Growth

Dear friends,

I have grown so much in the past month that I cannot just cover in a short update. As I mentioned before, I have started working full time in the ministry setting, and I am being so blessed by it. My supervisor is very keen on pruning me, and as a result, I am being renewed every week and making changes in my life with thorns that have plagued me for a long time. As I prayed with more direction, discernment, as well as more faith, small miracles are happening in my life.

A few of the miracles I've experienced so far are:

Increased productivity
i) my reading speed has quadrupled, as I have been able to read faster and focus for longer
ii) my time awareness and management has improved, as I recognise that I am a steward of God's resources and that includes time. I have started to plan on the go, and to do a constant rundown of each day and each task, to ensure and repeat success.

Better relationships
iii) I have acquired more of a human touch, such that even strangers around me are warming up to me in a very short time, and people that I've known for longer are also yielding the way to their hearts.

Better discipline/Self-control
iv) I have gain discipline over the fear of hunger, as well as the sin of gluttony, as I have learnt that hunger without fear, pride or insecurity, is just a physical symptom, and while fasting, I can fully rely on God and His provision for my health and my needs. As a result of fasting, I have cut down my meals to healthy amounts with nutrition as a focus, rather than fullness.
v) I have also been shown that I have taken in certain destructive lies of the enemy, such as being transparent with emotions is equivalent to honesty, while it is just grounds for the enemy to reap destruction. So, in seeking to manifest more self-control in this domain, I'm working towards even more productivity and better relationships.

Greater understanding of God's Word
vi) From reading, memorizing and meditating on the Word, as instructed in Joshua 1:8, I have gained more insights on what the Word says, as well as opened new ways to gaining more truths. I'll share more about that in another update.
vii) I have been rereading God's promises and reciting those Scriptures to myself to keep myself in a constant state of joy and hope, which is exactly what God intends for us. Rather than focusing on the darkness that is happening, we are the salt and the light, we should focus on the God of hope and be brimming with joy and peace at all times (Romans 15:13).

Additional benefits
viii) As additional gains from the above blessings, I have more time, better relationships, and better health than ever before, and as a result of this, I am able to pick up a few hobbies that I didn't have time before. I now hit the gym once a week (will work up to twice a week when possible), picking up a new instrument, the Ukelele, for personal worship, reading and memorizing more of the Bible (something that I am adamant about now), and also reading the occasional book to invest into the future that God has planned for me.

As you can see, God is leading me to higher grounds and it's been an amazing adventure so far. I've also been doing a bit more writing on Facebook, just short devotions for my friends to share in my discernment. Not sure if God is calling me towards writing more, but I'll be writing my lengthy updates here and focusing on snippets of God's Word on Facebook.

Much love,

James

Fiction writing

Lately, I had been inspired by a friend to do a bit of fiction writing. So, here's an idea that I was playing with this morning. Enjoy.

Altar Call
by James Fung (July 4, 2016)

“Come on! Hurry up!”

I opened my eyes and looked around. What is this place? It’s so bright. Before I could figure it out, a hand grabbed my robe and dragged me along. Robe? I looked down, I was wearing a white robe with little specks of gold dust. Woah, that’s awesome!

“Leett uerr go!” I twisted around. “I can walk by myself.”

I was greeted with a weird smirk. “Walk, James? We’re flying.” And true to his word, we were indeed flying. I instinctively looked around his robe to where a name tag would normally be, and the letters P-e-t-e-r appeared in gold dust and quickly disappeared again. Oh, right. We’re in heaven again. Wait, does my robe do that too?

“Yeah,” answered Peter.  I laughed.  Seeing that I didn’t know how to fly, I let him lead me through the pearly white lanes and into a building. Not unlike Peter Pan at all. Pun not intended. Peter laughed too.

***

As soon as we entered the building, Peter nudged me towards a line of angels who were lining up to enter the Throne Room. I resisted the urge to glance at their robes, because I knew the gold dust would respond to my thoughts. I got to experiment a bit on the “ride” here. Made a little gold dust car go honk honk around my robe, and a gold dust shark do a little ballet with a seal. Such good fun.

So I lined up behind the last angel, and waited in line. The hall was massive, even for angels. The ceiling was far higher than most cathedrals that I have visited on earth, but I could still see it in details because I was in my heavenly body. So, I watched as clusters of busy bodied angels go on with their daily business, not unlike an office on earth. That is, if they all had wings.

The queue was moving quickly, and when I got to the head of the queue, an angel asked me, “Which flavour?”

“Uh…” I wasn’t sure what to say. “What flavours are there?”

The angel sighed. “Blueberry, strawberry, mango, grape, orange, and lime.”

“Oh, right. Blueberry please.” He pushed what looked like a blue tube into my hand, and the next one gave me a box of cards and directed me a seat.

Wow! It was like… a Bingo hall! No, it wasn’t “like” a Bingo hall. IT WAS A BINGO HALL. I laughed so hard. The angel next to me nudged me, “You better get ready. It’s going to start soon.” He gave me a serious look.

“Oh, right. Well, I don’t gamble. Aah….” I glanced at his robe. J-o-s-e-p-h. “..Joseph. So what should I do?”

He smiled. “Oh, right. You must be the new guy. Here, open up your box and let me show you what we are actually doing.”

I opened my box, and stared into a stack of bingo cards. Unimpressed, I took them out and laid them out in front of me. Then I took my “blueberry” dabber and planted it in the middle.

Grinning, Joseph took up his own “grape” dabber, and opened it from the top end, and took a sip. What? He took a sip? I looked around the hall, and surely enough, there were quite a few angels sipping from their dabbers. “Waiittt… what is that?”

“This… is a fruit juice dispenser. It comes in any form that you like.” He demonstrated by turning it into an icy and then into a lollipop. “But don’t eat from the other end, that side is really a dabber.”

Excited, I held the strange contraption in my hand. The power to mark and the power to slurp! I pictured a frozen jelly snack in the shape of a dolphin, and just as Joseph explained, it was there. Oh, and the taste is beyond heavenly!

Joseph cleared his throat. I didn’t know that you can do that in heaven.. clearing throats, but I turned my attention back to him. “The reason they designed these is so that we can have something to re-energize us as we do these all nighters.”

All nighters?! What? “Let me explain. They’re about to have an altar call at Sacred Heart Emmanuel Church at their annual rally in Indonesia, and when that happens, God is going to write down a bunch of numbers, and the archangels will be in charge of disseminating them to us. Our job is pretty easy.. as you probably can guess already.”

“We.. find those numbers and dab them with our dabbers!” Still high from the energy frosty.

“Yes, good boy. But make sure to only dab the number in your column, and to pass them in order down to the checkers.”

“What do they do with these numbers?”

“They pass them onto the spinner and tailor angels, and they prepare the robes and heavenly bodies for each saved soul that comes forward.”

Dumbfounded, I blinked.

***

When I opened my eyes again, I had returned back to my body on earth.

Let

Lord, may we never be numbed by the news.

Let us mourn for every life that is lost, and every person affected. Let us mourn for the hearts of those who committed the crime. Let us mourn, Lord. Let us surrender and seek Your heart in these matters, and let us surrender and come to You in prayer. For only You know the things that are unseen, only You know the plans you have for this world, for us. For only You know what brings You greatest glory, and what brings home your children. Let us mourn, Lord, but let us also pray. Let us move this nation in intercession, and into intercession. Let us move. This mountain. Together. With You. For we are your children. We are your children in name and in form; in our image, and in our spirit. We are your children. So as we hold our hands together, or raise our palms to You, Hold our hands together, Your mighty hands over ours. And impart upon us, Your wisdom, Your love, Your courage, Your peace. Your impartation upon us, into us, over us. Let us pray, let us rise, let us walk, let us fight. Knowing that You alone are our shepherd, our God. That You alone have saved us from death, And in You alone we have life. Joy. Peace. Victory. Let us walk. And walk with us to see Your kingdom here.

Prophesying Adventures

As I was saying, I received the green light to pray constantly for people and God is showing me visions as I do that. I've been having a really great time, just going back and forth with Him to get more details and more visions, and He's come through 100% of the time. A lot of the time, the visions show what the person is going through, which basically means, God knows your struggles, and He is here for you. Sometimes, it carries instructions, which is pretty amazing, and other times, it shows afflictions, which depending on the situation, I'm not allowed to share, and instead, I pray in intercession. It's pretty amazing. And now that I'm constantly receiving, I am able to discern what I should be sharing, and what I shouldn't, so He has lifted the rule that He gave me, and gave me more flexibility in discernment.

Over the past 2 weeks, I have had constant visions of the people around me, whether I know them or not, and it is because I have been constantly seeking Him in prayer for intercession. It's a bit like doing my homework, now that I have been taught a new skill, and so, as I continued to do this, I have worked out with God, or rather, He has taught me the way it will work now. First, I will approach Him and ask for what He may want to say about a person, then He would show me a series of visions (at request), as sometimes I won't understand them until He illustrates them with more variations. Then after He's told me the general idea of it, I would either seek Him for more details, again depending on the situation, and He would answer my questions in epiphany (sudden knowledge). After that, I would either pray for the person, or approach the person to share the vision, and offer to pray for them. As I do that, God will speak through me to reveal even more secrets. I've repeated this process on average 5-10 times a day, every day for the past 2 weeks. And just when I thought I got this, as everyone (100%!) I approached confirmed the accuracy of these visions. He went a step further, by giving me very detailed visions about people's lives, and it's only happened to two people so far, one each day of the weekend past, but I know how He is training me, and so I am excited once more for more teachings. This will be an amazing journey, indeed.

Funny side note, the people in my fellowship has started noticing my "Seeing" face, and it gives them the giggles, which is hilarious! Basically, I just space out and talk to the air a lot now. And as I continued to learn, I am also passing what I learn onto those around me. God is raising up a very powerful army of prayer warriors and intercessors.

Final reminders, as said in Ephesians 6:

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. 11 Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. 12 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

Growth of a Sunflower: Fulfilment of prophecy

If you cast your mind back to October, I mentioned that I had a vision of Sunflowers on a Soccer Pitch at around March, and it was that I was staring at all these tall sunflowers and wondering whether I'd ever grow to be like them. People that were in my fellowship that have been there forever and had ministered to everyone in the group. Reliable, gifted in love, ministry, prayer and prophecy. And God had replied, I'll grow you as tall as these, and that was very encouraging.

Looking back now, I once again see myself on that soccer pitch, and as He had promised in slightly more than a year ago, I had grown to be one of the core flowers on the pitch. 

Recently, He's been growing me as a healer, something that I had also been praying for since I stepped foot into the Vine Church. One morning, I woke to His voice saying: "There, you're a healer now." And I understood His meaning, as I had taken up a new view of my gift in prayer and prophecy and had acted upon it. 

It is this: having realised that I am gifted in prayer and prophecy, I knew the only thing to do is to walk it in my life, and that means to pray whether I have something to share or not. It isn't the prophecy that requires me to pray or approach people, it is the need that people have for prayer. And since anyone can pray for anyone else, I had walked that into my walk, and when I do have prophetic visions or knowledge, I ease into it as part of my gifting. Our practice in faith, our presence, our faith and discipleship in God, is what makes us the Gift worth giving, not simply what we can offer in prophetic vision or knowledge that comes only from God. We ourselves are renewed and also from God, and we are also His hands and feet. If we don't do, and we don't walk, then it is just idle faith. Anyone can have those. Take courage, be strong, go forth as the Lord has already gone ahead of us.

So as I started to pray for people simply because I observe the need for prayer, whether there are physical issues, emotional issues, or spiritual, I offer to pray for people, and in response to that faithfulness, God had started pouring out an overflow of accurate visions for me to share with the people that I pray for. And it's been over a week since the day, Jesus said to me: "Go ahead, I'll do the work from now on, the visions will come as you open your heart and open your mouth."

And so, I'm very excited about what I'm experiencing right now, as He is indeed blessing me through this gifting to heal not only physical, but also emotional and spiritual issues. For it is not me at all, but Him who gives me the visions, then gives both myself and the recipient the decoder to apply it to their lives, and sometimes my own. I have long learnt to listen in when God is speaking through me, because of the hidden treasures that only He can reveal. It is such exciting times!

He has also been expanding my reach, not only have I grown in capacity to walk with my brothers and sisters in the Young adults fellowship, but He is also leading me to start to minister to members of the rest of the church. 

That's the update for now! Thanks for reading!

My Hug, His Embrace

A poem I wrote when my sleeplessness broke.

Praised be the LORD forever!

He is the giver of my peace

He knows just what I need

Halleluyah, Halleluyah!

Praise be to my King!

He rests me by the river

And leads me back to pastures green

He fills my cup with heavenly dew

It refills my soul, making me whole.

Forever, I am whole!

Forever I am HIS!

Forever I am Loved

Forever in His arms.

Hundred and eighty degrees I turn

I reached out to give him a hug

I embraced the air tightly

Knowing You are there

I close my eyes, and sigh

In your snug embrace

Around my shoulders

In my heart, in my soul

Clothe me with Your fragrance!

O heavenly dew of lavender and mint

And freshly trimmed grass 

A hint of the sweet, sweet fruit

O kiss me with the kisses of Your lips

Hug me and never let go

Whisper your words of love to me

My heart pounds with love and exhilaration

Your are my LORD, my LORD!

You are all I need. 

Your Grace is enough for me.

Your Grace is enough. Enough!

I thank You for this Grace

From the depth of your Embrace

I am beside myself with peace

Peace everlasting, ever calming.

Your hand on mine, I in yours

Holding my heart, holding my soul

I sigh.. sigh.. sigh

I am complete, 

Completed by you.

Completed in this hug

Completed, in Your Embrace.

The Power of Yes

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