the chosen one

Henri Nouwen - Life of the Beloved

firstly, know that you are the beloved. Secondly, become the beloved. Enflesh the truth. a lifelong process. 3 spiritual disciplines - firstly, recognise the world for what it is - deceitful, lying, dealing always in condemnation and destruction. the truth is that you are the beloved, well-loved by the perfect One long before this world took you and spat you out. secondly, surround yourself with communities that speak this truth to you. thirdly, overflow with gratitude.

when you recognise that you are truly chosen, it does not breed in you any sense of superiority or arrogance, but rather, it opens your eyes to see the chosen-ness of every other person around you. when you no longer approach people in fear of rejection, or in a condemning spirit, you are free to fully engage with them, wholeheartedly, lovingly. that is why it is said that streams of living water will flow out from within us.

rushed post. don't have too much time nowadays. :)

Yesterday morning I got pretty angry at God over a trivial thing. Let's just say it was related to a computer game, and I was accusing God of not loving me. :) Really silly, I know. In my defence, let me say that I believe so firmly in God's power that I believe it extends even to computer games. :)

It brought to mind something I read in the Philip Yancey book, "Reaching for the Invisible God", where the author relates a thought that one of his friends had brought to him - "I believe that God is good, but what good is God?" It seems that sometimes being a Christian makes no difference to your life except point out in great detail what your faults are. We don't see gifts and miracles operating in our lives any more than we see them operating in the lives of others around us, and we wonder why we signed up for this faith of self-denial.

Part of the answer lies in the book of James. "When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures." God loves us enough that He will not give us something that encourages our faults - He risks our anger and our rejecting Him to keep us holy and pure and set apart for Him. God wants to teach us not to covet the things of this world, so that we will not always "quarrel and fight", "kill and covet", and that we will not cultivate a friendship with this world.
There is a difference between our wants and our needs, and God WILL respond to our needs, and MAY respond to our wants, if they are not against His will. Will God give you a million dollars if He knows that it will encourage you to become lazy and slothful, and to indulge worldly lusts?

Another part of the answer is in James 1. God is training us in perseverance. Other parts of the answer lie in our own sin. I was talking with some friends about salvation, and whether it was truly a free gift in light of all the Bible says the different things which we must not do, or that we should do. It seems to me that we do others a disservice, when we emphasise the free gift that is grace, and make no mention of the life change that needs to follow.
After some thought, I guess that freedom and grace are free indeed, but that by our own actions we willfully walk back into the slavery of sin. No one can serve two masters - if we sin continually and willfully, we are putting ourselves into slavery under sin, and we forfeit the freedom that was bought for us by Christ. That is why the Bible says that idolaters, drunkards and other miscellaneous evil-doers will not enter heaven, because such men have returned to Egypt and slavery. This was confirmed for me in the book of Jude, which condemns those who "change the grace of our God into a license for immorality". Do not be deceived; God is holy.
Grace is free, but no one said it was easy. Jesus himself said that those who come to Him must hate even their own life, and be willing to carry the cross as He did. (Luke 14:25-27)

"I no longer call you servants..."

Still reading John Bevere's book... the lessons are rather hard to take.


A servant obeys, but not always willingly. He may be unhappy in his heart with what he has been asked to do, he may not always be able to understand the will of his Master, but he obeys because he understands that obedience is non-negotiable.

A friend understands the heart and innermost desires of the Master. He does what the Master asks with great joy and without hesitation, and desires what the Master desires.

Taking the analogy a step down, a parasite or thief lives off the generosity of the master. He neither obeys nor recognises the authority of the Master of the house, but in spite of this stridently claims food and board as his right.

I obey, but not always joyfully. The fear of the Lord is helping me to keep His commands. But how does one move from servant to friend?


Covetousness is the root of much sin. Covetousness tells God that He isn't doing His job properly, that you could do a better job than He, and that your own personal needs are more important to you than your relationship with Him. The Israelites were unhappy with how the Lord had been sustaining them. Balaam always questioned the Lord's commands. Covetousness is like the sin of idolatry (Eph 5:5 I think)

Hunger

Today I was reading chapter 3 of 'Drawing Near', by John Bevere.

he talks about some churches which have grown lukewarm. Quoting from Revelations 3 - "I know your deeds, that you are neither cold not hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm - neither hot nor cold - I am about to spit you out of my mouth." (v15-16,NIV)

The cause? in the very next verse. "You say, 'I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.' But you do not realise that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked."(v17) We allow the things of this world to satisfy us. One way to detect this life satisfaction is to listen to what we are excited to talk about. Do we love to talk about the amazing things God is doing in our lives? Or do we get more excited talking about our plans for our ministry? Or do we get most excited talking about sports, school, common friends etc. I admit, this must be corrected slightly for our Asian culture, but still.

To be clear, this is not sin. This is only a failure to take hold of all which God has to offer us, to settle for the smallest fraction of God's goodness.

v20 is often used by evangelists, calling the unsaved to repentance. The verse is familiar to all of us - "Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and open the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me." (v20) Yet this message was being said to the church. God is knocking at the door of our churches, and asking to come in. This is further confirmed in verse 22, "He who has ears, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches." (emphasis mine)

We will hunger for what we feed on. This concept is similar to what Rick Warren pushes with his '40 days to form a habit' message, but I prefer John Bevere's take on it, because it gels so well with what I've been experiencing and hearing in my own life.

We will hunger for what we feed on, and this is true with real food. If we are always eating junk food, we will crave more junk food. But when we make that deliberate step to change our eating habits, to take more vegetables and fruits, it may start our being very difficult, but then we learn to tolerate it, and then later to enjoy it. It's taken me a couple of years to love my dark green leafy vegetables, but I'm so glad for it. Similarly for my Bible reading, or Christian literature. It's starting to become a habit - not a discipline, but something I enjoy and look forward to. It's so amazing. "A satisfied soul loathes the honeycomb." (Prov 27:7) And it's also painfully obvious that I've never made blogging a habit. =) but it's not terribly important, so that's alright.

My life must be Christ's broken bread
My love his outpoured wine
A cup o'erfilled, a table spread
Beneath his name and sign
That other souls, refreshed and fed,
May share his life through mine.

Albert Orsborn, ex-general of the Salvation Army.


I'd include the other verses as well, but I don't fully understand them. What is the winepress? Why is the fruitful vine a burden?

Encouragement

Hebrews 3:13 says, "But encourage one another daily, as long as it is
called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin's
deceitfulness."

I was greatly encouraged yesterday, as I met up with a few friends who
had just been on a mission trip to the Philippines, as they testified
non-stop about the goodness of God as shown through the trip. It was
not a time of great signs and wonders, of miracles that gave glory to
God, but more of an eye-opening trip, as God showed each of them more
about themselves, and humbled them through the faith and the witness
of the very people they had come to serve.

It amazes me that anyone could bring themselves to preach about
tithing to the extremely poor, or about faith to those in dire
straits. We, who have never been through the kind of hardships they
face every day, surely have no right to even speak of these things to
them. Yet God's grace was abundant in them, as they accepted the
message, and by God's grace, the message even ministered to some of
them.

And as I read this verse, I remembered the wealth of emails I had
received these past weeks testifying of God's goodness. And I've been
putting off reading them, because I've just grown cynical about such
things, but as some of my friends said yesterday, these things are
there to encourage us, and keep us from becoming hardened.

Elsewhere in Hebrews 3, it refers readers back to Ps 95. It talks
about the journey of the Israelites through the desert, and how they
angered God until He declared that they would never enter His rest.
And this is an analogy for our lives too. The Israelites were
obedient to the call to leave Egypt, an obedience borne out of the
fear of the wrath of God. But like many Christians, they became
complacent, demanding, disobedient, and lost their inheritance.

This is a warning to those who believe that once saved is forever
saved. Believing in your heart and confessing with your mouth that
Jesus is Lord is a continual process, and disobedience will disqualify
us from our eternal inheritance just as surely as it did the
Israelites. For our God is an unchanging God, the same yesterday,
today and forever.

Made perfect through suffering

In Hebrews 2:10 thereabouts, it suggests that Jesus was made perfect through the suffering he endured here on earth, which seems to me a strange thing. How can God be made more perfect?

Further down in the chapter it explains that this was partly to do with Jesus' role as a mediator on our behalf and high priest, who is now better able to empathise with our sufferings, having gone through many of them.

it reminded me of something i read in a book some time back, which posed the conundrum that when God created the earth and man, He knew that it was going to descend into the sin and anarchy that we have now. But He created it anyway.

The book went on further to propose that suffering is key to greater glory. there is no glory in being a middle-class person from an average family who grew up to do something great. There is great acclamation for the boy who came from a poor and broken home who grew up to do that same great thing. It's like that quadriplegic who completes triathlons, with his dad pulling him all the way. We admire them because they had a much tougher route to get to where they are now.

Why did God allow Satan to wreck all this havoc in what was once a 'good' world? Because what comes out of the chaos has been tested and proven.

The Creator

In days long past,
every possession was hand-crafted lovingly by an artisan,
and it was easy to imagine a Creator God who did the same.

In the days of the Industrial Revolution,
possessions are cranked out ceaselessly by impersonal, uncaring machines,
and it is easy to imagine that the Universe works in this way too.

But Who created this machine?

Wanted: Me

Been doing alot of thinking of late. It started with feelings of guilt, about certain things which I've been putting off. Things which aren't really my responsibility, but which would be good to do anyway. And the train of thought derailed into a far-ranging discourse on serving God, and what exactly it is we are called to do, helped along by various discussions about our life's purpose and how we glorify God.

I reflected back on my journey with God, starting from when I first started to get serious about this whole God business some six or seven years ago, way back in Sec3, where my idea of glorifying God meant putting all of my heart, mind, soul and strength into worship. Shouting out the songs at the expense of my voice, analysing each line and word of every song to see if I could truly mean the words that were being sung, and being quiet if I couldn't. It was all the love that a child knew how to give. The rest of my life wasn't particularly significant - I spent approximately half my waking hours playing computer games - but I worshipped God the only way I knew how.

I remembered how when I went to JC, loving God meant setting aside time for him each morning to seek His presence - the first time I had ever managed a consistent quiet time. I was not satisfied to give Him 15 minutes of my morning on a crowded train - I desperately wanted God's presence each day, giving myself huge amounts of leeway time so that I wouldn't feel any time pressure when I came before Him. Getting to school at insane hours to enjoy the quiet hours with Him. Before I cracked open my Bible, I would sit and pray until I felt God's presence with me, and then I would start reading. Yet I coasted through the other parts of my life, blessed in all abundance with intelligence and good friends.

Over time, I was convicted of the need to use my gifts to serve God. I felt that the next step for me was to move out and begin serving, to stop being a parasite living off the church, but an active, contributing member. I felt that God gave me gifts so I could use them to bless His people, not to hide them under a bushel, a prompting made all the more urgent by the multitude of gifts I knew I had been given. And this new direction has challenged me greatly, forcing me far from my comfort zone in some circumstances, leaving me often weary in mind and body. And in doing so, I have been discovering new strengths, new gifts, and I know that God's been working in me, to repair the broken bits and to strengthen the working bits. And it's been great.

But wondering at these feelings of guilt, which are gradually becoming more familiar, I come to the realisation that I have wandered from my first love. I have subscribed to the belief that doing significant things is the measure of my day, and by extension the measure of my worth. Although I have heard this message many ties before, it has never struck home like this. I remember ending many days with regret at time wasted on worthless things, set upon by thoughts of self-condemnation. And measuring myself by this yardstick, I have come to measure others in the same way, leading to a judgemental attitude.

I pondered upon the analogy of a parent-child relationship, and reflected on how that relationship was independent of any outside success or failure on either person's part, dependent only on mutual love. I thought about the stories I've heard about children who felt overburdened, and ultimately unloved, because of the weight of parental expectation, and I remembered that my God is not like that. My God is the perfect Father, and He loves me with a perfect love that is unchanging and unshakeable.

We were looking at a discussion question which asked us what our primary purpose in life was, and I answered that it was to glorify God. My answer has changed. Our primary purpose in life is to love God. A lesson I was taught a long time ago and had forgotten till recently was that if you had done nothing else of worth in a day except worship God, then that day had been well spent for that reason alone. I remembered Micah 6:8, which had been my favourite verse once, a long time ago, which tells me that the Lord requires nothing of me but to love mercy, do justly, and walk humbly before my God. I imagine the joy which a parent would feel, when a child comes back beaming from a day of fun and relaxation, and I imagine that God would be the same way. After all, God is happy when we are happy.

The caution then, is not to take this lesson overboard. As in bringing up any child, there are times to love them and times to discipline them; times to comfort them, and times to challenge them. As I have been challenged, I hear this call to remember my first love, and to shift my focus to where it should never have left. But even as I feel more justified now to do things which are relaxing and recreational, I must not make them the focus of my life, and I have no idea how the lines are drawn. But one thing I know - that as long as I make room for God in my life, I am moving in the right direction.