New perspective on life July 28, 2009
Posted by David Hiran Watson in Daily Life-Walk.add a comment
For my readers who don’t know, I’m involved in a Christian band called PalmSway. The band is actually meant to be part of a ministry, started up by two friends of mine – Gabriel and Mishkah – and myself. The three of us all go to the same church, and God gave them the idea to start PalmSway back in 2007, and after they shared the idea with me, I felt God’s call to be a part of it as a leader. On a side note, the ministry is called PalmSway Worship Ministries, and the purpose of the ministry is to share God’s love through the various mediums of the arts. PSWM is meant to be an umbrella ministry, under which there are both individuals and teams associated with PSWM who minister through the arts. The teams are generally considered a direct ministry (or sub-ministry) of PSWM, while individual artists can be considered associated with PSWM. For example, there is a PalmSway Worship Band, which consists of Gabriel, Mishkah, myself, and several others. We practice and play in both worship settings and concert settings (whether at a church or non-religious venue).
How does this all relate to the title of this post? Well, this past weekend, PalmSway Worship Band was invited to lead the worship at a prayer conference out of town. The conference was amazing, and extremely spiritually high. Even though there was a structure and plan, throughout the weekend God led us according to His plan for the weekend. It was interesting to see the various attempts made by Satan to get us sidetracked, but God by His Spirit kept us unified (us being both PSWB and all those in attendance at the conference). There were times of intense worship, times of teaching that really spoke to me (and it seemed many others as well), and times of prayer ministry by the pastors/apostles who were leading the conference.
The conference ended on Saturday, and much of the band members ended up helping lead worship at my church on Sunday. I say this because even though the conference ended, the spiritual high was perpetuated at church Sunday morning and evening, and throughout the afternoon.
However, coming out of the weekend, as I went to sleep yesterday, I was not sure what would happen in regard to the changes and growth and intensity of experiences and feelings. Like most Christians, I find that after a spiritual retreat of any sort, life tends to pull you back down in such a contrasting way to the time of retreat. What tends to happen is that after even a few days (!), let alone a week, the experiences of the retreat seem like a lifetime away. The growth and changes seem to rescind, either completely, or partially. I for one find it extremely frustrating. Any desires on my part that sprung up during the conference to connect deeper with God seemed to fade even today as I went about my day!
All of that changed, however, when I read a post by a friend of mine entitled Journey and Destination. My friend – Greg – was blogging his thoughts on a post by a friend of his, entitled Training vs. Trying. The ideas of both posts are the same: seeing life as a journey versus seeing life as a destination. I’m not going to explain in further detail the content of the two posts – I encourage you to read them before you continue reading below, unless you are already familiar with the ideas expressed in the post titles.
I have to say I was, and am, greatly encouraged to think that life is about the journey, about training to be like God as opposed to trying to be like God. When life is about the journey, about training to be like God, the experiences I had at the conference effect my continued experiences going forward. Instead of the conference being a destination, a point in time that is now over and therefore has no direct relevance to the present, the conference is a point in time that I can build upon. Instead of me having to try and appropriate the desires, the growth, the changes and experiences of the whole weekend onto who I am now, and onto my days going forward, I can use the weekend as the next building block/brick in my journey of life.
It is still possible, even with this outlook on life, to not build upon the existing bricks in my life properly, and as it were waste those bricks. Yet, in many senses, those bricks are still not a waste. To put this more concretely, even if I should fail to consistently, daily spend time with God, the weekend’s experiences are not wasted. It is true that the bricks laid over the weekend would be put to much better use, as a foundation, if I continue to spend time with God and practice the growth that occurred. Yet, nothing I do can ever fully negate or erase the bricks laid over the weekend. Praise God!
This is definitely a perspective that I will have to practice viewing intentionally, until it becomes a part of me. Yet, I am now encouraged that no good experience in life can be completely wasted.
DH
Victory! May 30, 2009
Posted by David Hiran Watson in About Me, Daily Life-Walk, God.Tags: close friends, God's love, moving, SI
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I know it’s been a while since I posted, but I wanted to share what happened tonight and the past couple of days. For those of you who don’t know, one of the struggles I have is with SI – self-injury. To put it bluntly, I cut myself. I had two incidents last year, and three so far this year. I alluded to the first one in a previous post. I had two incidents over the past two days – one Thursday (May 28) night, and the other Friday (May 29) evening. In total I cut myself 26 times on each forearm.
I’m confessing all of this to say the following: God is SO loving and amazing! I shared what I did with three close friends, brothers and sister in Christ – Gabe, Mish, and Bryant. Later in the evening, God set up a meeting with Bryant, Gabe, my pastor, and myself. And through the meeting God spoke to me, showing me what I’ve been doing to myself, what I’ve been allowing to go in my life, and what needs to happen going forward for healing. There was a lot of prayer: my brothers prayed over me, and I prayed to the Father. It’s so precious to me how we can come to God as we are!
Through the prayers and counseling, it came to light that what has been going on in my life has been a spiritual battle. I say it came to light because although I’ve known that I’m in a spiritual battle, I didn’t put two and two together in regard to the depression and the negative thoughts. It didn’t connect in my mind that I’ve been tormented by a demonic spirit trying to keep me focused on the past and the negativity of disapproval. I needed to stop seeing God through the lens of my parents and who they are and how they interact with me, and see God for who He really is.
With the help of my brothers in Christ, I repented, rebuked the tormenting spirit(s), and humbled myself before God again. I have to say: it feels so relieving to humble myself before God. The weight just lifts right off my shoulders, knowing that God is in control again 
.
God, through Bryant, spoke after the prayers about my spirit-man, or inner man, and how I need to feed him and make him strong again. I know it’s not going to be easy though. In fact, sitting here in front of my computer, just before I wrote this post, I was tempted to cut again! Thankfully God spoke to Gabe and Bryant and got them to take the knives I was using away. Anyway, I’m going to end here. If you’re reading this and you pray, please pray for me.
On a side note, I’m moving again; I’m moving in with my sister to a 2-bedroom apartment. I might be without internet access for a few days, so if you leave any comments I won’t get them until I have access again.
DH
Dear God April 5, 2009
Posted by David Hiran Watson in About Me, Daily Life-Walk, Faith, God.Tags: Faith, God, life, struggles, Superchic[k]
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I’m going to take a page out of love, devi and style this post as a letter to God:
Dear God,
Tonight was pretty difficult; I’m sitting here at this moment listening to “Courage” by Superchic[k] and I have two questions to ask you. First, for those dealing with hurting and pain and difficulty, what difference does believing in you make? You and I both know that both questions arose in me earlier tonight while traveling home on the TTC. We also chatted about them at that time – well, more like I voiced them to you and then focused on the music coming out of my mp3 player. But I’m recounting them now both for the sake of anyone reading this, and because writing it this way is part of the healing (answering) process.
So back to the first question; if you recall I thought of the Footprints poem, and the line about how when there was one set of footprints, it was you carrying the dreamer. But I realized that both non-Christians and Christians get through hard times. (For those reading, I use those two terms in the traditional sense of the words). For example, a non-Christian, when confronted with losing a loved one, will experience the pain and loss. They will shed tears, go through the whole grieving process, and move on. Eventually the pain from the loss will completely cease, or at least subside to almost ‘background noise’. How is that any different from a Christian who turns to you during the grieving process for help? Alright, I admit that perhaps they will have a shorter grieving period, and there is also the prospect of hope that they will see the loved one in Heaven (should the loved one have been a Christian as well). But, in my eyes, there is no major ‘advantage’ to turning to you during the grieving process.
Or let’s look at another example: someone who is struggling with a difficult time, such as breaking an addiction. There is a lot of pain and hurt and hardship associated with an addiction – whether you’re the addicted one or someone you love is the addicted one – and breaking an addiction. My “church” upbringing tells me the ‘right’ answer to this scenario: my trusting you gives me your strength and invites you into the situation. But many who don’t trust you, who perhaps are not Christians, break addictions. Many who don’t trust you have their families healed and restored back from the damaging effects of an addiction.
Don’t get me wrong God, I’m not saying I don’t trust you or that I don’t want to trust you. Until recently, I struggled with the whole “If God is loving, why does He let us go through difficult times, etc” issue. I finally fully understand why your letting us go through hard times IS an act of love – I understand and believe. Of course it’s only because you broke through and made the intellectual understanding become heart understanding. My current struggle is, therefore, not why are people going through hard times. Rather, it’s whether trusting in you during our struggles makes any major difference? Honestly, I can’t see any major difference on the surface between someone who trusts in you and someone who doesn’t while they are going through a rough patch. Eventually both the person who trusts in you, and the one who doesn’t, gets through the rough patch and does so seemingly victorious and stronger for it. Yes, there are exceptions to the rule. But those exceptions exist, as far as I am aware, in both camps. Perhaps any major difference exists underneath the surface…
DH
God IS February 20, 2009
Posted by David Hiran Watson in Daily Life-Walk, Faith, God.add a comment
So, anyone who has interacted with me over the past 2-3 months will vouch for the fact that I have been struggling in my faith, and my relationship with God. I am not going to go into all the details, but suffice to say that my journey over the past few years of working through some deep issues that arose through my childhood has seemed to take on a cyclic path over the past 1-2 years specifically. Cyclical meaning a cycle of highs and lows, where, during the high cycles, I go through a time period of being close to God and, as a result, having greater success in dealing with the deep issues. In the low cycles, I still walk with God, but have decided some aspect of the struggle is too much to bear, and set a threshold on how close I allow myself to draw to God. In other words, I stagnate to a degree in my faith. This usually happens because I start focusing on the struggle itself a little bit too much. Throughout this process, God is still guiding me and (patiently and faithfully) helping me work through the issues. The counselor I’m seeing is one of the ways God does this.
Anyway, getting back to the point of this post, these past few months I have been in a low cycle. Again, without going into full details, I was, through a combination of struggling with sin, getting angry and blaming God, and picking at the scabs of my own pain, stagnating in my faith. Essentially, I loved God and had a relationship with Him, but I did not surrender to Him, allowing myself to believe that it was not safe to do so.
Tonight God broke through all of the farce and walls, and suddenly gave me a experiential revelation that it is safe to surrender to Him, because HE IS SAFE! I love it when God does that – breaks through all the mud and mire to shine His light and truth. He had actually been laying the building blocks to this moment of revelation for the past week or so, ever since the SI incident last Thursday (Feb. 12).
I do want to thank God for this moment, and His putting up with my selfishness. I also want to thank Him for the Christian brothers and sisters I have talked to within the past week; I am eternally grateful to them.
DH
Ways to deliberate December 2, 2008
Posted by David Hiran Watson in About Me, Daily Life-Walk, God, Relationships.Tags: About Me, God, my blog
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I’m not sure what to write yet…I think at times I just like typing – it’s very soothing for me. I think I know what I’ll write on – the book study I was a part of today. But first, that initial sentence might seem a strange way to start a post, and you might be wondering why I did not just delete that sentence once I knew what to write on? I think the answer to that is partially related to who I am and what this blog is to/for me.
For those who know me, I am someone who hides aspects of myself, and will open those areas up only when I feel completely comfortable. I suppose we are all like that to some degree or another. For myself, mostly because I have felt burned in the past when sharing and expressing certain areas of who I am and my personality, I tend to express those areas only when I am by myself or around individuals/small groups I feel safe in. You could say I have been operating under the “once bitten, twice shy” principle in these areas.
When I started this blog, I wanted to use it to express myself. I quickly came to a point where I was filtering in my mind what I would post on, and that filter was set to only allow subjects that did not ‘expose’ those aspects of myself I wanted to hide. I believe I mentioned something to this affect in a previous post, but I have consciously decided that I don’t want to intentionally filter out those aspects of myself, both in my posts and (more and more as I’m able to by God’s grace) in life interaction.
This is my lengthy way of saying that the initial sentence is tied to one of those aspects. In particular, it is one of the ways I walk with God. I will talk out and express what I am feeling or thinking as part of the decision-making process. For example, if God tells me to go to a location, and I do, I will usually say out loud, “Ok Lord, what now?”. Or if I am in the middle of an activity and I get hungry, I might say out loud, “I’m starting to feel hungry; should I go eat something?”, and deliberate from that question. The point is that I, for some reason, feel more comfortable to deliberate out loud even if it means saying out loud all the thoughts and feelings going through me, akin to a running commentary.
So I don’t have time now to post on the book study – have my church’s worship team practice. I will try and write about the study later tonight or tomorrow.
DH
Reflection on my day… December 1, 2008
Posted by David Hiran Watson in Daily Life-Walk, Education, Faith, God.Tags: depression, email, how God works, university
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Today has been a hard day; I am definitely still battling depression or at the least, depressive thoughts. Ever since going to uni, back in 2001, I developed and battled depression. There have been good and bad times, highs and lows, and I must say that 2008 on the whole has been both a high and low year. It has not been the lowest year I have had, but it has been one of the highest. Looking back on this battle, I am amazed at the faith God had and has produced in me. The process is still continuing, but throughout the battle I have never stagnated or backslid from God. In fact, He has been the o/One I have consistently turned to. It is like having a friend who is always right beside you. I did not always “pray” in the traditional sense, but I would instinctively talk to God whenever my mood changed or I was stressed or trying to figure things out or, in general, needed to express myself. I have to say “thank You” to God for His faithfulness!
Coming back to today, I was quite down and out this morning. After meeting with my counselor I some new perspective on the jumble of thoughts and feelings racing through me. The rest of the day has been a time of God ministering to me, giving me back my hope; hope that He is in charge and holds me in His hand. I love how God knows exactly what you need and gives that to you. Even that last sentence God reminded me of through His ministering: I was checking my email just before writing this post, and a friend of mine had sent me a forward about how it is God’s job to supply my needs according to HIS riches, and to make me happy. The forward was not saying that God is some kind of genie, but that as His child, it is not my job to try and keep myself happy via things or other people. Instead, I need to trust God and let Him take care of me.
DH
Warring motivation November 24, 2008
Posted by David Hiran Watson in About Me, Daily Life-Walk.Tags: arts, creativity, personality
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Have you ever felt like you are (at least) two different people? Or perhaps more apropos, that within you resides multiple, polar aspects to your personality? (On a side note, I have always liked that word – apropos. ). I suppose the word polar implies two opposites, like the North and South Poles, so multiple polar aspects might be an oxymoron. And I am not talking about clinical MPD, but rather different desires or motivations within you that don’t reconcile to each other, and shouldn’t coexist together but they do. The interesting phenomenon to behold is how a particular motivation wins out over the others. As far as I can tell, the external circumstance – more specifically, the people around me and the state they are in – either plays the sole factor or a major factor in which motivation(s) arise to the surface. This same factor usually determines which motivation also rules the others.
For example, even though I have an artistic side and a fairly strong right brain, I feel more comfortable expressing my creativity in safe situations. This is partly due to past experiences where the creative within me has been derided. There are times where I have a creative moment, and want to express it. This could be a desire to be dramatic, to draw, create music, dance or creatively write. Yet, depending on who I’m with, I might not feel safe to express that creativity for fear that I will be mocked and derided. Most of the time, in these situations, the fear wins out, and the motivation to suppress the creative desire rules me.
This is also true if the company I’m in has never seen me express myself creatively through a specific medium. The company perhaps is not the deriding type, and yet I will still find it hard to overcome the motivation to suppress my creativity for reasons of fear.
DH
It’s been a long road… November 19, 2008
Posted by David Hiran Watson in Daily Life-Walk, Faith, God.Tags: Faith, God, how God works, Star Trek: Enterprise
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Does anyone know the title song from the tv show, “Star Trek: Enterprise”? The one that starts off with “It’s been a long road getting from there to here / It’s been a long road, but my time is finally here”? I was thinking of that for the title of this post, but changing it to “It’s been a long while…”; I haven’t worked out the rest of the lyrics yet. But I guess it HAS been a while since I last posted. Truth be known, I had forgotten about this blog (!), but was faithfully reminded about it by God through a comment to my post God is GOOD!.
It’s amazing how God works; I have a friend who uses analogies describing God’s ways as that of a master weaver, or master chef, or master baker, or (I would add) master composer. HE knows just the right time for everything and He brings you to something or through something at just when it’s needed. And what’s really ‘mind-blowing’ is to sit back and watch how that right time is not just specific to you. That just-when-it’s-needed timing is applicable to you and all of those around you. I see this in the interaction and friendship (fellowship) of brothers and sisters in Christ. I have Christian friends whom I interact with on a fairly intimate level, and many of the times I only see how much God uses them as a source of encouragement and help for me. While I know that the friendship isn’t mainly one-sided, I still can’t help feeling that God mostly uses them in my life. And yet, in every instance where I’ve voiced that to the friends in question, they have responded with the same but reversed sentiments.
All of this recognition about how God works makes me often wonder why I don’t trust Him more. Surely, even if I’m struggling through an issue, and I’m not sure how God is going to resolve it, I can at least look back to the past and draw strength from how God has come through for me every time I’ve needed Him.
DH
