Listen what you don't want to listen

"No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no heart has imagined what God has in store for those who love Him..." 1 Corinthians 2:9

If i could still remember clearly, this is my first ever bible verse in my blog. Cool huh, what has happened to me now? This verse actually signifies the objective for Ignite '06 Conference - REGENERATION. It's about regenerating ourselves (teenagers and young adult), particularly our relationship with God to a new unpredictable challenging dimension (trust me, it will happen, BUT only to those who truly commit their body and soul to God).

The theme for today is 'listen what you don't want to listen'. What struck me most is the two workshops in the afternoon, "What's the deal with the Holy Spirit?". Interesting! Holy Spirit! it's something that i know about; yet something that i know a little about. What i knew was that Holy Spirit is part of God, The Trinity - the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. How Holy Spirit works? i don't have a clue. Somehow i felt it a few times before, but wasn't not really experiencing its presence.

To tell you what Holy Spirit really is after listening to the talk, i can say it's not a short explanation to do. Let me try. *am thinking really hard* When we become Christian, or we said we are baptised in the name of Jesus, holy spirit comes into my heart (holy spirit lives in us!). For Catholics, we are baptised since we were born by our parents without our consent, so meaning, holy spirit is already in us since born. And as we got confirmed (the time when we went through the process of confirmation), that's the time when we ourselves made the vow to accept Christ into our life (it's our decision!), and we said 'I believe bla bla bla'. Holy spirit is once again renewed in our life.

But what is Holy Spirit? (*correct me if i'm wrong)
Holy spirit makes things possible. It makes the relationship between God and us HAPPENED. To make it clearer, it functions to open ourselves (our heart) up to experience the love of God. Without holy spirit, we can never experience God in our life. Sounds complicated right, let's say harddisk and motherboard, they wont operate if it is not for a cable. Hmm, another example, a microwave will not work if u don't do the action of switching on the electricity.

So, to let Holy Spirit which is already in us to work for us, we have to first ALLOW it to work in our life. Because if we don't, we can't see anything, experience wonderful gifts of God. In Christian faith, holy spirit is like a jar of water with sands in it. We need to keep stirring it (to pray for the coming of Holy Spirit) so that it touches our heart through experiencing God and Jesus. If not, what you see is water and sand at the bottom of the jar. And as i've said, Holy spirit has always already in us and what we need to do is to open our heart to allow Holy Spirit to touch us, that we may experience God, His wisdom, His way and His love for us.

Next, how do you know when Holy Spirit touches u?
Well, difficult question, because it touches every single one of us differently and uniquely. One way Bible says is that people start to sing in tongue. i see this pretty common in Catholic community, seeing people start singing in tongue in which only God can understand. Am not too sure about other churches. Another way forgot already (bad memory). Tomorrow must ask my friend or Fr Chris (the priest who gave us this awesome talk).

And i would like to share with you what this person experienced,

There was once a guy.
Brought up in a Catholic family, he was baptised and
confirmed at 15 yo.
However, his knowledge about Jesus had often come
from weekly readings; no pleasure readings on Bible.
Obviously his knowledge of God was very shallow, yet
he believed in God, trust in Him and never gave up hope in Him.

The passion to serve God was quite limited as
he was always occupied with 'busy'ness.
To say that he had experienced true love from God
is something external rather than internal.
He had good friends, good community, good parents supporting him,
but his relationship with God was more like a short-term thing,
more like a i-free-i-talk;not-free-no-talk thing.

And one day, somehow, he was called by God,
through his friends to attend a conference.
The conference was an eye-opener for him.
It makes him realized that life is more than just work and attending weekly mass.
He wanted to follow Christ,
he wanted to find the TRUTH,
he wants to find out what God wants from him,
because life is nothing as beautiful and awesome as to follow God's plan.

But deep down in him,
there was something.
Something that had been locked for a long time,
that yearned to be opened.

And therefore he prayed.
This time, all he cared was Jesus.
he told Him that he wanted to follow His way.
he told him that he would give up his life to follow Him.
he told Him to shows him the way to the TRUTH.
he told Him that he is willing to take up the challenges God had planned for him
but he toldHim that He must walk with him.
But that something was not fully opened yet; he needed help!

He went up to the father.
When the father prayed over him, something happened.
something he never expected to happen happened.
this something changes his life completely.
Huge rays of light shined into his darkest closed-eyes
he felt like fire is burning inside of him.
and he could feel a soothing chill down his head.

After the prayer, he knew everything is clear.
he realized life has become different when he opened his heart.
no words can explain exactly what he has experienced.
All he could feel is,
his heart is burning.
Not his heart actually, it's what he called as Holy Spirit.
But this is just a beginning of a long journey.
A long journey of seeking the Truth
by following Jesus.

For he was told, and he will always remember,

"I have come in order that you might have life, life in all its fullness" John 10:10