I've Never Had to Prepare to Prevail

March 1st, 2018 at 1:37am GMT +8 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on the 37th floor of the balcony in my airbnb, I sat overlooking the skyline of the city after failing to fall asleep when God spoke to me. I got in bed at 9pm and would fall asleep for 10 minutes and wake up thinking that it was morning. I fell back asleep again and woke up 5 minutes later and again I thought that it was morning. By this time it was midnight and I try to fall asleep with the intention of stay asleep but after being asleep for 15 minutes I wake up again. I was reminded of the story of Samuel who kept waking up in the middle of the night as God called his name. Samuel mistook God calling him for the voice of Eli and after the third time Eli realized it was the voice of God and told Samuel to "go and lie down, and if he calls you, say, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening." That is just what I did, I ask God to speak to me for I was listening and boy did He speak.

God spoke to me in that moment and He revealed to me exactly what He said to Samuel: “See, I am about to do something in Israel that will make the ears of everyone who hears about it tingle." God began to reveal to me my purpose and what He has called me to do. He began to speak to my heart in ways that made my ears tingle out of reverence of His greatness. He told me the plans that He had for me which deeply terrified me but got me excited to see what the end would be. I was fired up, I came home focused on living out the will of God but overtime I got distracted, discouraged, and disappointed that I gave up.

I gave up on deepening my relationship with God, I gave up on trying to see His promises come to pass, and I gave up on the very thing that fueled my passion. I started off excited and on fire about what God would do but as I got started that excitement started to decline after 4 podcast episodes my following dropped by 48%. My fire started to burn out after 2 people read my blog posts and when the words didn't come to me easily. I gave up because it got hard.

Nothing in life has been hard for me. I easily made friends in school, I was always a top performer in the classroom with little to no effort, and once I secured an interview with a company I knew that I would easily land the job. So when it came to the promises of God I just knew that once starting Personable it would instantly become a success. God promised that I would have an international platform reaching and inspiring thousands and I expected it to just happen. I expected it to take off after the first episode and it would get easier and easier from there. But what I did not expect was to fail like I did. I didn't expect to release content and only have a handful of people listen. I did not expect to get so defeated and quit because it got hard. But I was foolish to think that the words would instantly flow through my mouth without making time to position my heart to hear the Word of God. I was foolish to think that I can invest an hour or two into Personable a week and have it take off. I've never had to prepare for anything to prevail and I'm getting the wake up call that I have to prepare for purpose.

But in the past few months I've recommitted to giving my all to God. I've committed to put Him first and to love God with all my heart, all my soul, all my strength, and all my mind. I've first committed to Him and in doing so He's reminded me of the purpose inside of me that is too loud to go unnoticed. For 2019 my word is simply all. I am focusing on giving my all to something for the first time in my life. If I've skated by life without preparing for anything and got this far, I can only imagine how God will bless me when I give my all to Him.