I posted this on Facebook and received many encouraging comments. It seems that there are at least a couple of people out there who resonate with this. So here I am, sharing this with whoever else would like to read it.
A reply to http://ifonlysingaporeans.blogspot.sg/2012/07/to-singapore-from-expat-returning-home.html (which, by the way, is a wonderful blog entry on Singapore; I highly recommend reading it.)
To the outsiders, the visitors, the expats; to those who grew up outside Singapore, have visited or lived in Singapore and have come to love and admire this country for what it is and what it has achieved.
You wonder. You wonder why us Singaporeans are such a complaining, unhappy, ungrateful lot. Why we're so unhappy with things when everything around us is beautiful. We have an effective public transportation system, a safe environment, we're known globally for great math and science education, our economy is booming, we have low unemployment, little systemic poverty, and all this obtained within a single generation.
Thank you. You help us to see what we are. You help us to see the gifts that God has given us, to appreciate our own beauty, to remind us of the good we have. We need that. We really need that.
But to you, I also say, you don't understand. You don't see the emotional struggles we have faced since young. We grew up in a system, a society, that for the most part believed that negative reinforcement and compliance were the most important principles in educating a child. We were educated not to ask questions but to recite ideal answers, and to never think you're good but always doubt your own sense of accomplishment. Consequently, we struggle to know how to make good decisions for ourselves because we've never been encouraged to have faith in our own choices.
We live in a society where individual opinion is often not valued unless it agrees with the norm; where we are taught that if you have authority over something or anyone, your primary obligation is to control, criticise and make sure they don't fall out of line, rather than to guide, encourage and build up. It is a society filled with paranoia that others are against us, rife with criticism of each other's (and our own) behaviour, and sorely devoid of affirmation, appreciation and edification. We are a society that feels lonely because we believe it is preferable to keep quiet than to convey words that build relationships like "I'm sorry," "thank you" or "you did this really well."
Don't let anyone fool you; Singapore is a wonderful place to live; but it is a challenging place to grow up. Children have little time to play, little space to run around, and few adults around them who actually demonstrate what it means to pursue their dreams, even though all adults tell them that they should choose to do whatever they feel most passionate about. We struggle to accept ourselves, to sleep well, to be dutiful to every family member and to be productive workers. And actually, for the most part, we succeed in all these things; but still we live with the constant, nagging sense of guilt that others have already done too much for us and we haven't done enough ourselves.
What's the point? Yes, much about the living environment in Singapore is world class. It's safe, it's clean, and it's generally efficient and fair. So please understand that when we complain about what goes on around us, we are really struggling to express our discontent with what goes on within us. We feel dissatisfied with something within our lives but have never been taught to value what goes on inside us, so therefore it must be something wrong with things outside instead - how others treat us, how the government behaves, how society is, or whatever else happens to be in front of our eyes that we can fault. We need to learn that most our external discontent is really a reflection of our sense of self.
This is what we are. We are a people, once (not too long ago) disappointed by a colonial parent and then once again rejected by our own neighbours, that has been marvelous at building up physical infrastructure, but that will still be building its own sense of identity for generations to come. For the most part, our biggest struggle isn't to put food on the table, but to conquer our self-doubts.
It is only to whatever extent that we honestly, genuinely obtain the revelation of our God-given beauty and worth, that we and our children will truly have a better Singapore to live in. And when that happens, it won't be because we have finally opened another MRT line or reduced COE price fluctuations, but because we have discovered, finally, that we can believe in who we are.
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Hunger is a Gift
I felt/heard God say something interesting to me the other day. It went along the lines of this: "Food is a gift, but the greater gift from Me is hunger."
It's a fascinating thought. Hunger is so natural that we seldom think of it apart from ourselves. Pain, we don't like, so we disassociate ourselves from it and can say, it's unpleasant but it's a gift from God to help us know when we're doing something that harms us physically. Or something like that.
As I meditated on this thought, this is what came to mind:
I pictured God making a bunch of people. Except, I can't quite picture that, so instead I pictured a loving wizard making a bunch of smurfs. He makes every aspect of them, fashions every single bit of each of them. He makes them with the intention, and the eager expectation, of loving them and being with them, and He makes them to be the counterpoint to His love, i.e. He designs them not just for community with each other but to need Him and find their fulfillment in Him. Not in a selfish way, but in a smart design kind of way.
Imagine the group of smurfs, all made to need their creator. Then the wizard gives them life and lets them live and commune and do stuff. He makes himself available to them. He shows them who he is and why they need him. Some of them respond, knowing logically that they need him. But most of them ignore him... because they have no desire. Their emotions are indifferent towards him.
It would break the wizard's heart. But the wizard who does nothing would not only be foolish, he would be cruel - cruel to make the smurfs to need him and be incomplete without him, yet to do nothing to make them want what they need.
That's where desire comes in. It is out of the wizard's love, and his grace, that he places a desire in the smurfs for Him. Slowly, the smurfs begin to realise that they feel different. And they begin to want to be with the wizard, to discover what the wizard is about, and to learn about how he made them and what was his plan for them. And that is where they find themselves complete... not only because they have found what they needed but because their wizard-given desires have been fulfilled by the wizard's very design.
That is a very loose picture of His grace for us. It is out of His grace that He not only makes us to need Him but causes us to want the One we need. To break it down into simpler terms, He made our bodies to need food, and He could have said, "you guys need food, but I'm not going to put any desire in you for it, so that you will seek food purely out of discipline and diligence. If you don't survive and you go hungry, it's your own fault for not being diligent. And if you are diligent, then you will do well."
That sounds like a very familiar kind of perspective, doesn't it? It's a common perspective in Singapore. And maybe in Asia (or East Asia?) in general - we tend to despise the emotional sometimes, as though feelings are a bain that we must put up with, and as though the most sincere acts are those which happen in spite of contrary emotions. Diligence is often prized over desire.
I believe this is an absolutely unbiblical view. Jesus wrote to the church in Ephesus, praising them for their good works (diligence! and obedience!) but saying, they had left their first love for Him, they must go back to their love for Him, and if they don't He will remove the lampstand from them. Their desire for Him meant a lot more - a LOT more - to Him than their faithfulness in doing good things.
Many of us Christians can't help having the mentality I described earlier because we've grown up with it, and that's okay - God accepts us as if we were perfect because we are covered by the blood of Christ. But we do need to realise that this view does not glorify God. That's because God Himself has emotions, and when we despise our emotions because they are emotions, we look down upon a piece of the nature of God. God has emotions... For instance, anger is often seen as an unacceptable emotion in our society, and one that is better left unsaid... but God does get angry and He has no problems with being vocal about it. The Bible also tells us that Christ was willing to sacrifice Himself for the joy set before Him. He had more than the discipline to obey His Father - He had a promise of joy after the sacrifice too. God, in His mighty wisdom, gave Jesus a joy (a desire) to motivate Him for what He was destined to do. Surely this emotional stuff must be a good idea.
It is His grace that He stirs up in us a desire for Him. It is His grace that the things of God make us happy. Hunger is a greater gift than food because He's given us the ability to get our own food, so anytime food is on the table it is at least partly because of our own efforts. (We should still be thankful for it, of course, and it is good that we are.) Hunger is different - you can't make yourself hungry. You can cultivate hunger, and you can inspire hunger, but there is absolutely nothing you can do to create or remove how much hunger you currently sense. Put it another way - if you had no food, you could go look for some. What could you do if you had no sense of hunger (even when you needed to eat)? You would be completely helpless. You might be able to survive for a few days out of habit and discipline, to simply eat when you figure you need to. But the joy in eating would be gone, as would the sense of satisfaction, and the desire to find food... and I would like to propose that you wouldn't last in the long run.
God has given us even more than the gift of Himself (which is more that we could ask for already!!); He's also given us the gift of wanting Him, of loving Him. It is this gift that we must treasure, cultivate, ask God for more of... and it is this gift that we must look out for in others. I don't mean to say that some in the world have the gift and some don't... I don't know about that one. But I just mean that we need to look for those pre-believers who are hungry, who sense a desire they don't understand, and we need to be sensitive to that desire and seek to speak to it (or ask God to). Because ultimately, it is their hearts they need to give to God, not their minds, and God leads them to that place of surrendering their hearts by speaking to their hearts too. If we don't know how to be sensitive to their hearts, then perhaps we just need to let Him speak to ours a little more.
These few days, when I say grace at meals, I've been trying to thank God not just for the food, but for my hunger and the satisfaction that the food brings. It's still a new and slightly uncomfortable concept for me. But I think it is an apt parallel to thank Him not just for the things of the spirit, but to thank Him that Godly things make me happy and that He's given me a desire for more of them.
This relates to another thought I had some time ago. The physical perfections of the universe, the fine tuning of the chemistry of life and the gravitational constant and all those things... to some people these point to intelligent design, but to others they simply point to the fact that we are on the other side of random chance - if a million universes existed but only one was capable of life, that universe would naturally be the only one we see. I get that. But to me, there is absolutely no reason why those life beings should find beauty in that same universe. Why should these creatures of chance revel in the moving colours of a sunset, or have their heart leap in awe at mountains, or feel like the stars speak to them of something greater? Why should they even be happy or sad at all? Maybe there are atheistic reasons proposed for that too... but my point is just that I think it is much harder to explain our sense of beauty and how it matches with how things really are, than it is to explain the science behind why we are alive.
Our sense of beauty testifies to His sense of beauty. It is that love for colour, aesthetics, grace and kindness, deposited into every human heart, that gives us a hint that we are all linked to our common Creator and meant to be with Him. For it is He, clothed in rainbows and painter of every sunrise and sunset, who is the epitomy of all beauty and all that makes our hearts sing. He is kind, gentle, strong, beautiful, joyful, just, compassionate and patient... traits that make hearts from tribes and nations all around the earth leap with joy.
He is, unquestionably, the desire of every nation and every people.
Woot.
It's a fascinating thought. Hunger is so natural that we seldom think of it apart from ourselves. Pain, we don't like, so we disassociate ourselves from it and can say, it's unpleasant but it's a gift from God to help us know when we're doing something that harms us physically. Or something like that.
As I meditated on this thought, this is what came to mind:
I pictured God making a bunch of people. Except, I can't quite picture that, so instead I pictured a loving wizard making a bunch of smurfs. He makes every aspect of them, fashions every single bit of each of them. He makes them with the intention, and the eager expectation, of loving them and being with them, and He makes them to be the counterpoint to His love, i.e. He designs them not just for community with each other but to need Him and find their fulfillment in Him. Not in a selfish way, but in a smart design kind of way.
Imagine the group of smurfs, all made to need their creator. Then the wizard gives them life and lets them live and commune and do stuff. He makes himself available to them. He shows them who he is and why they need him. Some of them respond, knowing logically that they need him. But most of them ignore him... because they have no desire. Their emotions are indifferent towards him.
It would break the wizard's heart. But the wizard who does nothing would not only be foolish, he would be cruel - cruel to make the smurfs to need him and be incomplete without him, yet to do nothing to make them want what they need.
That's where desire comes in. It is out of the wizard's love, and his grace, that he places a desire in the smurfs for Him. Slowly, the smurfs begin to realise that they feel different. And they begin to want to be with the wizard, to discover what the wizard is about, and to learn about how he made them and what was his plan for them. And that is where they find themselves complete... not only because they have found what they needed but because their wizard-given desires have been fulfilled by the wizard's very design.
That is a very loose picture of His grace for us. It is out of His grace that He not only makes us to need Him but causes us to want the One we need. To break it down into simpler terms, He made our bodies to need food, and He could have said, "you guys need food, but I'm not going to put any desire in you for it, so that you will seek food purely out of discipline and diligence. If you don't survive and you go hungry, it's your own fault for not being diligent. And if you are diligent, then you will do well."
That sounds like a very familiar kind of perspective, doesn't it? It's a common perspective in Singapore. And maybe in Asia (or East Asia?) in general - we tend to despise the emotional sometimes, as though feelings are a bain that we must put up with, and as though the most sincere acts are those which happen in spite of contrary emotions. Diligence is often prized over desire.
I believe this is an absolutely unbiblical view. Jesus wrote to the church in Ephesus, praising them for their good works (diligence! and obedience!) but saying, they had left their first love for Him, they must go back to their love for Him, and if they don't He will remove the lampstand from them. Their desire for Him meant a lot more - a LOT more - to Him than their faithfulness in doing good things.
Many of us Christians can't help having the mentality I described earlier because we've grown up with it, and that's okay - God accepts us as if we were perfect because we are covered by the blood of Christ. But we do need to realise that this view does not glorify God. That's because God Himself has emotions, and when we despise our emotions because they are emotions, we look down upon a piece of the nature of God. God has emotions... For instance, anger is often seen as an unacceptable emotion in our society, and one that is better left unsaid... but God does get angry and He has no problems with being vocal about it. The Bible also tells us that Christ was willing to sacrifice Himself for the joy set before Him. He had more than the discipline to obey His Father - He had a promise of joy after the sacrifice too. God, in His mighty wisdom, gave Jesus a joy (a desire) to motivate Him for what He was destined to do. Surely this emotional stuff must be a good idea.
It is His grace that He stirs up in us a desire for Him. It is His grace that the things of God make us happy. Hunger is a greater gift than food because He's given us the ability to get our own food, so anytime food is on the table it is at least partly because of our own efforts. (We should still be thankful for it, of course, and it is good that we are.) Hunger is different - you can't make yourself hungry. You can cultivate hunger, and you can inspire hunger, but there is absolutely nothing you can do to create or remove how much hunger you currently sense. Put it another way - if you had no food, you could go look for some. What could you do if you had no sense of hunger (even when you needed to eat)? You would be completely helpless. You might be able to survive for a few days out of habit and discipline, to simply eat when you figure you need to. But the joy in eating would be gone, as would the sense of satisfaction, and the desire to find food... and I would like to propose that you wouldn't last in the long run.
God has given us even more than the gift of Himself (which is more that we could ask for already!!); He's also given us the gift of wanting Him, of loving Him. It is this gift that we must treasure, cultivate, ask God for more of... and it is this gift that we must look out for in others. I don't mean to say that some in the world have the gift and some don't... I don't know about that one. But I just mean that we need to look for those pre-believers who are hungry, who sense a desire they don't understand, and we need to be sensitive to that desire and seek to speak to it (or ask God to). Because ultimately, it is their hearts they need to give to God, not their minds, and God leads them to that place of surrendering their hearts by speaking to their hearts too. If we don't know how to be sensitive to their hearts, then perhaps we just need to let Him speak to ours a little more.
These few days, when I say grace at meals, I've been trying to thank God not just for the food, but for my hunger and the satisfaction that the food brings. It's still a new and slightly uncomfortable concept for me. But I think it is an apt parallel to thank Him not just for the things of the spirit, but to thank Him that Godly things make me happy and that He's given me a desire for more of them.
This relates to another thought I had some time ago. The physical perfections of the universe, the fine tuning of the chemistry of life and the gravitational constant and all those things... to some people these point to intelligent design, but to others they simply point to the fact that we are on the other side of random chance - if a million universes existed but only one was capable of life, that universe would naturally be the only one we see. I get that. But to me, there is absolutely no reason why those life beings should find beauty in that same universe. Why should these creatures of chance revel in the moving colours of a sunset, or have their heart leap in awe at mountains, or feel like the stars speak to them of something greater? Why should they even be happy or sad at all? Maybe there are atheistic reasons proposed for that too... but my point is just that I think it is much harder to explain our sense of beauty and how it matches with how things really are, than it is to explain the science behind why we are alive.
Our sense of beauty testifies to His sense of beauty. It is that love for colour, aesthetics, grace and kindness, deposited into every human heart, that gives us a hint that we are all linked to our common Creator and meant to be with Him. For it is He, clothed in rainbows and painter of every sunrise and sunset, who is the epitomy of all beauty and all that makes our hearts sing. He is kind, gentle, strong, beautiful, joyful, just, compassionate and patient... traits that make hearts from tribes and nations all around the earth leap with joy.
He is, unquestionably, the desire of every nation and every people.
Woot.
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Thoughts on Hunger and Passion
Hunger
"Come on, let's stir up our hunger for God..."
I've heard many iterations of this over many years of my Christian life, and I just heard it again today. It started me thinking today... and I think many churches have a fundamental misunderstanding of how spiritual hunger works.
I'm not sure what "stirring yourself up" is supposed to mean exactly (it's not a biblical term I'm sure), but to me, the closest equivalent I can think of is to meditate on God and His goodness when you're down. Perhaps even, as my US pastor Glen used to say, preach the gospel (the good news! not that you need to be a better Christian) to yourself. Focus on God, declare that He is good to you, and keep focusing on the aspects of God that He reveals to you until your internal environment (how you feel) conforms to the truth of how He is. This is not about avoiding your feelings; this is about influencing them with your mind until your feelings actually reflect what your mind knows is the truth.
Many times, though, I've heard "stirring yourself up" to mean the equivalent of "make yourself feel ___". No one will ever say it like that, but from the way people use it, it sure sounds like that's what they mean. Stir up the hunger, stir up the passion etc etc often sounds like "Make yourself feel hungry," or "come on, be passionate!" to me.
So here's my thoughts on two truths about hunger that seem extremely pertinent to me right now:
1) You can't make yourself feel something.
You can't will an emotion. You either feel it or you don't; you either want it or you don't. You can't make yourself want something. Yes, there are many times when our emotions are dulled or we're just fearful of feeling or desiring things because of bad past experiences, so in that case, there is a process of letting how you feel or what you desire reveal itself. But that takes time, patience, love and acceptance. It is not an instantaneous thing, and telling people repeatedly to stir up that feeling is probably more counter productive to letting that feeling come out. The same goes with hunger. You're either hungry, or you're not. God can change that in an instant of course, but you're not God. You can't make yourself hungry.
What you CAN do is put yourself in situations or environments that would influence you to feel a certain way. E.g. if I'm feeling lonely, I can stay home and sulk, or I can pray and focus my mind on the fellowship of the Holy Spirit until my heart gets it and I stop feeling that way, or I could almost force myself to say yes to an invitation I know is open to me to hang out with good friends, even though I feel like sulking, because hanging out with them will make me feel less lonely. Similarly, I can't make myself fall more in love with someone, but I can create conditions where I would develop feelings for them (which is one of the points of dating - to regularly and frequently create situations where feelings for the other person can develop and grow). So when it comes to spiritual hunger, I could hang around spiritually hungry people; I can go to a place where people are experiencing more of God than what I normally do etc. But I cannot make myself be hungry if it happens that all these things don't stir up anything in me.
Emotions and desires are like plants - at best, you can cultivate and nurture them. But you can't force them to grow.
2) The only way to get hungry when you're not, is to begin to want the things you don't yet have.
How many times have you not felt like eating AT ALL, only to see someone walk by with a delicious morsel that just whets your appetite and makes you crave it? We sometimes think we're just being weird, but let's be honest - it's the way God made us. At any one point, we have a certain amount of hunger. Let's say we have none now. We're full, we're satisfied, we've eaten what we've eaten and there's nothing we can do to change that. When someone walks by with something that looks delicious, suddenly we're made aware that there is something more that we haven't had, something that's desirable... and then we want it.
If we always eat everything we want (in the natural) then gluttony may result. But in the spirit, hunger is a good thing - our spirits get strengthened by spiritual food. (Although I will add that sometimes when we receive a lot spiritually, the best thing to do isn't just to receive more but to give it away by ministering to others). So, the only way to build spiritual hunger is to get a revelation of God that is even better than what you already expect, and what you expect is often based on what you've experienced. It's faith - the substance of things hoped for, proof of things unseen. It's the conviction, the realisation and revelation, that God has already been good but He really does have more for you, and even if you don't quite see what it is, you realise that you don't already have it all, that there is more (that's the faith part!). And then you want it. Ta daa! Hunger.
So, as a leader, the best way to stir up hunger in a people is to focus their eyes on God's goodness. There is always more of Him to see, and He always has a next step for us that takes us closer to Him. Declare His promises. Preach His goodness. Let people connect with the fact that God really loves them as they are (i.e. taste that He is good now) and has more for them (and who can resist that when they've already tasted He is good?).
The reason why this is so important is that if leaders try to get their people to stir up hunger without setting their eyes on something greater, then I think the people only have one other option, which is to tell themselves, I don't have enough. But what if they really do feel like they do have enough? Then they begin to doubt themselves. "I don't have enough but I feel like I'm full. How arrogant can I be? My feelings must not be of God and I must fight them." And then condemnation comes in and becomes a tool to make themselves feel a need for God. Because it's actually true; if we accept condemnation (which we shouldn't! See Romans 8) then we feel lousy and we feel the need for God to rescue us. Of course then the problem is, when God rescues them from the guit, how do they maintain the hunger? So then they go into condemnation again, and essentially end up almost intentionally using condemnation to stay distant from God so that they will always feel like they need Him, so that the prayers that their pastor is asking them to pray to tell God that they are 'desperate' for Him will actually be sincere.
I can say this because I've been through it, and I've had to recover from it. This is my inside scoop. And maybe I'm wrong; maybe this was just my own issue and no one else got this message from what the church I've left (but still have much fondness for!) did on a regular basis. It's possible. But I highly doubt I'm alone. My leaders meant well and God gives them grace, so I'm not judging them or any other leader. I'm just saying, telling your people to 'stir up hunger' (or passion, or desire) all the time is NOT a healthy thing for the flock.
A focus on passion
The other thought I have is this focus on being passionate for God. It's a frequent cry, and a good one often times, to be more passionate for Him. However, I do think that it can be overstated as a spiritual goal. The kingdom of God is full of contradictions (Jesus is a lion and a lamb; we are to be innocent as doves and sly as foxes; we are to love our neighbours and love our enemies, but hate Satan and hate sin) and it is in the tension of those contradictions that His precious and awesome truth is found. It's the same here. Passion alone is insufficient; it must be completed by patience.
Notice I didn't say that it must be balanced by patience. "Balance" is a good word, but it often connotates a sense of compromise; that too much of one thing is bad, and sometimes we need to have less of one and more of the other. In the kingdom, contradictory truths don't balance each other out. They fulfill each other. A wife does not balance out her husband; she completes him. Without her, he cannot be all that God made him to be, and without him, she cannot grow to the fullness of her identity as a God-made woman. It's the same with kingdom principles. We aim to love our neighbours and enemies a lot and hate sin a lot. We don't aim to have a limited amount of passion and a limited amount of patience; we aim to have tons of both.
Have you ever met a person who is completely quiet and agreeable all the time, and then one day gets really angry over one thing (something good, like injustice)? Doesn't the fact that they were so meek before serve to bring out the severity of the rage? It's the same with passion. The more passion you have, the more your patience means, and the more the patience to wait for God to do what you desire Him to do builds character and draws you closer to Him. Similarly, the more patience you have, the more your passion means, because you're crying out to God out of a desire so big that it has to come out in spite of your patience to wait. That's why patience and passion fulfill each other.
In contrast, a focus purely on passion, I think, promotes impatience. "God we want you! Come! Come now!" The intent is good, and there's nothing wrong with expecting God to do good things in the present. But if this is the predominant cry of our regular prayer meetings, then our relationship with God becomes focused on the now, the presence of God in the meeting you're in, the success of this particular event. But our relationship with God is eternal, and even within this lifetime is a long process of Him transforming us into His image. As Christians, our aim shouldn't be to be better now (more passionate, more hungry or whatever it is); we are already made perfect by the blood of Christ and we can consider ourselves accepted by God today as though we were as perfect as Jesus is. Instead, our aim should be to walk with God in the present and for the long term, listening, yielding, obeying, loving, and allowing Him to develop the fruits of the Spirit in us.
I think a Christian with the fruits of the Spirit but not the gifts will inherit the kingdom of God, but a Christian with the gifts but without the fruits may not. At the end of the day, the key question when we get to Heaven is whether we know Christ and Christ knows us (Jesus rejected many in the parable who cast out demons in His name because, in His words, "I never knew you"), and that relationship in the long run is made manifest most acutely by the presence of the fruits of the spirit.
Of course the gifts are pretty darn fun too. :)
"Come on, let's stir up our hunger for God..."
I've heard many iterations of this over many years of my Christian life, and I just heard it again today. It started me thinking today... and I think many churches have a fundamental misunderstanding of how spiritual hunger works.
I'm not sure what "stirring yourself up" is supposed to mean exactly (it's not a biblical term I'm sure), but to me, the closest equivalent I can think of is to meditate on God and His goodness when you're down. Perhaps even, as my US pastor Glen used to say, preach the gospel (the good news! not that you need to be a better Christian) to yourself. Focus on God, declare that He is good to you, and keep focusing on the aspects of God that He reveals to you until your internal environment (how you feel) conforms to the truth of how He is. This is not about avoiding your feelings; this is about influencing them with your mind until your feelings actually reflect what your mind knows is the truth.
Many times, though, I've heard "stirring yourself up" to mean the equivalent of "make yourself feel ___". No one will ever say it like that, but from the way people use it, it sure sounds like that's what they mean. Stir up the hunger, stir up the passion etc etc often sounds like "Make yourself feel hungry," or "come on, be passionate!" to me.
So here's my thoughts on two truths about hunger that seem extremely pertinent to me right now:
1) You can't make yourself feel something.
You can't will an emotion. You either feel it or you don't; you either want it or you don't. You can't make yourself want something. Yes, there are many times when our emotions are dulled or we're just fearful of feeling or desiring things because of bad past experiences, so in that case, there is a process of letting how you feel or what you desire reveal itself. But that takes time, patience, love and acceptance. It is not an instantaneous thing, and telling people repeatedly to stir up that feeling is probably more counter productive to letting that feeling come out. The same goes with hunger. You're either hungry, or you're not. God can change that in an instant of course, but you're not God. You can't make yourself hungry.
What you CAN do is put yourself in situations or environments that would influence you to feel a certain way. E.g. if I'm feeling lonely, I can stay home and sulk, or I can pray and focus my mind on the fellowship of the Holy Spirit until my heart gets it and I stop feeling that way, or I could almost force myself to say yes to an invitation I know is open to me to hang out with good friends, even though I feel like sulking, because hanging out with them will make me feel less lonely. Similarly, I can't make myself fall more in love with someone, but I can create conditions where I would develop feelings for them (which is one of the points of dating - to regularly and frequently create situations where feelings for the other person can develop and grow). So when it comes to spiritual hunger, I could hang around spiritually hungry people; I can go to a place where people are experiencing more of God than what I normally do etc. But I cannot make myself be hungry if it happens that all these things don't stir up anything in me.
Emotions and desires are like plants - at best, you can cultivate and nurture them. But you can't force them to grow.
2) The only way to get hungry when you're not, is to begin to want the things you don't yet have.
How many times have you not felt like eating AT ALL, only to see someone walk by with a delicious morsel that just whets your appetite and makes you crave it? We sometimes think we're just being weird, but let's be honest - it's the way God made us. At any one point, we have a certain amount of hunger. Let's say we have none now. We're full, we're satisfied, we've eaten what we've eaten and there's nothing we can do to change that. When someone walks by with something that looks delicious, suddenly we're made aware that there is something more that we haven't had, something that's desirable... and then we want it.
If we always eat everything we want (in the natural) then gluttony may result. But in the spirit, hunger is a good thing - our spirits get strengthened by spiritual food. (Although I will add that sometimes when we receive a lot spiritually, the best thing to do isn't just to receive more but to give it away by ministering to others). So, the only way to build spiritual hunger is to get a revelation of God that is even better than what you already expect, and what you expect is often based on what you've experienced. It's faith - the substance of things hoped for, proof of things unseen. It's the conviction, the realisation and revelation, that God has already been good but He really does have more for you, and even if you don't quite see what it is, you realise that you don't already have it all, that there is more (that's the faith part!). And then you want it. Ta daa! Hunger.
So, as a leader, the best way to stir up hunger in a people is to focus their eyes on God's goodness. There is always more of Him to see, and He always has a next step for us that takes us closer to Him. Declare His promises. Preach His goodness. Let people connect with the fact that God really loves them as they are (i.e. taste that He is good now) and has more for them (and who can resist that when they've already tasted He is good?).
The reason why this is so important is that if leaders try to get their people to stir up hunger without setting their eyes on something greater, then I think the people only have one other option, which is to tell themselves, I don't have enough. But what if they really do feel like they do have enough? Then they begin to doubt themselves. "I don't have enough but I feel like I'm full. How arrogant can I be? My feelings must not be of God and I must fight them." And then condemnation comes in and becomes a tool to make themselves feel a need for God. Because it's actually true; if we accept condemnation (which we shouldn't! See Romans 8) then we feel lousy and we feel the need for God to rescue us. Of course then the problem is, when God rescues them from the guit, how do they maintain the hunger? So then they go into condemnation again, and essentially end up almost intentionally using condemnation to stay distant from God so that they will always feel like they need Him, so that the prayers that their pastor is asking them to pray to tell God that they are 'desperate' for Him will actually be sincere.
I can say this because I've been through it, and I've had to recover from it. This is my inside scoop. And maybe I'm wrong; maybe this was just my own issue and no one else got this message from what the church I've left (but still have much fondness for!) did on a regular basis. It's possible. But I highly doubt I'm alone. My leaders meant well and God gives them grace, so I'm not judging them or any other leader. I'm just saying, telling your people to 'stir up hunger' (or passion, or desire) all the time is NOT a healthy thing for the flock.
A focus on passion
The other thought I have is this focus on being passionate for God. It's a frequent cry, and a good one often times, to be more passionate for Him. However, I do think that it can be overstated as a spiritual goal. The kingdom of God is full of contradictions (Jesus is a lion and a lamb; we are to be innocent as doves and sly as foxes; we are to love our neighbours and love our enemies, but hate Satan and hate sin) and it is in the tension of those contradictions that His precious and awesome truth is found. It's the same here. Passion alone is insufficient; it must be completed by patience.
Notice I didn't say that it must be balanced by patience. "Balance" is a good word, but it often connotates a sense of compromise; that too much of one thing is bad, and sometimes we need to have less of one and more of the other. In the kingdom, contradictory truths don't balance each other out. They fulfill each other. A wife does not balance out her husband; she completes him. Without her, he cannot be all that God made him to be, and without him, she cannot grow to the fullness of her identity as a God-made woman. It's the same with kingdom principles. We aim to love our neighbours and enemies a lot and hate sin a lot. We don't aim to have a limited amount of passion and a limited amount of patience; we aim to have tons of both.
Have you ever met a person who is completely quiet and agreeable all the time, and then one day gets really angry over one thing (something good, like injustice)? Doesn't the fact that they were so meek before serve to bring out the severity of the rage? It's the same with passion. The more passion you have, the more your patience means, and the more the patience to wait for God to do what you desire Him to do builds character and draws you closer to Him. Similarly, the more patience you have, the more your passion means, because you're crying out to God out of a desire so big that it has to come out in spite of your patience to wait. That's why patience and passion fulfill each other.
In contrast, a focus purely on passion, I think, promotes impatience. "God we want you! Come! Come now!" The intent is good, and there's nothing wrong with expecting God to do good things in the present. But if this is the predominant cry of our regular prayer meetings, then our relationship with God becomes focused on the now, the presence of God in the meeting you're in, the success of this particular event. But our relationship with God is eternal, and even within this lifetime is a long process of Him transforming us into His image. As Christians, our aim shouldn't be to be better now (more passionate, more hungry or whatever it is); we are already made perfect by the blood of Christ and we can consider ourselves accepted by God today as though we were as perfect as Jesus is. Instead, our aim should be to walk with God in the present and for the long term, listening, yielding, obeying, loving, and allowing Him to develop the fruits of the Spirit in us.
I think a Christian with the fruits of the Spirit but not the gifts will inherit the kingdom of God, but a Christian with the gifts but without the fruits may not. At the end of the day, the key question when we get to Heaven is whether we know Christ and Christ knows us (Jesus rejected many in the parable who cast out demons in His name because, in His words, "I never knew you"), and that relationship in the long run is made manifest most acutely by the presence of the fruits of the spirit.
Of course the gifts are pretty darn fun too. :)
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
If you wear underwear, you should buy insurance.
I lost a bag with my camera inside over this past weekend. I left it on the seat in the train as Clar and I were getting off it with all our luggage and fumbling to get to the airport on time. Thank God my passport wasn't inside! But sadly I lost my camera with tons of awesome photos (and a couple of videos) in it. The moment I realised I didn't have it I ran back to the light rail at full speed (ok I slowed down at the end cuz I was tired) but it was gone from the train and the security guy hadn't seen anything... I take it someone just took the bag. Sad. :(
Well. Whoever it was also got a bag of baguette with butter in it so I hope they were hungry.
The small saving grace is that I'd bought travel insurance in SIngapore before I came on this trip. I've never bought travel insurance before, but the subject naturally came up when I talked to colleagues about my trip given that a) I'm travelling and b) I work in insurance regulation. The natural part of my brain would normally think, ok I'm paying the insurance company like $100, and most likely I'll get nothing out of it. I could make a really big claim, but most likely nothing will go wrong and I would have wasted $100.
And now that I'm about to make a claim with Aviva, I see the folly of that reasoning in a way that I hadn't before.
The theory to explain it is that you do get something out of it even if you don't make a claim. You're covering uncertainty. You're giving the insurance company money in exchange for the promise that if anything does go wrong, the insurance company will cover it (or most of it). And they really will...
But still, the concept often eludes us. And now I'm discovering there's another side to the argument. Many people (like me before I bought this travel insurance) view insurance as a gamble. I'm paying, say, $80, and there's a small chance that I make a lot of money out of it (like if I make a $5000 claim); else I lose the $80 and just make my trip more expensive, and why would I want to do that? I was already fretting over the $50 difference in airfare between Cathay Pacific and ANA! The reason why that argument doesn't work is that any time you get to make a $5000 claim, it's because something bad has happened (ie. you lost something worth $5000... or probably more like $4500 since people tend to exaggerate the value of their lost items when making claims). So you never actually earn anything. You just... lose less. (And there's also the things that are irreplaceable, like the photos in my camera or the pain or grief (however momentary or dramatic) of losing something you liked.)
I think we tend to forget that part of it, or at least I do; that any 'gain' you make from insurance is directly linked to a loss event, so you're not actually gaining anything at all. If you forget that, insurance becomes a stressful decision of risking "wasting your money" if you don't make a claim and really makes no sense at all, because if you're like most people you'd rather avoid the uncertainty of 'wasting your money' (unless you like the lottery... in which case you'd probably just go buy the lottery). The truth is, though, even if you make a claim, you're not really going to be happy that you're earning something... Like in my case, I don't feel like i'm earning however much I'll get to claim from Aviva (maybe $400-$500 or so?). I already lost a camera; I'm just marginally glad I don't have to fork out another $500 or so to replace it.
Some people call it 'peace of mind'. I don't really like that term, because most people obtain 'peace of mind' by just not thinking about the risk in the first place. Which, I suspect, is why people tend to hate insurance agents - because they claim to be selling you peace of mind but they do it by making you more worried about something you weren't worried about in the first place, and then make you feel bad for not worrying about it earlier. If your goal is peace, then you're better off never thinking about risk or insurance. Instead, I think insurance a little more like covering your ass... like wearing underwear. If you notice it, you feel more comfortable at best. If you don't, then you just forget its there, and that's fine. But either way, when something bad happens that makes you need it, it sure doesn't stop the situation from being unpleasant... but it helps to make things a little better.
As long as it fits.
Well. Whoever it was also got a bag of baguette with butter in it so I hope they were hungry.
The small saving grace is that I'd bought travel insurance in SIngapore before I came on this trip. I've never bought travel insurance before, but the subject naturally came up when I talked to colleagues about my trip given that a) I'm travelling and b) I work in insurance regulation. The natural part of my brain would normally think, ok I'm paying the insurance company like $100, and most likely I'll get nothing out of it. I could make a really big claim, but most likely nothing will go wrong and I would have wasted $100.
And now that I'm about to make a claim with Aviva, I see the folly of that reasoning in a way that I hadn't before.
The theory to explain it is that you do get something out of it even if you don't make a claim. You're covering uncertainty. You're giving the insurance company money in exchange for the promise that if anything does go wrong, the insurance company will cover it (or most of it). And they really will...
But still, the concept often eludes us. And now I'm discovering there's another side to the argument. Many people (like me before I bought this travel insurance) view insurance as a gamble. I'm paying, say, $80, and there's a small chance that I make a lot of money out of it (like if I make a $5000 claim); else I lose the $80 and just make my trip more expensive, and why would I want to do that? I was already fretting over the $50 difference in airfare between Cathay Pacific and ANA! The reason why that argument doesn't work is that any time you get to make a $5000 claim, it's because something bad has happened (ie. you lost something worth $5000... or probably more like $4500 since people tend to exaggerate the value of their lost items when making claims). So you never actually earn anything. You just... lose less. (And there's also the things that are irreplaceable, like the photos in my camera or the pain or grief (however momentary or dramatic) of losing something you liked.)
I think we tend to forget that part of it, or at least I do; that any 'gain' you make from insurance is directly linked to a loss event, so you're not actually gaining anything at all. If you forget that, insurance becomes a stressful decision of risking "wasting your money" if you don't make a claim and really makes no sense at all, because if you're like most people you'd rather avoid the uncertainty of 'wasting your money' (unless you like the lottery... in which case you'd probably just go buy the lottery). The truth is, though, even if you make a claim, you're not really going to be happy that you're earning something... Like in my case, I don't feel like i'm earning however much I'll get to claim from Aviva (maybe $400-$500 or so?). I already lost a camera; I'm just marginally glad I don't have to fork out another $500 or so to replace it.
Some people call it 'peace of mind'. I don't really like that term, because most people obtain 'peace of mind' by just not thinking about the risk in the first place. Which, I suspect, is why people tend to hate insurance agents - because they claim to be selling you peace of mind but they do it by making you more worried about something you weren't worried about in the first place, and then make you feel bad for not worrying about it earlier. If your goal is peace, then you're better off never thinking about risk or insurance. Instead, I think insurance a little more like covering your ass... like wearing underwear. If you notice it, you feel more comfortable at best. If you don't, then you just forget its there, and that's fine. But either way, when something bad happens that makes you need it, it sure doesn't stop the situation from being unpleasant... but it helps to make things a little better.
As long as it fits.
Saturday, September 10, 2011
What I think it means to look after the health of your soul
Folks talk all the time about looking after your health. Sometimes they talk about looking after your sanity. As Christians, there is a clear call from Jesus to watch out for our own souls... and yet I find that taking care of your soul comes up far less often in conversation amongst Christians than taking care of your computer. And I think that's mainly because we have no idea what the heck it means to take care of our souls. What is our soul anyway? It seems like a theoretical, head-knowledge concept and we don't have much of a real-world sense of how to apply it to ourselves, our being, our feelings and our senses.
And yet it's one of the most important parts of a Christian life. The call from Jesus to be like the 5 virgins who kept the oil in their lamp burning; his call to watch and pray... do we know what we're watching and praying for? What does it even mean to keep watch, when there's nothing physically to watch for? I think it means to keep watch for the condition of our souls so that we're ready to love HIm when He returns... So here's my take on a few aspects of what it means to look after your soul:
1. Consider your emotions; don't ignore them.
And by "consider", I mean take time to think about them. Understand how you are feeling. Give yourself time and space to feel instead of trying to shove it away so you can get round to doing 'more important' things. This comes naturally to many of us; to many others, it doesn't. I'm talking to the latter group now.
Often in Chinese culture we focus on the mind and the will. Personal feelings are seen as tolerable at best, evil at worst; especially when they appear to disrupt the order or 'peace' of a larger social group. And I think this idea has, unfortunately, found its way into Christian theology. We talk about doing good, and about crucifying the flesh, and often times crucifying the flesh ends up being tantamount to beating yourself with a psychological stick when your feelings make you want to do something that your mind thinks isn't good. "Shove those feelings away and be obedient to God, you weak and faithless Christian..."
But that isn't true. As Christians we should be the most engaged with our emotions, good and bad, because they are God-given and part of our complete salvation/restoration. Emotions aren't evil. God has emotions, Jesus had emotions, and He made us to have emotions. Feeling negative emotions is often the doorway to healing; it's when we feel hurt, upset or angry that God (or significant people in our lives) are able to provide comfort, understanding and love, and ultimately, healing. Ignoring those emotions is often a defensive mechanism to avoid being vulnerable, and in the process we shut off God from a part of our heart.
I'm reminded of something Glen (my pastor in the USA) used to say: It's not good to be angry at God, but if you're angry at Him it's even worse to pretend like you're not. I have discovered from personal and intimate experience with God that He is very capable of dealing calmly with our anger, and He is ever loving and patient to listen to us vent when we need to vent. I once spent about 10-15 mins in a worship session just bawling, tears flowing like a river, because I was angry at Him for letting me go through something hurtful. Those 10-15 minutes were spent venting at Him, and I felt like I was grabbing Him by the shoulders and shaking Him and yelling at Him. And the whole time I felt like He had this calm look on His face, like He was listening patiently and letting me shake Him. I didn't push Him away, I just confronted Him and said, "this sucked, why didn't you prevent this from happening?" because I was already feeling it and it wouldn't have done any good to pretend I wasn't. At the end of it all, I stopped, panting, tired... and I felt like I'd taken my hands off His shoulders and He was still there, patient, calm, even smiling a little at me. And because I went through all of that, my anger at Him left, I knew He loved and accepted me even in the depth of my anger, and I felt He was completely in loving control. I don't know how He did it, but He did.
Does this mean we should spend our time thinking about every thing we feel? No; sometimes it's wise to not focus too much on how you're feeling and to move on. But I think it's always important to at least acknowledge a feeling, and in the long run we should be seeking to understand our feelings more than we try to ignore them. Which leads me to my next point...
2. Understand why you feel the way you feel.
This will most often result in a "I don't know." And that's okay. The important step is to ask the question. Sometimes we avoid doing this because we've grown up in an environment that didn't accept how we feel unless there was a good reason, and so anytime someone questions why we're feeling a certain way, we feel rejected. If that's the case, you first need to tell yourself it's okay to not have a reason.
Why is understanding why you feel how you feel important? It's not so that we can justify our feelings. We live under grace; God accepts us unconditionally, regardless of how bratty or unreasonable we are. So how we feel is perfectly fine with God. Instead, I think the significance of this is in the longer term. I've found that I've made significant steps in my spiritual life and my own healing when I'm able to talk to someone about the things that bother me. I observe how I react, and often I don't understand them, but over time I start to see a pattern, and that pattern may reveal certain bitterness that I may have towards someone, or particular hurts that need healing, or particular lies in my past that I need to realise have shaped my world but are not true. Most importantly, it's how I learn to relate to God better; I've found that the more I understand myself, the more I understand how God made me, and the more I see that I really do make sense; that there is a sense of order and reason about even the seemingly irrational parts of me, and that speaks to me of how I've been lovingly and painstakingly crafted by the Loving Almighty Himself.
Why this is important to looking after your soul? Because understanding how you feel will tell you what are the areas you need to be loved in. On the flip side, if you don't seek to understand this, you will keep finding solutions that don't work because they don't actually address why you're doing what you're doing. E.g. Guys who fall into the addition of pornography often do so because they lack emotional affirmation and love; i.e. they feel unvalued. If you don't understand that, an easy solution will be to scold yourself and tell yourself you're a terrible person for looking at all these things... but that just accentuates the problem and makes things worse because feeling unvalued was how you began looking at it in the first place. On the other hand, if you understand that it's because you need affirmation, then you begin to see the point of finding someone to confess it too and talk about it with; someone who will affirm you and say it's okay, God doesn't judge you and neither do I, let's work through this together.
3. Seek out the oil (Mat 25:1-13)
Ok. Figurative speech. What exactly is the oil? Some say it's the Holy Spirit... but even then, sounds kind of figurative to me. What does it mean?
I think it's simply this: Our primary job as Christians is never to keep the fire burning (to make ourselves feel passionate; to "stir up" emotion; to keep serving; to try harder... although there may be times for each of those). Our job is to find what keeps our hearts alive (His love, His spirit) and to feed on it. Seek the oil and the flame will naturally burn (I think that's the miraculous gift of life! A dead person will do nothing no matter how much you love him). In other words, learn to receive, and learn to place yourself in places where you receive Godly things. Sometimes we tend to think that we need to force ourselves to obey, when we're really just running dry and need a little love. Seek out His love; come into your prayer time seeking to believe He wholly loves and accepts you before you begin to ask for anything (it's futile to ask God for something if you don't first believe He already knows and cares about what you want/need); find rest in Him (Heb 4). Find people who love you; give them opportunities to love you; spend time with God and focus on His love at all times.
Is being obedient and staying faithful as a Christian important? Sure. But it's not the most important thing. This race has never been about what we can do for Him anyway; it's always been about Him and what He does. We sometimes have a hard time accepting that in Singapore, because our entire culture is based on works-based acceptance; I am a good citizen if I am productive, stay late, earn enough for the family, provide for my kids, coach them through school etc. If I don't, I get scolded, or at best someone will tell me I got my just desserts for not trying hard enough. The Christian version goes something like this: I am a good Christian if I read my bible every day, spend X minutes praying everyday, treat people nicely, share the gospel with someone once in a while and serve regularly in a ministry. Oh and don't forget regular bible study and church attendance. If I don't at least try, then I can't expect God to love me and bless me.
Aside from the fact that that just isn't the heart of God, what this mentality fails to realise is that every action of giving (burning the flame) consumes motivation (oil), and we can and do run out of motivation when we give all the time and don't spend any time receiving. In seeking to earn His acceptance which has already been given free, oftentimes we are just depleting ourselves and our relationship with God.
In serving an abundant God as His little ones, shouldn't it be that we receive from Him so much more than we give? That, after all, is how every healthy little child is raised. This has never been about what we do for Him, and we need to stop defining our Christian lives around that. The hallmark of a faithful one isn't how much he has done for God, for there will be those in the end times who say Lord, I've done all these things for you, and Jesus will say "I didn't know you". Instead, we are like little children, often eager to do things to please the Father (which is great!) and constantly in need of His love and acceptance. I think the simple act of coming back to God, in full confidence that He loves (and likes!) us, and asking for some love and encouragement from Him brings Him so much joy, just like it would any earthly father to have his son or daughter come to him and say, "Daddy could I have a hug?"
This is why I think it's important to consider and understand our emotions; because if we don't even realise we feel upset, how can we tell when we're running dry and need His love? Of course He knows us better than we know ourselves, and I absolutely believe that it's fine if we don't see everything, because He sees what we need and He knows how to convince us. My concern is just that we will reject it even if He told us that was what we needed to focus on, thinking instead that it was Satan trying to tempt us.
We're like a motor car; fill up its tank, step on the gas and it goes happily (whee!). If the tank is low, it sputters... and then only an idiot would say the car is lousy and yell at it to try harder. That would be silly - the natural solution is to take the car to the gas station and fill 'er up (hopefully we don't have to push!). Our job as Christians to watch and pray, to keep our lamps alive, isn't one of trying harder to do things; it's figuring out where the gas stations that feed us His oil (His unconditional and extravagant love and acceptance) are, visiting them regularly and making sure we stay filled.
Seek His love and our lamps will naturally burn bright with us barely even trying. It's that simple.
And yet it's one of the most important parts of a Christian life. The call from Jesus to be like the 5 virgins who kept the oil in their lamp burning; his call to watch and pray... do we know what we're watching and praying for? What does it even mean to keep watch, when there's nothing physically to watch for? I think it means to keep watch for the condition of our souls so that we're ready to love HIm when He returns... So here's my take on a few aspects of what it means to look after your soul:
1. Consider your emotions; don't ignore them.
And by "consider", I mean take time to think about them. Understand how you are feeling. Give yourself time and space to feel instead of trying to shove it away so you can get round to doing 'more important' things. This comes naturally to many of us; to many others, it doesn't. I'm talking to the latter group now.
Often in Chinese culture we focus on the mind and the will. Personal feelings are seen as tolerable at best, evil at worst; especially when they appear to disrupt the order or 'peace' of a larger social group. And I think this idea has, unfortunately, found its way into Christian theology. We talk about doing good, and about crucifying the flesh, and often times crucifying the flesh ends up being tantamount to beating yourself with a psychological stick when your feelings make you want to do something that your mind thinks isn't good. "Shove those feelings away and be obedient to God, you weak and faithless Christian..."
But that isn't true. As Christians we should be the most engaged with our emotions, good and bad, because they are God-given and part of our complete salvation/restoration. Emotions aren't evil. God has emotions, Jesus had emotions, and He made us to have emotions. Feeling negative emotions is often the doorway to healing; it's when we feel hurt, upset or angry that God (or significant people in our lives) are able to provide comfort, understanding and love, and ultimately, healing. Ignoring those emotions is often a defensive mechanism to avoid being vulnerable, and in the process we shut off God from a part of our heart.
I'm reminded of something Glen (my pastor in the USA) used to say: It's not good to be angry at God, but if you're angry at Him it's even worse to pretend like you're not. I have discovered from personal and intimate experience with God that He is very capable of dealing calmly with our anger, and He is ever loving and patient to listen to us vent when we need to vent. I once spent about 10-15 mins in a worship session just bawling, tears flowing like a river, because I was angry at Him for letting me go through something hurtful. Those 10-15 minutes were spent venting at Him, and I felt like I was grabbing Him by the shoulders and shaking Him and yelling at Him. And the whole time I felt like He had this calm look on His face, like He was listening patiently and letting me shake Him. I didn't push Him away, I just confronted Him and said, "this sucked, why didn't you prevent this from happening?" because I was already feeling it and it wouldn't have done any good to pretend I wasn't. At the end of it all, I stopped, panting, tired... and I felt like I'd taken my hands off His shoulders and He was still there, patient, calm, even smiling a little at me. And because I went through all of that, my anger at Him left, I knew He loved and accepted me even in the depth of my anger, and I felt He was completely in loving control. I don't know how He did it, but He did.
Does this mean we should spend our time thinking about every thing we feel? No; sometimes it's wise to not focus too much on how you're feeling and to move on. But I think it's always important to at least acknowledge a feeling, and in the long run we should be seeking to understand our feelings more than we try to ignore them. Which leads me to my next point...
2. Understand why you feel the way you feel.
This will most often result in a "I don't know." And that's okay. The important step is to ask the question. Sometimes we avoid doing this because we've grown up in an environment that didn't accept how we feel unless there was a good reason, and so anytime someone questions why we're feeling a certain way, we feel rejected. If that's the case, you first need to tell yourself it's okay to not have a reason.
Why is understanding why you feel how you feel important? It's not so that we can justify our feelings. We live under grace; God accepts us unconditionally, regardless of how bratty or unreasonable we are. So how we feel is perfectly fine with God. Instead, I think the significance of this is in the longer term. I've found that I've made significant steps in my spiritual life and my own healing when I'm able to talk to someone about the things that bother me. I observe how I react, and often I don't understand them, but over time I start to see a pattern, and that pattern may reveal certain bitterness that I may have towards someone, or particular hurts that need healing, or particular lies in my past that I need to realise have shaped my world but are not true. Most importantly, it's how I learn to relate to God better; I've found that the more I understand myself, the more I understand how God made me, and the more I see that I really do make sense; that there is a sense of order and reason about even the seemingly irrational parts of me, and that speaks to me of how I've been lovingly and painstakingly crafted by the Loving Almighty Himself.
Why this is important to looking after your soul? Because understanding how you feel will tell you what are the areas you need to be loved in. On the flip side, if you don't seek to understand this, you will keep finding solutions that don't work because they don't actually address why you're doing what you're doing. E.g. Guys who fall into the addition of pornography often do so because they lack emotional affirmation and love; i.e. they feel unvalued. If you don't understand that, an easy solution will be to scold yourself and tell yourself you're a terrible person for looking at all these things... but that just accentuates the problem and makes things worse because feeling unvalued was how you began looking at it in the first place. On the other hand, if you understand that it's because you need affirmation, then you begin to see the point of finding someone to confess it too and talk about it with; someone who will affirm you and say it's okay, God doesn't judge you and neither do I, let's work through this together.
3. Seek out the oil (Mat 25:1-13)
Ok. Figurative speech. What exactly is the oil? Some say it's the Holy Spirit... but even then, sounds kind of figurative to me. What does it mean?
I think it's simply this: Our primary job as Christians is never to keep the fire burning (to make ourselves feel passionate; to "stir up" emotion; to keep serving; to try harder... although there may be times for each of those). Our job is to find what keeps our hearts alive (His love, His spirit) and to feed on it. Seek the oil and the flame will naturally burn (I think that's the miraculous gift of life! A dead person will do nothing no matter how much you love him). In other words, learn to receive, and learn to place yourself in places where you receive Godly things. Sometimes we tend to think that we need to force ourselves to obey, when we're really just running dry and need a little love. Seek out His love; come into your prayer time seeking to believe He wholly loves and accepts you before you begin to ask for anything (it's futile to ask God for something if you don't first believe He already knows and cares about what you want/need); find rest in Him (Heb 4). Find people who love you; give them opportunities to love you; spend time with God and focus on His love at all times.
Is being obedient and staying faithful as a Christian important? Sure. But it's not the most important thing. This race has never been about what we can do for Him anyway; it's always been about Him and what He does. We sometimes have a hard time accepting that in Singapore, because our entire culture is based on works-based acceptance; I am a good citizen if I am productive, stay late, earn enough for the family, provide for my kids, coach them through school etc. If I don't, I get scolded, or at best someone will tell me I got my just desserts for not trying hard enough. The Christian version goes something like this: I am a good Christian if I read my bible every day, spend X minutes praying everyday, treat people nicely, share the gospel with someone once in a while and serve regularly in a ministry. Oh and don't forget regular bible study and church attendance. If I don't at least try, then I can't expect God to love me and bless me.
Aside from the fact that that just isn't the heart of God, what this mentality fails to realise is that every action of giving (burning the flame) consumes motivation (oil), and we can and do run out of motivation when we give all the time and don't spend any time receiving. In seeking to earn His acceptance which has already been given free, oftentimes we are just depleting ourselves and our relationship with God.
In serving an abundant God as His little ones, shouldn't it be that we receive from Him so much more than we give? That, after all, is how every healthy little child is raised. This has never been about what we do for Him, and we need to stop defining our Christian lives around that. The hallmark of a faithful one isn't how much he has done for God, for there will be those in the end times who say Lord, I've done all these things for you, and Jesus will say "I didn't know you". Instead, we are like little children, often eager to do things to please the Father (which is great!) and constantly in need of His love and acceptance. I think the simple act of coming back to God, in full confidence that He loves (and likes!) us, and asking for some love and encouragement from Him brings Him so much joy, just like it would any earthly father to have his son or daughter come to him and say, "Daddy could I have a hug?"
This is why I think it's important to consider and understand our emotions; because if we don't even realise we feel upset, how can we tell when we're running dry and need His love? Of course He knows us better than we know ourselves, and I absolutely believe that it's fine if we don't see everything, because He sees what we need and He knows how to convince us. My concern is just that we will reject it even if He told us that was what we needed to focus on, thinking instead that it was Satan trying to tempt us.
We're like a motor car; fill up its tank, step on the gas and it goes happily (whee!). If the tank is low, it sputters... and then only an idiot would say the car is lousy and yell at it to try harder. That would be silly - the natural solution is to take the car to the gas station and fill 'er up (hopefully we don't have to push!). Our job as Christians to watch and pray, to keep our lamps alive, isn't one of trying harder to do things; it's figuring out where the gas stations that feed us His oil (His unconditional and extravagant love and acceptance) are, visiting them regularly and making sure we stay filled.
Seek His love and our lamps will naturally burn bright with us barely even trying. It's that simple.
Haze is all around (again!)
I see it with my eyes and
I smell it in my nose
Haze is all around me
And so my sinus flows
It came in on the wind
It's everywhere we go
So join your hands and pray now
For a different wind to blow
Oh Indo farmers, your haze does kill
Why do you burn your trees each year without fail?
Don't recall the beginning; just wish for an end
Please take your haze away from our land...
I smell it in my nose
Haze is all around me
And so my sinus flows
It came in on the wind
It's everywhere we go
So join your hands and pray now
For a different wind to blow
Oh Indo farmers, your haze does kill
Why do you burn your trees each year without fail?
Don't recall the beginning; just wish for an end
Please take your haze away from our land...
Friday, March 04, 2011
Salvation is the close of the old chapter of trying to earn God's acceptance. Baptism in the Holy Spirit is the opening of a new chapter of living out His authority and the authority He's given you. You can't get to chapter 2 without closing chapter 1. But wouldn't it be a shame to stop at chapter 1, or even halfway through chapter 2, without seeing what the ending He has in store is like? No eye has seen, no ear has heard, what the Lord God has in store for those who love Him.
It's not about what you do. It's about what you believe.
It's not about what you do. It's about what you believe.
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