Disclaimer: The sharing is pure from my personal view; therefore, please don’t take it to be absolute. Thanks.

——————————————————————————————–

Lunch time, two brothers are arguing who should be the one get the apple on the table. Mommy sees it and thinks it is a good opportunity for a spiritual lesson. She said, “You two are brothers, you should learn from Jesus – What will Jesus do (WWJD), if He were sitting with you in your case? I think He will let His brother to have the apple”. The elder brother of the two then said, “Kevin, you now would be Jesus!”

This is an interesting and enlightened story from a Radio broadcast that I just heard recently. There is a mentality of “You do it!” prevails in today’s environment. This mentality is in current church environment also. Oftentimes, we see a lacking in areas of church serving and ministries. Instead of jumping into it ourselves, we would like other people to do it. Isn’t this ironic if we are all in the same family of God?

In recent daily Bible study, we once again read the account of God wanted Moses to lead Israelites out of Egypt, after Moses saw the miracle of burning bushes.  God said to Moses, “Now therefore, go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall say.  現在去 罷 ， 我必賜你口才 ，指教你所當說的話 (Exodus 4:12)”  What was Moses’ reaction to God? But he said, “O my Lord, please send by the hand of whomever else You may send. 摩西說 ： 主阿 ，你願意打發誰 ，就打發誰去罷！(Exodus 4:13)” Moses used all kind of excuses to turn down God. In his mind, he might be thinking, “God, why don’t you do it yourself?”  Isn’t this the same mentality we have regularly?

The other problem we usually have is the mentality of “Only me is doing it”. Last Sunday I shared with some of you Elijah’s good fight. If you continue to read through 1 Kings, you will find that after Elijah performed the great battle against Baal’s prophets to appeal the undecided Israelites, he ran for his life and he complained to God:

He replied, “I have been very zealous for the LORD God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.” 他說，我為耶和華萬軍之 神大發熱心‧因為以色列人背棄了你的約，毀壞了你的壇，用刀殺了你的先知，只剩下我一個人，他們還要尋索我的命‧(1 Kings 19:10)

Can God do it Himself? Absolutely! We know that it is our blessing to be called by Him and can partake His ministry. So, brothers and sisters, the mentality of “You do it” or “Only one left” is a danger to our spiritual life. May our Lord remind us daily to serve Him joyfully….

——————————————————————————————–

One of the early mornings, I was dropping off my kids at high school. On my way back, I saw an interesting scene on a car – there are a few pieces of giant black eyelash were sticking out of headlights of a Volkswagen. Due to the round dome design of the headlights, they look just like two giant eye balls with eyelashes. Wow, this is the first time I saw such an interesting and creative idea for a car. It does beautify the car even though it may not be practical or may be dangerous to other drivers on the road due to distraction.

Eyelash is a short stiff hair that grows in a row from the edge of the eyelid.  It provides at least two functions, one is beautifying and the other is protection. Ladies would be more interested in beautifying than protection, I think, since there are so many cosmetics for eyelashes on the market. For gentlemen, the function of practical protection is probably considered more important than beautifying.  This tells me that men and women have a rather different focus on things. Actually this is one of the wonders God created for us – we see different things and complement each other.

In this world, there are a lot of things that is beautiful but impractical. You can argue that whether it is practical or not is depending upon personal preference. To some degree, I agree. However, to me, a thing that is beautiful but impractical is usually for the purpose of decoration. Some of them may not be harmful but would not be of useful to us either. For example, is our belief (faith) like a decoration that is beautiful but not practical? If it is, then we are in danger. A decorative religion has NO life inside and it is bounded to wither – it wouldn’t grow and it couldn’t affect any other life except negatively. Besides, we are living in a society that is focusing on our personal image more than genuine quality of life. Admittedly, there is nothing wrong to be looking good. But, the danger comes when it becomes “decorative” because of over focus on it.

One of my friends taught me about the answer to the question of “What is the chief end of man?” – “To glorify God, and to enjoy Him for ever.”  It is quite enlightening. In fact, Rev. C.H. Spurgeon summarized it even further, “The chief end of man in this life and in the next is to please God the Maker”.  This is quite true and it explains the practical purpose of our life. The author of Ecclesiastes told us that God has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. (神造萬物，各按其時成為美好‧又將永生安置在世人心裡‧﹝永生原文作永遠﹞然而神從始至終的作為，人不能參透. 傳道書 3:11)

God created beautiful things for us and He also wants us to know Him personally. Without the practical purpose of knowing Him, we will miss the big piece of our life – the eternity in our heart. So, my brothers and sisters, it is our practical purpose to please God and let’s live a life that is worthy of His calling….

Happy Chinese New Year!

———————————————————————————————

Walking through a breezeway connected in between two buildings at my work place, I came to windows of another building facing along the Hudson River, during my lunch break. I then sat down around a table and enjoyed a nice view of the scenery across the River. My memory took me back to a previous experience that I had with my family at NYC.

We were sitting around a table and looking out of the window of a restaurant to view NYC’s famous high-rise buildings moving around us (i.e., the restaurant was swiveling). To me, it is a kind of exotic dining experience. This excursion was highly recommended by my wife, based on her prior experience, in order to entertain our in-laws who visited us at that time to have an experience of good food with a good view. Even with her prior knowledge, however, we still spent quite a while in locating the restaurant called “The View”. Funny thing is there were NOT that many New Yorkers around the Time Square knew the place when we approached them. I thought it might be due to the holidays. The not-so-good part is we didn’t make a reservation beforehand. So, we ended up having to wait in a long line due to the popularity of the restaurant. The restaurant was packed but food was good and “the view” was even better. Overall, I would say it is worthwhile. But, let me put a disclaimer here first: It is NOT my intention, whatsoever, to promote the restaurant and I certainly have no association with it.

The experience of “The View” reminds me of our spiritual journey. When we first met our Lord, we may find that the view of Him is so glorious and majestic that how can it be for Him to substitute for us on the cross. Actually from the Bible, we learned that it is His beauty that King David was longing for in his psalm – he asked from God to let him gaze His beauty (瞻仰他的榮美) all the days of his life (Psalm 27:4).  After we received Him as our Lord, we were sanctified. Thus, our view of things started to change accordingly – our focus started to become more Christ centric. The Bible tells us that He opened our spiritual eye so we can see things the way He sees. However, the devil is using every possible means to put a veil over our view. He tempts us with splendor of all the kingdoms of this world in order to sway our focus from God. In our daily Bible reading, we read that Jacob was running away from his father-in-law, Laban, with his household and belongs because God instructed him to leave, in viewing of his mistreatments by Laban. His wife Rachel, however, stole the household idols from her father, Laban (Genesis 31:19), thinking that she could get blessings from those idols. This is a warning to us that sometimes we might mix idols with our belief to cloud our view and this is exactly the devil wants us to do. Are we aware of the scheme from the evil one? Can we resist his “view”? It is worth us to guard our heart because everything we do flows from it (Proverbs 4:23).

——————————————————————————————-

It was back to my high school years from my English class that I learned the terminology of DIY (Do-It-Yourself) the first time. Years later, I had the opportunity to come to the States alone for study. I finally realize what DIY really means – I need to wash clothes by myself, cook my own meals, study by myself, deal a lot of things, by myself, etc…. Of course, you can argue that this is just a growing process and should be called “Training for Independence” 🙂 Well, not quite. The DIY became more challenging when it comes to the task of repairing my problematic and aged station wagon, in order to avoid some repair costs from my tight budget. It was a dirty DIY job but it is also a rewarding one, sometimes. When my wife joined me two years later, the DIY expanded to another spectrum – kitchen. She sometimes would crave for some of the delicacies from our home town without luck because we were located in a remote country side. At that time, she has to learn how to make them by herself either with friends’ help or from book of recipes. This is another type of DIY that we didn’t realize it before. 🙂

Later on, the area of DIY for home improvement came into light when we had our own place. There were always some spots in our home that require our attention – sometimes it was minor but other times it was a big project. I have been enjoying those DIYs. The excitement comes from the surprises I encountered – from missing a part to all kind of silly mistakes. They were valuable and it reveals how fallible a person that I’d be. Of course, there is a side effect on my DIY too – my finished work may not look as professional as it could be and therefore wife may complain once a while. Despite of this, I learned a lot though; especially thinking of Clint Eastwood’s quote in his movie, “A man has got to know his limitations”… ha, ha, ha…

The DIY mania is an integral part of American culture. You can get an idea from why “Home Depot” and “Lowes” stores were so welcome across the country. The goodness of the culture is it promotes business opportunities and man’s sense of achievement (成就感). I am kind of thinking this sense of achievement was embedded by the Creator of the universe – our God. Perhaps, it might imitate the sense of the word recorded in the book of Genesis, “神看著是好的(God saw that it was good)”  The biggest difference is we were NOT creating anything from scratch; we were trying to restore something to its good-as-new condition in our DIY repairs; or, we were trying to add / improve something in our DIY improvements by utilizing existing materials. Therefore, we were limited by what we have learned and our own understandings.

The danger of DIY, however, comes from indulging in one’s ability without realizing it. It creates a false impression of “See, I am good!”  The net is a prideful heart generated and it couldn’t listen to others’ suggestion. Therefore, a right balance between the sense of achievement and prideful heart is absolutely essential if you want to enjoy your DIY work.

In our spiritual journey, we need to have the habit of DIY too. We need to study God’s words and to spend time in prayer by ourselves with Him in order to develop a close relationship with Him. This in turn will give us a sense of achievement (fulfilling feel) with our Lord. On the other hand, we also need to know our limitations by co-working with our brothers and sisters in His family. This I call it a DIO (Do-It-Ourselves) work because our Lord wants us:

From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work. 全身都靠他聯絡得合式、百節各按各職、照著各體的功用、彼此相助、便叫身體漸漸增長、在愛中建立自己。(Ephesians 4:16)

May we all have the DIY and DIO mentality throughout the year…..

—————————————————————————————————–

Last week, I was relaxing at home and realized that I need to use the spare time to do something productive – I decided to fix the reverse indicator light problem from my old car. I spent two afternoons trouble-shoot it trying to find a solution for the problem. Follow some advices from the internet, I was able to find the problem area is from a “neutral safety switch” mounted on the transmission case of my car. The function of the switch acts as an indicator on which gear (P, R, N, D, 2, 1) the transmission is. In addition, it prevents the car from starting if it is not either on the “neutral” gear or on the “park” position. Due to the old age of the switch, it took me a while to dismount it from the transmission case while the car is on the park position. After the removal, I dismantled the switch and cleaned inside of it and reassemble it. In the middle of putting it back and tightening it on the transmission case, I accidentally turned the switch arm and the transmission was switched from “park” to “neutral” position. As soon as I realized that, the car is moving downhill already. I was panic because it is going to run into my neighbor’s house across the street. Fortunately, my sons and a friend’s son were there at that time to help. So, I jumped into the car and tapped onto the brake to stop the car right before it hits my neighbor’s mailbox. Then, my sons and the friend’s son helped me to push the car back to my driveway. Whew… it was a close call and a fiasco that I was not prepared for – I thought it was good enough to put on the e-brake without putting on wheel chokers.

I think every life experience could be a lesson for us to learn, no matter how trivial it is. Firstly, I could see the importance of the gear indicator – it tells us where is our gear position would be – in Drive (D) or in Reverse (R) or in Park (P), etc.  A “wrong gear position” would be disastrous if it is not what was intended. In our spiritual journey, there is a similar indicator too. Are we continued to grow (in the Drive (D))? Or, are we at the stagnant (in the Park (P)) position? The worst possible position that we can be is at the Reverse (R) position. How do we know that we are at that position? The Prophet Hosea indicated to us that a sign of “Reverse” in our spiritual journey is similar to this: “His hair is sprinkled with gray, but he does not notice. 頭髮斑白，他也不覺得‧(Hosea 7:9b)”. It implies that we lost our interest in God’s house just like our hair sprinkled with gray, but didn’t notice it. This symptom starts from we lost interests in God’s word and in prayer, then lost respect of our Lord Jesus Christ and finally we become insensitive to sins.

Secondly, well preparation is always a thing that we tend to neglect. Sometimes, I quickly jump into something which is not thoughtfully prepared. This may result in failure or possible humiliation. The other time, however, I may envy someone’s success without knowing that there is a price of numerous painful efforts or humiliating failures behind. As the saying goes, “No pains, no gains”.  I need to spend my efforts to learn in order to succeed.  Analogously, in our spiritual journey, if we do not put our efforts in cultivating our relationship with God, we may not be able to escape from the snares of temptation coming from the evil one.

My dear brothers and sisters, “Happy New Year”!  “Do you have a New Year Resolution already?” “Are you starting to execute it yet?” As the yearly theme of our church is “Lives affecting lives”, can we affect others positively without being affected negatively? Let’s be prepared to make a “new year resolution” by putting our efforts on reading God’s word daily because His word is our life!