Feeble Praying

I often feel guilty about my feeble prayers...

... until I realised it is the praying that really matters.

Thinking aloud

What’s that again? I thought as I reread the passage.

The mission of the church is paramount, and what propels the mission forward is an awakened mind, a mind ablaze with God and the things of God. This is the heart of the Cultural commission within the Great Commission. The Great Commission calls us to reach out to every person with the Gospel of Jesus Christ; the Cultural Commission calls us to lay hold of every nook and cranny of the world for the kingdom of God. They are not separate endeavours – they are the two edges of the single sword we are to wield.” - James Emery White in A Mind for God.

Lay hold of every nook and cranny for the kingdom of God. Can it be? What was the Great Commission again? Turning to Matthew 28:19-20 in my NRSV bible, it reads:

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

I remembered that the first five words of the Great Commission if you look at the original language it would be better rendered as “As you go, make disciples…” It means then that making disciples is not an event or even a programme; rather it is part of your lifestyle – it should flow naturally from how you live and who you are. And the way you live, the way people live collectively is called the culture.

As we live our lives, as we go about our living, we are to make disciples. It then means that disciple-making should flow out naturally from the way we live. It means then that the things that comprise our lives – the way we behave and talk, the way we spend our time and resource, our world-view and deeply held values and beliefs must facilitate disciple-making. The transformation must originate from inside out.

At the heart of the Great Commission, there is implied a Cultural Commission – a mandate for us to redeem the culture for Christ. What does it mean then to redeem the culture for Christ? It means that in all areas of culture – in the creative arts, in science and technology, in education, in the industry etc, we are to live out our witness as Christians. It does not only mean that we have to “witness” and tell people about Jesus; rather it also mean that we put on the “mind of Christ” – we think Christianly and that we have the “aroma of Christ” – we behave like Christ. It means that as Christians we cannot huddle into the sub-culture and form holy cozy enclaves; we have to engage the world and be the salt the bible tells us to be.

Ollie

February 2007

God IS

Why?

Because I AM.

God’s Cause

Sovereign God,

Your cause, not my own, engages my heart,

And I appeal to you with greatest freedom

To set up your kingdom in every place where Satan reigns;

Glorify yourself and I shall rejoice,

For to bring honour to your name is my sole desire.

I adore you that you are God,

And long that others should know it, feel it,

And rejoice in it.

O that all men might love and praise you,

That you might have all glory from the intelligent world!

Let sinners be brought to you for your dear name!

To the eye of reason everything with regards to the conversion of others is as dark as midnight,

But you can accomplish great things;

The cause is yours,

And it is to your glory that men should be saved.

Lord, use me as you will,

do with me what you will;

but, O, promote your cause,

let your kingdom come,

let your blessed interest be advanced in this world!

O may you bring in great numbers to Jesus!

Let me see that glorious day,

And give me to reach for the multitudes of souls;

Let me be willing to die to that end;

And while I live, let me labour for you

To the utmost of my strength,

Spending time profitably in this work,

Both in health and in weakness.

It is your cause and kingdom I long for, not my own.

O, answer God my request!

From “The Valley of Vision – A collection of Puritan Prayers and Devotions”.

Who Feeds Us?

This article was written by Ngiam Xing Yi, a team member of the Grace Baptist Church YYA Missions 06 trip to Indonesia from 13 to 20 Dec 2006. Inspired by what he saw on his trip, he wrote a lucid and thought-provoking account reprinted below with his kind permission. Readers beware, it’ll get you thinking.

Who Feeds Us?

There were guests around on that day. Foreign Chinese young men and women who were attempting to befriend the people. They had done a short performance. They had made balloons for the children. They had sung a few songs for those who were watching.

And then it was the children’s turn to present a small something. They began to sing a short Christian song they had picked up from the volunteers who had been working with them for a while now.

One of the older women watching curtly interrupted them. “Why are you singing Christian songs? Stop it. Sing something else.”

A boy turned and retorted, “Who feeds me? You? Don’t tell me what to do.”

This short scene took place while the team was in the slums. While it may have seemed that it might have merely been an act of rebellion from the boy, it showed us much more. He had challenged authority. He made the choice to do what he thought was correct. He understood that no one else except the hand feeding him had control over his actions or his life.

Do we do the same? For the street people who have virtually nothing to their name, their goal in life is simple. To make the best of nothing. For people like us, who have seemingly improved our lives and culminated advancement into a world of material comfort, we seem to have everything. Yet we hanker after more, worrying everyday that what we have or what we do is never enough. We believe the control of our lives lies in our very hands, and that we can only rely on ourselves to survive and make decisions.

We forget who is in control. We forget who feeds us everyday. The One who is the reason why we can stand here today and be proud of our lives. Instead, hours are spent chasing after the world we love. Our choices are based on reasoning that we create for ourselves, and never on the dependence on the One who provides.

Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not more valuable than they? Matthew 6:26 (NIV)

The boy taught me an important thing that day. He had told me to reconsider who was in charge of my life. He had questioned why I was listening to voices of the world instead of the Voice of Truth. With nothing to his name, this boy understood that only the one who feeds him is to be followed. With so much in my life, I constantly forget the source of everything that brings me satisfaction.

Earlier in the year I made the choice to go to Jakarta. I wanted to be of service to the Lord. To be humbled in the presence of those who had less physically, but had more spiritually and mentally. I believed I would reap much more from my experiences than any effort that I would put in. I was right. The Lord blessed all of us much from this trip, showing us much more than we thought we would ever see, hear or smell. Each and every incident seemed to be a lesson given by God.

This particular event showed me how much I had lost track of the priorities in life. For a young student like me, I had everything before me. I could choose to take any path that I wanted in life. Yet I was rudely brought back to reality by what transpired that day.

I cannot say that I have entirely put my focus back on serving the Lord as of now. Yet, through this trip, I have been deeply affected by the small lessons that have popped up along the way. Now I am more aware of what is important to me. Now I can firmly say that I will follow the one who feeds me. Now I can start throwing off the influences the world has placed on me.

If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in Him. 1 John 2:15b (NIV)

Ngiam XingYi

Febuary 2007

The Hollow Men

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us — if at all — not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

By T S Eliot, in the "Hollow Men"


Do you sometimes feel hollow? Do you feel that sometimes life seems mundane and meaningless - that there has to be something more? You wish to see beauty in form and shape; enchantment in the myriad shades of colour; purpose in the force of directed motion. I do.

I want to see meaning in this life. I want to give of my energies and efforts to a higher purpose, to a higher cause. I want to bleed for a significant cause; to give my life to a higher love. I'm tired of this hollow, mundane living. I want to see awe and wonder, of a living eternal God at work in every situation, every moment and every person. I want to see the beauty of a life lived for Jesus; I want to see the enchantment in discovering the myriad expression of Love for Christ; I want to see the purpose of His Kingdom come.

I'm homesick. I'm waiting...

I still believe that life has a plot the way a novel has a plot - that events are somehow leading somewhere...

And those who have crossed over, the cloud of witnesses are whispering to me, "Get up, get up and finish the race. Come and take your place."


Ollie
February 2007

A Prefect Fool

Inspection stickers used to have printed on the back "Drive carefully - the life you save may be your own." That is the wisdom of men in a nutshell.

What God says, on the other hand, is "The life you save is the life you lose." In other words, the life you clutch, hoard, guard, and play safe with is in the end a life worth little to anybody, including yourself, and only a life given away for love's sake is a life worth living. To bring his point home, God shows us a man who gave his life away to the extent of dying a national disgrace without a penny in the bank or a friend to his name. In terms of men's wisdom, he was a Prefect Fool, and anybody who thinks he can follow him without making something like the same kind of a fool of himself is labouring under not a cross but a delusion.

Federick Buechner in Wishful Thinking (New York; Harper and Row, 1973), 28.

To be Let Down by People

Have you ever been let down by people? To have a promise broken by a friend? To be disappointed by leaders? To be jaded by once "heroes"?

You always think that people should know better; or that as mature adults they should discern the better way. However, life often do not work out that way. The evidence at large points to people being messy, ill-informed and stubborn. Sometimes they are unaware or ignorant of the hurt, pain and confusion they are causing; other times they simply do not care, insisting on their way no matter what it may cause.

It is times like this when I'm disappointed and quick to judge and react that I'm reminded of a story about Corrie Ten Bloom.

A story was told of Corrie and her sister when they were locked in a Nazi prison camp during world war II. A prison guard was mercilessly beating on his sister. Corrie seethed with rage at the ill-treatment to her sister and in her heart she hated the guard. She wished him evil and wanted to seek revenge for the hurt and pain caused to her sister and herself.

Then a voice spoke in her heart; it was as God spoke through the fog of anger and bitterness. The still small voice said, "Corrie, there is a Nazi in you as well." It broke Corrie and convinced her that she too was capable of these atrocities; she too could have been a Nazi. She chose to show grace and forgive her captor.

We too could also choose to show grace to the people who let us down, for we too would also have let others down. We are all sinners. Showing grace and forgiveness would bring healing and free the space for reconciliation. For we all have the propensity to harbour a "Nazi" within; it is the unmerited grace of Jesus that frees us; brings healing; and reconciliation.

Ollie
February 2007