Olivia Toh, Service Team
I entered last AY stepping into new and old leadership roles. Along the way, I somehow started believing that I had to be a ‘standard’ Christian leader who plasters a ‘God is Good so be thankful’ sparkly banner over my real-life struggles. Bejewelling my fears away when the valleys got too deep and the Red Sea wouldn’t part proved unhelpful. I just wanted to know why I could not see God going before me as promised. Yet, it was more a voluntary blindness on my part, so that I didn’t have to be awake and deal with the exhausting process of healing. It was about my pride, really. My ego would have suffered a terrible damage to admit that I had lost sight of who Jesus is and that I had probably stopped growing in my love for Him.
At our first Adoration during SOCL, I surrendered and told Jesus: help me to know You. In the reflection session that followed, I wrote out the lies about my identity that I had been holding on to and the negative scripts about God that I’d come to believe in. I had forsaken my identity as sheep for more space and time to be shepherd. But this perceived need for more time to minister to my sheep was probably a projection of my own need for more time to spend with Jesus. The human girl was desperate to rest in Him, to let Him Love her, but she told herself that she was a machine. What was I placing heavy burdens on myself and not lifting a finger to remove them for? What was my self-sufficiency supposed to prove? This foolishness, God-willing, was the perfect, fertile ground for God to be great.
Now were my hands open to be held by His.
I felt so sorry for silencing Jesus every time He tried to call me home, so ashamed that I had been so proud about myself as a leader, and so guilty for all the Love that He desired to pour out that I tried to hold off. These overwhelmed me. And the journey I knew awaited me to build trust in Jesus again seemed like a marathon, but I also knew that every step would be one that brings me closer to Him.
Olivia’s cell group
Now that I have allowed myself to be received into His Love, I recognise just how present Jesus had always been to me. It is true that I still cannot feel Him about 90% of the time, my passions for worldly things remain very real, and even my intellect says to me sometimes that God could’ve done several things to prevent certain sufferings in my daily life. What’s different is that I prefer it this way now.
Because, in a way, it tells me that God’s Goodness is certain, needing no human witness. Yet, He invites me to go and tell everyone – through cooperating with His Will, choosing to believe that He is present, and being the voice that cries out in this concrete jungle to make straight a way for the God with us.
So now, my friend, come and see the One who knows all about me. Where, in your life, do you think He will reveal Himself to you on this new day?
