spoke almost audibly into my other ear, "I affirm you for your faith." I could but stop myself from falling into tears. As I reflected on this today, I also looked back at some of the big answers to prayer that I have been receiving. The gift of singleness is something that I used to pray for as a teenager, and I received it again, almost audibly a couple of months ago at a seminar on Hearing God. A story for another time, but since then, I have had immense peace in this area of my life, and no longer have any wavering in my heart when it comes down to loving my sisters. I start to think of prayers that I have been praying for a long time coming, and at the very top of that list, I can remember prayers all the way up to i) the beginning of my faith journey, and ii) even before I became Christian. It doesn't matter, see, whether you were Christian when you started those prayers, what matters is if they were in line with what God has placed in your heart. The former is a prayer for my parents to accept Christ into their lives, and the latter is simply a repeated birthday wish since as young as my parents can remember (age 3-4), to have a happy family.
So when God asked me just now, "Do you believe in me?" I said, "Yes, I do, with all my heart." I want to see my parents filled with the same abundant joy and love that I have in my life and I want to see the same harmony that my parents have pursued to maintain in our family, but immeasurably more. Basically, I want God's harmony and love and peace and joy and hope and beauty to be so eminent in my home that it will overflow into every relationship from my home outwards. From me, to my parents, to my brother, to our relatives.. To the ends of the earth. Our lives are still young, there is still a lot of road ahead. So I dare to ask and imagine, and I dare to believe in the promises and the words spoken in Ephesians 3:20-21 and Acts 1:8.
"Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen." - Ephesians 3:20-21
"But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem [home], and in all Judea and Samaria [neighboring countries], and to the ends of the earth." - Acts 1:8
