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I read from Bill Hybel’s “Too Busy Not To Pray” that authentic Christians are “persons who stand apart from others, even other Christians, as though listening to a different drummer. Their character seems deeper, their ideas fresher, their spirit softer, their courage greater, their leadership stronger, their concerns wider, their compassion more genuine, their convictions more concrete. They are joyful in spite of difficult circumstances and show wisdom beyond their years.”

I’ve always wanted to be one of them “authentic Christians” – those who remain unfazed even when they are constantly on the move, when every ministry lays claim on them, when they’ve gone through hellfire and brimstone and they still look every bit as passionate as the day they came to Christ.

Jim Elliot once prayed, “God, light these idle sticks of my life and let me burn out for thee.” There’s also a hymn by another missionary called “Let me burn out for Thee” with that same idea in mind. The chorus goes something like this …

Let me burn out for Thee, dear Lord
Burn and wear out for Thee
Don’t let me rust or my life be
A failure, my God, to Thee
Use me and all that I have dear Lord
And draw me so close to Thee
That I feel the throb of the great heart of God
Till my life burns out for Thee

I shared that with a friend and we agreed that though the hymn was too noble and we wouldn’t ever dare to voice out the words of this song for the fear of being a hypocrite if we held back anything at all.

I would never so much as to hope I’d be another Jim Elliot or Henry Martyn but somehow, isn’t that the road that all Christians want to take? To come to a point where you face God and you can do nothing but to surrender your ALL to Him? To pledge your entire life to serving Him? To love Him with a burning fire that never dies?

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As much as I would like to say with my lips that I want to burn out for Him, I’ve been plagued by constant fatigue and headaches coming every time I attempt to plan or do any important stuff.

With a To-Do List that seems to grow infinitely bigger each time I look at it, I am amazed at the strength that God has given me to still go on. No doubt, most of the time I’m half asleep and I can’t think properly with Dumbo the baby elephant dancing around in my head, I’m still able to carry out most of my duties. If it were a couple of years ago, I would have been totally paralysed.

But even though I am more peaceful than before, sometimes I still worry and calculate about whether I can finish the task within the required period of time with the maximum results. All that I’m doing right now is “for God’s glory” but I suspect my heart ain’t at the right place most of the time.

To fall, get up and fall again is painful, but to walk that extra step God rejoices. We are given an extraordinary inheritance, we have to live like it or always be called a fool.

Today I read a few passages but the main passage struck me. These verses appear twice in the same psalm. Just some final words to leave with you as I go back to work:

Why are you so downcast, O my soul?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
For I will yet praise Him,
my Saviour and my God.

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I have decided to follow Jesus
I have decided to follow Jesus
I have decided to follow Jesus

No turning back
No turning back

Do you know what is the meaning of this simple yet powerful Sunday School song? Have you sung it so often that its significance has already been diluted beyond recognition? To sing this song requires more than just lip service, it requires …

Today, we had Rev Raymond Lo, Executive Director of FEBC Hong Kong as our guest speaker for our morning devotion and I learnt a very important lesson.

He spoke on Conviction, Core Values and Commitment – the hallmarks of value-driven Christian service as opposed to result-driven service.

Nothing struck me as much as when Rev Raymond spoke on Commitment. You see, I’m a commitment-phobe. When the going gets tough, I get going, out. I’m quick to catch the vision for a particular cause but when the honeymoon is over and the returns are lesser than the input, my fire dies. Once I was impassioned, now I am obliged. Once I was willing to go to the ends of the earth for the cause, now I am too lazy to take out the rubbish.

Ahhh… commitment. The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. I am now in Christian service but am I willing to commit my entire self to what I am doing? Do I look like I am putting in my all, yet at the back of my mind, am I looking for other options?

It may be hard to swallow but once you are committed to something, there are no other options. Or rather, you throw out those options and never look back. Never regret.

No turning back once you have decided to follow Jesus. That is true commitment.

Our Lord is a committed God and He delights in commitment. Psalm 107 speaks of His faithfulness even though His people constantly turned away from Him. One particular section touched my heart:

17 Some became fools through their rebellious ways
and suffered affliction because of their iniquities
18 They loathed all food
and drew near the gates of deat.
19 Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble
and he saved them from their distress.
20 He sent forth his word and healed them;
he rescued them from the grave.

Is your spiritual ambition to become more like Jesus? If it is, (and I hope it is ) be committed in the small mundane stuff even. Don’t escape something because it stretches you or it doesn’t give you the recognition you desire.

Our LORD persisted in keeping His side of the covenant even though it cost Him. Are we going to do the same? I pray we will.

I adore

I haven’t been faithful in updating here, have I?

Recently, I began a series on prayer and of all the EDWJ topic serieses (??) I’ve been following, this has got to be the one that has touched my heart the most.

Prayer has always been such a mystical, surreal kind of experience for me. During prayer meetings, I’d either (1) doze off (2) get distracted by my toes (3) start drifting off to goodness knows where else. There were only one or two times in my Christian life that I actually paid attention to what was going on.

I’m also not afraid to admit that I sucked at praying in my own time. I think I never actually prayed because I felt so tired of asking God for stuff (since He already knew everything about me) and I was pretty skeptical about praying for deliverance and healing.

I mean, I knew these things worked some times and I believed with all my heart that when Jesus prayed, people got healed emotionally/mentally/spiritually. However, I still felt as if all my prayers hit the ceiling and bounced back hitting me in the face. It hurt, I didn’t know how to pray and saying the Lord’s prayer felt like a heart-less ritual.

But back in my mind, I had the niggling feeling that prayer was important if I wanted to keep my sanity in a world bustling with activity.

At hand, I’m juggling my work at the station, logistics work for Christmas in Singapore, teaching Sunday School, the publicity work for youth camp, the Young Adults’ ministry and preparing for a conference in JB next February. (Don’t tell me, I know I’ve bitten off more than I can really chew.)

If anything, I don’t need more time. I need peace. Hope. Joy. Love.

I used to be prone to panic attacks when I was in secondary school. I’d start sweating like crazy, thinking of the most horrible of consequences, and be totally paralysed, unable to work/speak/eat properly.

This condition improved in poly when I got back on track with God. I learnt to trust Him a little bit, like a baby learns to trust that his mother will never leave him alone.

Lately, the familiar painful naggings of a panic attack have come knocking. Nothing too serious, but just enough to set the alarm bells ringing to prepare for one.

In the noisiness of the life zooming past me, I desperately needed to still my heart before God. While preparing for my programs, I realised that I was putting all my trust in the methods of prayer. If I felt I didn’t pray well (which was most of the time), I didn’t feel like praying much. In the end, I let my own judgement of how well I prayed determine my heart for God.

Being forced to do research on prayer, I found out that prayer is really about God. Words worship but deeper than that, silence adores.

You are God in heaven
And here am I on earth
So I’ll let my words be few
Cause Jesus I am so in love with you

The simplest of all love songs
I want to sing to you
So I’ll let my words be few
Cause Jesus I am so in love with you

And I’ll stand in awe of you
Yes, I’ll stand in awe of you
So I’ll let my words be few
Jesus, I am so in love with you
~ Let my words be few, Matt Redman

I hadn’t learnt to adore God. Worship I knew, ask me about most Christian Praise and Worship songs and I can sing it for you. Adoration, keeping silent before God and just adoring Him for who He is, I could not.

I was afraid of the silence, but the silence was where God wanted me at.

Lately, I’ve been more silent, learning how to recognise God’s voice. It’s a continual process because God is everywhere but I’m learning to make the time before bed the sweetest because the time is unhurried and the day is done. I try not to watch TV after 9pm, leave the computer off if I don’t need to work, and spend the hour before bedtime reading a good book or the Bible, journalling or taking 5 minutes to be silent before God, giving Him the happenings of the day.

I’m starting slow. Still very much in the process of walking and falling. Sometimes it does get dry, when I’m tired and my mind is so frazzled by the day. Yet, I’m learning to praise God for every corner I turn, every person I meet, every new thing that demands my attention.

He listens! I can feel He cares for me. After I’ve given Him a particular care, I can literally feel the nagging ache recede into peace. Hope and joy comes from knowing that this “labour in the Lord is not in vain”. Love comes from the support of friends and family.

O, how I am loved!

Some prayer requests:
1) My family and I are looking for a new house. We will have 6 months from Jan 25 to find a new place. We have seen many places already but none of them have clicked with all of us. We are praying that the Lord will reveal to all 4 of us the place that He has in mind for us.

2) I’m coming up with new programs for 2005. Many of them are ideas I would like to take and run with, but I am limited in resources and time. Please pray for like-minded Christians who have a passion to shepherd people through the avenue of broadcasting.

3) The Christmas in Singapore project is drawing closer (begins 26 Nov). Please pray for good coordination among the committees and for the masses who will be down at Orchard Road to be touched by the Holy Spirit and that their hearts will be opened to the gospel.

On a final note, here’s a verse that inspired a song that is one of my favourites

Find rest, O my soul, in God alone;
my hope comes from Him.
(Psalm 62:5)