He's alive and we've only just begun to worship Him

He's alive - Suzy Yaraei

Full surrender

This past weekend was super packed for me, but for all the right reasons. Saturday was spent at Sentosa first and then at Wesley for Day 1 of Karar. We ended around 5.15pm. I was wondering how to occupy my time because I had a dinner appointment with two dear university friends at 7.30pm. One of the Karar co-leaders suggested that I attend Wesley’s Saturday service which had already started at 5pm in the Wesley hall just a few steps away from where we were standing. So I took her suggestion and went for the service. 

To my delight, the new pastor-in-charge Reverend Dr Kow Shih Ming was giving the sermon. His message was The Key to Following Jesus with the scripture reading from Luke 9:23. He noted that Christians usually wanted Jesus in their cars but not in the driver’s seat. This was because when Jesus was driving, He was in charge and He drove according to where He wanted to go; not where we wanted to go. His question to us was “Who is in charge of our lives?” Is it Jesus or is it us? 

The key to following Jesus, he noted, was total surrender. It didn’t mean that we become totally passive; rather, surrender is the glad and voluntary acknowledgment that there is a God and it is not me. His purposes are wiser and better than our desires. Jesus does not come to rearrange the outside of our life the way we want. He comes to rearrange the inside of our life the way God wants. Surrender takes courage in trusting Jesus and that our lives will be better than Him in charge. Surrender is a daily matter. Surrender means learning to be authentic for God and seeking to handle everything in a way that honours God. Surrender, however, comes with a cost. It means dying to our self and handing all aspects of our lives over to Jesus. The vicar gave us a paper key at the beginning of the service and at the end of it, he asked us to write our names and number the date as an act of commitment towards a full surrender to God. 

The service was also meaningful to me because of Holy Communion. I attend an Anglican church and it was quite educational to me to see how Holy Communion was conducted slightly differently in a Methodist setting. One of the differences was that the vicar and others leading in the Communion were kneeling before the Cross when they were reciting the prayers before partaking of the Communion. I found this humbling because it was such a stark visual reminder of our status before God, as well as His sacrifice for man.

On Sunday, I was deciding whether to attend my own church’s 10.30am service. Around 9am, my alarm sounded. After another 45 minutes, I jumped out of bed, took a shower and hailed a cab to church because I got a message that I was to meet in church after service to go to a home of one of my Kyrgyzstan mission trip mates. We were having a lunch gathering there because the missionary had returned home to Singapore for a few months. 

I was just in time for the 10.30am service. Again, there was an unexpected speaker in Reverend Canon Terry Wong, vicar of St Jame’s Church, who spoke on temptation. Broadly, he defined temptation as anything that takes us away or distracts us from being the person that God has intended us to be. Drawing on Matthew 4:1-11, he noted that temptation usually comes in three ways. 

First, the Devil tempts us to focus only on the one need of that hour, with all other things fading into the background. That one thing would have seemed the most important, akin to an object in a photo with a shallow depth of field. This need comes in various forms – the need for affirmation; the need for intimacy; the need for sex; the need for power, the need for money; and so on. He urged us not to be deceived and not to open the door, not even a crack, to temptation. “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” 

Second, the Devil tempts us through half-truths. Half-truths are lies. Defeats, failures and setbacks are temporary in a Christian's life, as long as one is submitted to God. We are already victors in Christ for eternity.

Lastly, the Devil tempts us by focusing on the end result through our need for significance. The lesson is not to reach there in our own way but by following God’s way. Rev Canon Terry summed up his message by saying that Jesus’ temptation took place in the desert, which suggests that we all have to face our struggles in our own desert. However, that place where we are alone is also a place of deep communion with God. He also tells us about this talk that he had with someone who works with former drug addicts who have turned to Christ. He asked this person: “How do you know that a person has not reverted back to drugs again?” The reply: “I keep tabs and ask him about his personal walk with God and I also take note of his fellowship with other Christians.” This was a reminder to me of how I was to keep tabs on my spiritual health – whether I was spending time alone with God as well as connecting to other Christians in fellowship.

I went for lunch and returned home around 4pm to do some work. After finishing the work, I reflected on the fact that the Singapore church was receiving its next generation of pastors, which included my own pastor Daniel Wee, Rev Dr Kow and Rev Canon Wong. As Rev Canon Wong remarked before he started his sermon, this new generation of pastors have some very big shoes to fill. He asked that we would pray for them because they are the leaders who will oversee the kingdom of God in Singapore over the next one to two decades. I felt quite privileged to have heard from two of them over just one weekend, without actually planning to in the first place.  

Thanksgiving

I'm thankful to God for a few things today - a nice lunch that was too short, an e-mail that informed me that I was no longer needed in someone else's life, roadside flowers that greeted me in the morning, a lovely dinner that included eating preserved titbits with Yakun coffee with shoe repair on the side, and finally time for myself before I sleep around midnight. I'm also very happy for a dear friend who is being called to the bar tomorrow and will be returning to be with her husband in the US soon.

Seven Fountains and 10 reflections

• People enrich us, so connectedness is important. Be humble to know that one receives even as one gives. 

• I can impose clear and strict boundaries in both ministry and life, but rigidity is crippling. God brought to my mind the analogy of water. How I need to be more open and more sensitive. To go with the flow and to be more fluid in my responses to people and situations.

• Be sure that you love the life you're living now...Then you can trust that God will reveal to you the direction to go when the time comes. Don't try to know now what you only have to know a few years from now.* 

• Receive God's gifting and calling with joy and use them because they are for His service. Oftentimes, I regard them as a burden and view them with trepidation because I am not sure where they will lead me to. 

• God knows me through and through. His challenge to me is to open up and become vulnerable to people so that they, too, can open up to me.

• I have to trust that the more faithful I am in my solitude, the more fruitful I will be in my community.*

• I need to stay close to the source of all living water - Jesus. Our service for God does not detract from the first necessary thing of spending time in the presence of Jesus. 

• Why not always give and forgive, encourage and empower, give thanks and offer praise? We have to think generously, speak generously and act generously. When we refrain from giving, with a scarcity mentality, the little we have will become less. When we give generously, with an abundance mentality, what we give away will multiply.*

• To have courage is to listen to our heart, to speak from our heart and to act from our heart. Our heart, which is the centre of our being, is the seat of courage.*

• At the core of Jesus is a heart of compassion.

* Extract from Henri Nouwen's Sabbactical Journey. 

Resting in the Lord

Back from solitude with God at a Jesuit silent retreat in Chiang Mai for five days. 60 solid A4 pages of notes and reflections. Well worth the experience. Will read through and reflect on those pages and write short excerpts. Watch this space.