Been reading my daily devotional material by Selwyn Hughes (EDWJ) entitled 'Being Real in the Psalms' and was truly truly glad for its contents.....which kinda summarised my life....and all the thoughts and emotions which I have been battling with (at least over the last few years)...... God truly knows what I need in each season and time of my life......
He starts off explaining about the 'uncomfortable' psalms- the psalms that acts as a mirror to our soul....which expresses the full range of human emotions - fear, anger, disappointment, hurt.......feelings that we are often ignorant or or willfully reluctant to face........the feelings that Christians are apt to ignore or repress....just because they are negative....and that they often question God or challenges His place in our lives......
And what is the purpose of these'uncomfortable' psalms??? The psalms that are a 'jarring outpourings in which the psalmists captures the struggle of the heart as it attempts to make sense of the goodness of God in the midst of the troubles of life......and he concludes that the purpose of these psalms are - to invite us to admit whatever we feel, know we are not alone in those feelings and to work through our uncomfortable emotions to a deeper relationship with God...... how these psalms not only teach us to praise and worship, they also teach us how to wrestle with negative feelings until those negative feelings give way to hope....
Then he goes on to expose one by one these negative feelings...beginning with fear......etc etc...and lays open the real reason for these negative feelings.....that reveals inner 'dis-ease'....the suspicion that God is not good.........Oh how true this is!!! And how many times have I struggled with this thought!!!!
Fear says , 'Is God capable of taking care of me?'
Anger says, 'Why does God allow my goals to be blocked?'
Envy says, ' God seems to bless other people more than me.'
Disappointment says, 'Is God fair?'
He says that our feelings may surface in the horizontal context of life- as a result of circumstances, events, situations - but they have a vertical context also: our concept of God.......How true!!!
Quoting Walter Brueggemann - 'The laments are refusals to settle for the way things are; they are acts of relentless hope that believes no situation falls outside of Yahweh's capacity for transformation; no situation falls outside of Yahweh's responsibility,.... It might surprise some to discover that in the darkness of our emotional wrestling with God, we grow in our understanding of Him....but only if we want to grow.....and this lesson, I have indeed learnt the hard way.......tough times, but so valuable in the growth of our souls.......
And then he goes on to talk about righteous vs unrighteous anger........and gives pointers to deal with unrighteous anger (anger that is self centred)...
1) When angry, be still and STOP
2) Next, WAIT
3) DO NOT FRET
And this is based on the scripture in Psalm 37: 1-40 'Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him; do not fret..'
Then he goes on again to talk about fear and all its permutations...the solution? Focus on God..... Fear of God (being in awe of God) strips away all other fears and compels us to deal with a God who has everything under His control..... Fear clarifies where it is that we place our trust.......
'Fear knocked at the door, faith opened it and lo, there was no one there' .......
If the greatest threats and the things we fear most are matters over which we have no control, how important it is to develop a relationship with the One who is never out of control.... Indeed, this advice is definitely a solid rock to hold on to in times of turbulent times....
After that, he goes on to expose envy. Envy (he says) is malicious grudging- wanting to gain what we do not have. It is born of the deep love of self....and then he quotes Dr. W.E Sangster who wrote - 'To practise comparison with one's fellows is often to be trapped into sin. If we are not as virtuous as they are, we are tempted to imply it is only in appearance and they are possibly hypocrites; if they have tasted more of the sweetness of success than we have done, we often slide into envy.'....This is followed by quoting Psalm 73 as an example....our negative emotion indicate far more than that we are experiencing mental turmoil; they reveal how strongly sin reigns in our hearts......and then he continues to take apart Psalm 73 to analyze how Asaph responded.... how his perspective was changed after being in the presence of God.... and the key to a changed perspective always lie in our understanding......
Then, he goes on to talk about despair...which is defined as : the loss of hope, the refusal to struggle, a deadening of the heart to the idea that one will be helped or rescued..... characteristics of despair includes:
1) A desire NOT to struggle
2) The FLIGHT from desiure
- over the years, he has met many people who were going through life , attending to their daily duties in a mechanical way (sounds like me!), but inside they were dead. They had put to death all desire. To desire, such people say to themselves, mean to be hurt, so they argue that if they don't desire they won't have to endure the pain of disappointed longings.
- however, you CAN know God so intimately that though your desires on a human level are not met and you feel disappointed and hurt, you can live with that hurt without the loss of your soul.
3) Loneliness
- definition of loneliness: Isolation from those who mean so much to us
- Can Christ succour us in loneliness and save us from despair? HE CAN
- No one need be lonely, however separate from others he or she may be, if the lonely moments are used to get closer to God
Steps to dealing with despair:
1) Be willing to acknowledge our feelings
2) Talk to God about it
3) Understand and accept the fact that we live in a sinful world where not all our expectations wil be met, not all relationships succeed and not all hopes are realised
God will not allow His children to live life without desires because it will make them less than human. So He will constantly prod us and challenge us, sometimes by arousing our deepest passion.
- Lord, is that what you are doing with me? To stir my soul?
Indeed I agree with Selwyn....better to be mad than to feel nothing.....
Then he finally touches on shame...which is based on a flawed sense of self...
Lord, teach me to acknowledge my true feelings before you...not to wallow in self pity....but to steep myself in your presence to the point that it changes my perception of those negative feelings.....may those tough times be a time of drawing nearer to you and to throw myself in your arms, knowing that you will NEVER let go of me..... and may you restore that HOPE...... that I so desperately need.....
Friday, September 11, 2009
Friday, September 4, 2009
Random thoughts....
It's only been 2 days since I went back to work after a week long break.......immediately felt black clouds gathering around me.....a sense of dread .....feelings of depression starting to slowly seep in..... it took only 2 days...... sigh...
suddenly felt all kinds of emotions welling up..... fear... anger .... resentment....fatigue...... etc etc....why? I really have no idea....guess it was all those pent up frustrations over the last 3-4 years trying to escape.....
Really really feel like giving up.......really..... even my colleagues are feeling the same way...... it's tough......
I think Mum finally understood.....only in this last trip home....... we had a chat....which ultimately always ends up with the topic of dating/ finding a life partner......being very honest with her....I think she finally sensed my distress....even despair....and the loneliness that sometimes overwhlems......it was with this question: Have u ever considered going back to australia? tt made me realised how long it really took her to understand my predicament......my line of works exerts tremendous stress on me .... physically.... mentally... emotionally ..... even socially, my line of work has impoverished me by diminishing whatever little time and energy i have to socialise and develop meaningful friendships.......and really , its pretty sad when your own family members dun understand at all!!!
then again....who can I blame? I chose to take this path on my own.....stating that I think God called me to this ministry......but these days, i'm seriously beginning to doubt it........maybe i heard wrongly? maybe i was mistaken? .... I really dunno..... maybe, just maybe, its time to head in a different direction.......
suddenly felt all kinds of emotions welling up..... fear... anger .... resentment....fatigue...... etc etc....why? I really have no idea....guess it was all those pent up frustrations over the last 3-4 years trying to escape.....
Really really feel like giving up.......really..... even my colleagues are feeling the same way...... it's tough......
I think Mum finally understood.....only in this last trip home....... we had a chat....which ultimately always ends up with the topic of dating/ finding a life partner......being very honest with her....I think she finally sensed my distress....even despair....and the loneliness that sometimes overwhlems......it was with this question: Have u ever considered going back to australia? tt made me realised how long it really took her to understand my predicament......my line of works exerts tremendous stress on me .... physically.... mentally... emotionally ..... even socially, my line of work has impoverished me by diminishing whatever little time and energy i have to socialise and develop meaningful friendships.......and really , its pretty sad when your own family members dun understand at all!!!
then again....who can I blame? I chose to take this path on my own.....stating that I think God called me to this ministry......but these days, i'm seriously beginning to doubt it........maybe i heard wrongly? maybe i was mistaken? .... I really dunno..... maybe, just maybe, its time to head in a different direction.......
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Just a closer walk with Thee......
Been very relieved after making the decision NOT to take the MRCP Paces exam in October this year.....felt like a burden of 100 kg lifted off my shoulders!! Whew!! Felt so liberated.....felt so free to do what I needed to do....and desperately more than anything else, I needed to get back to God....to get a fresh perspective of my life.....to renew my vision and passion........I knew deep in my heart that I was drifting further and further away.....my heart growing colder and more callous each day....the disappointments I felt with the church in general ...... I needed a reminder of the grace and mercy of God in my life......
So one day, after finishing work early.....dropped by a christian bookshop looking for nothing, yet at the same time looking for something specific which would minister to my broken soul.......was so glad when I chanced upon Philip Yancey's book entitled - 'Soul Survivor' , How my faith survived the church....How apt! How appropriate for me at this moment!!!
True to its title....it did wonders for me.....and what was more amazing was how Philip Yancey discovered God and His grace through both Christian and non Christian writers.......and walking with the literary giants from the Hall of Fame did much for me....knowing that they suffered the anguish that I faced....knowing that the issues that I struggled with were not new and alien to the human race....and somehow grasping the insight that these pioneers of faith obtained through their own struggles...... the hypocrisy in the church, amongst Christians......the lies the church tells us......the fact that we all fall so far short of God's commands.....and in that, how the pride of life becomes not just a stumbling block but a sin.........and how each of them responded to these facts in life......some grew stronger in their faith....some crumbled under the sheer despair....... thought I would record some of Philip Yancey's words here as a reminder....
He starts off talking about the church abuse that he encountered in his christian walk. " I have no religious sanction. I am neither pastor nor teacher, but an ordinary pilgrim, one person among many on a spiritual search. Unavoidably and by instinct, I question and re-evaluate my faith all the time....I asked myself yet again,Why am I a still a Christian?' What keeps me pursuing a gospel that has come to me amid so much distortion and static, that often sounds more like bad news than good? "
This question resonated within my soul... Have been asking myself that question over and over again the last few months. And I did not have an answer to that question. Whilst I have stopped going for cell meetings, I still faithfully attend church on the weekend, not so much out of obligation or habit, but because it is one of my life line in maintaining my sanity....yet on the other hand, it is the people in the church that caused me to question my faith most of all.....they are the ones who make me feel that if all Christians are hypocrites, then I would rather not be one.........so how do i reconcile this seeming paradox???
Well, whilst this book did not resolve all my questions....it did achieve what Philip Yancey intended it for....It is a book that demonstrates people from the ages past who were people made fully alive...and credits their personal faith as the reason for that......let's look at some of them....
Martin Luther King Jr
- whilst I never could understand the racism between the white and blacks in America, the fact that this guy stood up for his generation....to stand in the gap....to preach a gospel of non violence...and of grace and mercy.....
- " 'Christianity,' he said, ' has always insisted that the cross we bear precedes the crown we wear. To be a Christian, one must take up his cross, with all its difficulties and agonising and tension-packed content, and carry it until that very cross leaves its mark upon us and redeems us to that more excellent was which only comes through suffering.' "
- When he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, King referred yet again to the principles he learned from the Sermon on the Mount: " When the years have rolled past and when the blazing light of truth is focussed on this marvellous age in which we live, men and women will know and children will be taught that we have a finer land, a better people, a more noble civilisation, because these humble children of God were willing to 'suffer for the righteousness' sake ".
- Made me re-consider my own life....of how 'racist' I am towards my fellow countrymen....the bumiputras of my land......how we grumble of how things are unfair and how the bumiputras get all the privilege and concession and not based on meritocracy......how we point the finger at others for being 'racist' when we ourselves are just as equally guilty of being exactly that!!! What hypocrisy! Lord, forgive me and help me to change my worldview!! Indeed, this is why the gospel says -Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, 'Brother let me take the speck out of your eye,' when you yourself fail to see the plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye. (Luke 6: 41-42)
- I know that you are asking today, 'How long will it take?" I come to say to you this afternoon, however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long , because truth pressed to earth will rise again.
How long? Not long, because no lie can live forever.
How long? Not long, because you still reap what you sow.
How long? Not long, because the arm of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justic.
How long? Not long, 'cause mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord, trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored. He has loosed the fateful lightningt of his terrible swift sword. His truth is marching on.
He has sounded forth the trumpets that shall never call retreat. He is lifting up the hearts of man before His judgment seat. Oh, be swift , my souls, to answer him. Be jubilant, my feet. Our God is marching on.
(King , frm The New Yorker, 6 april 1987)
- I like what Yancey writes :
A prophet calls us to daily acts of obedience, regardless of personal cost, regardless of whether we feel successful or rewarded. And a prophet also reminds us that no failure, no suffering, no discouragement is final for the God who stands within the shadows, keeping watch above his own. A prophet who can convey both these messages with power just may change the world. While Martin Luther King Jr lived on earth, I, his neighbour, did not listen to what he said. I was quick to pounce on his flaws, and slow to recognise my own sin. But because he stayed faithful, in the short view by offering his body as a target but never as a weapon, and in the long view by holding before us his dream, a dream of a new kingdom of peace and justice and live, he becomes a prophet for me, the unlikeliest of followers.
GK Chesterton
- Yancey writes:
I learned not to laugh or smile, and not to cry. I tried not to care or react: to cold or heat, to good smells or bad ones, to beauty or ugliness, to love or hate. In a perveted experiment, I broke my own arm against the metal frame of my bunk bed to test my mastery of pain.
I see now what I could not see then, that I was erecting a strong stone fortress against love, for I thought myself unlovable......
- Sounds exactly like me!!... u mean I am not alone in feeling this way?!?
- Yancey found optimism in Chesterton's writings, esp in Orthodoxy and The Man Who Was Thursday, where Chesterton makes a case for optimism amidst the gloom of the world.... he also found that asking the question : ' Where does pleasure come from?' eventually led him back to God.... and that there are many good gifts - nature, music, romantic love, etc....which ultimately originates from our Creator...
- 'I am ordinary in the correct sense of the term. said Chesterton, 'which means the acceptance of an order; a Creator and the Creation, the common sense of gratitude for Creation, life and love as gifts permanently good, marriage and chivalry as laws rightly controlling them.'.......
- Yancey : Under his influence I too realised the need to become more 'ordinary'....
- 'The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult ; and left untried, ' he (Chesterton) said. The real question is not 'Why is Christianity so bad when it claims to be so good?' but rather 'Why are all human beings so bad when they claim to be so good?'... Chesterton readily admitted that the church had badly failed the gospel. In fact, he said , one of the strongest arguments in favour of Christianity is the failure of Christians, who thereby prove what the Bible teaches about the Fall and original sin.
- How true!!! In fact listen to what Chesterton writes when The Times asked a number of writers for essays on the topic, 'What's Wrong with the World?' :
Dear Sirs:
I am.
Sincerely yours,
G.K Chesterton
- Would loved to have seen their responses to that line! But indeed, how true it is, isn't it?
Dr. Paul Brand
- does this guy even need any further introduction?!?
- Loved reading 2 of his books which was co-authored with Philip Yancey- The Gift of Pain and Fearfully and Wonderfully Made and In His Image.... He is one of my favourite and most celebrated Christian doctor that I know of.....
-"The most precious possesion any human being is his spirit - his will to live, his sense of dignity, his personality. Though technically we may be concerned with tendons, bones and nerve endings, we must never lose sight of the person we are treating."- Dr. Paul Brand
- As Brand reflects now, the process of following his patients through the full rehabilitation cycle ultimately challenged his whole approach towards medicine. Somewhere, perhaps in medical school, doctors acquire an attitude that seems suspiciously like hubris: 'Oh, you've come just in time. Count on me. I think I'll be able to save you......Brand began to see his chief contribution as one he had not studied in medical school: to join with his patient as a partner in the task of restoring dignity to a broken spirit. 'We are treating a person, not a disease,' he says. 'That is the true meaning of rehabilitation.'
- Like Yancey, I was beginning to see my problem....I was wrestling with issues facing humanity, yet I have not learned to love individuals....well, not in the manner that God requires of me....not in the way that glorifies Him....and His created beings.....and to make matters worst, I was in the healthcare profession where we are expected to 'care' and love people.....have I lost the vision along the way? Have I got so disllusioned and disappointed that I forgot why God called me to this particular profession?!?
- I love this quote of Dr. Brand's.....
' Because of where I practised medicine, I never made much money at it. But I tell you that as I look back over a lifetime of surgery, the host of friends who once were patients bring me more joy than wealth could ever bring. I first met them when they were suffering and afraid. As their doctor, I shared their pain. Now that I am old, it is their love and gratitude that illuminates the continuing pathway of my life. It's strange - those of us who involve ourselves in the places where there is the most suffering, look back in surprise to find that it was there that we discovered the reality of joy.'
Robert Coles
- this was a Christian psychiatrist who became famous after deciding to interview children from various background (Children of Crisis) and found that those from disadvantaged families to have greater inner strength that he has not seen in others....whilst those from privileged backgrounds were more bored, alienated.......and came to this : It was true that the poor were cursed......Yet in a strange but undeniable way, the poor were also blessed, for whatever reason, with qualities such as courage and love and a willing dependence on God. The irony: good humanists work all their lives to improve the condition of the disadvantaged, but for what? To raise them to the level of the upper classes so that they too can experience boredom, alienation and decadence?
- At the end of his research, he had discovered that the poor are mysteriously blessed and that the rich live in peril. He learned that what matters most comes not from without - the circumstances of life- but from within, inside the heart of an individual man or woman or child. He had begun his research with a head full of phrases such as 'guilt complex', 'character disorders' and 'response to stimuli'. He had emerged with old fashioned words like 'conscience' and 'sin' and 'free will'.
Tolstoy & Dostoevsky
- In his spiritual autobiography, A Confession, Leo Tolstoy mentions that Christians sometimes treat each other worse than they treat people of other faiths.....
- Yancey goes on to say ...." As I think about individual Christians I know, I see some people made incomparably better by their faith, and some made measurably worse. For every gracious, kind-spirited, forgiving Christian, I can point to a proud, mean-spirited, judgmental one. In my own experience, those who strive the hardest and believe the most fervently are sometimes the least attractive persons. Like the Pharisees of Jesus' day, they get caught up in competition and end up self-righteous rather than righteous. Politicians tell me their nastiest letters come from people who quote the Bible and claim to speak for God - which I easily believe since my mailbox shows the same pattern. How do I resolve the tension between the ideals of the Gospel and the actuality of those who profess it?"
- Indeed, how do we resolve that conflict? In fact, I think most of the time, I err on the 'legalistic' and Pharisaic side of the coin...... I judge others by their failures whilst forgetting the grace of God in my own life...... For Tolstoy, this apparent discrepancy finally tore him apart, whereas for Dostoevsky, he found the grace of God in his own failures.....he saw grace in the lives of his prison cell mates....in many of his novels- Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Possessed, The Brothers Karamazov..... he learned in prison that the gospel of grace infiltrates this world not primarily through words and rational arguments but through deeds, through love.....
- As Yancey aptly puts it : 'Today , I claim these two Russians as my spiritual guides because they help me accept a central paradox of the Christian life. From Tolstoy, I learn the need to look inside, to the kingdom of God that is within me. In that glance, I see how miserably I fall short of the high ideals of the gospel. But from Dostoevsky, I learn the full extent of grace. Not only the kingdom of God is within me; God himself dwells there. Where sin increased, grace increased all the more - is how Paul expressed it in Romans.'
Mahatma Gandhi
-Though Gandhi was not a Christian by belief or practice, he attempted to an impressive degree to live out some of Jesus' principles.........he modelled his principles on what Jesus taught.....love for your enemies.....non violence... he once said ; ' No cause, no matter how just, merited bloodshed. I would die for the cause, but there is no cause I am prepared to kill for. '
- Yance asked a very valid question as he read of Gandhi's life : 'When I read the history of Mahatma Gandhi alongside the history of the Christian church, I cannot help wondering what went wrong. Why did it take a Hindu to embrace the principles of reconciliation, humility and vicarious sacrifice so clearly modelled by Jesus himself? Gandhi credited Jesus as his source for these life principles, and he worked like a disciplined soldier to put them into practice. What has kept Christians from following Jesus with the same abandon? '
- Indeed, I ask myself, that very same question....What has kept ME from following Jesus with the same fervour and abandon???
- Sadly, it was the church itself that turned Gandhi away from Christ....the failure of man, caused this Hindu to reject Christ.....in Gandhi's words - 'The church did not make a favourable impression on me,' he remembers, citing dull sermons and a congregation who 'appeared rather to be worldly-minded, people going to church for recreation and in conformity to custom.'
- It's amazing....because I once remembered how I had those same exact thoughts....the only difference, I cling on to Christ even more tightly despite my experience in church....whilst Gandhi chose to walk away....How tragic!
Dr. C. Everett Koop
- I have never heard of this name before I read this book....and I did not know who he was, but after reading this excerpt, I found inspiration in this man- a paediatric surgeon who managed to reconcile the fact that a man of faith can get involved in politics without making crucial compromises........ He walked the difficult road of a public person with a Christian faith....and he spoke out for what he believed, no matter how unpopular it would make him.....and he emerged a winner.....the best Surgeon General America has ever had...a man of integrity.......How we need more people like him!!
John Donne
- Yancey found John Donne - the Elizabethan poet four centuries ago who wrote 'Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions'.......with the most appropriate 'message' which he used while speaking at a friend's funeral.....a man with AIDS .... who was also a Christian.....
- I on the other hand had experience of Donne (unknown to me at that time!) through a movie/ play that I watched at one of my oncological posting... 'Wit' which was written by Margaret Edson.......
- It was in this book that I discovered the life of John Donne... a dean who lived in the time of the plague in London...and who contracted the illness in his service to the people that he served......
- Yancey writes : ' The central reason I keep returning to Donne's Devotions , as on the night of David's funeral, is that the book recounts each crisis in detail (a crisis of fear, crisis of meaning and a crisis of death), and continues to yield new insights into these primal confrontations with the mystery of suffering.....Although Devotions does not answer the philosophical questions, it does record Donne's emotional resolution , a gradual movement towards peace. At first - confined to bed, churning out prayers without answers, comtemplating death, regurgitation guilt - he can find no relief from fear. Obsessed, he reviews every biblical occurence of the word 'fear'. As he does so, it dawns on him that life will always include circumstances that incite fear: if not ilness, financial hardship, if not poverty, rejection, if not loneliness, failure. In such a world, Donne had a choice: to fear God, or to fear everything else......Donne concludes his best course is to cultivate a proper fear of the Lord, which fear can supplant all others: 'as thou hast given me a repentance, not to be repented of, so give me , O Lord, a fear, of which I may not be afraid'. I learned from Donne, when faced with doubts, to review my alternatives. If for whatever reason I refuse to trust God, what, then, can I trust?'
- Donne suffered pain and illness....and questioned the meaning of it all.....he knew the crisis of fear...and the crisis of meaning....he struggled to accept death.....and emerged with a 'holy indifference' to death...not by discounting death's horrors, but by a renewed confidence in resurrection.....'O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? ....... God knows all this world's weight and burden and heaviness, said Donne in a sermon; 'And if there were not a weight of future glory to counterpoise it, we should all sink into nothing.' ...
- I love this quote...which reverberated in my mind whilst watching 'Wit' - "Death be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so...One short sleep past, we wake eternally, And death shall be no more, Death thou shalt die."
Annie Dillard
- yet another unsung and unknown hero......how the modern world has suffered for the lost of the love for reading.....the classics i mean..... I was introduced to Annie Dillard by Yancey.....and the 'rebellion' which she went through sounds very much like mine....
- Yancey writes: ' Annie did have one short fling of rebellion against God, she told me. After four consecutive summers at the church camp, she got fed up with the hypocrisy of people coming to church to show off their clothes and wanting to make a major statement, she decided to confront the ministers head-on. The senior minister terrified her, so she marched into the assistant minister's office and delivered her spiel about hypocrisy. A wise man, in one fell swoop he accomplished for her what took me many years: he separated the church from God, and did so in a dignified way, rather than demeaned, his teenage critic. 'He was an experienced, calm man in a three-piece suit; he had a moustache and wore glasses. I was this little high school kid who thought I was the only person in the world with complaints against the church. He heard me out and then said, " You are right, honey, there is a lot of hypocrisy," Annie felt her arguments dissolved. Then the minister proceeded to load her down with books by C.S. Lewis which, he suggested, she might find useful for a final-year essay....To Annie's consternation, he was right....After ploughing through four straight volumes of C.S.Lewis she fell right back in the arms of Christianity. Her rebellion lasted one month. '
- Hehe.....sounds like me....only difference was there was no such minister to counsel me......and I stumbled upon C.S.Lewis by accident....through a friend of mine.....
- I like her quote: ' I alternate between thinking of the planet as a home - dear and familiar stone hearth and garden - and as a hard land of exile in which we are all sojourners.' ...pretty much sums up the description I have of this blog.....
There are many many more giants of faith out there...people like Frederick Buechner, Henri Nouwen, Shusaku Endo, etc ....there would not be enough pages to write about them....but I must say that I am totally awed by this book....and would like to read all their writings for my ownself......and to collect my own 'Hall of Fame' of literary Christian writers....giants of faith who stood in the gap for their generation......and impacting their world for Christ......
So one day, after finishing work early.....dropped by a christian bookshop looking for nothing, yet at the same time looking for something specific which would minister to my broken soul.......was so glad when I chanced upon Philip Yancey's book entitled - 'Soul Survivor' , How my faith survived the church....How apt! How appropriate for me at this moment!!!
True to its title....it did wonders for me.....and what was more amazing was how Philip Yancey discovered God and His grace through both Christian and non Christian writers.......and walking with the literary giants from the Hall of Fame did much for me....knowing that they suffered the anguish that I faced....knowing that the issues that I struggled with were not new and alien to the human race....and somehow grasping the insight that these pioneers of faith obtained through their own struggles...... the hypocrisy in the church, amongst Christians......the lies the church tells us......the fact that we all fall so far short of God's commands.....and in that, how the pride of life becomes not just a stumbling block but a sin.........and how each of them responded to these facts in life......some grew stronger in their faith....some crumbled under the sheer despair....... thought I would record some of Philip Yancey's words here as a reminder....
He starts off talking about the church abuse that he encountered in his christian walk. " I have no religious sanction. I am neither pastor nor teacher, but an ordinary pilgrim, one person among many on a spiritual search. Unavoidably and by instinct, I question and re-evaluate my faith all the time....I asked myself yet again,Why am I a still a Christian?' What keeps me pursuing a gospel that has come to me amid so much distortion and static, that often sounds more like bad news than good? "
This question resonated within my soul... Have been asking myself that question over and over again the last few months. And I did not have an answer to that question. Whilst I have stopped going for cell meetings, I still faithfully attend church on the weekend, not so much out of obligation or habit, but because it is one of my life line in maintaining my sanity....yet on the other hand, it is the people in the church that caused me to question my faith most of all.....they are the ones who make me feel that if all Christians are hypocrites, then I would rather not be one.........so how do i reconcile this seeming paradox???
Well, whilst this book did not resolve all my questions....it did achieve what Philip Yancey intended it for....It is a book that demonstrates people from the ages past who were people made fully alive...and credits their personal faith as the reason for that......let's look at some of them....
Martin Luther King Jr
- whilst I never could understand the racism between the white and blacks in America, the fact that this guy stood up for his generation....to stand in the gap....to preach a gospel of non violence...and of grace and mercy.....
- " 'Christianity,' he said, ' has always insisted that the cross we bear precedes the crown we wear. To be a Christian, one must take up his cross, with all its difficulties and agonising and tension-packed content, and carry it until that very cross leaves its mark upon us and redeems us to that more excellent was which only comes through suffering.' "
- When he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, King referred yet again to the principles he learned from the Sermon on the Mount: " When the years have rolled past and when the blazing light of truth is focussed on this marvellous age in which we live, men and women will know and children will be taught that we have a finer land, a better people, a more noble civilisation, because these humble children of God were willing to 'suffer for the righteousness' sake ".
- Made me re-consider my own life....of how 'racist' I am towards my fellow countrymen....the bumiputras of my land......how we grumble of how things are unfair and how the bumiputras get all the privilege and concession and not based on meritocracy......how we point the finger at others for being 'racist' when we ourselves are just as equally guilty of being exactly that!!! What hypocrisy! Lord, forgive me and help me to change my worldview!! Indeed, this is why the gospel says -Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, 'Brother let me take the speck out of your eye,' when you yourself fail to see the plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye. (Luke 6: 41-42)
- I know that you are asking today, 'How long will it take?" I come to say to you this afternoon, however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long , because truth pressed to earth will rise again.
How long? Not long, because no lie can live forever.
How long? Not long, because you still reap what you sow.
How long? Not long, because the arm of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justic.
How long? Not long, 'cause mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord, trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored. He has loosed the fateful lightningt of his terrible swift sword. His truth is marching on.
He has sounded forth the trumpets that shall never call retreat. He is lifting up the hearts of man before His judgment seat. Oh, be swift , my souls, to answer him. Be jubilant, my feet. Our God is marching on.
(King , frm The New Yorker, 6 april 1987)
- I like what Yancey writes :
A prophet calls us to daily acts of obedience, regardless of personal cost, regardless of whether we feel successful or rewarded. And a prophet also reminds us that no failure, no suffering, no discouragement is final for the God who stands within the shadows, keeping watch above his own. A prophet who can convey both these messages with power just may change the world. While Martin Luther King Jr lived on earth, I, his neighbour, did not listen to what he said. I was quick to pounce on his flaws, and slow to recognise my own sin. But because he stayed faithful, in the short view by offering his body as a target but never as a weapon, and in the long view by holding before us his dream, a dream of a new kingdom of peace and justice and live, he becomes a prophet for me, the unlikeliest of followers.
GK Chesterton
- Yancey writes:
I learned not to laugh or smile, and not to cry. I tried not to care or react: to cold or heat, to good smells or bad ones, to beauty or ugliness, to love or hate. In a perveted experiment, I broke my own arm against the metal frame of my bunk bed to test my mastery of pain.
I see now what I could not see then, that I was erecting a strong stone fortress against love, for I thought myself unlovable......
- Sounds exactly like me!!... u mean I am not alone in feeling this way?!?
- Yancey found optimism in Chesterton's writings, esp in Orthodoxy and The Man Who Was Thursday, where Chesterton makes a case for optimism amidst the gloom of the world.... he also found that asking the question : ' Where does pleasure come from?' eventually led him back to God.... and that there are many good gifts - nature, music, romantic love, etc....which ultimately originates from our Creator...
- 'I am ordinary in the correct sense of the term. said Chesterton, 'which means the acceptance of an order; a Creator and the Creation, the common sense of gratitude for Creation, life and love as gifts permanently good, marriage and chivalry as laws rightly controlling them.'.......
- Yancey : Under his influence I too realised the need to become more 'ordinary'....
- 'The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult ; and left untried, ' he (Chesterton) said. The real question is not 'Why is Christianity so bad when it claims to be so good?' but rather 'Why are all human beings so bad when they claim to be so good?'... Chesterton readily admitted that the church had badly failed the gospel. In fact, he said , one of the strongest arguments in favour of Christianity is the failure of Christians, who thereby prove what the Bible teaches about the Fall and original sin.
- How true!!! In fact listen to what Chesterton writes when The Times asked a number of writers for essays on the topic, 'What's Wrong with the World?' :
Dear Sirs:
I am.
Sincerely yours,
G.K Chesterton
- Would loved to have seen their responses to that line! But indeed, how true it is, isn't it?
Dr. Paul Brand
- does this guy even need any further introduction?!?
- Loved reading 2 of his books which was co-authored with Philip Yancey- The Gift of Pain and Fearfully and Wonderfully Made and In His Image.... He is one of my favourite and most celebrated Christian doctor that I know of.....
-"The most precious possesion any human being is his spirit - his will to live, his sense of dignity, his personality. Though technically we may be concerned with tendons, bones and nerve endings, we must never lose sight of the person we are treating."- Dr. Paul Brand
- As Brand reflects now, the process of following his patients through the full rehabilitation cycle ultimately challenged his whole approach towards medicine. Somewhere, perhaps in medical school, doctors acquire an attitude that seems suspiciously like hubris: 'Oh, you've come just in time. Count on me. I think I'll be able to save you......Brand began to see his chief contribution as one he had not studied in medical school: to join with his patient as a partner in the task of restoring dignity to a broken spirit. 'We are treating a person, not a disease,' he says. 'That is the true meaning of rehabilitation.'
- Like Yancey, I was beginning to see my problem....I was wrestling with issues facing humanity, yet I have not learned to love individuals....well, not in the manner that God requires of me....not in the way that glorifies Him....and His created beings.....and to make matters worst, I was in the healthcare profession where we are expected to 'care' and love people.....have I lost the vision along the way? Have I got so disllusioned and disappointed that I forgot why God called me to this particular profession?!?
- I love this quote of Dr. Brand's.....
' Because of where I practised medicine, I never made much money at it. But I tell you that as I look back over a lifetime of surgery, the host of friends who once were patients bring me more joy than wealth could ever bring. I first met them when they were suffering and afraid. As their doctor, I shared their pain. Now that I am old, it is their love and gratitude that illuminates the continuing pathway of my life. It's strange - those of us who involve ourselves in the places where there is the most suffering, look back in surprise to find that it was there that we discovered the reality of joy.'
Robert Coles
- this was a Christian psychiatrist who became famous after deciding to interview children from various background (Children of Crisis) and found that those from disadvantaged families to have greater inner strength that he has not seen in others....whilst those from privileged backgrounds were more bored, alienated.......and came to this : It was true that the poor were cursed......Yet in a strange but undeniable way, the poor were also blessed, for whatever reason, with qualities such as courage and love and a willing dependence on God. The irony: good humanists work all their lives to improve the condition of the disadvantaged, but for what? To raise them to the level of the upper classes so that they too can experience boredom, alienation and decadence?
- At the end of his research, he had discovered that the poor are mysteriously blessed and that the rich live in peril. He learned that what matters most comes not from without - the circumstances of life- but from within, inside the heart of an individual man or woman or child. He had begun his research with a head full of phrases such as 'guilt complex', 'character disorders' and 'response to stimuli'. He had emerged with old fashioned words like 'conscience' and 'sin' and 'free will'.
Tolstoy & Dostoevsky
- In his spiritual autobiography, A Confession, Leo Tolstoy mentions that Christians sometimes treat each other worse than they treat people of other faiths.....
- Yancey goes on to say ...." As I think about individual Christians I know, I see some people made incomparably better by their faith, and some made measurably worse. For every gracious, kind-spirited, forgiving Christian, I can point to a proud, mean-spirited, judgmental one. In my own experience, those who strive the hardest and believe the most fervently are sometimes the least attractive persons. Like the Pharisees of Jesus' day, they get caught up in competition and end up self-righteous rather than righteous. Politicians tell me their nastiest letters come from people who quote the Bible and claim to speak for God - which I easily believe since my mailbox shows the same pattern. How do I resolve the tension between the ideals of the Gospel and the actuality of those who profess it?"
- Indeed, how do we resolve that conflict? In fact, I think most of the time, I err on the 'legalistic' and Pharisaic side of the coin...... I judge others by their failures whilst forgetting the grace of God in my own life...... For Tolstoy, this apparent discrepancy finally tore him apart, whereas for Dostoevsky, he found the grace of God in his own failures.....he saw grace in the lives of his prison cell mates....in many of his novels- Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Possessed, The Brothers Karamazov..... he learned in prison that the gospel of grace infiltrates this world not primarily through words and rational arguments but through deeds, through love.....
- As Yancey aptly puts it : 'Today , I claim these two Russians as my spiritual guides because they help me accept a central paradox of the Christian life. From Tolstoy, I learn the need to look inside, to the kingdom of God that is within me. In that glance, I see how miserably I fall short of the high ideals of the gospel. But from Dostoevsky, I learn the full extent of grace. Not only the kingdom of God is within me; God himself dwells there. Where sin increased, grace increased all the more - is how Paul expressed it in Romans.'
Mahatma Gandhi
-Though Gandhi was not a Christian by belief or practice, he attempted to an impressive degree to live out some of Jesus' principles.........he modelled his principles on what Jesus taught.....love for your enemies.....non violence... he once said ; ' No cause, no matter how just, merited bloodshed. I would die for the cause, but there is no cause I am prepared to kill for. '
- Yance asked a very valid question as he read of Gandhi's life : 'When I read the history of Mahatma Gandhi alongside the history of the Christian church, I cannot help wondering what went wrong. Why did it take a Hindu to embrace the principles of reconciliation, humility and vicarious sacrifice so clearly modelled by Jesus himself? Gandhi credited Jesus as his source for these life principles, and he worked like a disciplined soldier to put them into practice. What has kept Christians from following Jesus with the same abandon? '
- Indeed, I ask myself, that very same question....What has kept ME from following Jesus with the same fervour and abandon???
- Sadly, it was the church itself that turned Gandhi away from Christ....the failure of man, caused this Hindu to reject Christ.....in Gandhi's words - 'The church did not make a favourable impression on me,' he remembers, citing dull sermons and a congregation who 'appeared rather to be worldly-minded, people going to church for recreation and in conformity to custom.'
- It's amazing....because I once remembered how I had those same exact thoughts....the only difference, I cling on to Christ even more tightly despite my experience in church....whilst Gandhi chose to walk away....How tragic!
Dr. C. Everett Koop
- I have never heard of this name before I read this book....and I did not know who he was, but after reading this excerpt, I found inspiration in this man- a paediatric surgeon who managed to reconcile the fact that a man of faith can get involved in politics without making crucial compromises........ He walked the difficult road of a public person with a Christian faith....and he spoke out for what he believed, no matter how unpopular it would make him.....and he emerged a winner.....the best Surgeon General America has ever had...a man of integrity.......How we need more people like him!!
John Donne
- Yancey found John Donne - the Elizabethan poet four centuries ago who wrote 'Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions'.......with the most appropriate 'message' which he used while speaking at a friend's funeral.....a man with AIDS .... who was also a Christian.....
- I on the other hand had experience of Donne (unknown to me at that time!) through a movie/ play that I watched at one of my oncological posting... 'Wit' which was written by Margaret Edson.......
- It was in this book that I discovered the life of John Donne... a dean who lived in the time of the plague in London...and who contracted the illness in his service to the people that he served......
- Yancey writes : ' The central reason I keep returning to Donne's Devotions , as on the night of David's funeral, is that the book recounts each crisis in detail (a crisis of fear, crisis of meaning and a crisis of death), and continues to yield new insights into these primal confrontations with the mystery of suffering.....Although Devotions does not answer the philosophical questions, it does record Donne's emotional resolution , a gradual movement towards peace. At first - confined to bed, churning out prayers without answers, comtemplating death, regurgitation guilt - he can find no relief from fear. Obsessed, he reviews every biblical occurence of the word 'fear'. As he does so, it dawns on him that life will always include circumstances that incite fear: if not ilness, financial hardship, if not poverty, rejection, if not loneliness, failure. In such a world, Donne had a choice: to fear God, or to fear everything else......Donne concludes his best course is to cultivate a proper fear of the Lord, which fear can supplant all others: 'as thou hast given me a repentance, not to be repented of, so give me , O Lord, a fear, of which I may not be afraid'. I learned from Donne, when faced with doubts, to review my alternatives. If for whatever reason I refuse to trust God, what, then, can I trust?'
- Donne suffered pain and illness....and questioned the meaning of it all.....he knew the crisis of fear...and the crisis of meaning....he struggled to accept death.....and emerged with a 'holy indifference' to death...not by discounting death's horrors, but by a renewed confidence in resurrection.....'O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? ....... God knows all this world's weight and burden and heaviness, said Donne in a sermon; 'And if there were not a weight of future glory to counterpoise it, we should all sink into nothing.' ...
- I love this quote...which reverberated in my mind whilst watching 'Wit' - "Death be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so...One short sleep past, we wake eternally, And death shall be no more, Death thou shalt die."
Annie Dillard
- yet another unsung and unknown hero......how the modern world has suffered for the lost of the love for reading.....the classics i mean..... I was introduced to Annie Dillard by Yancey.....and the 'rebellion' which she went through sounds very much like mine....
- Yancey writes: ' Annie did have one short fling of rebellion against God, she told me. After four consecutive summers at the church camp, she got fed up with the hypocrisy of people coming to church to show off their clothes and wanting to make a major statement, she decided to confront the ministers head-on. The senior minister terrified her, so she marched into the assistant minister's office and delivered her spiel about hypocrisy. A wise man, in one fell swoop he accomplished for her what took me many years: he separated the church from God, and did so in a dignified way, rather than demeaned, his teenage critic. 'He was an experienced, calm man in a three-piece suit; he had a moustache and wore glasses. I was this little high school kid who thought I was the only person in the world with complaints against the church. He heard me out and then said, " You are right, honey, there is a lot of hypocrisy," Annie felt her arguments dissolved. Then the minister proceeded to load her down with books by C.S. Lewis which, he suggested, she might find useful for a final-year essay....To Annie's consternation, he was right....After ploughing through four straight volumes of C.S.Lewis she fell right back in the arms of Christianity. Her rebellion lasted one month. '
- Hehe.....sounds like me....only difference was there was no such minister to counsel me......and I stumbled upon C.S.Lewis by accident....through a friend of mine.....
- I like her quote: ' I alternate between thinking of the planet as a home - dear and familiar stone hearth and garden - and as a hard land of exile in which we are all sojourners.' ...pretty much sums up the description I have of this blog.....
There are many many more giants of faith out there...people like Frederick Buechner, Henri Nouwen, Shusaku Endo, etc ....there would not be enough pages to write about them....but I must say that I am totally awed by this book....and would like to read all their writings for my ownself......and to collect my own 'Hall of Fame' of literary Christian writers....giants of faith who stood in the gap for their generation......and impacting their world for Christ......
Saturday, July 11, 2009
A caring church....
Again...have been so deeply impressed by the simple, yet utterly profound insight of Selwyn Hughes on the whole theme of caring and how the church should care that I really must write his thoughts down before I forget in time to come....
In the EDWJ issue of Jan/Feb 2009:
Five ingredients that go into making a community of God's people a model of His love and care:
1) A caring church is excited about the challenge of bringing it's member into maturity
- problems among Christians are God's way of highlighting the need for maturity
- difficulties in a local church should be seen not as an obstacle but as an opportunity
- A problem, after all, is only 'a solution in disguise'
- Is your local church or fellowship plagued by problems?
- Perhaps you need this word today to remind you that there is no growth without pain
- When we take personal responsibility for the upholding of Christ and the development of fellow Christians in our local congregation, we fulfil our responsibility as part of the Body of Christ, our Saviour
2) A caring church is a church whose leaders demonstrate care and concern for each other, thus setting a good example to the flock
- It is the responsibility of leaders in any church to maintain a high standard of holiness for no church can rise higher than its leadership in the quality of its fellowship and caring
- Care is demonstrated by church members spending time together, not just in business meetings but also in relationship-building
3) In a caring church people can share their deep feelings and hurts without fear of rejection
- How difficult this truth can be in real life!!
- In Selwyn Hughes words - " Well, if you have a mist in the pulpit, you are certain to get a fog in the pew! Such preaching have turned a lot of christians into phoneys,"
- If we care for people, we will give them the freedom to tell us how they feel, with no fear of being rejected
4) A caring church is a church with a system of loving support
- Love isn't about sentiment or feeling - its about giving real help to real people
- Problems are anticipated, strategies planned and lasting solutions developed
5) A caring church is a church whose members are willing to lay down their lives for others
- Direct quote from that morning's devotion:
In all my travels I have come across only one church where a commitment is made by every member to place the interests of the other members before their own.I found this church in Pusan, Korea. The atmosphere in that church was the most wonderful experience in over 40 years of ministry. The minister told me that whenever someone joins this church, either through conversion or moving into the community from elsewhere, all the other members gather round the new member and recite together these words:
'We covenant to love you with the love of the Lord Jesus Christ - the love that puts your interests as a priority. Nothing you do will stop us loving you. If your actions dishonour Christ, we will tell you so, but in a spirit of love. We will pray for you daily by name. Anything we have is at your disposal. We will honestly tell you how we feel about the level of your spiritual maturity from time to time. If this means pain for each of us, we will trust our relationship enough to take that risk, realising that in 'speaking the truth in love we grow up in every way into Christ who is the head'. We are committed to you because of what od has designed us to be be in His loving creation.'
- Wow!!! what a commitment!!
In the EDWJ issue of Jan/Feb 2009:
Five ingredients that go into making a community of God's people a model of His love and care:
1) A caring church is excited about the challenge of bringing it's member into maturity
- problems among Christians are God's way of highlighting the need for maturity
- difficulties in a local church should be seen not as an obstacle but as an opportunity
- A problem, after all, is only 'a solution in disguise'
- Is your local church or fellowship plagued by problems?
- Perhaps you need this word today to remind you that there is no growth without pain
- When we take personal responsibility for the upholding of Christ and the development of fellow Christians in our local congregation, we fulfil our responsibility as part of the Body of Christ, our Saviour
2) A caring church is a church whose leaders demonstrate care and concern for each other, thus setting a good example to the flock
- It is the responsibility of leaders in any church to maintain a high standard of holiness for no church can rise higher than its leadership in the quality of its fellowship and caring
- Care is demonstrated by church members spending time together, not just in business meetings but also in relationship-building
3) In a caring church people can share their deep feelings and hurts without fear of rejection
- How difficult this truth can be in real life!!
- In Selwyn Hughes words - " Well, if you have a mist in the pulpit, you are certain to get a fog in the pew! Such preaching have turned a lot of christians into phoneys,"
- If we care for people, we will give them the freedom to tell us how they feel, with no fear of being rejected
4) A caring church is a church with a system of loving support
- Love isn't about sentiment or feeling - its about giving real help to real people
- Problems are anticipated, strategies planned and lasting solutions developed
5) A caring church is a church whose members are willing to lay down their lives for others
- Direct quote from that morning's devotion:
In all my travels I have come across only one church where a commitment is made by every member to place the interests of the other members before their own.I found this church in Pusan, Korea. The atmosphere in that church was the most wonderful experience in over 40 years of ministry. The minister told me that whenever someone joins this church, either through conversion or moving into the community from elsewhere, all the other members gather round the new member and recite together these words:
'We covenant to love you with the love of the Lord Jesus Christ - the love that puts your interests as a priority. Nothing you do will stop us loving you. If your actions dishonour Christ, we will tell you so, but in a spirit of love. We will pray for you daily by name. Anything we have is at your disposal. We will honestly tell you how we feel about the level of your spiritual maturity from time to time. If this means pain for each of us, we will trust our relationship enough to take that risk, realising that in 'speaking the truth in love we grow up in every way into Christ who is the head'. We are committed to you because of what od has designed us to be be in His loving creation.'
- Wow!!! what a commitment!!
Saturday, June 27, 2009
The Art of Caring
Every now and then, I am reminded why I love reading the writings of Selwyn Hughes...He is one of the few of the earliest minister who's writing impacted me in my early days as a Christian....especially in the area of the 'caring' ministry.....His insight have proved valuable....and accurate....wished I had known some of these 'pearls' before I embarked on my own caring ministry.....maybe I would have less scars to show for it......
The last issue of EDWJ (Feb 2009) has an excellent issue on how to care - for others and ourselves....I loved the section on pitfalls to avoid.....
1) We need to learn first of all how to be 'LOVE RECEIVERS' - 1 John 4: 7 - 21
I struggled with this issue for the longest of time...because partly, it is easier to give than to receive...because a lot of times, we feel that receiving means that we are the 'weaker' party.....How wrong we can be! However, for me, the biggest struggle was that I hate 'troubling' others with my problems...never knowing if people were willing to listen.....or even stand with me in those times...... I hated to be obligated to others.....But now , I am learning slowly to accept help....to be more thick-skinned in sharing with others....and asking for help....
2) We must never manipulate others - Mark 10: 17-31
Sometimes we forget and then manipulate others into doing what we think they should be doing......
3) We must curb our curiosity - Hebrews 3: 1- 15
This is when we need to draw a line between helping versus our own curiosity about other people's problems ( ie the Gossip Queen within us!)
4) We must avoid caring where care is not needed - 2 Tim 1: 3-14
5) Care for one at a time (disciplined desire) - Proverbs 2:1-10
We need to be aware of our capacity to care...usually that means one person at a time....
6) We need to avoid caring for others to the detriment of our own families - 1 tim 5:1-8
Used to make this mistake...until the Lord showed me that my role in my family is greater, if not equal to my role in church.....and that over the years He has shown me that my role in caring my unbelieving family members probably supercedes the strangers I can help out in the community....
7) We need to learn when to let go - Acts 8; 26-40
How true!!!!
8) We must always make sure that when we care we have spiritual support and back-up - Acts 12: 1-17
How often we forget this! This is of utmost importance for people in the caring ministry......isn't it?!?
Lord, teach me to be a 'CARER' like you did.....one who knew how to minister to others....and to care for ourselves at the same time.......
The last issue of EDWJ (Feb 2009) has an excellent issue on how to care - for others and ourselves....I loved the section on pitfalls to avoid.....
1) We need to learn first of all how to be 'LOVE RECEIVERS' - 1 John 4: 7 - 21
I struggled with this issue for the longest of time...because partly, it is easier to give than to receive...because a lot of times, we feel that receiving means that we are the 'weaker' party.....How wrong we can be! However, for me, the biggest struggle was that I hate 'troubling' others with my problems...never knowing if people were willing to listen.....or even stand with me in those times...... I hated to be obligated to others.....But now , I am learning slowly to accept help....to be more thick-skinned in sharing with others....and asking for help....
2) We must never manipulate others - Mark 10: 17-31
Sometimes we forget and then manipulate others into doing what we think they should be doing......
3) We must curb our curiosity - Hebrews 3: 1- 15
This is when we need to draw a line between helping versus our own curiosity about other people's problems ( ie the Gossip Queen within us!)
4) We must avoid caring where care is not needed - 2 Tim 1: 3-14
5) Care for one at a time (disciplined desire) - Proverbs 2:1-10
We need to be aware of our capacity to care...usually that means one person at a time....
6) We need to avoid caring for others to the detriment of our own families - 1 tim 5:1-8
Used to make this mistake...until the Lord showed me that my role in my family is greater, if not equal to my role in church.....and that over the years He has shown me that my role in caring my unbelieving family members probably supercedes the strangers I can help out in the community....
7) We need to learn when to let go - Acts 8; 26-40
How true!!!!
8) We must always make sure that when we care we have spiritual support and back-up - Acts 12: 1-17
How often we forget this! This is of utmost importance for people in the caring ministry......isn't it?!?
Lord, teach me to be a 'CARER' like you did.....one who knew how to minister to others....and to care for ourselves at the same time.......
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Reminded of His LOVE, reassured of His faithfulness....
Was really really glad that I was able to leave work early on a sunday night (after my night shift on saturday!) and actually be able to make it for church on a sunday morning!!! It's been a while since I have been able to get to church/ even cell group....so it was good to be back in the house of God again , after what seems like a loong time!!!
The speaker today was Ps Sam Farina (who was also my church retreat main speaker this year)....and was very very blessed by his sermon......really needed the reminders that he talked about today...how when the tough times come, our vision gets blurry....yet in the midst of it all we need to remember:
1) He sees us even if we can't see Him..
How true!!! Liked what he said that when we cry, our vision gets blurred...and we can't see clearly...yet, even when we can't see or sense Him, He is always there.....like it says in the Bible - He cares even for a sparrow......How much more valuable are we?!???
2) Believing is seeing...
3) He responds to our obedience
This is like direct contrast to what the world says.....isn't it?!?
Liked the examples he named.....like Moses asked by God to remove his sandals at the burning bush ( and the fact that he was probably surrounded by sheep dung at that time).....or when Naaman was asked to wash at the river....... or the blind man whom Jesus asked what he wanted ( to be healed of his blindness)....
4) He wants to heal our pain, not assign blame....
How true! But how often we forget this, that we always ask who is to blame....Like the when Jesus' disciples asked him about the blind man and who sinned ( him or his parents) causing his blindness.....I love Jesus' reply.... No one sinned, this happened so that the glory of God may be revealed through him....WOW!!! Deep answer loaded with heaps of meaning!!!
At that moment.....my heart was touched....I needed a desperate reminder that God loves me.....and that He wants to reveal His glory and power in my weakness......was also reflecting the fact that God is using my hands to heal people.....lots of time, I questioned whether doing medicine was the right thing for me....I feel ill-equipped mentally, physically and emotionally....din feel that I was doing much for others....however, it was only today that I actually received affirmation that my care for patients and their survival is only possible through His grace...........also realised that my singlehood can also be a way He can reveal His power and glory...I dunno how....I dunno why....but I believe that He cares...and He knows the desires of my heart...and that if I believe and walk with Him, I will see that miracle in my life!!!
The speaker today was Ps Sam Farina (who was also my church retreat main speaker this year)....and was very very blessed by his sermon......really needed the reminders that he talked about today...how when the tough times come, our vision gets blurry....yet in the midst of it all we need to remember:
1) He sees us even if we can't see Him..
How true!!! Liked what he said that when we cry, our vision gets blurred...and we can't see clearly...yet, even when we can't see or sense Him, He is always there.....like it says in the Bible - He cares even for a sparrow......How much more valuable are we?!???
2) Believing is seeing...
3) He responds to our obedience
This is like direct contrast to what the world says.....isn't it?!?
Liked the examples he named.....like Moses asked by God to remove his sandals at the burning bush ( and the fact that he was probably surrounded by sheep dung at that time).....or when Naaman was asked to wash at the river....... or the blind man whom Jesus asked what he wanted ( to be healed of his blindness)....
4) He wants to heal our pain, not assign blame....
How true! But how often we forget this, that we always ask who is to blame....Like the when Jesus' disciples asked him about the blind man and who sinned ( him or his parents) causing his blindness.....I love Jesus' reply.... No one sinned, this happened so that the glory of God may be revealed through him....WOW!!! Deep answer loaded with heaps of meaning!!!
At that moment.....my heart was touched....I needed a desperate reminder that God loves me.....and that He wants to reveal His glory and power in my weakness......was also reflecting the fact that God is using my hands to heal people.....lots of time, I questioned whether doing medicine was the right thing for me....I feel ill-equipped mentally, physically and emotionally....din feel that I was doing much for others....however, it was only today that I actually received affirmation that my care for patients and their survival is only possible through His grace...........also realised that my singlehood can also be a way He can reveal His power and glory...I dunno how....I dunno why....but I believe that He cares...and He knows the desires of my heart...and that if I believe and walk with Him, I will see that miracle in my life!!!
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Roller coaster ride....
As usual.....time passes as one gets entrenched in a flurry of activities...
from having to do an extended cardio posting ( no thanks to the H1N1 outbreak).....to changing work place in the middle of the month and having to adjust to hour-long examinations of every new patient....to the lack of efficiency and competence in some 'nurses' (if you could even call them that!).....to missing my nephew's birth....to even simple things like having to endure a 40 min ride to work every day.....it has indeed been a roller-coaster ride of events and emotions.....Not to mention the wedding I had to attend recently....
Have been contemplating this issue called 'love'.....or what is more commonly known as 'romantic love'.....could never understand how a man and a woman can 'love' each other so much to want to spend all their time with each other...much less get married and have kids....yes, I am cynical......but yet at the same time, it is a beautiful and amazing miracle that I have yet to understand.....
Guess, in a way, I will never understand it.....probably explains that fact of why I am still single at this age...tsk, tsk ......I see the heads out there shaking in dismay at my predicament...puzzled as to the fact why I as a woman would not want to be in 'love'....to get married...to have kids...
Don't get me wrong....I would love to fall in love, be swept off my feet, receive flowers and surprises....I would want to get married and have kids.....but I think one also has to be realistic.....that we live in an imperfect world....with fellow human beings who have also fallen from grace.......that we need to be careful as to who we give our hearts and life to....
For me...I can only pray that God will bring the correct person into my life....and that I would recognize him and that we would have the opportunity to develop a beautiful friendship...which could lead to something more.....
For now....I can only sit back and enjoy the roller coaster ride whilst it lasts.....and hopefully not end up to dizzy or nauseous at the end of it.......
from having to do an extended cardio posting ( no thanks to the H1N1 outbreak).....to changing work place in the middle of the month and having to adjust to hour-long examinations of every new patient....to the lack of efficiency and competence in some 'nurses' (if you could even call them that!).....to missing my nephew's birth....to even simple things like having to endure a 40 min ride to work every day.....it has indeed been a roller-coaster ride of events and emotions.....Not to mention the wedding I had to attend recently....
Have been contemplating this issue called 'love'.....or what is more commonly known as 'romantic love'.....could never understand how a man and a woman can 'love' each other so much to want to spend all their time with each other...much less get married and have kids....yes, I am cynical......but yet at the same time, it is a beautiful and amazing miracle that I have yet to understand.....
Guess, in a way, I will never understand it.....probably explains that fact of why I am still single at this age...tsk, tsk ......I see the heads out there shaking in dismay at my predicament...puzzled as to the fact why I as a woman would not want to be in 'love'....to get married...to have kids...
Don't get me wrong....I would love to fall in love, be swept off my feet, receive flowers and surprises....I would want to get married and have kids.....but I think one also has to be realistic.....that we live in an imperfect world....with fellow human beings who have also fallen from grace.......that we need to be careful as to who we give our hearts and life to....
For me...I can only pray that God will bring the correct person into my life....and that I would recognize him and that we would have the opportunity to develop a beautiful friendship...which could lead to something more.....
For now....I can only sit back and enjoy the roller coaster ride whilst it lasts.....and hopefully not end up to dizzy or nauseous at the end of it.......
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)