LIFE's purpose

No growth; no use

Last Friday’s cell was fun. You guys attended with a peculiar zeal, quiet zeal. And I thank you for the enthusiasm showed, in your own special way. It has been three years now. Not exactly long in a cell life, but not exactly short either. I think three years is a good number. It is just nice. It is just nice to get to know each other. It is just nice to be comfortable, personal and more forthright. But we all know numbers are just numbers. We can be together for as long as the life of Adam (950 plus years) and not learn anything. So the years mean nothing without the growth.

So, let’s count the growth in our group. First, we witnessed the birth of a few beautiful babies. Let me count the bundles of joy: Dave (the wise one), Tiara (the princess), Lemuel (the priceless gift), Jezer (the restless energy) and the akan datang yet-to-be-named daughter of mine. Second, we saw traffic of people leaving and joining our cell group, with a steady growth in numbers.

Lastly, we witnessed the positive change in lives of our members. I think this is the all-important factor in a cell group. Lives have to be changed for God. Lives have to demonstrate growth - real, genuine, progressive growth. Personally, I think we are wiser after three years…or else, I would have failed miserably as your cell leader. No growth, no use.
I am convinced that the years of personal relating and “clowning around” have caused you guys to inch closer to God, closer to His love, closer to His teachings.

Remember what I said before, “Conversion is in doing as much as you can with as much as you know and to progress on a daily basis.” This means that your conversion is like the rise of dawn. Surely, positively and incrementally, your spiritual transformation should rise like the new morning. God doesn’t expect sudden, skyrocketed growth that fizzles off midway. God expects progressive, steady growth.

Of course, where there is growth, there is also the reverse, the dreaded regress. You would have no excuse as a child of God if you should stand before your grandchildren one day and are unable to recall one thing that you had done for God that matters for eternity. Beloved, I believe a wasted life is not so much on doing the same thing day in and day out and not exactly liking it – like your salaried work. That’s unwise, but it is still excusable (provided your children are well provided for and you have a retirement nest waiting for you).

A truly wasted life, in my view, is when one consistently professes to be one thing and then failing to live it up in his lifetime. Consider the following ministry activity: attending church for the rest of your life, paying tithes faithfully, serving regularly, attending cell group week after week, praying for others, listening to sermons every Sunday. Then, one day you discover that your life has not changed a single bit. You are still bitter. You get envious easily. You still sulk like a child. You still blame others for your own mistakes. You still want the easy way out of things, still running away from responsibility. You may age as a human being but you are still a babe in God. In short, you are still you.

When death beckons, such a life has nothing to show for and is truly wasted on things that doesn’t count for eternity.

The plea of 5 virgins

If I may be so presumptuous and construct a simple conversation between Jesus (JC) and the five virgins who didn’t have enough oil in their lamps, I think it would go something like this:-
JC : depart from me, for I know you not.
Virgins : But JC, we got oil, see.
JC : its too late.
Virgins : But you are a God of Love?
JC : I’m also a God of Judgment.
Virgins : JC, you must give us another chance. This is all too sudden.
JC : What is “too sudden”? The suddenness of my coming or the suddenness of your repentance?

The virgins then convened a short conference. They knew it was a trick question. If they replied, “suddenness of Christ’s coming,” then Jesus would say that His coming has already been written. They have obviously failed to keep watch and pray. If they replied, “suddenness of their repentance”, Jesus would say that they were insincere and their repentance makes a mockery of His death. Both ways, they would be digging their own grave. So, they did what all mortal beings would do: they kept quiet and looked at Jesus with puppy-dogged eyes.

JC continued : Why do you sleep knowing your lamp is empty?
Virgins : JC, we thought we still had time. We were young. We were busy. We had to look good for you. Don’t you know the make up alone took days…and…and how about the tailored gown? You know how slow those Jewish tailors can be.
JC : Then, you have made your choice…And my father has made his.
Jesus shut the door behind him.

Have you made your choice?

Rising from the ashes: the amazing life of Hannah Whitall Smith

I would like to ask you, “What is the destiny, which God has planned for modern man? How can a person forfeit the destiny, which God has planned for his life?”

Last Friday, our pastor shared with us his personal conviction on salvation. He believed that once we are saved, our names are forever written in the book of life. In other words, our salvation is secured, inerasable, guaranteed. Revelation 3:12 puts it, “…he who overcomes, I will make him a pillar in the temple of My God…I will write on him the name of My God.”

Now, let’s not get carried away. The tag, “Once saved always saved” has its condition. The condition is: We must first overcome.

You see, the story of the gospel is as simple as 1-2-3. One, it is about our creation. Two, it is about our fall. Three, it is about our redemption. In between the 1-2-3, it is all about overcoming. That’s the purpose of our existence. That’s our destiny.

Different people overcome life’s struggles in different ways. Different people, different strokes. Take the life of the American evangelist, Hannah Whitall Smith (1832 – 1911), for example. She was a fighter in every sense of the word. Her husband and her were both international evangelists and together they had conducted many successful evangelistic campaigns in Europe. But it all came to an abrupt end when her husband was accused of seducing a lady while he was praying for her. Shunned by the local churches, Hannah had to return with her husband to Philadelphia in disgrace. However, she stood by her husband and vouched for his innocence.

Subsequently, while still grieving over the death of her daughter, she discovered that her husband was engaging in an affair. It was a double blow for Hannah. Still, she didn’t divorce him. But they stayed apart for the most part of their marital life. Then, things went down hill when she lost two of her daughters to illness. But the tragedy did not stop there. Later, one of her daughters was disillusioned by the hypocrisy of her father and she married the famed atheist Bertrand Russell, who wrote, among many literary works, the controversial book entitled, Why I am not a Christian. As if all this was not enough, two of her children inherited her husband’s emotional and mental instability and suffered from what would be termed today as bipolar manic-depressive disorder.

For most people, the death of one daughter would be too heart wrenching to make life worth living. But Hannah lost three, endured an unfaithful husband, stood and watched helplessly as her daughter walked down the aisle with a man who did not believe in God, and had to grieve over her daughters’ mental illness.

In all these, Hannah overcame and proclaimed, “This, then, is what I mean by God being enough. It is that we find in Him, the fact of His existence and of His character, all that we can possibly want for everything. God is, must be, our answer to every question and every cry of need.”

In the midst of her grief and pain, Hannah went on to write her classic book called, The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life. What an indomitable spirit, beloved! Talk about rising from the ashes of grief. How could a lady who had experienced so much pain still able to pen a book about happiness! She would have been more qualified to write about sorrow and pain, disappointments and betrayal. Truly, she has overcome.

Well, I guess Hannah’s secret to living an overcoming life is well surmised in the comments of her biographer, Marie Henry, “Hannah Whitall Smith’s resiliency would surprise people all of her life. Knocked down, time after time, hounded by doubts and confusion, she had a gift of dealing with defeat and rebounding from despair. There was a prevailing buoyancy in her soul, an aliveness and sense of adventure in her spirit. Hannah would have said very simply that her constantly deepening faith kept her from losing her enthusiasm for life, that it was her steadfast belief in the goodness of God that lightened her spirits and enabled her to maintain her vitality.”
There is much to learn and emulate from the overcoming life of Hannah Whitall Smith.

I believe she struggled much with doubts and despair in her Christian journey but she never lost sight of her destiny with God. She knew she was royal material with royal blood flowing in her veins and with a royal crown waiting for her at the end of her earthly race. And 1 Peter 2:9-10 put it grandly, “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a Holy Nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.”

We are indeed handpicked by God. Our identity is in God. We belong to Him exclusively. Our mission is to declare His good works, His praises, His everyday miracles, His goodness, His love and His mercy. For we are redeemed for a costly price and “out of darkness” we have entered “into His wonderful light.” There is no better summary of a Christian’s destiny than the illuminating words of 1 Peter above.

Miserable octogenarian and a happy forty something

A Baptist pastor in America and an author of many illuminating books, John Piper, once declared that, “The deepest and most enduring happiness is found only in God. Not from God, but in God.” He says that everybody is looking for happiness. In fact, we all are looking for some form of happiness. We find this form of happiness in changing a new car. We find another form in the birth of a baby daughter (eh…this September…just a reminder). Further forms may be found in your work or, that temporary emotional perk you feel when you receive your cheque at the end of the month. For others, happiness may come in the form of a prince charming or a princess cantik.

I have identified three basic forms of happiness. The first form is happiness in the possessing. The second form is happiness in the giving. The third form is in the glorifying. The first form is of course prone to disappointments.

Almost every morning, I would fish out 80 cents to buy the informative Straits Times. The first page I usually read is…the obituary. Yes, the obituary. No, I don’t have a fetish for dead people. But I am curious about how the dearly departed had lived their lives. The epitaph is usually sobering. I note that it starts with the age of the deceased. Some died at 24. Some at 50. Others at 84. Rarely anyone died after 90. But longevity doesn’t mean happiness. I believe that a miserable octogenarian and a happy forty-something can appear on the same page of the obituary.

The next thing I notice is the lists of names, lists of relationships, the next of kin. For some, it runs a few pages. For others, it’s barely a paragraph. For most, there is a spouse, three to four children, a few in-laws, and the insuppressible grandchildren. Never had I come across an obituary column that did away with the list of loved ones and replaces it with a list of personal assets. It would sound awfully incredulous for loved ones to post the following, “the dearly departed has four sport cars, two penthouses, a few bungalows overseas, a few very fat bank accounts and a string of international companies.”

How much can a person possess in his or her short lifetime? Material possession is necessary but definitely not indispensable. In other words, it is a should-have, not a must-have. We are all starting our family. We have kids, naughty ones for some. We should, as responsible parents, have a roof over our head - a roof to shelter our loved ones. If we have a bit more money, we should consider living in a bigger house, maybe with an unobstructed view. Then, comes transportation.

Our local public transport system is convenient and structured. But a car is a viable option for some who can afford. We can consider a family sedan – boxy four wheels with comfortable seat. Then, we should always save a little on the side for our children, for our retirement. If we have more money, more time, more energy, maybe, just maybe, we can consider striving for the next form of happiness – the happiness that comes from giving.

Giving is definitely a higher form of happiness to attain. It is emotionally satisfying to see the conversion of a non-believer through your investment of time. It is inspiring to see an orphan being fed a proper meal in some remote part of Thailand with the money that you’d donated to the missionary cause. It is heart warming to receive a grateful hug from one of your cell group members because you have through three years of sharing made a difference in his or her life (Not trying to suggest anything here…)

But still giving alone cannot be the ultimate goal in life. The highest form of happiness is captured in these words by John Piper:-

The chief end of man is to glorify God
By enjoying Him forever

God and spiderman

I believe a man or woman is never complete without God. We can wake up in the arms of our spouse. We can get the fattest bonus this side of heaven. And receive a promotion with endless perks and power. We can carry our new born in our arms. Realize our dreams and goals in a shortest time possible. But still the happiness derived from these activities is only short-lived. Mankind’s ultimate end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. This is the 3rd and highest form of happiness. Matthew 13:44 reads, “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then, in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field”.

I remember one of the happiest times in my life. My father promised me that he would buy me a Spiderman figurine after the Spiderman movie. I was only twelve years old then, a non-Christian, and Spiderman was the closest equivalent to a deity to me. I was so excited I did not pay attention to the 2-hour movie. In fact, I was dying for the closing credits so that I could sprint out of the theater to get the Spiderman figurine. Imagine for a stiff, red and blue, spandex-clad, spider-like skinny doll, I missed the entire show. After two weeks, I discarded my Spiderman doll for another superhero, superman.

Anyway, the point is not the doll, the point is in my excitement to possess it - the inexpressible joy of holding it at the end of the movie. How beautiful it would have been if I could redirect part that joy and excitement for the pure pursuit of God - not just for his gifts or blessings, but to chase after God for the loving father He is like a twelve year old would sprint after a plastic doll.

Our hidden treasure and mental spam

Now, beloved, let me ask you: Is God your treasure hidden in a field? Or just an old wooden crate tucked in one corner of your basement?

At this point, let me throw in another two questions:

What does it mean for you to know God?
And when God looks at your life thus far, what will He find…or what do you want Him to find?

Beloved, I trust the answers to the two questions are personal. Every one of you have different answers, I guess - especially the answer to the second question. Whatever the answer, I have this feeling that you guys desire to do more for God.

I think a good place to start is to review our circle of priority, me included. What is in the center of your life now? Your job? Your wife? Your loved ones? Your bank account? Your studies? Any room in your heart for God? Any passion for living a life God has destined you to live? John Henry Newman once said, “Fear not that thy life shall come to an end, but rather fear that it shall never have a beginning.” Does your Christian life have a beginning in the first place? Note that there is no end or completion without a beginning. You can’t finish a race without starting somewhere. What is the beginning in your Christian faith? Or has it even started? Have you started to live a life God has ordained you to live? Have you started to live a life pleasing to God? Or are you the start-and-stop kind of Christian? Or worst, the triple “S” kind, start-stop-stagnate?

CS Lewis once said, “The real problem of the Christian life comes where people do not usually look for it. It comes the very moment you wake up each morning. All your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists simply in shoving them back; in listening to that other Voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in. And so on, all day.”

What occupies your thoughts every waking morning and every closing night? For most of us, the answer is sadly, nothing important. In the morning, we allow our bladder to think for us and we head for the toilet. At night, we are too tired to squeeze out one more thought. We doze off like a log. We go on mental autopilot so frequently that our thoughts gallop in all directions like wild horses. None of these thoughts play a significant impact in our lives. None of these thoughts draw us closer to God.

CS Lewis warns us about such thoughts; such thoughts that crave for your attention and floods you with anxiety and fear or cause you to remain mediocre. I call these thoughts mental spam. Like unwanted, unsolicited e-mails, these thoughts distract you from purposeful godly pursuit.

CS Lewis is asking us to take control of our thoughts. He is asking us to consecrate our mind. To train our ears to hear God’s voice. To start the day with a heavenly perspective and to end it with heavenly praise. True serenity comes from opening our first waking moment to the powerful assurance of God’s word. True peace of the heart comes from meditating on God’s sovereignty over our circumstances. God is in control. We are under the shadows of his wings. We are safe. For me, I am constantly reminded of this reassuring prayer in the form of a written note stuck to the side of my fridge, “Lord help me to remember that nothing is going to happen to me today that you and I can’t handle together.”

Then, there is Isaiah 43:2-3, a powerful assurance of protection, “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you. And through the rivers, they shall not overflow you. When you walk through fire, you shall not be burned. Nor shall the flame scorch you. For I am the Lord your God. The Holy One of Israel, your Savior.” God watches over us. We need to know this. God wants us to know this. This knowledge is powerful.

Imagine, when trials come, when the hope dims, when the floor beneath you give way, when you feel used and discarded, when you reach the end of your rope, you can always look up to heaven and pray, “God, I surrender all. I do not know how, why and for how long. But you know. You care. You would not let me go. I surrender all. I want to ride on your shoulder and cross these rapid waters together with you. You take me across. You lead me. I surrender all.”

The bend by the watercress

Here, I have reached my fresh water point. This is where I read to you the following poem written by a minister of God, Dr David Jeremiah, who overcame cancer. The words are simple, piercing and very refreshing.

Sometimes we come to life’s crossroads
And we view what we think is the end
But God has a much wider vision
The road will go on and get smoother
And after we’ve stopped for a rest
The path that lies hidden beyond us
Is often the path that is best
So rest and relax and grow stronger
Let go and let God share your load
And have faith in a brighter tomorrow
You’ve just come to a bend in the road

What is the bend in your road? Your work? Your temper? Your lust? Your doubts? Your fear? Your finances? Remember, no matter what, it is just a bend in the road, and the bend leads to somewhere God is taking you. It’s just that you are unable to see it yet. All will soon be revealed. So, have faith, follow the bend, walk the contour, hold God’s hands, for He has a plan for you, a plan to prosper you. Your destiny lies around the bend.

Don’t forget that we are created for great things. For now, our victory need not be in building a few big churches. For now, our victory need not be saving million of lives on international evangelistic campaigns. Our victory need not even be setting up orphanages, donating truckload of supplies to the needy, or donate millions of dollars for overseas crusades. These are different paths that await us after the bend.

Our victory starts with a surrendered will. It starts with a willing vessel and a submitted heart and it usually ends with God-honoring pursuits. Remember, only a surrendered will is able to take that bend with God.

Beloved, the surest way to forfeit your God-given destiny is to fall under the following categories of people.

Some people God is unable to use:-

1) Those who know best – blinded by pride and arrogance.
2) Those who are too busy for God.
3) Those whose hearts are divided.
4) Those who put God in a box due to the lack of faith.
5) Those who want to remain on the fences.
6) Those who want to please men more than God.
7) Those who help God because they are unable to wait for God’s time.

Another category of people who constantly forfeits their destiny in God is the group that cannot give up the temporary riches of this world or deny their fleshly desires. For this, I am greatly ministered by Proverbs 11:28, which reads, “A life devoted to things is a dead life, a stump; God-shaped life is a flourishing tree.” Then comes the complementary verse in Jeremiah 17:7-8, which reads, “Blessed are those who trust in the Lord…They are like trees planted along a riverbank, with roots that reach deep into the waters. Such trees are not bothered by the heat or worried by long months of drought. Their leaves stay green and they go right on producing delicious fruits.”

Where have you been planting your tree, beloved?

1) Still waters? – apathy and comfort zone;
2) Shallow waters? – materialism and earthly rewards;
3) Rapid waters? – busyness and superficiality;
4) Polluted waters? – fake repentance and continual sin;
5) Congested waters? – double standard and double minded;
6) Mirage? – blind ambition and goals without true value;

OR

7) River of life – eternity-perspective and a surrendered life.

Okay, I can end now. But not without closing this letter with this beautiful poem from the treasure trove of Dr Neil T. Anderson in his book, God’s Power @ Work in You:-

The Wreath

A friend of mine whose grapevine died, had put it out for trash.
I said to her, “I’ll take that vine and make something of that.”
At home the bag of dead, dry vines looked nothing but a mess, but as I gently bent one vine,entwining ‘round and ‘round.
A rustic wreath began to form, potential did abound.
One vine would not go where it should, and anxious as I was, I forced it so to change its shape, it broke – and what the cause?
If I had taken precise time to slowly change its form,
It would have made a lovely wreath, not a dead vine, broken, torn.
As I finished bending, adding looms, applying trim, I realized how the rustic wreath is like my life within.
You see, so many in my life have tried to make me change.
They’ve forced my spirit anxiously, I tried to rearrange.
But when the pain was far too great, they forced my fragile form, I plunged far deeper in despair, my spirit broken and torn.
Then, God allowed a gentle one that knew of dying vines, to kindly, patiently allow the Lord to take His time.
And though the vine has not yet formed a decorative wreath, I know that with God’s servants’ help one day when Christ I meet,
He’ll see a finished circle, a perfect gift to Him.
It will be a final product, a wreath with all the trim.
So as you look upon this gift, the vine round and complete,
Remember God is using you to gently shape His wreath.