Was feeling so burdened and sad about the lost, poor and our apathy, and wrote an email to 2 leaders in CEFC. And yesterday night was writing a card to someone who I knew understood, couldn't help but end up in tears. And went to pray to God, crying, about the lostness of men, about how helpless I felt.
This morning, I was very touched during worship, and couldn't help tearing again while we sang about the river of God.
And the message was so good, it spoke to me.
Pastor Ed emphasized that the great commission was about disciple-making to the "nations". So why are we all in Singapore?- He asked. The only reason I am in Singapore, he said, was because God had called me to Singapore. He was at the jungles and rural area before and had told God he would have been happy to stay there all his life.
There I saw the heart of this man of God.
He talked about how transformation preceeds multiplication.
True indeed.
And the final portion on the Holy Spirit. Just been feeling so discouraged because of how loosely He is being used. But Pastor Ed brought it all back into perspective. We need the empowering of the Holy Spirit, we need to be filled by Him in order to fulfil the great commission.
How do we get filled- by desperation and yielding. How true.
Kept crying again during worship. From the depths of my heart cried out to God. For myself, for the suffering, for the lost, for how helpless I felt. Scenes in China at the mission trip- faces of those chinese youths so vivid. Scenes in CHC...tear stained faced, and hands lifted up to God- crying, use me God. Those moments of prayer in the past, of yielding...of desiring to use my life to serve Him.
Perhaps its time for me to start serving once again. By the empowering of the Spirit.
Sunday, January 14, 2007
Saturday, January 13, 2007
Discovering where hope begins in a village in Mozambique
Check out this article.
So encouraging.
Surprised by Friendship
Cassandra Zinchini
"I was moving to Africa for selfish and unselfish reasons. Selfishly, I hoped Africa would save me from a life of numbness, a life of seeking mere satisfaction—more money, more recognition, more whatever. I hoped to find it true that less is more.
Unselfishly, I wanted to help the one-sixth of humanity living without basic food, water, and shelter. My heart was touched from continents away...
But here in a place where the people I grew to love did not have enough food, my own needs faded like the imprint of waves on the sand, quickly receding into the bright sea. The Africans were not happy in their poverty. At the same time, it was obvious to me that material goods were not the only answer, because neither had I been happy in my Western materialistic life.But here in a place where the people I grew to love did not have enough food, my own needs faded like the imprint of waves on the sand, quickly receding into the bright sea. The Africans were not happy in their poverty. At the same time, it was obvious to me that material goods were not the only answer, because neither had I been happy in my Western materialistic life...
In the Jesus film, Jesus multiplied bread so the hungry had more than enough, and he watched with pleasure as his disciples pulled in a large catch of fish from the sea. The ones surrounding me—the poor, the hungry, the sick—understand and believe Jesus' message. They are eager to receive friendship. Here the gospel is applicable, and it really is Good News: bread for the hungry, healing for the sick, love for the unlovely."
So encouraging.
Surprised by Friendship
Cassandra Zinchini
"I was moving to Africa for selfish and unselfish reasons. Selfishly, I hoped Africa would save me from a life of numbness, a life of seeking mere satisfaction—more money, more recognition, more whatever. I hoped to find it true that less is more.
Unselfishly, I wanted to help the one-sixth of humanity living without basic food, water, and shelter. My heart was touched from continents away...
But here in a place where the people I grew to love did not have enough food, my own needs faded like the imprint of waves on the sand, quickly receding into the bright sea. The Africans were not happy in their poverty. At the same time, it was obvious to me that material goods were not the only answer, because neither had I been happy in my Western materialistic life.But here in a place where the people I grew to love did not have enough food, my own needs faded like the imprint of waves on the sand, quickly receding into the bright sea. The Africans were not happy in their poverty. At the same time, it was obvious to me that material goods were not the only answer, because neither had I been happy in my Western materialistic life...
In the Jesus film, Jesus multiplied bread so the hungry had more than enough, and he watched with pleasure as his disciples pulled in a large catch of fish from the sea. The ones surrounding me—the poor, the hungry, the sick—understand and believe Jesus' message. They are eager to receive friendship. Here the gospel is applicable, and it really is Good News: bread for the hungry, healing for the sick, love for the unlovely."
Saturday, January 06, 2007
Mere Christianity
I've just finished reading C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity! It is such a good book, one of the best I've read so far. The thing about this book is how much it challenges the mind to believe in God.
Not sure if it is just the influence of this book, but perhaps also because of other materials I've been reading, I think that the salvation experience is very sacred. It is not immediate, but God is working within the lives of every individual. Hence the act of bringing an individual to church is not the matter that deserves rejoicing - though it can be the start of the journey, but rather we pray that God will work deeply within the life of that individual. I think God touches us in different ways, apart from visits to church, but He can speak to us through events, situations and people, soften our hearts to hear Him.
I liked this paragraph written by C.S. Lewis. I think it makes a lot of sense. And perhaps...closer to my idea of what God is doing within our lives.
"In the first place the situation in the actual world is much more complicated than that. The world does not consist of 100 per cent Christians and 100 per cent non-Christians. There are people (a great many of them) who are slowly ceasing to be Christians but who still call themselves by that name: some of them are clergymen. There are other people who are slowly becoming Christians though they do not yet call themselves so. There are people who do not accept the full Christian doctrine about Christ but who are so strongly attracted by Him that they are His in a much deeper sense than they themselves understand. There are people in other religions who are being led by God's secret influence to concentrate on those parts of their religion which are in agreement with Christianity, and who thus belong to Christ without knowing it. For example, a Buddhist of good will may be led to concentrate more and more on the Buddhist teaching about mercy and to leave in the background (though he might still say he believed) the Buddhist teaching on certain points. Many of the good Pagans long before Christ's birth may have been in this position. And always, of course, there are a great many people who are just confused in mind and have a lot of inconsistent beliefs all jumbled up together. Consequently, it is not much use trying to make judgements about Christians and non- Christians in the mass."
Not sure if it is just the influence of this book, but perhaps also because of other materials I've been reading, I think that the salvation experience is very sacred. It is not immediate, but God is working within the lives of every individual. Hence the act of bringing an individual to church is not the matter that deserves rejoicing - though it can be the start of the journey, but rather we pray that God will work deeply within the life of that individual. I think God touches us in different ways, apart from visits to church, but He can speak to us through events, situations and people, soften our hearts to hear Him.
I liked this paragraph written by C.S. Lewis. I think it makes a lot of sense. And perhaps...closer to my idea of what God is doing within our lives.
"In the first place the situation in the actual world is much more complicated than that. The world does not consist of 100 per cent Christians and 100 per cent non-Christians. There are people (a great many of them) who are slowly ceasing to be Christians but who still call themselves by that name: some of them are clergymen. There are other people who are slowly becoming Christians though they do not yet call themselves so. There are people who do not accept the full Christian doctrine about Christ but who are so strongly attracted by Him that they are His in a much deeper sense than they themselves understand. There are people in other religions who are being led by God's secret influence to concentrate on those parts of their religion which are in agreement with Christianity, and who thus belong to Christ without knowing it. For example, a Buddhist of good will may be led to concentrate more and more on the Buddhist teaching about mercy and to leave in the background (though he might still say he believed) the Buddhist teaching on certain points. Many of the good Pagans long before Christ's birth may have been in this position. And always, of course, there are a great many people who are just confused in mind and have a lot of inconsistent beliefs all jumbled up together. Consequently, it is not much use trying to make judgements about Christians and non- Christians in the mass."
Evangelism
Mere Mission
N.T. Wright
For generations the church has been polarized between those who see the main task being the saving of souls for heaven and the nurturing of those souls through the valley of this dark world, on the one hand, and on the other hand those who see the task of improving the lot of human beings and the world, rescuing the poor from their misery.
The longer that I've gone on as a New Testament scholar and wrestled with what the early Christians were actually talking about, the more it's been borne in on me that that distinction is one that we modern Westerners bring to the text rather than finding in the text. Because the great emphasis in the New Testament is that the gospel is not how to escape the world; the gospel is that the crucified and risen Jesus is the Lord of the world. And that his death and Resurrection transform the world, and that transformation can happen to you. You, in turn, can be part of the transforming work. That draws together what we traditionally called evangelism, bringing people to the point where they come to know God in Christ for themselves, with working for God's kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. That has always been at the heart of the Lord's Prayer, and how we've managed for years to say the Lord's Prayer without realizing that Jesus really meant it is very curious. Our Western culture since the 18th century has made a virtue of separating out religion from real life, or faith from politics.When I lecture about this, people will pop up and say, "Surely Jesus said my kingdom is not of this world." And the answer is no, what Jesus said in John 18 is, "My kingdom is not from this world." That's ek tou kosmoutoutou. It's quite clear in the text that Jesus' kingdom doesn't start with this world. It isn't a worldly kingdom, but it is for this world. It's from somewhere else, but it's for this world.
The key to mission is always worship. You can only be reflecting the love of God into the world if you are worshiping the true God who creates the world out of overflowing self-giving love. The more you look at that God and celebrate that love, the more you have to be reflecting that overflowing self-giving love into the world.
N.T. Wright
For generations the church has been polarized between those who see the main task being the saving of souls for heaven and the nurturing of those souls through the valley of this dark world, on the one hand, and on the other hand those who see the task of improving the lot of human beings and the world, rescuing the poor from their misery.
The longer that I've gone on as a New Testament scholar and wrestled with what the early Christians were actually talking about, the more it's been borne in on me that that distinction is one that we modern Westerners bring to the text rather than finding in the text. Because the great emphasis in the New Testament is that the gospel is not how to escape the world; the gospel is that the crucified and risen Jesus is the Lord of the world. And that his death and Resurrection transform the world, and that transformation can happen to you. You, in turn, can be part of the transforming work. That draws together what we traditionally called evangelism, bringing people to the point where they come to know God in Christ for themselves, with working for God's kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. That has always been at the heart of the Lord's Prayer, and how we've managed for years to say the Lord's Prayer without realizing that Jesus really meant it is very curious. Our Western culture since the 18th century has made a virtue of separating out religion from real life, or faith from politics.When I lecture about this, people will pop up and say, "Surely Jesus said my kingdom is not of this world." And the answer is no, what Jesus said in John 18 is, "My kingdom is not from this world." That's ek tou kosmoutoutou. It's quite clear in the text that Jesus' kingdom doesn't start with this world. It isn't a worldly kingdom, but it is for this world. It's from somewhere else, but it's for this world.
The key to mission is always worship. You can only be reflecting the love of God into the world if you are worshiping the true God who creates the world out of overflowing self-giving love. The more you look at that God and celebrate that love, the more you have to be reflecting that overflowing self-giving love into the world.
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