Wow, it has already been 6 months as a student here at Gospel for Asia School of Discipleship! The Lord is teaching me so many things and He is also encouraging me!  I think the biggest thing the Lord is encouraging me to do is to keep following, pursuing and seeking Him no matter how I feel. I think this is the absolute hardest thing for me to do because when I am emotional and don’t know why (and even when I do know why) I just want to hide and get away from everyone.  Now if I chose to rely and act on what my emotions said, I would probably be back home.  Making the decision to rely in faith on the Lord’s promises, is so hard for me, but once I do it I feel better because when I read His Word I truly trust what He says.  There have been times however, when I read God’s Word and didn’t feel any different afterwards — this is where faith comes in.

Hebrews 11:1 says “Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see” (NLT).  This verse explains it perfectly.  When my emotions decide to take over; immediately faith needs to step in.  I have to have confidence that what I hope to happen (which would be that the feelings go away and ultimately that His perfect, good, pleasing will would be done so He may be glorified) and by hoping this will actually happen I can be so assured that it will happen.  I know the Lord and He promises to answer the cries of His righteous ones, to deliver, and give them such perfect peace for those who choose to trust Him and keep their thoughts fixed on Him (Isa. 26:3).  He also promises us that when we seek Him with all our hearts, we will find Him (Deut. 4:29) He is not going to hide Himself from us.  He doesn’t desire us to stay on an emotional roller coaster for the rest of our lives! He came to give life and to give it more abundantly! (John. 10:10).

I find this so encouraging that the Lord showed me this because it really is so important to this Christian life.  I mean think of one who is in the position of leadership.  Don’t you think there are days when they just feel like giving up and not leading anymore? I mean those in leadership have so many different tasks to do, decisions to make and there not always easy decisions, and they most importantly have to shepherd their flock like Jesus calls them too.  If they decided to just give up and stop leading because that’s what their feelings were telling them, I don’t think we would have any leaders in the world, and I know Gospel for Asia would not still be in existence.

The Lord has shown me I have to train my emotions.  Whenever I feel them coming up and taking over I have to immediately go to the Lord and ask for faith.  And all I need is faith as small as a mustard seed to move mountains. (Matthew 17:20) God has used so many people in my life, especially here at Gospel for Asia to remind me that my emotions and heart are very deceitful above all else (Jer. 17:9) and I need to put my faith in the Lord’s promises. The president of Gospel for Asia, K.P. Yohannan reminds us all of this very often.  We need to be reminded because emotions are nothing we can hope in and make decisions based upon.

I think back in my life before School of Discipleship when I used to make so many decisions based on my emotions and every single time, it turned into a huge mess.  I remember receiving a text, e-mail, or phone call from someone who made me so angry and instead of taking it to the Lord I decided to react and I ended up really hurting that person and caused them to view God not as a loving God but as an angry God because I called myself a Christian.  I praise God that He has been so gracious to me and grown me very much in this area of my life!  I also praise God for even bringing me here to School of Discipleship so that these areas in my life can be revealed.

I desire to live by faith and I am encouraged to do so by all the wonderful people here at Gospel for Asia. Each day they encourage me even when I fail to not give up and to keep running the race for Christ. Praise God 🙂