Comeback

Wow I haven't written in this thing in such a long time. I'm looking back to my old posts that date back to my freshman and sophomore years and I'm wondering how the heck did I talk about so many useless things. But one thing I realized was how cheerful and bubbly I was back then and now I see a big Scrooge and I'm just like WTF. Why am I so boring and depressing now omg. I'm going to try to bring back old memories and start blogging on this until I stop caring which is probably going to be quite soon.

Since I have nothing significant to talk about yet I'm just going to talk about my experience at Passion because that's probably the biggest thing that's happened during winter break. Special thanks to ex-President future staff forever Linguini Phineas Andy Duke Kang for making it happen :).

le tired

All I can remember from Passion is eating a lot of food and getting really fat and being really cranky for most of the trip. At least I took a lot of photos so I can think back to how it was.

Cookie drove and we were in the car with Julie Jung and Jenn Seo and they insta passed out so that was tight. I got to snipe photos of them in LaLaLand but I won't post Jenn's because she got dominated so hard I feel bad.

Here's our current Large Group. I will take this down upon request Julie but I know you're cool enough to handle it.

What are you dreaming about.

So then we finally get there like 8 hours later or something and we're all so tired but we decide to grub at a nearby breakfast place and I'm just like

bitter as balls

And we finally get to the dome!

PACKED

45000 people and not one single hot yuhj = 0 distractions very nice praise Jesus

It was pretty sick being with 45000 other believers worshiping one God under one roof. Never thought I'd get the chance to do that but life is full of surprises. Everyone singing the same song and hearing 45,000 voices united. Too sick yo.

Now would you look at that

Fast forwarding to the good stuff. Passion itself was amazing but you guys can go watch stuff on YouTube or ask me for sermons/praise from the Digital Pass I bought so check that out later.

Georgia itself was a LOT of fun too.

First...

Sleepy Alpaca

We grubbed so hard in ATL

Didn't actually taste these except red velvet but I never knew cakes can be so pretty

best part of the trip for sure. 24/7 pho tastes good and cheap omg

Forgot who got this but looks good...

me and sam nam ordered a $30 meal for each of us...

came with this uber 느끼한 sauce and soup and salad or something wasn't worth it but lotta food

demolished that chicken whoever it was. really good Korean owned deli

We also visited the fish that also wasn't worth $30 or something but whatever

Some Todai lobster

My amazing photo of people taking a photo. He's cheesing hard.

Some effing worthless penguins

Some Kingler that all of us wanted to eat as opposed to watching. So much meat for sure...

As Cookie would call them... "the electronic eels"

On the way home I managed to install Pokemon Yellow on my rooted Droid so that was fun.

Screw iPhone users screw all your GBs and Wifis and screw your super long battery life that serves no purpose for a bad phone anyway. Jk Jesus loves everyone :D

But no matter how good the food was in Atlanta this was always missed:

I haven't hit up Honey Pig yet since like December. Who wants to go with me!?

Omg screw blogging this is boring idk how I did it for so long.

The Hand Me Down

I don’t have any siblings so I have no idea how a real hand-me-down feels like. I never got any used clothes, used toys, or used school supplies. Everything for me was brand new. I was the first to try anything as a kid in my family and I was always the last as well. This allowed me to have complete freedom over what I wanted to do, but I also had the disadvantage of not knowing the proper way to do things, since I didn’t have an example in front of me. Older brothers and sisters should be like an instruction manual. Something you usually want to just skip and throw away, but something you really have to pay attention to in order for you to be safe and successful.

People have come and gone from my life. Older people, younger people, people of the same age. Regardless, we are all from the same generation that God has placed us in. None of us are better than the other, or worse than another, but we all have a specific role within us. These roles might change over time, but they do apply to each and every one of us. It just depends how old we are and who we are dealing with.

Growing up as an only child, I was never told to do something by someone older. There was no one older. I was free to do whatever the heck I wanted to do. I was my own boss. This opened my path to a lot of freedom, a lot of mistakes, and a lot of regrets. I always wished I had an older brother, not so that I can be cared by him and stuff, but because I wanted to observe someone do stuff to see how they end up, so I can adjust to what they did and do it properly.

One of my flaws is that I completely suck dick at doing something when it’s my first try. Maybe this applies to everyone, but I cannot remember one thing that I was good at when I tried it for the first time. I am very scared to have sex because I bet I will blow balls at that too. Anyways…

But I will be honest and say I think I can get good at a lot of things, like REALLY good at some things, as long as I get enough practice in to be comfortable with it. This also applies to everyone so don’t think I’m just being cocky. The difference is some people adjust faster while some people take more time, but in the end, we can all be good at stuff as long as we care and try hard enough for it. These are the independent variables: your own efforts and your own ability to care.

So because I never had the older brother to observe while growing up, I take a lot of special attention to anyone who’s older than me. When they speak to me, I will listen a lot. I will be very quiet and be very alert to what they have to say to me. I also love listening into older people’s conversations, to see what kind of world they live in and to try to understand what backgrounds they are coming from. Some elders seem extremely wise, and some seem like complete idiots who are more immature than I am. That’s why sometimes I like to judge based on experience, and not just on age. It’s just that experience quite often comes along with age.

These older people have become the examples we watch and live by. By knowing how they succeed and how we fail, we adjust to it and learn, grow, and act differently. If we see something successful, we will imitate it and further their legacies. If we see them fall, we will reflect upon it and be cautious that we don’t do the same thing, but to try something different. This pattern of adapting is passed down from generation to generation. Some older brothers that have come and gone in my life, I will never forget their lessons. Not only the things they told me, but the way they lived their lives. To know what you guys did right, and what you guys did wrong, helped me grow in so many ways. Thank you for always being that example and older brother for me.

Many of us don’t want to be like our fathers because we grew up seeing every bit of detail about them. Their habits. Their successes. Their mistakes. Their ups and downs. We know their deepest darkest secrets and we want to avoid becoming the same being. But at the same time, they were our examples and they were once our heroes when we were young.

The bright side is that we have an extremely solid example to follow. The footsteps of Jesus Christ. He has the most influential and successful story out of anyone in history. He is a true revolutionist. There’s even a literal instruction manual for us left by Him, and it’s called the Bible.

Many of us are lost in our lives, not knowing where to go, who to seek, what to do, but we all know deep inside the real answer. It’s only a matter of time before we truly understand it. Like I said, I’m bad with a lot of things when I try it out first. I need practice, practice, and more practice to get good at it. And it’s about time to practice what I preach, and what I firmly believe in.

Now let’s shut up and go to bed, Choi.

Dead Ends, One Ways & IMs

Do you ever get happy to see a dead end? Every time you drive around in neighborhoods, trying to find an exit, you come across that big fat DEAD END sign and mutter the F-word, make an awkward U-Turn in someone’s driveway and go back out. When is that sign ever a good thing for someone?

Then there’s the one way sign. That piece of crap always forces you to go only one direction, when you really do need to go the other way. Who the heck made that rule anyway? So much for having freedom, that thing completely dominates us when we least need it. I don’t think one ways were ever a good thing either.

But here’s one reason why I do like one ways more than dead ends. One ways actually give you an option to go somewhere. Dead ends usually don’t. Dead ends mean you are stuck there and you just have to go back to where you came from, because you have no where else to go. One ways will at least take you to a new place, even though you might not have wanted to go there initially.

I feel like life is full of street signs as well. I think for several of us, this one way and dead end sign is a pattern in our lives. We will always go wandering somewhere in life, taking left turns, right turns, and maybe a few U-turns, and somehow we will end up at a dead end, getting stuck without knowing where to go. And once we try going here and there to find our way out, we reach this stupid one way sign that’s pointing at only one direction, and for us, I think it usually points up towards the sky.

They say the weaker we are, the closer we get with God. Even for me, experiencing God’s presence was that time I lost every bit of hope within me. It was that time I realized I had nothing but God’s hand to hold onto, when everything else that I used to cling onto disappeared. Even though we lose so many things in our lives as we grow up and move on, at least there’s always that sense of security; that the big man above will always be holding His hand out for you. It gives me an awkward feeling in my heart when I really do stop and think about the amount of people who were never aware of this mighty hand reaching out to them. The people who gave up and just let go of their lives, falling deep into the pits of Hell, just because they didn’t know that God was there to help. How sad it is to realize that somebody could have been saved, but due to their ignorance they had to lose it all.

Sometimes I wish I was Spider Man, because every time that guy is faced with a brick wall, he can probably just climb over it with his sticky fingers. Or sometimes I wish I was Harry Potter, so I can tap one of the bricks and it will take me to Diagon Alley or something. When I face a wall as Jonathan Choi, I just want to smash my head against it and hope everything just clears up somehow. But stuff like that never works the way we want them to. Some things will always be bigger than us, and we’d have to take a few steps back and understand where we stand. And when I’m staring at a brick wall, I usually know in the back of my head that it takes more than just me to overcome it. God will either bless me with the power to break through this wall, or He will guide me to a way around it so that I can keep walking. I wonder if He ever gets tired of helping me and leaves me hanging for a bit, because He’s so busy dealing with more serious business.

It’s like receiving IMs from a lot of people. You know those random good days when a LOT of people IM you for no reason? And for some reason those days are the days I’m actually doing something important. So when each and every person IMs me, I can’t give them back an equally detailed and personal response. I might even just spam “lol” at everything they say. If God has a screen name, I bet he receives over a trillion IMs a day, or maybe even per hour, or per minute, or second, I don’t know. And it’s so unbelievable to me how He can possibly have the time to look through and answer all of them at will. He surely accepts all of them, maybe rejects a couple of them, but never will He sign off on you, put up an Away Message, or ignore your IM. He’s like that nerd who’s always on His computer just waiting for someone to message Him, except He’s not a nerd, He’s actually a God. The God. How amazing is that?

Then again, a part of me feels like maybe He doesn’t receive as many IMs as I expect Him to, because not a lot of us really pray the amount we should be praying. Maybe He’s not too busy, but instead pretty bored, just waiting for someone to IM Him. If it were Facebook, He probably already friend requested every single person on this planet, and now He’s just waiting patiently for each and every one of us to accept. Probably feels left out because He’s never tagged in any of our photos, when in reality, each and every photo should have Him tagged somewhere, because He’s always with us everywhere we go. Probably gets juked every single time someone puts up “God” as part of their status without an @ sign in front of it to tag Him, because they’re using His name in vain, and not really talking to or about Him.

That kind of sucks. It’s as if God is that dude on your buddy list who you’d IM as a last resort, only when you’re out of friends to talk to. Or that dude who’s always up at like 4 AM in the morning when no one else is awake, so you have no one else to IM but Him. Never do you IM him when there are other people online, or when you’re busy doing something else. Why?

I ask this question to myself every time I’m about to go seek God. Why is it that I always have to think before I’m about to seek God, and why do I feel so nostalgic every time I’m about to pray? If I know He’s always there, and if I know He will always listen, why do I always hesitate and push it off? What “bad” comes out of talking to Him? If I imagine my wall-to-wall with God, and think about the comments I left Him, and the replies He gave me, I can be pretty confident that this journey can continue onto greater things. So why do I push things away all the time?

It’s only when I’m faced with nothing but emptiness that I seek God to fill up this void. It’s so difficult to seek first, I always end up approaching Him at the last minute as a last resort. I’ve been lost, searching for an exit, and after days of wandering around, I’m finally faced with the one way sign, telling me to go in that corner and pray. To let God be the MapQuest that will guide me.

Maybe people really do have a point when they complain to me that I never IM them first. But this one man never complains, and only patiently waits for me to IM Him, making me feel even worse about it. I guess it’s about time to double-click that screen name called God, and start that IM the same way I always start it…

“Hey. It’s been awhile.”

…hopefully sometime in the near future I can change the way I greet this guy.

“For though he was crucified through weakness, yet he liveth by the power of God. For we also are weak in him, but we shall live with him by the power of God toward you.” 2 Corinthians 13:4.

Holy Moly

"Hey you hungry?"

"Yeah. Very hungry!"

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah! I'm gonna kill like 69 plates for dinner."

"What."

"I'm gonna kill 69 plates!"

"How many?"

"I'm just kidding! Please don't punish me!"

Wow. Little did I know how corrupt this world was outside of my little comfort zone. There are 13-year old boys walking around retreats saying they can kill 69 plates of food. I have been truly humbled.

The same boy is sitting by himself in the corner, eyes staring directly at the ground, both arms and hands wrapped around his waist, as if he has a stomach ache.

"You okay Sam?"

*Nods*

"You hungry again?"

*Shakes head*

"What's wrong?"

*Shrug*

I step up the rows and sit next to him.

"What's up big guy? Why do you look all sad?"

"I'm just thinking about the message."

"How did you like it?"

"I'm starting to realize how much of a sinner I am. How many bad things I've been doing. I'm starting to regret a lot of things."

This kid's 13 guys. He's in 7th grade.

More to come...

Shed

I remember a time in sculpture class when I had to create a bunny made purely out of newspapers, tape, and glue. When I was working on the rabbit's head, I realized that I made the shape into an uneven oval. To cover up this flaw, I kept adding more newspapers to the misshapen side. But once I did that, I noticed the other side was messed up now. So I added more newspapers to the other side. Layer on top of layer, I continued to glue more newspapers until the imperfect shape of the object was fully hidden. Though I ended up with a bunny rabbit that had a really fat head, its imbalanced head shape was no where to be seen, thanks to the multiple layers of paper covering it.

Similar to how I tried covering my rabbit head's flaws with layers of newspapers, I feel as if people try to cover up their own personal flaws and insecurities with walls of their own. Maybe we don't use newspapers to hide our true selves, but whatever it is that we use, it can end up becoming very sturdy and permanent, eventually locking away who we really are completely. These barriers that we create around us prohibit us from revealing ourselves, not just to other people, but even to ourselves, and perhaps maybe even God.

Who are we at heart? Who are we deep inside, beneath all our fake identities, beneath all of our masks? I can genuinely believe that some of us aren't even sure of our own identities. We don't know who we are, we don't know what we live for, what we love, what our purpose is. Some of us may believe that we have our goals and future set straight, but at the same time are very confused at what we're currently doing. This is because these walls that we are hiding behind are blocking us from seeing who we really are.

For me, it's kind of difficult to understand exactly what it means to open up. This is because I don't find it that hard to be able to share things about myself, and to let others know what I'm going through. I don't mean to be cocky or anything, but that's just how I am. I don't even think it's an advantage to brag about, because sometimes I do wish that I was a bit more soft spoken. Sometimes I appear to be a big baby, and sometimes I catch myself just vainly complaining. But for some people, it's quite the obstacle to be able to push down these walls and open up to others.

It's beyond my capabilities to understand what these walls might have been built with. It's their past, their struggles, their life, it is not within my power nor business to invade their privacy. However, I did read somewhere that walls keep people out but bridges join them together. If we truly care about the people amongst us, how can it be possible to get along with them if we refuse to connect with one another? Just like how it's important to relate to God, it's important to relate to the people that God has placed in our lives. You can reach out to others all you want, but if you disable other people from being able to reach out to you, it's a one-way relationship. As much as you want to give, you also have to learn to receive (and vice-versa).

I love the spontaneous moments when my brothers and I end up in a place we didn't even plan on going to earlier, and somehow have an amazing talk about the things we stress about in life. There are so many stupid, immature, baby things we complain and cry about on a daily basis, but when we are together trading these sorrows with one another, they slowly start to fade on their own somehow and lead us to laughter and happiness. It's magic, I have no idea how it works. We will be raging hardcore with veins popping out of our foreheads, dirty words coming out of our mouths and red lines bulging in our eyeballs, but at the end of the day we will be breathing sighs of relief and smiling with satisfaction. It's times like this when I truly appreciate my friends, because we are able to hide nothing and trade everything, understanding that nothing will change in the ways we look at each other.

X-Men:First Class was an amazing movie. Despite some of the action being a little cheesy, and the excessive dialogue, I loved every bit of it. The storyline was much deeper than I imagined, and the character development was magnificent. Something that hit me pretty hard was each moment when Magneto spoke to Mystique. Mystique was always someone who was embarrassed of her own appearance. She did whatever it took to hide away her true form, and instead disguised it with something that seemed to be more appealing to the public. However, Magneto appreciated her inner beauty, and encouraged her to be real, not just to the world, but to herself as well. I feel like this is something we all need to do, to be more genuine with one another, but more importantly, with ourselves and on top of that, to be real with God.

We constantly hide under our blankets, hoping God won't notice the flaws that we have in our lives. The sins that we commit. The emotions that direct us towards Satan. We refuse to show our true colors even to the people around us, with the fear that they will judge us based on our insecurities. We try to put up a tough leather skin armor to temporarily slide by situations where we are close to being exposed. How long are we going to do this for? How long are we going to try to take a detour into Heaven?

None of us need to take the longer route, going through unnecessary obstacles, to try to fool others, to try to fool ourselves, to try to fool God. We need to accept that we are loved no matter what we do, no matter who we are, because God made us, and He's created us in His image, and there's no reason for us to feel embarrassed or shy in front of anyone. Jesus Christ was always humiliated, but did He stop moving forward? No. If all of us are really going to try wearing this cross on our necklaces, we need to start shedding some clothes. We need to take off our dirty clothes, and wash them together with one another, because we alone do not have the power to cleanse them completely. And even then, it's not going to be fully washed. The only one who can fully eliminate the stains on our clothes, the scars within our hearts, the pain within our lives, is not ourselves, but our Father above.

So tell me, do you want to live as a big bunny with a fat head, or do you want to go out there and be proud of the unique, creative life form that God has made you into? Shed some layers people, it's summer and it's getting mad hot. I'm down to get fully naked, are you?

Do You See It?

I think we all fail to see the big picture. It’s actually quite impossible for us to witness and comprehend the big picture, because our lives are being painted by the man up above. We won’t ever live to see the masterpiece, but often do we forget that we are a part of this amazing work of art. We, the children, are the creative designs and elements of God’s painting called life.

Tonight I went stargazing with two of my bros. Sounds mad homo but your judgement does not matter. I lay down on the concrete of the parking deck, staring up at the brightly lit night sky. One dot, two dots, three dots, more dots. So many shiny stars were just chilling up there, as if someone took a really sharp white pencil and took a few stabs on a black piece of paper. You can barely see these stars, you can’t even tell what shape they are from here, other than the fact that they are dots. They look so small and so insignificant to our lives but if you take 5 minutes to stare at them, you begin to appreciate how unreal and magnificent they are, just floating up there with no strings attached.

It’s the littlest details that people tend to miss, which usually provide the greatest forms of happiness and joy. People are so blinded by their goals and ambitions that the various beautiful things that are right in front of their eyes go unnoticed and ignored. Even for me, I was oblivious to what I was missing out on.

Imagine a blank piece of paper. Now put a dot at the center of it. The paper isn’t very blank anymore right? How about the prettiest girl you know? Or the best looking guy, doesn’t matter. Now put a big pimple on their forehead. Your attention will probably be focused on that pimple for awhile. Notice how much of an impact small details can make to an entire image? Similar to how such a small detail can ruin a perfectly fine piece of art, it can also alter it into something even greater. The overall picture may be amazing, but it really is nothing without the little details that make it into that one big thing.

Can you imagine eating French fries without ketchup? Sure, they’re still French fries, but ketchup makes it SO much better. Who eats cookies without milk? You gotta have milk. Yes, we can live life the way it is and however we want it, but if we start to take these small condiments provided for us by God and sprinkle them onto our lives, our walk will become that much sweeter, that much tastier, that much more enjoyable. What’s the point of walking along a straight, long, plain path? It’d be so much nicer to see flowers on the right, big trees on the left, and huge mountains in front of you at a far distance. Maybe some birds up in the sky, a caterpillar crawling beside you on the sidewalk, and the sound of little kids laughing and splashing water at each other at a nearby pond. All of these exciting things are provided for us already.

Maybe some dick decided to be funny and smear your awesome picture. Now there’s a big stain on your artwork. Many of us are too caught up in the distractions, the things that get in your way and divert your attention away from the various possible options. You can always paint over that smear. You can always decorate it and make it look nicer. Maybe it won’t ever be the same as it was before, but why can’t we try something new? How long are we going to let one thing drag us down and prevent us from moving forward?

Try to count the amount of reasons why your life right now sucks some major cock. Think about every little thing that pisses you off on a daily basis. Your co-workers, your parents, your grades, your friends, your enemies, your bills, gas prices, the hot weather, or maybe just life in general. Then try counting the amount of things in life that make you happy. Every little thing your friends did for you when you needed them. Every time you got invited out to something. Every time someone made you laugh, or even laughed with you. Every smile you gave someone, every smile you’ve received. Every prayer that’s been answered. Every time God has been faithful to you.

Don’t stress or give up if you can’t see the big picture. We are right here inside it.

What is Real?

What does it even mean to be genuine these days? Who's being real and who's being fake? Who's the one to judge? These questions continue to fog my mind and influence my life-living decisions for no reason. At the end of the day I just lay in my bed and stare at the ceiling, thinking to myself: "When am I going to take my diapers off and stop sucking on this pacifier?" At least I have a beautiful poster of SNSD on my wall so I can stare at that instead and fall asleep.

Everyone says it's important to find an identity in Christ in order to be satisfied with your walk and to find a greater sense of intimacy in the relationship that you have with Him. This will further shape you into a child of God and build a stronger form of confidence and security within yourself. So how do you do it?

Let's say I walk into an airport. They do a security test. They ask me who I am, what I do, where I'm from. They go through a background check of my entire life to see what kind of person I am. Can I be confident here that I am really who I say or think I am? If I consider myself a Christian, a true son of God, can I be resting assured that this is my real identity based on how I've lived my life in the past and how I'm living in it now? Will I be able to pass this security check and truly go through that narrow gate towards Heaven? Or will I be caught as a fraud and be sent straight through the wider one where I will join the many other "fakes"?

Even being aware of this sense of judgement coming up and claiming that I truly have faith, I'm so laid back and careless about what's about to arrive in the near future. With all the talk about the world ending soon and the final judgement occurring, none of us really have a sense of urgency or even a sense of excitement. How much do we really care?

It's so hard to relate to and rely on our Father when we are so satisfied and sucked into our everyday lives, where money, fame, and greed control our desires and emotions more than the Spirit itself. We have so little room (if any) for a time of intimacy with God, as if it's a homework assignment you can fit into your schedule right before you sleep. It's never something you look forward to, or put at the top of your priorities when you wake up. Why? We're all aware of this flaw and yet we fail to do anything about it.

Someone told me you have to hit rock bottom in order to cling onto the hand that God always has reached out to you. You have to lose grasp of every other little branch that this evil world gives us in order to finally yell and scream for God's intervention. He's always been here and waiting, always loving and caring, and yet we choose to ignore it until the very last moment, when everything else that we thought was important disappears from our lives, and the only thing left is Him and his welcoming arms.

I've always thought I hit rock bottom, and that my life couldn't get any worse. I've always thought that things can only get better because I've already been hit with the deepest downswing. I thought God always had my back and that I could feel at ease with Him supporting me, but I've actually been shaking Him off and trying to run off on my own, thinking that I can do it alone. To know that God's available for me and for me to ignore His presence and continue to weep on my own only proves how thin the string is that's tying this relationship that I have with Him.

It's about time I grab a rope and tie my heart into His hands, because the next time I'm about to fall down a steep cliff, no one but God is going to be able to pull me back up.

Read: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%207&version=NIV

It's like every life lesson that you need to survive this unholy world.