"Stop Asking Me!"

This is it. I can't pull any more Gideons. I can't keep asking for another sign.

This past year, I have been fighting God because I wasn't sure if He really wanted me to go back to China, so instead, I tried to find every reason to go against this sinking feeling in my head that I should go back this summer. But today was it. I can't keep asking.

Tonight for large group, Crossroads went to YWAM SF Tenderloin to help out with their Hot Chocolate Ministry. But today had just... not been a good day. There was no particular reason to justify why I was in such a bad mood, but I was. Maybe it was because I felt like I didn't sleep particularly well last week. Maybe it was because my online physiology homework took WAY too long. Maybe it was because I didn't get to study for biochemistry or global health and the overwhelming feeling of feeling... overwhelmed was beginning to build up. Maybe it was because I have been feeling really spiritually drained (I'm so ready for Spring Break...), and I have been feeling particularly unworthy and inadequate the past couple of weeks. Maybe it was the culmination of all these things, but the fact of the matter was that I just felt. bad.

And I didn't think I could do anything to help reach the lost in SF. In passing, I kept praying to God that He would just give me peace in knowing that He would be working in me—telling me to have faith, but somehow, my mood still didn't improve. I stayed silent the entire commute to SF, and I just wanted to go home and sleep.

Then the actual outreach began. And....

it was overwhelmingly anticlimatic. The DTS student that led our group didn't ask too many questions—she responded to my questions, but otherwise, she didn't really keep up much conversation. We set out to hand out hot chocolate at 7:30 pm, and we were supposed to come back by 8:40 pm, but the streets were strangely empty that night, so after we walked around a bit and handed out a few cups of hot chocolate, had a short conversation here and there, we went back to the base by 8 o'clock without too much to report for the night. We ended the night with a time of sharing, where my snaps of affirmation got enthusiastically picked up by the DTS students (lol).

Okay, so then why I am spending so much time talking about all this? Because literally in the last 5 minutes, God spoke so powerfully and deeply to me. As we ended the night in prayer, we began to pack our stuff and get ready to leave, but before I could go to grab my backpack, one of the DTS students R immediately pulls me aside and asks if he can pray for me.

A little caught by surprise, I of course reply that yes, he can pray for me. He then says that he just wanted to encourage me that he believed that whatever I was feeling worried about, God wanted to tell me that he wanted to give me guidance and clarity in that area. So I told it all to him, and before he actually prayed for me, the DTS student that led our group just came up to me and gave me a hug, thanking me for... something (I forget exactly what, but just the gesture of the hug spoke loudly). And then he prayed for me, and then I gave him a hug haha.

What he didn't know is that I have been worried out of mind about telling my parents that I'm considering going back to China this summer. Just three weeks ago, they came up to celebrate Chinese New Year's with me, and my mom reminded me that this is my last summer of undergrad—I can't waste this last summer! And I can't shake the sinking feeling that my parents would think that going back to China this summer would be a waste of a summer.

But I can't deny all the signs God has given me over the past year, whether it was some prayer that was said in passing about one person "becoming a long-term missionary in China," or some dream that someone had that I would be the director for an ISEC team, or some random person who gave encouragement to me and a group of friends (without knowing that we were all Christian)—which for me manifested itself in an emphasis on missions in countries like China. I felt like I could take each sign and justify that... it wasn't enough. I kept asking for more—"God, give me another sign to show me that this is actually what you're trying to tell me. God, give me a reason why I shouldn't go work in a lab this summer and study for the MCAT."

And tonight was it. That encouragement the DTS student gave me was enough. It's ironic that in telling me that he believed God wanted to give me guidance and clarity, I was given guidance and clarity.

2 Corinthians 12:9-10
"But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong."

So this is it—China, here I come. I have no idea why God wants me there this summer, and I'm still feeling pretty ashamed of my own sinfulness, but I believe that God is greater than my own weakness. If I'll need to do some convincing with my parents, so be it. If I ruin my chances with medical school, so be it, but I'm choosing to allow God to present his power in the face of my weakness.