The Death Knell of Meaning

Ravi Zacharias wrote:

“Pleasure, not pain, is the death knell of meaning.

This is the lonely planet problem of Sam Harris’s worldview — the belief that because each of us is alone in the universe our personal joys and sorrows have no effect or impact on anyone else. In other words, it’s all about me.

We have all come to know that our problem is not that pain has produced emptiness in our lives; the real problem is that even pleasure utlimately leaves us empty and unfulfilled. When the pleasure button is pressed incessantly, we are left feeling bewilderingly empty and betrayed.”

and one phrase that I particularly liked (probably cause I relate myself so much to it):

“The greates disappointment (and resulting pain) you can feel is when you have just experiienced that which you thought would bring you the ultimate in pleasure – and it has let you down.”

and to sum it all up:

“Pleasure without boundaries produces a life without purpose. That is real pain. No death, no tragedy, no atrocity — nothing really matters. Life is sheer hollowness, with no purpose”

Wide Awake

It’s about 3.20 am in the morning and after hours of struggle to sleep, I decided to get up and write this post.

Many thoughts were in my head, both very disturbing and some new learning points, most of which I gathered after a few days of dry spirituality.

First of all, is of course the struggle to accept reality. It’s just something that I have constantly been battling with, sometimes I thought I have conquered it, sometimes it just made me crumble all the way down. There seemed to be no end to it. and I guess when I’m too confident of my own ability to handle it, it will come back and haunt me, reminding me that everything’s only by His Grace. In theory, it’s so easy to accept. But in reality, it’s strangely difficult. Sometimes I wonder if it’s just not my position to understand everything, maybe it’s just time for me to accept ‘blindly’ and move on. But, again, it’s never easy.

When Paul said “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God” in Philippians 4. Present your requests to God. At first it sounded like, give to God once and for all, and you’re done. That must be the ideal case, because personally, it’s much more than that. It’s the daily struggling with thoughts that you knew you shouldn’t have, actual dreams that give false hopes, the sinful nature of yourself which allow me to compromise and indulge in those thoughts. And then realizing that it’s wrong, again and again, telling God to please control your thoughts because you can’t seem to do it anymore, to please let your mind focus on Him because you just don’t want to fall into the same sin again and again. But does praying that once made everything okay in an instant? No. It’s daily, crying and yearning for God to stay near when you felt yourself drifting away from Him and more and more into satan’s hand.

And secondly, when I struggled to sleep I always like to sing hymns to myself. This time I sang Be Thou My Vision because the lyrics happened to be just on top of my head. It’s funny how at times like this, a simple and well-known, maybe overly-sung hymn can give a new understanding to someone like me. It’s the sentence in the first verse where the words “Thou my best thought by day or by night” are. It’s as if God is saying, yeah, you keep thinking too much about your useless thoughts, your sins, your struggles but you forgot that the only solution is to think more of Christ. I thought I “go to God” in my struggles, but in fact, I was just wallowing myself in self-pity. How else can I have confidence in this fallen world, if not the confidence of the Cross?

And of course, I know it will be hard. VERY HARD. To keep telling myself that I want to follow God’s way. that I want no other joy than the joy from God. no other sunshine but the sunhine of His face. Especially in this fallen world where the temporary happiness are just too tempting, instant, and easy to achieve. But those are just driving me away from the real source of joy. I hope that this will be my constant prayer, and to know that I will only be satisfied by God:

“Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love,
that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days.”

Psalm 90:14

God’s Plan and Sovereignty

I had been wandering off spiritually, not praying, not reading the Word of God, just doing whatever I felt like doing. I felt guilty everytime, sometimes I just gave certain justifications and excuses to clear the guilt, and recently I forced myself to pray, read the Bible, and listen to a sermon.

I stumbled upon Rev. Stephen Tong’s sermon on youtube on Ephesians 1:5-9. I always searched for his sermons because somehow I felt most rebuked by his preaching (probably because it’s in Indonesian) and culturally closer to my experiences and situation.

He argued that most of the churches had been declining spiritually due to the fact that they focus too much on human’s experience of God, on the crystallization of the human experiences in the history that they failed to see through God’s eyes. Not only do we have to look near and far, but we have to look from top down (through God’s eyes).

Besides, what I think is really affirming is when he mentioned that there are four type of God’s Sovereignty:

1. God’s Eternal Plan

His unchanging plan which exists before the world, before the concept of time and space, before there are any creature besides God Himself. The plan that was in Him, in His eternity

2. God’s Control/Sovereignty in the history

God leads and controls whatever that happened in the history of mankind. It is more difficult for those from the Western part of the world to accept this fact since more often than not every single part of their lives are planned and organized very well. However, spiritual things go beyond man’s understandings.

One of the example he gave was about Jude, the author of the Book Jude in the Bible who originally wanted to write a book on God’s salvation works but God’s controling, God’s push and burden were so strong on him to write on the end of the world. This is because Paul at that time was already writing the Book of Romans, about God’s salvation works.

Therefore, we as Christians have to obey Him and be sensitive to His plans to be able to see God’s plan.

3. God allowing sins and unpleasant things.

This is clear where God allows human beings to not obey Him. Because at times, man is so daring to misuse his/her freedom that God gives them. God’s control and sovereignty is to give freedom to men and to allow them to act unpleasing to Him.

4. God giving the disobedient over to sins

As in Romans 1:26,28,30.

It is still under God’s power. And in God’s sight, these people who are given over to sins still have to be responsible to God, the Judge of this world. It is at this stage that people nowadays think that they are FREE, that God does not exist, but sadly, they are just in a stage, very slippery slope towards eternal death.

One very rebuking point to me, who complains a lot about God, to God when I was faced with a small bitty bit of problem and difficulty is this:

Be grateful to God who still meddle in our lives. Giving us hindrance, difficulties, pain, waking us up to the fact that we’re wrong because we, human beings, are just too dangerous to be left with freedom and without any obstacles because in our smoothness of life, we sleep spiritually, we pride ourselves, and slowly leaving God.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said that if we’re sitting in a very comfortable chair, it is rare for us to not be drowsy.

A sleeping spirituality is even worse than animals.

God wakes us up by whipping us, giving us failure, to remind us that we are human beings, limited creatures who can’t do anything without Him.

Rev. Tong, then, cried out with these two sentences that had so far been stamped firm in my heart. He asked us to tell God that

“I’d rather be in Your hands, to go through difficulties, than to be in Satan’s hand and be prosperous.

I’d rather be under Your teachings, guide us, O Lord so that we can be perfect, than to be free to do whatever I want but blinded by Satan in his plan”

It is true that sometimes God gives us something so beautiful, something we can be proud of, something so secure, OUR DREAMS and suddenly take them away to tell us that we have misused those things or that we are not the OWNERS of those things. And at those times, we just cry, angry, and are disappointed at Him. Maybe we started telling Him, “Why did you do this to me, God? I hate you, I don’t trust you anymore”

It’s exactly at those times, God will say

“I don’t care about you trusting me or not, but you have to care about WHY I DESTROYED YOUR DREAMS”

“You are pained by your lost of worldly things? I am pained because I lost you”

Beneath The Cross of Jesus

Beneath the cross of Jesus I fain would take my stand,
The shadow of a mighty rock within a weary land;
A home within the wilderness, a rest upon the way,
From the burning of the noontide heat, and the burden of the day.

O safe and happy shelter, O refuge tried and sweet,
O trysting place where Heaven’s love and Heaven’s justice meet!
As to the holy patriarch that wondrous dream was given,
So seems my Savior’s cross to me, a ladder up to heaven.

There lies beneath its shadow but on the further side
The darkness of an awful grave that gapes both deep and wide
And there between us stands the cross two arms outstretched to save
A watchman set to guard the way from that eternal grave.

Upon that cross of Jesus mine eye at times can see
The very dying form of One Who suffered there for me;
And from my stricken heart with tears two wonders I confess;
The wonders of redeeming love and my unworthiness.

I take, O cross, thy shadow for my abiding place;
I ask no other sunshine than the sunshine of His face;
Content to let the world go by to know no gain or loss,
My sinful self my only shame, my glory all the cross.

I love the last two stanzas.

It is quite disappointing that usually in recorded hymns, only the first and the last verse is sung. Hymns like this can’t be really sung with deep conviction without really reading the words, saying Amen to it, and sing it. Most of the times people hate hymns because it sounded boring, repeated for 4 stanzas with the same tune.

They want music that’s closer to their ear, their generation, pop music, rock music. And the words? Don’t make it too difficult, I won’t be able to ‘feel’ it right away. Write about feelings, write about how Jesus loves ME, dies for ME, blessings for ME, or… I love you, all those love song phrases. It’s not that I have anything against those phrases, it’s okay if we’re still in the start of our spiritual journey with God. However as we progress, shouldn’t we praise God with songs containing words portraying our depth of understanding? That Jesus and me, not only Jesus died for me, Jesus loves me, I am so thankful. What’s next? How about our repentance? Like about redeeming love and unworthiness in the 3rd verse?

The wonder of how a love so amazing, can redeem an unworthy soul like us. Shouldn’t understanding of that makes us not take everything for granted, and struggle in our lives to live according to what our status says “in Christ”. What the cross meant to us? What does Jesus’ love to us meant? How should we response?

I remember a few years back I was still attending a Methodist Church in Singapore and I loved the worship part, and fell asleep or zoned out during the sermon part. Imagine the excitement when I heard about a session under the stars, only singing worship songs. Not to mention that singing is really a passion of mine. So it doesn’t matter what I sing, I sing with feelings. Why? because that’s how the words and people around me forced me to be. All feelings but apparently no understandings.

‘I ask no other sunshine than the sunshine of His face’. This has such a deep meaning. Yes, definitely more than “You are my all in all”. Why? because sunshine is such an essential part of every living things in this earth. Sunshine is like our main source of energy in this world. But why I ask no other sunshine, than the sunshine of His face? This is similar to David saying ‘Thy loving kindness is better than life’. Without God’s love, without Jesus’ light on us, our life is practically meaningless. We’re all doomed. So why live life without God’s loving kindness, or Jesus’ face shining on us?

It’s the same in the apostles’ time and even now. How Good Friday isn’t much celebrated compared to Easter or … Christmas. Christians do not want to see the suffering Jesus, they wanna see the triumphant Jesus. The apostles were expecting Messiah who would be rebuilding the physical kingdom on earth and be their physical king. It’s hard to understand why the Cross is our glory. The hymn author wrote ‘My sinful self my shame, my glory all the cross. ‘. Know where our position is. Knowing our unworthiness, knowing that nothing in this life we can be proud of because nothing we have doesn’t come from Him. To be proud, instead, of the cross. Of who we are, what our status is, knowing that it i through the Cross that we accept all those.

Thanks be to God.

Yet Again?

A stable spirituality is one which is not stable.

That’s what someone told me while I was struggling with beliefs, faiths, and sins.

It is so hard to accept the fact that no matter how stable I try to act or be, there will just be this shattering period, a period of uhh I’m so tired of everything, uhh I hate the way I am, uhh I hate this or that person.

Being someone who sometimes can’t help but be extreme, sometimes very strong, sometimes too weak for anything.  It’s even more frustrating.

I’m not even sure which one I actually am. Is it the strong one, or is it the vulnerable one? Or is it really both? So this is normal? It is okay to be unstable?

I don’t know. I will remember to response correctly in front of God, but… should I just stop the but, and just move on doing what I know I should do.

The Word of God, that’s what I need, and that’s what I am avoiding everytime I feel rebelious.

Sad…

Recent Thoughts

I figured that whatever thoughts I had and whatever lessons I had learned, I really have to write it down, I do not trust my head, do not believe that it can contain that much information. Maybe some I can absorb and learn right away, maybe some I can’t. I am sure writing it down will give me more chance in the future to be reminded or to relearn.

I just read A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis. It’s Lewis’ personal writings to reflect upon his reactions towards his wife’s passing away, and the response to God that he finally decided on. I found it very honest, very descriptive, too many details that honestly I had troubles understanding them. But it is amazing to learn from the way people think, how the thoughts developed, how feelings are described in words. And what I found is mostly true for me.

I dare not compare what I went through with what he did. I have been in grief too, but grieving over myself, and my own loss of “possession”. Selfish grief. Nothing really, if compared to most of the grievances went through by people around the world. But the reality is that it is there, and I can’t just brush it away knowing that it is small compared to others. I saw the need to learn to overcome it, to learn how to response correctly in God’s presence.

My experience is not losing someone to death, but more of losing someone whom I thought I would spend the rest of my life with, maybe forever. It’s childish, it’s selfish. But I guess it suits my level of spirituality. Thinking that I have gotten over everything, proud to be okay, just to find out that, there are things that I just can’t control. Things like feelings. Maybe instead of trying to make those feelings totally vanish, I thought I should learn how to response to those feelings instead.

In the beginning chapter of A Grief Observed, Lewis wrote:

“There are moments, most unexpectedly, when something inside me tries to assure me that I don’t really mind so much, not so very much, after all. Love is not the whole of a man’s life. I was happy before I ever met H. I’ve plenty of what are called ‘resources.’ People get over these things. Come, I shan’t do so badly. One is ashamed to listen to this voice but it seems for a little to be making out a good case. Then comes a sudden jab of red-hot memory and all this ‘commonsense’ vanishes like an ant in the mouth of a furnace.”

I learned from him that I should first be honest with myself. I am not that strong a person to say I don’t mind this and that, the reality is that I am troubled. But am I gonna let the troubles take over my whole life, control me into this lunatic girl who behaves whatever way she wants? Well, I’ve gone through that and I can safely say no. Now, I want to know, I want to learn what response from me that will please God.

Then it comes the time when I was very depressed and sad, I ran to God, I cried out for Him, but without any answer. I was questioning whether God is ignoring me altogether? I’ve even come to think that I may be not one of the ‘predestined’ one and He has never deserted me because I was never His in the first place. Stupid thought, I know. But whatever thought came through, I knew deep inside that He’s still there, upholding me quietly.

Lewis continued with these:

And so, perhaps, with God. I have gradually been coming to feel that the door is no longer shut and bolted. Was it my own frantic need that slammed it in my face? The time when there is nothing at all in your soul except a cry for help may be just the time when God can’t give it: you are like the drowning man who can’t be helped because he clutches and grabs. Perhaps your own reiterated cries deafen you to the voice you hoped to hear.

On the other hand, ‘Knock and it shall be opened.’ But does knocking mean hammering and kicking the door like a maniac? And there’s also ‘To him that hath shall be given.’ After all, you must have a capacity to receive, or even omnipotence can’t give. Perhaps your own passion temporarily destroys the capacity.

Someone told me before that usually it’s our own expectations of what we want to see happening blocks our view for what God is working on in our lives. Something along the line of what Lewis explained, or maybe sometimes we focused too much on our pain, on ourselves, that we are blinded and deaf to what God wants to teach us.

And lastly of course, another very important point I have so far experienced and also learnt.

“My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it Himself. He is the great iconoclast. Could we not almost say that this shattering is one of the marks of His presence?”

The Incarnation is the supreme example; it leaves all previous ideas of the Messiah in ruins. And most are ‘offended’ by the iconoclasm; and blessed are those who are not.”

The shattering is painful. I do not dare to ask pain from God. But if that is the path that God wants me to go through, I pray that He gives me strength with it. I want to keep believing in Him, having faith in Him. Rev. Stephen Tong once said “A man is how he responds to God”, reminding me each day that whatever I am doing, I am responding to God, and if I am to do that, I pray that I will always respond in a way that pleases Him.

Thank you Lord.

At Calvary

The common mercies we enjoy all sing of love,
just as the sea-shell, when we put it to our ears,
whispers of the deep sea whence it came;

but if we desire to hear the ocean itself,
we must not look at every-day blessings,
but at the transactions of the crucifixion.

He who would know love, let him retire to Calvary
and see the Man of sorrows die.
- CH Spurgeon

Good Friday Revival

Year by year since I decided I wanted to be a serious Christian, Good Friday and Easter came and gone so quickly. Sometimes I selfishly go to the service without inviting anyone I know, selfishly absorb whatever lessons I get from the atmosphere, from the Word of God, from the sermon. It is pretty frustrating at times for me to promise myself every year that in one year’s time, I will at least bring one person to the rally and it just fails every year. I wasn’t even at the point of getting rejected for asking, I didn’t have the guts, or didn’t care enough to actually ask those I care about to listen to the word of Life that has personally changed me.

Maybe I wanna keep all my friendships at a comfortable level, no conflict, no this and that, nothing. I am just too scared to face problems, or in another sense, I do not trust that if I seek God’s Kingdom first, all the rest will be added. Such a weak faith.

This is the first Good Friday and Easter where I would not be in Singapore. I did not even know that it’s coming so soon. and at the blink of an eye, I have agreed to sing for my church here in Sacramento for its Easter Service. It felt so easy here when I am not in Singapore, and I do not have all those responsibilities. So easy, but so wrong. Maybe God is giving me time to reflect and do not what others asked me to do, but what I am convicted to doing.

I hope I do not go past day by day thinking it’s okay to live without referring to His Words, praying and understanding God’s heart, and thinking that I own my own life. I am too old to play around. I need to grow up, I need to have the pain and the passion for others. I need more convictions. I need God’s help.

Sincere thoughts from a weak sinner

I just attended a mission conference in San Francisco and I learnt one thing which really struck me deeply. It may not be something new, even to me, but the meaning of those things sinked down really profoundly on that day. Thus, after e-mailing this thoughts to a friend, I thought of posting this on this blog because no matter who read it, or even if no one reads this, it will act as a reminder for me in my course of life as God’s worker in this fallen world.

I had served for 2 years in a Christian Fellowship in my university in Singapore. I also had served the Lord through music in church. I reflected the lesson that struck me that day to all the ministries that I have been involved in, especially for that one period where I was in charge of fellowship camp. I pondered again why after the 2 year span of serving God, I ended up being very stressed out, I ended up disappointed at God, I ended leaving Christianity and stopped going to church (for some time).

I used to serve so passionately, so enthusiastically that sometimes I wondered why others didn’t have as much fire as I had. Not to mention that God graced me with certain organizational skills. What went wrong?

Firstly, about the camp. It’s an important event for our fellowship although it’s only an annual 3-day thing. I saw lives being changed through the camp in my two years in this fellowship. Christians who were lukewarm, started to be more serious in upholding their Christian values in their lives and ministries. I saw how the transformation of mind, transformed the whole person, and affecting the fellowship in the positive light, motivating even more members to live close to God, to strive to be like Christ. No matter how terrible our planning is, how much trouble happened during the camp, God somehow, somewhat, mysteriously worked in those people that earnestly seek Him, working through the committee’s imperfect work to make our members, mere fallen and weak sinners, to be more perfect each day. Camp is indeed an important Kairos.

Therefore, I thought back in time again about how every year the new committee will all come together, sit down and think brainstorm the weaknesses in our fellowship in order to come out with a theme for the camp. Usually, the IC of the camp will send some points to ponder regarding the condition of the fellowship and our impact on the surrounding. I’m guessing probably there will be some of us who only started reflecting on the fellowship when they saw the emails, or even worse only started thinking when the meeting for discussion started and my wild guess is people will end up talking for the sake of being able to voice their “opinions” (eventhough some of the opinions were pretty convincing). I myself had been in those situations, honestly.

The situation in which I haven’t been is one in which my heart is truly crushed when I see the weaknesses in our fellowship, crushed looking at myself, at my own brothers and sisters not glorifying God in our lives, crushed because whatever not pleasing in God’s eyes, do not please my heart too. Most of all, to have a heart that is crushed looking at the hardened hearts of my brothers and sisters in Christ and myself for being terribly ignorant instead of being crushed, broken and weep over the lives of people around us whose path will obviously lead to their perishings. Without such crushed hearts that love God more than anything and love those who God loved, I believe there will be no true revival.

So what went wrong? I thought over and over again, am I that comfortable with my activities? Comfortable with the annual camp, the meetings, the people voicing their opinions, theme set through majority votes and every year going through the same procedure without further thinking without really going to God, getting down on our knees to pray and cry over our sins, asking for hearts that yearn to obey Him, to yearn to synchronize to God’s heart, even if it’s a small part of it.  Being too comfortable with spiritual activities, activities which built more and more the wall of self righteousness, the wall which kept me feeling holy.

It’s time that we take a step back, and think of why we’re doing all this. Why need a camp? Why are we serving Him? Why are we doing whatever we are doing?. What is truly our vision in our camp? in our ministry? Is it because the activities are done under the name of our Christian Fellowship then whatever motivations for activities are guaranteed to be for the Glory of God?

Do we really know what He wants us to do in this fellowship, in this world, in our life? Do we really see a “vision” from Him, to see the needs of the people here in our fellowship and outside it? Are we really burdened, are our hearts really moved not because that’s God’s orders so we JUST have to do it BUT because we understand even the smal part of God’s heart, and from the understanding, it burdened us, it became our burdens when we actually see the needs of people around us and that bring us to kneel down even more in His presence, praying constantly for our vision and at the same time follow it up with our faithful actions.

Again, on the topic of our camp fellowship, I quote Mother Theresa who once said ” I’m not called to be successful, I’m called to be faithful” when asked about the successfulness of her ministry to the poor. The worry about success of the camp will definitely be there, just like all other secular events in which all those must be planned fabulously BUT our fear for God should far overwhelm that worry. Fear that we are not faithful to Him, fear that whatever we do will not be blessed by Him. Then, we should really take time to reflect and pray that He will grant us such heart,  a heart which is crushed when we see sin, weep over sins because in our heart, there is a small bit of God’s heart which is the love of God to His people and His passion for His own glory.

I pray that whoever fell into the same trap of ministries, activities, and soon disappointment, will together with me, learn to accept the reality in life, the fallen reality of this world and kept striving not for our success, but strive to be faithful to what we are called for. God is a God who always keeps to His promises. When I first became a Christian, I read this verse about nothing will separate me from the love of God, separate me from God. Though I ran away from Him, He drew me back, His grace pulled me back, His Holy Spirit refreshes me again, His Words transformed my mind, over and over again, and the Cross gave life back to me. I believe that whoever is now in the same situation has the same promise from God, and I pray that soon they will find God and the joy of serving God in their lives again. Cos God promises to lead us from Grace to Grace, from Strength to Strength, from Faith to Faith.

Just another  weak, weak sinner strengthen by the loving grace of His blood on the Cross,
Pat

Reformed Spirituality

Recently I am listening to Rev. Dr. Stephen Tong’s National Reformed Evangelical Convention (NREC) sermon which was 5 years ago in 2004.

He was speaking about what is true revival. And he mentioned Psalm 23 as one of the key bible verse about Reformation.

Psalm 23:2-3

² He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters,

³ he restores my soul.
He guides me in paths of righteousness
for his name’s sake.

or in other translation :because of His Holy name, He has waken me up and lead me into the original path.

Reformed movement means STOP DEVIATING and RETURN to the correct path that God has planned. Why this movement?

1. Because of His Holy name, not because of our merits, not because we deserve it.

2. We have to be awaken, we need to know where we have deviated.

Thanks be to God.

I wish I were able to attend even one of the NREC. But I had no more chances.