Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Convocation 2007…

It was a great evening I must say. God truly revealed Himself as a great God, a loving Father, and a marvelous Provider. I was pretty sick a few short days prior to the Convocation weekend. But the good Lord sustained me through. The Convocation service ended slightly before 10pm & by 10.30pm, I was almost ready to collapse. I was so sick the next day; I literally stayed in bed throughout the day. My fever must have been quite high. After all, I felt as if I could breathe out great balls of fire!

I almost didn’t want to “graduate.” After all, it’s my third master degree from MBTS & it’s not cheap to graduate with all those fees and dues. But I was glad I went ahead with the graduation plan. The thrill for me was being the first recipient of the ThM (Missiology). Apart from that it was just a small insignificant step to reach a PhD. After all, the School requires a ThM for the PhD entry. And that’s just it. Little did I realize that my little “achievement” brought big impact & significance to the people around me. A fellow graduate from Mongolia told me that she was proud to have met me because she had never met a lady receiving a ThM before. Some lecturers who realized the demands of the program came to express similar encouragements. Because my love language is word of encouragement, it was a great evening & the Lord sustained me long enough to be encouraged and affirmed. There were also families of friends who shared my joy so much that it touched me to the very core! Not to mention greetings from fellow colleagues, students, and co-workers in ministry. Thanks to technology, the whole evening was recorded & I can’t wait to get a copy of that short little moment when I took the scroll to encouraging cheers from people who shared with me the goodness of a great God.

Just another short testimony – most of you do not know me from my childhood. The truth is that I was never a good student at all through my school days. I was the average/below average student. The first time the Lord gave me the impression to proceed to study for a master degree was when I was in my first year of my undergraduate study in UM. I could still remember that moment when I was sitting beside the dirty Tasik Universiti in the cool of the evening. It scared the freak out of me! But those were “formation” years that the Lord took to break a proud, money-minded, career-focused, and materialistic person. And I know He’s not through with me yet…but right now, I’m ready to be molded in the hands of the Master.

I’m writing to thank all of you; for all your prayers, partnership, fellowship, love, and thoughts. The little that you contributed to my life had made quite a difference. The next step is to pursue PhD and there’s more challenges ahead. Why I need to press on further? Because my greatest conviction is that my God deserves the best. He always gives me the very best and I want to give the best back to Him. Because I can only give out of what I’ve got, I need to equip myself when opportunity presents itself for me to better myself so that I can keep giving Him the better from the previous best. And knowing the great God that we serve, it’s worth every effort. I’m glad I gave up everything for Him because truly, it’s worth it!

I believe it’s a little thing for a great God to take an average/below average student to have 4 degrees. I’m a dreamer and I dream big because I know I can only achieve as far as I dare to dream. But I invite you to join me in dreaming big for our God so that together we can bring a difference to impact our generation in this nation & beyond to the glory of our God.

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