i’ve come to give — an offering
i’ve come to give — everything
i lose my hands
i lay me down
before my King, receive me now
to You, Lord i bow
for You, Lord i live
and my heart’s desire is for You
You are worthy, You are worthy
Son of God
You are holy, You are holy
Son of God
-exit10
one of the images that stick out in my mind when i was at Rutgers was maybe the year 2000 when our FIC praise team was just being really started. It was arvin, dean, chermaine, and i. just four people. four different people from different places whom God decided to break. i remember being picked out among the crowd because someone heard a girl singing harmony. after some kicking and screaming, i decided to put my words into actions and follow God’s gentle nudge. i met up with chermaine and dean who seemed to me close friends, which in a way intimidated me cuz i was the odd one out…not to mention the odd one.
i was mad intimidated with chermaine mostly cuz she was known all over campus as the filipino diva who sang in every major asian expo. they paired me up with her?! i really stayed in her shadow for many many a times…and just accepted what God had in me. But little did i know that God had sent me side by side with Chermaine to pick up some singing techniques from her. wow. she will testify these days that she learned a lot from me, but how baffled she will be to learn that i gained so much musically from her.
then pol and jerome joined. during our practices, not only have we learned about praise and worship, and songs, and chords, and arranging, and leading…but the sweetest thing was praying. we learned how sweet it was to pray after a long arduous practice. i remember we’d be in the middle of a song and just break into desperate singing…then one of us would end up just convicted to pray…and once we opened our eyes, you’d only sigh, smile and wipe the tears away. even the people upstairs of us for the planning meetings would come downstairs and find a bunch of crying nuts and just always would question what was going on with the praise team. i always smile now and in hindsight mirror say, “God was going on.”
way in the beginning, i remember requesting cherms to pray for us, but she softly declined cuz she wasn’t familiar or comfortable praying publically. but as time went by and God just blessed our prayer circle, He was also molding her. it was beautiful to see but i didn’t notice until our retreat of that year. before we went out to play for praise, our praise team met in a separate room…after we prayed we went outside where people were waiting…but even before we started singing the fast praise songs, as the music just played, i looked over to chermaine and she had already started crying…i smiled at her…God was really speaking to her…that day, in front of all her peers and other people listening, she testified and prayed. wow. i was so moved. i felt so humbled to have witnessed how God changed her heart.
dunno why i was thinking bout this tonite. was listening to some music…made me miss singing with her.
