2009: A New Year of direction and priorities

I still remember  in one of the last prayer meetings last semester, one of the pastoral staff was talking about goals we think that if accomplished, will bring us satisfaction -- and how flawed we were to think that anything other than God would make us truly joyful, and about living entirely for God. 

Goals like "if only I had better results, I would be so much happier with life", or even "If only I prayed and read the Bible more, I would be so much more satisfied". 

I remember distinctly praying that while trying to parse through the many emotions I was feeling. 

Hesitancy, because while I always say I study for God, I'm not sure if I actually do. Sometimes I feel my life has been dedicated to the pursuit of academic excellence, and in that whole-hearted single-minded unwavering pursuit, the boundary between living and studying for God and living merely for excellence/accomplishment/pride/self-satisfaction's sake gets smudged. And I wonder if academics has so consumed my being that I allow it to jostle with God for first place in my life.

Pride and self-righteousness, because I thought that I had accomplished to some measure all the goals he used as examples -- results, spiritual discipline, popularity, and the subsequent guilt and self-condemnation for inflating myself.

Confusion, because I still didn't (and still don't) know about whether to continue studying Finance or not.

But I know as we seek Him, even with our filthy lives, He molds and breaks us. For His grace is sufficient, and as I've gone and am going through these torrid times of self searching and evaluation of my motives, He sees the heart and the desire to live for Him though it is masked by my human weakness. And He does the changing.

This semester's results have been beyond my wildest expectations -- I would never have even dreamed of receiving such grades. It's been really hard trying to interpret them though: what did I do to deserve them, did I trust God more, did I work harder, I don't think I was smart enough to deserve them, where to from here. In some ways, it initially felt like a fulfillment of hard unending toil, like I achieved what I purposed myself to do, and that not merely to achieve results, but to learn and learn till the brink of perfection. And that fulfillment was something I have been working towards and thankfully accomplishing most of my life.

But back to God changing us. Today, today I felt a strange liberation from the demanding path of academic perfection. Not a weakening or removal of drive or motivation, but rather an evident transformation of that drive. It suddenly clicked in my soul, and it seems my whole perspective has been revolutionized. Suddenly I felt the burden of having to repeat and perform next semester vanish, the mental fatigue I thought I'd never be able to shake off evaporate, the tension subside. That even though my calling is academic excellence, I pursue it because it is my calling from Him who grants wisdom and understanding, and not because I am seeking excellence as an end in itself. That I study and learn because He has given me the ability and the opportunity to, not because I seek it as a means to human achievement. And suddenly, I feel recharged and raring to go next semester, because there has been renewal -- and I feel I know a little more about what it means to study as an act of worship, and what it means for the joy of the Lord to be my strength. These things I've talked and thought about much, but it is God alone who can transform that head knowledge into heart knowledge.

I pray my fuel next semester (and for the rest of my life) shall be grace, and not my own strong will and drive (and interestingly, I think the source of my fatigue this semester was having to constantly psych and motivate myself through the relentless work, and not the actual work itself).

Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.