A chat with a friend

On Wednesdays, I only have to teach two hours in the morning and I sometimes stay at school and prepare my teaching lessons for the next couple of days, but I also leave my MSN or Yahoo mesengers on so that I might chat with some friends.

I chatted with a friend of mine today for a long time on our messenger talks. We had a good conversation going back and forth and I really enjoyed talking to that friend and so did she. In our conversation, she tried so hard to encourage and comfort me because she knew that I just had broke up with my boyfriend and she wanted to make sure that I am all right and I am not too sad. Be honest, I sometimes am sad but I am hanging in there and seeking a way out and seeking some helps. I know I have to help myself stand up again so that I can help others. Being sad can't make me feel better and I need to do something and get myself a way out.

In our conversation, she asked me why I can recover so fast and not feel so down and depressed. I told her that I can do that because of my belief in God. I am very happy that I could have been feeling miserable for a long, long time if I hadn't had faith that God will carry me through this time of despair. I might sometimes not feel God's touch and comfort but I know He is always there and I need to have faith to believe in that.

I told my friend in our little chatting window screen, I said, "Faith is a confidence in believing God's plans and provisions and in seeking that God will fulfill everything that he has promised." The response I got from her is that she wonders why I have such strong faith and she told me that she used to be a Christian before but she is a Buddhist now. I told her that I don't have a strong faith but I have a little faith and I've been praying every day and asks God to grand me a bigger faith so that I can hold on to everything He has promised.

My friend brought up an interesting issue--she used to be a Christian but she is a Buddhist now. She gave up her faith just because she cannot feel God's presence. She knows deeply in her heart and she cannot serve two masters but she doesn't know why God seems so far away from her when she prays. She said, 'praying is like talking in the air, there is nothing there that you can see." In response to what she said, I said you need to have more faith in believing what you cannot see and that's what faith is all about.

Faith is believing that there is something that has been promised and it will come in the right time. It's not the problem of when it will come and what it should look like but it's the matter of whether we are ready for that and if we can have that. In the Bible, it clears states that we should be ready anytime because it may come anytime unannounced. And, that's faith and being patiently in waiting something that had been promised.

I don't really have such a great faith as she described but I merely have a little faith and patiently seek out the ways of God. I had lost my faith because I did not in God and I felt that God had forsaken me and he never wanted me to be close to him anymore. I found out that I was wrong and I had proved myself wrong.

In fact, I gave up God but God never forsook me. In the Bible, especially in Psalms, David says: (Psalm 22:1-5)

"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me so far from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry out by day, but you do no answer, by night, and am not silent. Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One; you are the the praise of Israel. In you our fathers put their trust; they trusted and you delivered them. They cried to you and were saved; in you they trusted and were not disappointed."

I guess I really would like to tell her those verses above and let her know that everyone does feel there is time when God seems so, so far away. Yet, if we can hang on to it long enough as David desribes in this psalm, we will not be disappointed, but be saved. I think what I feel now.

In the time, when I just ended my last relationship, I felt that it was the end of the world and there was nothing more for me to linger around on this earth. I was so down and depressed because I believed that I had lost everything. But I am glad that I prayed that night and I found God was there with me trully again and his angels protected me and whispered into my ears saying, "You are my beloved, in you, I find the mercy and love that you give to other people you care and love."


"In him and through faith in him we may approach God with freedom and confidence." (Ephesians 3:12)