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name: Jesse Lu
born: August 6, 1984 e-mail: mr.jesselu@gmail.com |
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| What does AfterApollos mean? |
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Apollos is a character in the Bible found at the end of
Acts 18. In short, he was a Jew, "mighty in the Scriptures", who, upon arriving at Ephesus, spoke out bodly in the jewish synagogue. The Bible says he was accurately teaching about Jesus, who, by now, had already come, died and risen, but that Apollos only knew of the baptism of John. Enter Priscilla and Aquila, two fellow tentmakers of Paul from Corinth. "...they took him aside and explained to him the way of God more accurately." revealing to Apollos that the coming Messiah that he was preaching about had already come! How blissfully sweet that must have sounded to him. So sweet, in fact, that Apollos went to Achaia "...and when he arrived, he greatly helped those who had believed through grace, for he powerfully refuted the Jews in public, demonstrating by the Scriptures that Jesus was the Christ."
AfterApollos, then, means following after Apollos, or one who is like Apollos. I chose this name because I recently lived through an apoll-itic two years, AfterApollos was also chosen for the obvious alliteration. A Testimony I have attended church for most of my life, because I came to Christ at the age of six. Having been born in Florida and then having lived in Canada for most of my life, my family and I moved to San Jose my sophomore year of high school. At a winter youth retreat with the Fifth Home of Christ in Cupertino I started to fervently read the Bible, spend time with God in prayer and serve in ministry at church. It was the middle of junior year of highschool and my life of sin, of dabbling in porn and spiritual idleness, started shifting into one whose center and joy was God. I became a leader in my high school christian club, was very active in my youth group and our pastor even quoted me in a sermon one Sunday. My family also noticed the changed as my teenage, hormone induced temper tantrums disappeared. I learned to play the guitar. I was baptized. I came to UCLA with a with a fervent spirit and a zeal for the Lord. I came with an exterior of godliness and an interior full of insecurities. And some of those insecurities ran deep. I joined Campus Crusade for Christ, a christian fellowship, my bible study leader was Greg Triplett and I went on my first mission trip during spring break to Mexico City. At this time, God started to bring my insecurities, my wounds to the surface. I discovered that a misunderstanding of God's love, and, consequently, his acceptance and approval, at the root had sprouted into mutilated self-worth at the stem and people pleasing at the leaf. I was displeased when I discovered how much I concerned myself with winning the approval and acceptance of others. When my misplaced self-worth was revealed I was saddened and when I realized that I did not know God's love I became depressed. Discovering A Wound How could this be? I stood, shocked, as my devoted and self-righteous model Christian self crumbled. I had read the entire Bible, memorized verse after verse, prayed for hour after hour, regularly attended church and regularly attended fellowship and I did not know His love? How could I have missed it and how could I have misunderstood it? Denial was futile as I could not dismiss the guilt I felt when I did not read my Bible and pray in the morning. If I missed one of these devotions or if I believed that I had sinned, I would live that day fearful that God had withdrawn His love from me; and when this happened, reconciliation came only through some effort of mine. What a tragedy and utter disgrace to God's love! I had trampled it and made Him out to be a stingy old man whose love could only be solicited through devotion or good works. Rejoice, for this is not so! "For as high as the heavens are above the earth, So great is His lovingkindness toward those who fear Him. As far as the east is from the west, So far has He removed our transgressions from us." (Psalm 103:11-12) also, "See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God; and such we are." (1 John 3:1a) lastly, "I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down His live for the sheep." (John 10:11) "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them and they follow Me; and I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish and no one will snatch them out of My hand." (John 19:27-28). This all came about in the month of August 2003. There were two other very important occurences in that month as well; I was given a book, The Search for Significance by Robert S. McGee and I started dating Ms. Sandy Tran. Towards Healing The Search for Significance was extremely helpful in that it pointed me straight towards the love of God. It stated very simply that the root cause of the problem was a way of thinking that could be summarized with the following equation. Instead of basing my goodness or badness on how well I perform and on what other's think of me, shouldn't I base my judgement of myself on what God's says and thinks of me? His opinion, after all, is the only one that counts. Although He knows every sinful action and evil thought that I have committed and will commit, the knowledge that His overpowering emotion and overarching attitude towards me is love is my freedom. Oh, how evil am I! How I have wronged my parents, my sister, my friends, my girlfriend! How I fail repeatedly in every aspect of my life! I come to God recognizing that I am horrible and guilty and He knows I am far worst that I realize; yet even so, He loves me. Thank you Lord. In You I find my peace. Now it is one thing to read something from a book, and another entirely to live it out. I think God put her in my life to help me out in that respect. I am very happy Sandy and I started dating at the end of that tumultuous August. She helped me learn to stop trying to please people and to be independent from their opinions of me. She was also someone I could share with and I am still grateful for her companionship. Above all, I am glad God's sovereignity extends even to the realm of dating relationships and that he has blessed me with her. Presently, I am to graduate from college in June of 2006 and am still dealing with various problems and wrestling with various issues in my life. I do not yet know what I will do when I graduate, but I do know that I want to live for God and for Him to fill every area of my life. I know that I must live a life centered on and directed to the one who owns my life and gave me life. Presently, therefore, my duty must be to struggle to this end. |
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