Sorry for a long absence of not blogging about cooking and God, I will try and update more often my thoughts and revelations about Dad (and eventually post up my crazy experience at PIHOP prophecy talking about cooking!)

So most people know and enjoy the amazing sensation known as Korean BBQ. It’s not even just Koreans now, everyone is getting in on this craze and going to restaurants and eating to their heart’s content.  You walk into a restaurant and immediately the sound of sizzling marinated meat on the grill, the loud chatter of parties, and of course, the delicious aroma that permeates throughout the room and up the olfactory senses in your nose. Yes, the smell is what makes Korean BBQ so notorious and infamous. 

For all those reading this, I can almost 100% guarantee that you all love Korean BBQ in some way, shape, or form. BUT! The only downside, most people would say, is the aroma and how it somehow iron grips itself to your clothes and your body. It’s embarrassing going somewhere after a dinner at a restaurant because everywhere you go, people will smell that strong pungent odor of Korean BBQ. People can smell you from a block down and know that you just had Korean BBQ. I’m sure all of us, including me, have thought, “I love Korean BBQ but I just don’t like the way it makes me smell afterwards.” And if you’re like me, you’re thinking this in the back of the room at Gethsemane while MSN is giving message and everyone is staring at you because they can smell you and your BBQ cologne/perfume. 

Now directly relate Korean BBQ and being Christian. It’s almost identical huh? Don’t follow? Well come and let’s take a ride into my wacky, cooking-and-relating-God mind :)

For those reading, we love God. It’s that simple. Sure we have our ups-and-downs but bottom line, we love God. We can’t imagine our lives without God (much like some of us can’t imagine our lives without Korean BBQ, or maybe that’s just me). We love God, yet we don’t want to smell like God. In a sense, we’re almost ashamed or embarrassed. Sure, it’s fine to go to ministry events and church on Sundays, being around other believers is all fine and dandy. It’s when it’s obvious that we’re Christians, that’s when we start to get a tad hesitant. Smelling like God, in my mind, is overflowing with the fragrance of the Holy Spirit. People can smell you a block away by your fragrance, but we’re scared to live that kind of life. Those are the “radical Christians” that we tend to stay away from because we don’t want to scare off any potential non-believers. Obviously, we need to use sound judgement and tact that the Spirit provides, but in a general sense, why are we so scared to be saturated in the fragrance of the Spirit. I want to live a life where my odor is of God. I want to walk down the streets and people know I’m a lover of God, not in some creepy, loud, obnoxious way. So often when we have that stench of Korean BBQ that others smell, it’s never really negative even though in our minds, we’re totally embarrassed. Almost every time I smell Korean BBQ on someone else, my first thought is “dang, they smell like BBQ, I wish I could eat some too.” Why can’t it be like that with our non-believing friends and people we’re trying to reach out to. “Dang, they walk with the Lord and smell like God, I wish I could be part of that.” It’s a difficult path to walk, but one I definitely want to strive for. Smelling like the Spirit can be different for each person and their own walk with God, but something we should be less embarrassed about.

I don’t care that I smell like a Korean BBQ Christian, do you? 

THE RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL SON!! 

I finally return to some blogging, we’ll see how long it lasts haha. Look forward to a post about the widely loved Korean BBQ :)

The church, from my perspective, is in a very sad state. We, as Christians, live so powerlessly and “watered” down. We live with so little authority and power (that God has bestowed upon us time and time again). It’s gotten to a point, where “water” is cliche and overlooked. What is water, you ask?

As we all know, water is ESSENTIAL to life as we know it. It hydrates our bodies, makes all our organs work, keeps us alive, keeps plants and animals alive, etc etc. We have to drink it to stay alive. However, if like me, water is not one’s number one choice for beverage while eating. Sure, we all pick water in restaurants because it’s free, but if we all had the money and resources, who’s not going to order a refreshing cherry coke with their burger, a nice red wine with their steak, or a milkshake on a hot summer day. Water is often a last choice.

In this scenario, water to the church is prayer. The most basic drink. When problems and stresses pile up on our plate, water is often the last thing we want to drink. Sometimes we want that cherry coke of prophecy. We want that milkshake of a quick answer. We crave some supernatural red wine that will magically make all the troubles go away. Sometimes we even just power through the meal on our own strength and energy, completely ignoring the beverage. I mean, not to say those other drinks are not biblical or anything, but WATER! How come water has lost all power. 

It breaks my heart when people ask for advice about things, and when they’re told to pray about it, they brush it off as nothing. We all know we need to pray about our stresses but now its become so cliche in our Christian walks. It’s to the point that praying about it, has become unhelpful advice. I’m definitely guilty of it too, not just pointing the finger at others. Going through difficult trials in my life, people told me to really pray about it. A lot of the time I would say okay, but in my head think, what else can God do, or worse, what can I do on my own strength. Please, let’s change this culture of water. Let’s change our perspective and view of water. Can we please realize what water is! 

One last metaphor. In movies where the protagonist is left in some desert, they instantly seek water. They’re so parched and thirsty that it becomes an obsession. They’re not thinking about a bottle of coke or a cocktail. They just want the sweet, refreshing taste of water on their lips. I want to be that desperate for water. I want to be that obsessed with water. I want my life to reflect the power of sweet water in my life. So what kind of drink would you like?

(As requested by Sunghee [happybday!], I will try and post more. I’ve been learning a lot in the Word but just not inspired to connect it with food haha. Hopefully God will stir in me a fire and passion to write/journal more)

I added the questions feature because I thought it would be pretty neat. So ask away! You can even be anonymous if you want! Bum bum bummm

This post will be kind of a stretch but stick with me please. So recently, I bought a huge tub of chocolate milk mix and I can’t stop drinking it. It’s getting to the point where I think I’m making my body lactose intolerant. Anyways, that’s beside the point. Eventually, in order to make myself not feel so bad, I tried to tell myself that chocolate milk is healthy. I mean yeah, there’s SOME sugar but it’s MILK. There’s more milk than sugar so it HAS to be healthy right? (I’m still trying to come to terms with it) But, in the end, I’m pretty sure that’s false :(. I think I do this with my relationship with God so many times too. All the compromise in my wretchedness, I try and look for that one redeeming character in the ocean of sin just to make myself feel better. But like someone told me (I forgot which GSN), sin is sin. It’s either sin or it’s not. They related it to missing a target. If you don’t hit the target, you don’t hit anything. There’s no maybes. There’s no grey area when it comes to sin, at least in God’s eyes. There’s only grey area from our eyes and perspective because we compromise. We add the chocolate mix ourselves to our otherwise pure, white, clean milk that was made by God.

Are you milk or chocolate milk?

I just wanted to write this thought down before I forgot. This won’t follow anything cooking related (though I tried to find a link, but alas, at 5:00 AM the axons and neural impulses firing are just not working at full capacity). God gave me this image of an alarm clock(iHome) that I have sitting next to my bed. It runs on both battery power and by power adapter by plugging into a wall socket. I always have it plugged in and had full batteries in it in case I ever wanted to move it around (because it doubles as iPod speakers/charger). However, as the months went on, I had to take out the batteries for other uses but still kept it plugged in. Once you remove all the batteries, this image shows up on the display of the clock. 

Although this image shows up, the clock works perfectly fine. This image has now been burned into my head because I wake up to it almost every morning. God’s revelation to me today was that this is exactly how our relationship with Him is. The batteries represent our own power and plugging into a wall socket is tapping into the eternal power of God. When you remove the wall plug, the batteries can only sustain power for the clock for so long before it eventually runs out. Plus, the low battery icon usually comes on too late for one to notice before the whole clock turns off altogether and one is lost in the space of time. However, when one removes the batteries and the power of their own self and solely rely on God’s power, it is only then that one realizes the extent on His Grace and Mercy. The low battery indicator signifies how little and how unworthy we are of Him and how we would be nothing without Him. But because only He can sustain us, in that weakness and acknowledging of that weakness, we can allow His power to flow through us. I’m sure you can understand the metaphor by now despite my poor grammar and lack of coherent thought at this hour. 

Something I stumbled upon while reading Francis Chan’s Forgotten God was that when Paul writes about the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians, it is singular.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

It’s interesting how people (or maybe it was just me) thought of these characteristics as separate fruits, that there were multiple fruits, that to follow the Spirit and really show that Spirit is moving in oneself was to display the elements like a checklist. If one could show love and joy, but maybe not peace or gentleness, one could still display some of the fruits of the Spirit. But in actuality there is just one fruit that incorporates all these elements and to really display the Spirit would be to show all these in your life. At the same time, these attributes are not what God wants us to do or show, but the kind of people God wants us to be. I’m glad God spoke through Francis Chan for this small revelation.

Continuing with this whole notion of fruit and applying it to a cooking metaphor of God, all I could imagine were real fruits and vegetables and raw ingredients set before a chef. Now while it’s true that a great chef can make an amazing meal out of any ingredients, how much better would be a chef be able to cook with the best, freshest ingredients he could gather. In the same way, God could cook an amazing dinner regardless of who He uses, but if he had a choice, would he rather use prepackaged frozen food or the freshest ingredients. I see the body of Christ similarly in this way. There are the instant frozen dinner Christians that you open on Sunday and microwave right away, they seem good at the time, they could potentially last a long time since they do not strain themselves or push themselves in their relationship with God. They’re perfectly content with sitting in the freezer biding their time and just waiting for something to happen. Then there are the delicious fresh Christians who are ready to be used by God in his masterful cooking. While the frozen dinner Christian lasts a long time, so does the fresh fruit Christian who continually renews himself in the presence of the Lord. Never does he spoil, never does he rot, but always fresh, always new and ready to be used at a moment’s notice. Even if God decides not to use these ingredients at that exact moment, they continue to stay fresh just waiting for the perfect opportunity to be cooked by the perfect Creator. So what would you rather be? A frozen dinner Christian or a fresh ingredient Christian?

Stay with me on this one.. (inspired by Francis Chan and Doo Hee GSN haha)

Picture your life as an enormous, long banquet table. On this table are all your favorite types of junk food. Hot cheetos fries, white chocolate macadamia cookies, 2-entree plate from Panda Express, buffalo wings from Rendevzous, etc etc. The table is literally overflowing with these kinds of foods, all tantalizing to your eyes, the smell of the food penetrating the pores of your nose (do noses have pores?) and tempting you. But tempting you from what? At the very end of this long table, lies a single, glorious plate of the most delicious food ever conceived by God. Basically it’s Heaven on a plate. It puts all other junk food on this table to shame. But the only way to get to it is by walking past all this tantalizing food for days, weeks, months, years.. Not to mention you are starving… You walk with your eyes set on that magnificent plate at the end of the table, but temptation starts to kick in. A nibble here, a bite of chicken there, stuffing down fries over there. By the time you get to the end of the table, you’re so full from junk food, you can’t even eat a bite of the plate at the end. Then the lifetime of regret and guilt sinks in. You knew about this plate from the very beginning, it’s not like it was a surprise when you got to the end of the table. 

So by now I’m sure you made the connection. The plate at the end of the table is God and Heaven. The table is your life full of temptations and sins that are there to prevent you from experiencing the full taste of awesomeness. Even a couple of bites takes away from feast at the end of the table. So can you hold out and resist snacking on the things of the world?

Let’s take this one step further. As you walk along this table of life, Jesus is right there walking beside you. But to him, he doesn’t see these snacks. Instead, he sees the grime and filthiest things of the world. He sees and smells buckets of slop, overflowing boxes of bugs and worms, cans full of fingernails and ear wax. But because He loves you so much, every time you look at the table and ask for His help, He eats that filth so that you won’t be tempted even more. As His mouth chews on cockroaches and grime, His eyes flow with tears. Not tears of pain or sorrow but tears of joy that you rely only on Him for strength to resist these temptations. Every step along that table, He is more than happy to eat anything on that table if it means you get to experience the plate at the end. 

How will you live your life?

Out of the ashes, a phoenix will rise..