I don't think I've laughed this hard at ANYTHING in such a long while...
Monday, July 25, 2011
Friday, July 22, 2011
A Poignant Weekend
So my birthday came and passed… with each passing year, I increasingly know who are my TRUE friends who still remember to wish me happy birthday, and idiots like Frodo who will prob one day 20 years from now read this and go “Wait a minute…. His birthday is in JULY???”
Anyways, it was a good weekend that just passed, where I visited CEFC again, and was once more struck by just how much this is a church that I would absolutely envision myself going. Once more, I felt that tug in my heart that called me to join the church, and finally stop feeling I’m putting on the Armor of God on Sundays because going to church is like going to war.
Trying hard not to sound like self-aggrandizement here, but the image that God put in me immediately when I again pondered on that temptation, was the story of the Transfiguration. It’s a familiar passage in the Bible, but one I fell in love with after reading Hind’s Feet on High Places. I felt like God was reminding me that the reason why He showed me something better on the mountaintop, was so that I could then once more go back down the valleys to tell the people. Maybe that’s the work He has for me in church.
Or maybe He just wants me to shut up and pray more. I’m sure that won’t hurt anyone.
Grins.
Anyways, it was an AWESOME service. From the powerful testimony by a domestic helper to Edmund Chan’s impassioned plea for the church to once again go back to basics and rediscover a love for God and his Word, and thereby rekindling the passion to tell the Good News, I can only say that it has been a long time since I felt God so powerfully connecting with me. I felt like Job, where after the silence I was hit by God with so many questions about the condition of my own spirit, and the condition of my own walk with Him. Even as the sermon was going on, and even as Edmund Chan was giving the altar call, I felt so much of my life surfacing once more, as if God was calling into account all the things He had shown me before, and asking what had I done with all the talents He had entrusted with me.
I felt myself broken, and crying not because I was touched by the sermon or the service. I felt, at first, a great fear that I had indeed been the servant who had buried the talent in the garden, for fear of failure, and the fear of losing it all. Then all I could feel was shame. Abject, wretched shame at how I had failed to make my life count despite so much that God had given to me. But of course, God who is always a gentleman, never leaves us with that. Once more I felt God reminding me that He is the one who redeems, and the one who restores that which was lost. He is the God who promises that when its all been said and done, all that matters is only that I have loved Him, and let my life reflect that love.
It was a very refreshing service, where I once again found my heart re-tenderized by Him. (Yes, I know the “re-tenderizing of my heart” will never make it into any Top Million Quotable Quotes. But it sound so apt!!)
The upcoming months are not going to be easy. I stand at one of the biggest crossroads of my life, where so many things are going to converge. Graduation, getting a job, getting married, and then my life begins the roller coaster that is ten years late in getting started. Maybe God knows, and so He used this Sunday’s service to remind me to utilize a little prescient hindsight, so that the decisions I make at this crossroad will be ones that demonstrate a love for Him, such that when I look back on my life, I would have been proud of the decisions I made standing at this crossroad.
Anyways, it was a good weekend that just passed, where I visited CEFC again, and was once more struck by just how much this is a church that I would absolutely envision myself going. Once more, I felt that tug in my heart that called me to join the church, and finally stop feeling I’m putting on the Armor of God on Sundays because going to church is like going to war.
Trying hard not to sound like self-aggrandizement here, but the image that God put in me immediately when I again pondered on that temptation, was the story of the Transfiguration. It’s a familiar passage in the Bible, but one I fell in love with after reading Hind’s Feet on High Places. I felt like God was reminding me that the reason why He showed me something better on the mountaintop, was so that I could then once more go back down the valleys to tell the people. Maybe that’s the work He has for me in church.
Or maybe He just wants me to shut up and pray more. I’m sure that won’t hurt anyone.
Grins.
Anyways, it was an AWESOME service. From the powerful testimony by a domestic helper to Edmund Chan’s impassioned plea for the church to once again go back to basics and rediscover a love for God and his Word, and thereby rekindling the passion to tell the Good News, I can only say that it has been a long time since I felt God so powerfully connecting with me. I felt like Job, where after the silence I was hit by God with so many questions about the condition of my own spirit, and the condition of my own walk with Him. Even as the sermon was going on, and even as Edmund Chan was giving the altar call, I felt so much of my life surfacing once more, as if God was calling into account all the things He had shown me before, and asking what had I done with all the talents He had entrusted with me.
I felt myself broken, and crying not because I was touched by the sermon or the service. I felt, at first, a great fear that I had indeed been the servant who had buried the talent in the garden, for fear of failure, and the fear of losing it all. Then all I could feel was shame. Abject, wretched shame at how I had failed to make my life count despite so much that God had given to me. But of course, God who is always a gentleman, never leaves us with that. Once more I felt God reminding me that He is the one who redeems, and the one who restores that which was lost. He is the God who promises that when its all been said and done, all that matters is only that I have loved Him, and let my life reflect that love.
It was a very refreshing service, where I once again found my heart re-tenderized by Him. (Yes, I know the “re-tenderizing of my heart” will never make it into any Top Million Quotable Quotes. But it sound so apt!!)
The upcoming months are not going to be easy. I stand at one of the biggest crossroads of my life, where so many things are going to converge. Graduation, getting a job, getting married, and then my life begins the roller coaster that is ten years late in getting started. Maybe God knows, and so He used this Sunday’s service to remind me to utilize a little prescient hindsight, so that the decisions I make at this crossroad will be ones that demonstrate a love for Him, such that when I look back on my life, I would have been proud of the decisions I made standing at this crossroad.
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