"Be strong and courageous, because you will lead these people to inherit the land I swore to their forefathers to give them. Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go. Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful. Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go."
--Joshua 1:6-9 (NIV)
This morning, in line with the Chinese New Year, Pastor Kuan Ming spoke on 'God's Way to Success and Prosperity'; his text was taken from Joshua 1:1-9.
I was at first somewhat alarmed when I heard the words 'success' and 'prosperity' because I'm quite aware of the much famed and derided Prosperity Gospel. Not that I know exactly what it's about, but basically it comes across to me as something that sounds like a motivational session with Anthony Robbins: Awaken the Giant Within!!!
But Pastor Kuan Ming's message was nothing like that. And when I read the passage, I noticed that the words 'prosperity' and 'success' appear in the very Word of God. I read it in the NASB version in church, and I've quoted the NIV translation above.
How are we to be successful and prosperous? By obeying God's law and meditating on His Word at all times. That simple. And that hard.
Three times God says: be strong and courageous. And the third time, God promises to be with us wherever we go.
Then Pastor Kuan Ming mentioned the well-known encounter between Joshua and the Captain of the Lord's Army.
Now when Joshua was near Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went up to him and asked, "Are you for us or for our enemies?"
"Neither," he replied, "but as commander of the army of the LORD I have now come." Then Joshua fell facedown to the ground in reverence, and asked him, "What message does my Lord have for his servant?"
--josh 5:13-14 (NIV)
He said, we don't recruit the Captain of the Lord's Army; He recruits us.
I'm just mentioning all this because I think I need to be reminded of these things from time to time.
To be reminded that success and prosperity are Biblical.
That God's Word is central.
That God's law must be obeyed.
That God will be with me, and because of that I can be strong and courageous.
That God is my Master, not the other way around.
Remember.
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Friday, February 16, 2007
Back on Track
This blog had just begun gathering steam, being updated several times a week, when technical difficulties brought it to a complete halt. No posts. No comments. No way of moving forward. Though technical issues remain, it is back on track.
The Bible study group I belong too - it stopped toward the end of the last semester, and several key members were away over Interim. Tonight, three weeks into the second semester, we are meeting to discuss time, topic, and reevaluate the purpose of our Bible study. It should be back on track.
My accountability group had a difficult time coordinating a time for all of us to meet due to our new schedules this spring semester. We finally met up last Monday. I think we are back on track.
Dorm Prayer has had major fluctuations in attendance. We have twelve people, and then we have two. I hope we get on track.
My devotional life, prayer life, and other disciplines - I practice them regularly, but my heart is in them only so often. I get tired, distracted, and hurried. I struggle to be obedient to God, to do what I know I ought and to avoid what I know I must. I try to view my day, my activities, my friendships, and my time in the light of who He is and not in the light of how I am. I often fail. I wish I knew how to stay on track.
I recall being CF President back in school. During our committee meetings, the discussion would invariably wander way off topic. We knew each other too well, and we had way too much fun. My voice was the voice of reason. I knew what we had to decide each meeting, and what could afford to wait. Always, I had the agenda in my mind, and when we strayed too far, I would sound the oft repeated call: "Focus, people, focus!" To this day, I just need to whipser the word "focus" with that group of people, and we laugh over old times, about how I kept us on track.
How much precious time is lost when we get off track. I am impatient to grow, to mature. I want to be making constant, or at least consistent, progress. I do not want to live with any sin a minute longer than I have too. And yet, I cannot keep focus. And then I find myself off track.
And then. I. Beat. Myself. Up.
Not that it gets me back on track any faster - it slows me down actually. Not that it makes me feel any better, except in some twisted way. You know what I speak of. I tell myself that as a follower of Christ, I have recieved the Holy Spirit and have thus been empowered to...
...to what? Be perfect? Be infailable? Be free from all personal struggles? Not to make light of failure in the Christian walk, not to make light of sin, but at what point did I decide that I was never going to go off track anymore? If that is possible, someone forgot to give me the memo.
I have been empowered to grow. To keep continuing. To get back on track, even if I have to do it seventy-seven times a day. It is a meandering course I take, but God does not seem as interested in the shortest distance between two points as He is in persistance in pursuing Him. So, I get back on track, and try to focus just a little bit longer this time.
And, who knows. Maybe someday He will even call me a man after His own heart.
The Bible study group I belong too - it stopped toward the end of the last semester, and several key members were away over Interim. Tonight, three weeks into the second semester, we are meeting to discuss time, topic, and reevaluate the purpose of our Bible study. It should be back on track.
My accountability group had a difficult time coordinating a time for all of us to meet due to our new schedules this spring semester. We finally met up last Monday. I think we are back on track.
Dorm Prayer has had major fluctuations in attendance. We have twelve people, and then we have two. I hope we get on track.
My devotional life, prayer life, and other disciplines - I practice them regularly, but my heart is in them only so often. I get tired, distracted, and hurried. I struggle to be obedient to God, to do what I know I ought and to avoid what I know I must. I try to view my day, my activities, my friendships, and my time in the light of who He is and not in the light of how I am. I often fail. I wish I knew how to stay on track.
I recall being CF President back in school. During our committee meetings, the discussion would invariably wander way off topic. We knew each other too well, and we had way too much fun. My voice was the voice of reason. I knew what we had to decide each meeting, and what could afford to wait. Always, I had the agenda in my mind, and when we strayed too far, I would sound the oft repeated call: "Focus, people, focus!" To this day, I just need to whipser the word "focus" with that group of people, and we laugh over old times, about how I kept us on track.
How much precious time is lost when we get off track. I am impatient to grow, to mature. I want to be making constant, or at least consistent, progress. I do not want to live with any sin a minute longer than I have too. And yet, I cannot keep focus. And then I find myself off track.
And then. I. Beat. Myself. Up.
Not that it gets me back on track any faster - it slows me down actually. Not that it makes me feel any better, except in some twisted way. You know what I speak of. I tell myself that as a follower of Christ, I have recieved the Holy Spirit and have thus been empowered to...
...to what? Be perfect? Be infailable? Be free from all personal struggles? Not to make light of failure in the Christian walk, not to make light of sin, but at what point did I decide that I was never going to go off track anymore? If that is possible, someone forgot to give me the memo.
I have been empowered to grow. To keep continuing. To get back on track, even if I have to do it seventy-seven times a day. It is a meandering course I take, but God does not seem as interested in the shortest distance between two points as He is in persistance in pursuing Him. So, I get back on track, and try to focus just a little bit longer this time.
And, who knows. Maybe someday He will even call me a man after His own heart.
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
Slow to give praise
have been wanting to post this up for a week but couldn't due to busyness.
i'm not in the desert anymore. not that i'm totally near God but He's here and He hears. i finally managed to sit in silence for an hour in bed on sunday. on monday, i read about 8 chapters of Genesis. i felt satisfaction in these. now, i continue to try keeping up this discipline. i don't want to feel that dryness and lostness again. it hurts.
thanks for keeping me in prayer...
i'm not in the desert anymore. not that i'm totally near God but He's here and He hears. i finally managed to sit in silence for an hour in bed on sunday. on monday, i read about 8 chapters of Genesis. i felt satisfaction in these. now, i continue to try keeping up this discipline. i don't want to feel that dryness and lostness again. it hurts.
thanks for keeping me in prayer...
warkah kepada Allah
I've decided after reading Tee Ming's latest post that I will make public a "protected post" from my Xanga. It reflects my spiritual struggles, which still continue, with varying intensity (most days I don't even think about it, and apathy surely cannot be intensity). If this is a "dark night of the soul" as described by St. John of the Cross, it has not abated for one and a half years. Devotion has run dry, and various other ideologies present themselves as alternatives. But we have to blunder onward... in hope that the Light will come.
---
Dear Lord,
It seems so long since we last conversed. I guess I have been giving you the cold shoulder for the past month or so, but prior to this we've already had a major communication breakdown that has benefitted neither of us. Today while reading Susan Tang's book "Spiritual Intimacy" I realised the main problem. I have stopped confiding in you due to lack of trust. And I've not been real in the prayers that I have said - mainly intercession for others while doubting all the time whether any change or impact is possible at all.
My unilateral "Cold War" I wish to end. I will be brutally honest, because you reward such straightforwardness, as seen in the Psalms and even the Prophets. One year and 4 months later, I'm still disappointed deep down inside that you had to strike me with a lifelong condition when I felt closest to you. This condition has scarred our relationship by turning it into a roller coaster ride through Heaven and Hades. Though I had my most intimate moments during my times of sickness, it is this that has caused me to question whether any of it was real at all. Perhaps it was just the madness, the mercurial fluctuations that left me with both euphoric experiences and brutal bouts of bottomless descents into sorrow. How could I be sure that all the grandiose visions were really from you and not some internal source of sanitylessness?
I've learned to appreciate where I am, yes. I no longer yearn so badly for that American education that was taken away from me in moments of tremendous anguish. However, I have come to doubt your goodness. Richard Garnett said that love is your essence, and power mainly your attribute. How can this be? A powerless God is not god at all. A God without love, however, is simply a god of malevolence, but yet still a god. You say you love me as your son, and I wish to believe it, but it is just so bloody hard to do so!
As time passes, I find that some of those closest to me who have been bulwarks of support when my faith has been challenged are now themselves turning into liberals (heterodoxists?) or questioners.Why shake us up this way, Lord? Even as we dabble in Spongian seperation of "acceptable" doctrine from the "irrational" (to "modern" minds, at least), are we walking away from you? Is our salvation dependent on how accurate our theology is? Are unconventional beliefs pathways to eternal damnation, guided personally by the Great Deceiver and his minions? Help, God! Must we go through these fires of temptation to compromise, sanitize and/or rationalize to emerge on the other side purified of dross? I fear that we might be swallowed up by the fire and perish in the flames of sin! Come to our aid, O Lord! Help us resist the Evil One, as we pray the prayer you taught us, among many others.
My offence today is rank, and its stench rises up to you. A very minor infraction, some might say, but nevertheless a dangerous sign of relapse into recidivism. Of course, it is also a matter of embarrassment. But I don't trust myself, O Lord! I must pray for strength, day by day. I am but such a frail youth, bent over by the burden that lies on my back. O Forgiveness! O Grace! O God of Second Chances! Come to my aid and change me. Grant me understanding! Lead me to your truth! I've not been so direct in my petition for a long time. I suppose I have lost my foundation of belief that you can really make a difference in my life. But here I am, with a battered body and failing strength and faculties. I want to admit that I am broken. Please come into me once more and live in this cracked piece of pottery!
A broken spirit
and a contrite heart,
You will not despise
You will not despise.
You desire truth
in the inmost parts.
A broken spirit
and a contrite heart.
Amen. Amen. Amen.
---
Dear Lord,
It seems so long since we last conversed. I guess I have been giving you the cold shoulder for the past month or so, but prior to this we've already had a major communication breakdown that has benefitted neither of us. Today while reading Susan Tang's book "Spiritual Intimacy" I realised the main problem. I have stopped confiding in you due to lack of trust. And I've not been real in the prayers that I have said - mainly intercession for others while doubting all the time whether any change or impact is possible at all.
My unilateral "Cold War" I wish to end. I will be brutally honest, because you reward such straightforwardness, as seen in the Psalms and even the Prophets. One year and 4 months later, I'm still disappointed deep down inside that you had to strike me with a lifelong condition when I felt closest to you. This condition has scarred our relationship by turning it into a roller coaster ride through Heaven and Hades. Though I had my most intimate moments during my times of sickness, it is this that has caused me to question whether any of it was real at all. Perhaps it was just the madness, the mercurial fluctuations that left me with both euphoric experiences and brutal bouts of bottomless descents into sorrow. How could I be sure that all the grandiose visions were really from you and not some internal source of sanitylessness?
I've learned to appreciate where I am, yes. I no longer yearn so badly for that American education that was taken away from me in moments of tremendous anguish. However, I have come to doubt your goodness. Richard Garnett said that love is your essence, and power mainly your attribute. How can this be? A powerless God is not god at all. A God without love, however, is simply a god of malevolence, but yet still a god. You say you love me as your son, and I wish to believe it, but it is just so bloody hard to do so!
As time passes, I find that some of those closest to me who have been bulwarks of support when my faith has been challenged are now themselves turning into liberals (heterodoxists?) or questioners.Why shake us up this way, Lord? Even as we dabble in Spongian seperation of "acceptable" doctrine from the "irrational" (to "modern" minds, at least), are we walking away from you? Is our salvation dependent on how accurate our theology is? Are unconventional beliefs pathways to eternal damnation, guided personally by the Great Deceiver and his minions? Help, God! Must we go through these fires of temptation to compromise, sanitize and/or rationalize to emerge on the other side purified of dross? I fear that we might be swallowed up by the fire and perish in the flames of sin! Come to our aid, O Lord! Help us resist the Evil One, as we pray the prayer you taught us, among many others.
My offence today is rank, and its stench rises up to you. A very minor infraction, some might say, but nevertheless a dangerous sign of relapse into recidivism. Of course, it is also a matter of embarrassment. But I don't trust myself, O Lord! I must pray for strength, day by day. I am but such a frail youth, bent over by the burden that lies on my back. O Forgiveness! O Grace! O God of Second Chances! Come to my aid and change me. Grant me understanding! Lead me to your truth! I've not been so direct in my petition for a long time. I suppose I have lost my foundation of belief that you can really make a difference in my life. But here I am, with a battered body and failing strength and faculties. I want to admit that I am broken. Please come into me once more and live in this cracked piece of pottery!
A broken spirit
and a contrite heart,
You will not despise
You will not despise.
You desire truth
in the inmost parts.
A broken spirit
and a contrite heart.
Amen. Amen. Amen.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)