Reading the Psalms in A New Light
Thanks to Pastor John Piper’s sermon on Pslams 42, I guess I am starting to learn to read the Psalms in a new light. At least less “I know this already”, more “I wanna know more”.
As someone belonging to a church where right doctrines, teachings and understanding of knowledge are highly emphasized, I’ve found myself suppressing the feelings part of being a Christian. Yeah, we always criticize the emotional extremism that certain denomination emphasized and most of the time I found myself “corrected” before I even began talking about my feelings as a Christian. “How do you feel?” seemed like a complete no-no in the community cause they wanna know what you understand, what you believe, not what you feel. I guess I just need to be brave enough to say that it’s exactly this which is the ‘excess’ of being in a Reformed church. I fully realize this. Not forgetting that it’s true that it’s not the original motivation/spirit that the church planter/leader had in mind.
One of the lessons I’ve learnt from listening to the sermon, is that one of the most important purpose of Psalms is to teach us how to feel “correctly”.
Psalms 42 is unique and very encouraging. I see myself very much in the similar situation, not knowing that such situation is there on the Bible, and is not wrong as I thought it was.
7Deep calls to deep
at the roar of your waterfalls;
all your breakers and your waves
have gone over me.
How many times I’ve complained to my friends about this kind of situation, where I’m in a quicksand of trouble, trying to get out of it but getting more sucked into it as I struggled out? His breakers and waves have gone over me, and I can’t seem to swim back. And all this while I thought to myself: no one else had this problem, don’t try to act as if you understand what I’m going through. If only I read deeper into Psalms. I will be so ashamed of that statement.
8By day the LORD commands his steadfast love,
and at night his song is with me,
a prayer to the God of my life.
9I say to God, my rock:
“Why have you forgotten me?
Why do I go mourning
because of the oppression of the enemy?”
The Bible has so much of such irony in successive verses. Just like Jonah in the storm with the sailors where he clearly showed them that he had very clear understanding about His God and yet he showed the least religious behaviour as compared to the sailors. On one hand, we know so much about God, we know so much that He is always there, never abandons, steadfast and all that. But on another hand, it just FELT like He has abandoned us, forgotten us, let us suffer in the hands of our enemies. This is a reality. We are not being hypocrites or such, we are being honest. We know, but we don’t feel it. And we’re here to say it out honestly.
Another very important conclusion to this Psalms 42. It didn’t end in the psalmist deliverance, nor did the psalmist asked for deliverance. What he asked for is simple. He asked for God and God alone.
1 As a deer pants for flowing streams,
so pants my soul for you, O God.
2 My soul thirsts for God,
for the living God.
When shall I come and appear before God?
How beautiful it is to learn from Psalms, from the Bible, knowing that it is not AT ALL far-fetched but really revolves around the relationship between God and men.
Still holding on to Him, my salvation, my God.
Love of His Words
One of the many weaknesses of being in a Reformed church is that as we receive much deep and biblical knowledge from our preachers, many of us may just lose our appetite for the Word of God itself. I personally realized that I, too, have been slowly and gradually moving away from using bible verses in self-arguments or in conversation with others. It’s actually easy to just capture the concept and forget the verses. And later on to justify self by saying “as long as I struggle with the concept, I guess it’s enough”.
However, I find this very disturbing and totally defeating the purpose of having a church and teaching which should in fact point us back to the Bible. Well, the church and its leaders are doing their jobs, just that the slothful and sluggish me is abandoning my own responsibilities. I fully realize my gradual drifting away from the Word of God, though I may hold certain posts and serve in different kinds of ministries in church as well as on campus, which is really ironic. I have less and less time with God, I justify my actions a lot. It has turned into a really scary scenario.
Today, somehow, Psalm 19 is read aloud in church. It reminds me these verses that I used to memorize, few years back. And I wonder where all the enthusiasm has gone.
7) The law of the Lord is perfect,
reviving the soul;
the testimony of the Lord is sure,
making wise the simple;
the precepts of the Lord are right,
rejoicing the heart;
the commandment of the Lord is pure,
enlightening the eyes;
9) the fear of the Lord is clean,
enduring forever;
the rules of the Lord are true,
and righteous altogether.
10) More to be desired are they than gold,
even much fine gold;
sweeter also than honey
and drippings of the honeycomb.
11) Moreover, by them is your servant warned;
in keeping them there is great reward.
I guess my response to this verse, the uneasiness, the troubled mind while reading and the reminiscing of the past just confirm even more that God’s words is at work in me even at that period, even when I least expected it, when I’m not actively seeking for it. Such power, such greatness, how can I lose sight of it all this while?
The law of the Lord has always been torturing, hasn’t it? How can it be reviving/refreshing the soul? How can it be rejoicing the heart, enlightening the eyes? Am I again using my unbelief to judge the word of God? Pardon my unbelief, Lord.
If His words says that the law of the Lord are all those, then let me experience it, Lord. Teach me to love it, do it and enjoy it. Let me take off this mask of unbelief, this skepticism that’s always been inside of me, this feeling of “i know that” and all the pride of being a Christian, especially from the Reformed denomination. Let me relearn what it is to love the law of the Lord, the perfect law, the fear of the Lord that keeps me clean which will keep warning me from unrighteousness and reminding me of the hope ahead.
If I cannot love God’s words, how can I ever say that I love God? I am such a liar then.
Help me with my unbelief, O Lord. Help me stay near to Your heart.
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An Indonesian Bible (Alkitab Indonesia), complemented with an English KJV Bible. Features include search, bookmarks, annotations and history. Completely free and I hope this would be a blessing for all 
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Allowed of God
“But as we were allowed of God to be put in trust with the gospel, even so we speak; not as pleasing men, but God, which trieth our hearts.”
– 1 Thessalonians 2:4
22 June Entry
I’m not gonna let the evil one use my feelings to drag me into self-pity, stopping me from being blessings to others and most of all stopping me from being satisfied in God.
Why being depressed over one thing , turning a blind eye to the fact that infact you have so many people around you who love and care about you a great deal.
A small man expects a great deal of others
A big man expects a great deal out of himself
I feel joy that even when I’m in fear but when I look into the eyes of a sister in Christ, I see a look in her face saying “I know you’re scared, be strong”
Also joy when another sister in Christ puts a lot of *obvious* effort in listening to my unending rambles, when she’s not even a listener type, just because she really misses having me around.
Every small gesture, offer of help, or even a simple how are you and remembering one piece of small detail about me to strike a conversation. It’s already much more than I deserve.
Joy from knowing that my life is not all about me an myself because as selfish as it might have been, it would be a totally meaningless life.
Joy to finally learn what it feels like to be sincerely grateful to God.
knowing that having all these thoughts are not something inborn, something I read from books, or that I somehow conjured up in my head but to know that it’s truly by God’s grace alone
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.
