encouragement

Unshakable

Posted on by christinekang

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Everything that can be shaken will be shaken but what remains will be unshakable. (Hebrews 12:27)

Some of us are in a season where the Father is orchestrating a divine shaking. He is going after everything that has exalted itself above Him in our lives, whether that is our greatest fear, a stronghold that has kept us from experiencing the fullness of His love, a lie that has kept us from knowing who we are in Christ, or an idol sitting on the throne of our hearts.

I feel the fire of testing and pruning through trials in my own personal life. I feel as though I am engaged in the greatest battle I have ever faced so far in my life. If you feel like you’re in a similar season, know that we will come out of the fiery trials victorious and forever changed! We will soar higher than we could have ever flown with our own might and cover distance farther than our wildest dreams. I believe this is a critical season to press into His presence, even if our feelings and thoughts say otherwise. We are being divinely set-up for breakthrough and aligned for His greater purposes for our lives. Praise the Lord for victory in the small battles because the war is about to be won!

Conquering Fear with Courage

Posted on by christinekang

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Journeying through this life with God is definitely an incredible adventure. From my personal experience, I can absolutely testify that He takes me from glory to glory but usually that new level of glory doesn’t come without courage. Looking back at my personal growth with the Lord, I see how far he’s brought me out from the pit of destruction all the way to placing my feet on solid ground. I can rest assured in knowing that the Holy Spirit is even more committed to my sanctification than I am. The only challenge with the process is that we are only sanctified to the degree we surrender and say “yes” to the Lord in facing our fears and sins. This requires incredible courage.

As I mature in the Lord, I find that there’s always deeper healing and more freedom to be had. Fears I thought I had dealt with are exposed as the Lord very gently yet very deliberately brings them to the light. For example, I had a very chaotic and tumultuous upbringing. Ever since I can remember, I was driven by fear. If I was given a responsibility, I carried it out in the fear of thinking that if I failed to carry it out, I’d get severely punished. Because I had lived with this fear almost my entire life, I had come to be very comfortable with the feeling of fear and anxiety. I was almost deceived to the point that it was normal and that without it I’d even be unproductive. I’d give excuses saying that I loved working under pressure. But as I grew in the Lord and started experiencing longer and longer spurts of freedom, I learned to discern these feelings of stress, fear, and anxiety and rightfully began to HATE them. Once you get a taste of freedom, there’s no turning back. I am entirely committed to facing all of my fears so that I can go back to my originally-designed state of freedom. One fear I still struggle with is the fear of man. Many people think i’m bold and that these fears no longer have any effect on me, but that is far from the truth. Although I desperately try to anchor myself in my true identity in Christ, I continue to realize new remnants of my troublesome past. At times, it can manifest in an unhealthy desire to please others or even in feeling that i have no voice. It is then that the Lord reminds me that we are not meant to act from a place of anxiety or fear. We are meant to act from a place of peace and rest! Our inheritance is unlimited joy, freedom, and every good gift from our Heavenly Father!

Kris Vallotton very wisely says, “Courage does not mean you don’t have feelings of fear. We all can have feelings of fear. Courage is rather not making decisions based on those feelings but based on the truth of God regardless of how you feel.” Courage is something that God places in our hearts. Without God and community, it is impossible to do anything we are remotely scared of. When we are in fellowship with Christ, He strengthens us and encourages us to keep pressing in because there will be breakthrough! Just the same, when we are in fellowship with each other, we encourage or inject courage into each other so that we can keep pressing in on our journey no matter how hard the enemy fights us or how much he tries to DIScourage us. He is out to search, kill, and destroy everything that is made in the likeness of God. He knows that God’s children are made in His image and inherit everything He has. The enemy also knows that the time of his reign on earth is limited so he tries to steal our courage in everything we do. Unfortunately, he has succeeded in discouraging many good Christians away from their godly callings and divine paths. But if there is one thing I know, it is that God is infinitely greater and stronger than absolutely anything Satan or any of his minions can throw at us! As long as we have breath, there will be grace and redemption. That is the God we believe in. He is so beautiful and easy to love because He always works for the good of those who love Him.

As we continue on this journey, let’s remember who our real enemy is. If we are to have success as the body of Christ, we must not get caught up in jealously, comparison, lust, or pride. Rather, we must love and encourage one another in unity. This will allow us to flourish as individuals and as a corporate body of Christ. We will be able to bring the best versions of ourselves for His Kingdom and for His glory.

The Journey of a Kang and Queen

Posted on by christinekang

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A friend recently asked me how Jason and I came to actually get married. For those of you who know us, we’ve dated for 7 years and most of those years, we were living in complete and utter darkness. That part of our testimony I’ll share at a later time. Here’s what I responded with:

I met a prophet whom my sister knew and trusted very much, and when I first met him, he told me things only God and I knew. Like the times I wanted to kill myself when I was getting abused by my mom (my mom and my relationship has been redeemed since then! She is really great!) and he went into great detail. But for about a year before I met him and I was dating Jason, I felt in my heart that we were supposed to break up. Not because I didn’t love Jason or he didn’t love me, but because we became complete idols to each other. As you probably already know, Jason and I didn’t get together in the most honorable way. We hurt a lot of people in the process and probably deserved a lot of the hate and anger that came to us. We truly felt like we were wearing a scarlet letter with people we knew at that time. We isolated ourselves and had a “we need to work out no matter what” attitude.

As I personally grew with the Lord and had crazy encounters with Him, I realized that Jason and my relationship was the hardest thing I could surrender to the Lord. So by the time the prophet said that to me, I already knew in my heart that we needed to break up. Another thing he told me was that my future husband was praying for me and that his prayers were hitting me right now because God is not bound by time. That always stuck with me.

So Jason and I had a talk and he was INSANELY calm and he agreed that we were idols to each other (which really was the grace of God). Jason and I mutually agreed that we would break up because this was what God wanted and we had no intention of getting back together in the future. I took a whole month to quit my job, gather my stuff, and move out to Azusa (living in Susanna and Paul’s living room).

I had a very strange peace about everything. My heart felt like it was literally saran wrapped with peace and grace. For the next 4 months, I met new friends who encouraged me to do Circuit Riders through YWAM and I worked on my relationship with the Lord. I felt so much freedom and grew in intimacy with the Lord. The strange part was that every time I closed my eyes to pray, I saw visions of Jason. He was really broken and crying. God lead me to pray for him. In a specific vision, I saw an angel of the Lord above Jason and knew that God was taking care of him. I decided to call him one day because in another vision he was bawling and I wanted to make sure he was okay. He was telling me that due to the break up, he was faced to actually choose God or keep going on the path of partying, drinking, and destruction. When he faced those two paths, he very deliberately chose God. When we were dating before and I was growing with the Lord, in my immaturity, I tried to convince him that God was real in the way I experienced him. My spiritual eyes were open to the works of the Holy Spirit and because Jason was always so doubtful, I tried to force him to believe things (my intentions were good but my maturity with the Lord and faith in him was so small at that time). In hindsight, I know that the Lord broke us up because he needed to work in my heart but more importantly, Jason needed to know that he was choosing Jesus because of his own will, not because I was forcing him to.

Going back to the story, when Jason and I talked after 4 months of silence, Jason told me how he chose the Lord and realized he wasn’t leading a relationship pleasing to the Lord. He told me he was praying for me every day (he still does 🙂 ). He said if we got together, he would lead me and love me in the way Jesus designed a relationship to be. So we decided to fast and pray for a week about it. After a week of praying, both of us felt an overwhelming amount of peace to give it another try. So we decided to get together and do it the right way — with God as the center. It truly felt like a new relationship. Jason put in a lot of effort to pursue me the way Jesus wanted all the while pursing God, too. I kept seeing a change in him and in my own heart. To be honest, I had many doubts even during that time because I was thinking, “God, you told us to break up. Is this why? Is it so that Jason would choose you with his own will?” And He responded to me. He said, “Do you remember all those prayers you sowed into him for all those years? Prayers of him loving me and being completely abandoned for me? I searched his heart and knew that that was his desire, too.”

I know it sounds kind of crazy but breaking up was the most pivotal and important decision we would both make. We were able to surrender our “god” and declare that only Jesus could take that place. I realize now that that’s what God wanted in the end. It wasn’t about Him choosing a specific spouse for us (which he can definitely do in some cases) but he knew that in our hearts, we both genuinely loved each other — we just didn’t know how to get to the healthy place He wanted for us. As you know, we’re married now and really, really, really happy. God is so good! I feel his love for Jason and me as partners and individuals every day. I have so much confidence in knowing that Jason intentionally pursues Jesus and me. We don’t take each other for granted. We also have a confidence in knowing that we are battle proven. No matter what Satan throws at us, we can weather that storm because we’ve been through crazier circumstances in the past and overcame them with Jesus.

I’m always so blown away by Jesus and his unconditional and infinite love. We definitely don’t deserve it, but his heart is to love all of us with such unstoppable love, favor, and grace. So it seems, I can never stop praising God because I know in my heart I can be evil, but he called out the best in us and even gave us the grace to step out into that truth.

I hope this answers your question! But please don’t ever hesitate to ask! It’s a testimony because the very essence of testimony is that God will do it again.

Thinking Twice About The Path of Least Resistance

Posted on by christinekang

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Sometimes the path of least resistance in our lives isn’t the right path for us. That path can look smooth and it can even look like the natural progression to the “next stage” in life. “I should go for that career with the higher salary” or “I should probably get married and have kids soon.” All those things are wonderful and I have no objections to those dreams whatsoever. But what if sometimes that path of expectation and “normalcy” that society, culture, and family puts on us is the wrong path? We are deep and complex beings with many desires and dreams. We were created with them and created for them. Explore the desires in your heart. What makes your heart sing? What makes you thrive? What energizes you? I often find that there is an intense resistance before the birth of a great dream. The resistance only confirms that we are on the right path because there is a whole spiritual world out there afraid that we will operate in our full authority, our full identity, and our full calling.

Sometimes the Lord’s path for our lives can look rugged and illogical. But it’s in that process of walking with Him in the lowest valley where we’ll be able to reach the highest peak, shining His glory because we were able to trust in Him. Trust the process and find joy in it. Where there is winter, spring is around the corner.