Life lessons at 25.

Wow. I’m 25. It’s my silver anniversary on planet earth haha. For 2 decades and a half, I’ve gained quite a handful of life lessons. I couldn’t put all in one blog post, but I’m picking top 5 wonderful things the LORD has taught me. My only hope is that no, not that I’d inspire you, but that thru this article we all get to see the beauty of the One who gave us life and the ability to live it.

Top 5 Life Lessons I treasure at 25.

1. Valley lows build us up for mountain-tops

Truth is, we don’t stay up the Summit. We spend more time climbing and struggling, even walking thru the valley than we do on mountain-tops. If you climb mountains, you know what I mean. I tried mountain-climbing once and we spent 2 hours on the trek but we only had less than 25 minutes at the top! So I thank God for times when we feel low, defeated, or caught in the battle of life – it’s because of these moments that we all the more treasure the view up there. This life lesson taught me that we can’t truly thank God for mountain-tops, success, and victories if not for the challenges we overcame.

2. You don’t need to see God’s entire plan. You just have to be obedient where you are.

Being a control-freak, I tend to want to understand the why of everything before fully jumping into it. I mean, I need to see it all first right?

But I realized that God’s goal can be so huge we might feel so overwhelmed if he revealed it to us. If I am led to be faithful with little, that means God has a big end in mind. What if the song he is putting in your heart will be a breakthrough to a hundred Christians? What if the design you are doing will spark the creativity of others? What if the article you just posted awakens new truths to your unknown readers? I can’t afford to delay the bigger impact God is about to do with the little he placed in my hands.

3. On Leadership: We give our best on the things we can control; we rest on the things we can’t.

Recently, I handed in my resignation as Ministry head to our youth pastor. I felt like I just could not handle the pressure of handling a team any longer. Now you should know this rarely happens, so for weeks I examined my thoughts and tried to find out why I felt that.

I realized that trying to control everything broke me down. When I see a mistake, or hear about someone’s unwise behavior, or when a teammate comes in late or backs out – I put the blame on myself. I tried to be God…which was tiring! I can’t be God and I could not handle everything. Life lesson? Leaders must learn to respect the LORD on things that are in his hands. (and oh, I’m still renewing my contract as ministry head for 2019 hehe)

4. Loving people also means understanding that each of us has difference pacing.

This life lesson came with heartaches and bruises. Relationships in life taught me a lot of things and one is that we need to respect the pacing of each person. God deals with us differently at any season. It is possible that I have overcome a certain struggle at this age while others seem oblivious about that area of their lives. I often get annoyed at older Christians when I find their thinking and actions seem childish than the one who just got saved. But I learned that each one has his own pacing, and life can be lived better if we learn to appreciate more and criticize less.

5. There’s no one-size-fits-all way to glorify God.

Glorifying God isn’t limited to holding a microphone and preaching inside a 4-walled building we often call as ‘church’. (Btw, church actually refers to the people, not the building) There are musicians who sing in the entertainment industry and do that for God. There are teachers who make a difference in the lives of many young minds, and that honors God. There are those who go to office, send emails, photograph sceneries, read a book, post a blog, or talk to people – and they glorify God.

To me, this is a very important lesson because this tells me a whole lot about the God I serve. This means my God is creative and He gives his people the freedom to serve him in any way we can or feel like doing! This means we do not need to put God in a box. And this means worship can come in all shape and sizes.

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