Month: January 2013

“Are you loosing air?” Journal of Reflection 1/27/2013

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

————————————————————————————————–

Last Thursday night, it was freezing cold and dark when I drove my car out of the parking lot at my working place. I immediately felt that there was something wrong with my car. I could hear a stream of strange noises was coming out of the right hand (passenger) side of my car, even with all the windows closed. I tried to ignore it initially and thought it might go away after the car was warming up. After three turns, I find it was not the case because my car was not responding to my handling. At that time, I had this hunch “Oh-oh, not good, a flat tire!” So, I slowly drove the car to a side road and checked the tire on the passenger side. Here it is – a flat tire!

As you can imagine, I was not a happy camper in that moment. Especially when I realize I need to change the flat tire under such a frigid winter night! With non-cooperating hands and fingers, due to the coldness, I struggled through for an extensive period before I put the spare tire on. When it was done, I slowly drove the car out but only to find that the spare tire was not quite functioning – tire was a little bit under-pressure and it was hesitating. However, I thought it could be due to the cold temperature and I continued on, eventually, I safely arrived at my home. Hooray! 🙂

A flat tire incident usually causes an unpleasant experience. It interrupts our original travel plan – it gives us hassles, additional expense, misery, and a possible life threatening situation. I thank our Lord for His protection during this encounter.

  • Firstly, the incident was happening on me instead of on my wife. Had this incident happened on my wife, it would be a lot more panicking from her than I can imagine. 🙂
  • Second, this incident was occurring on a parking lot instead of in the middle of a highway. If it were not the case, I might run into a risk of car accident at that time.
  • Third, there is a spare tire ready in my car allows me to swap with the flat one. In my last flat tire experience, however, the spare tire was also “flat” since it was the very first time we use it! 🙁
  • Finally, I had a hat and a pair of gloves to help me in resisting the cold weather.

I couldn’t help but to think that it would be a lot worse than I would have been, if I were not prepared for this kind of situation. It reminds me of the fact that God allows unexpected situations happen in our life. He sometimes uses various situations to remind us that we will have trouble in this world and He is still in control (John 16:33).

The flat tire symptom may occur immediately or gradually due to a puncture or small leaks, without our notice. In our journey of faith, will we run into a “flat tire” situation? You bet! In such a situation, it could be very damaging to our faith and sometimes it may cause many sorrows and difficulties to the church, if we are not aware of it.

My dear brothers and sister, “Do you feel your enthusiasm in serving God is fading? Are you loosing air like in a tire?  If yes, then you are experiencing a “flat tire” syndrome. As your brother or sister, we are your “spare tire” – we can help you to go through the situation, temporarily. However, please remember that the ultimate recovery and fix is to come before our Lord because He is our source of power and our ultimate repair station! He can fix our feeble arms and weak knees if we recognize our symptom and are willing to be repaired.

“Healthy Back” Journal of Reflection 1/20/2013

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

————————————————————————————————————

In the past Christmas, my wife had this loving idea to gift me a certificate for a local exercise club. She wants me to join a short program called “Healthy Back” in light of my problematic back. The intent is to strengthen my weakened back by using the instructed program offered by the club. Inevitably, this exercise program becomes my New Year resolution, as she suggested. 🙂

The first session I had was with an instructor in the club. Its purpose is to evaluate my current condition in order to see how the program could help. In the process of evaluation, I had to sit on a “strange” machine and the instructor would lock down my lower part on the machine – this prevents me from using leg portion to err the evaluation. Then, I had to use my back to push a back lever on the machine, back and forth, to test the strength of my back. Not sure how accurate it is; the prognosis is my back is not as strong as others are , according to the test result. So, here we go, I need to stay in the program. 🙁

“How healthy is our back?” is always an important question to ask ourselves as we are vertebrate in nature. Without a healthy back, we would not be able to stand up and walk. As a result, severe illness could be developed and they would hamper our physical body to function properly. For years, I have this problem in my back and it causes me to loose sleeps during the nights and have to take extreme care in doing various physical actions. It is by God’s grace that I could continue to function normally. I constantly remind myself, “One day at a time, don’t over-do it!” 🙂

If we look closely to our faith living, there is a “healthy back” element too. I would think “a good relationship with our Lord” is the “healthy back” to our faith journey. Let’s recall it. How many times do we loose sleeps during the nights because we want to satisfy our own desires and ambitions, without considering how God would think? How many times we would go astray because we think we can do it all due to our pride? We have seen many symptoms of our “unhealthy back” in our journey of faith. However, we still don’t want to confess our transgressions to Him. Jesus’ brother, James, taught the brothers and sisters in the Jerusalem that anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God (與世俗為友的 ,就是與神為敵). In addition, God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble (神阻擋驕傲的人 ,賜恩給謙卑的人James 4:4, 4:6).  This tells us that we need to humble ourselves before Him and spend time with Him consistently in order to build up a good relationship with Him.

My brothers and sisters, without the healthy back in our faith journey, we are likely to fall into the traps made by the evil one, inattentively. May we encourage one another and remind one another that our enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Let us not to become one of his victims.

“The Source of Power” Journal of Reflection 1/13/2013

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

———————————————————————————————————————-

Once a while in the morning rush hour, many things would occupy me. Under such condition, I would tend to be absent-minded and as a result, left the power strip for my laptop computer behind. The trouble is not until I enter my office and pull out the laptop from my backpack the very first time, I then realize that I’ve forgot the power strip at home. The remedy is I need to make a special trip back before the laptop would cry out “Critical battery condition, 10% power is available!” Incidentally, in the past week, I had to make such trips twice! Sigh…. What a drag for a new year!

Looking at the power strip of my laptop, I figure it could serve three purposes. The first one is it can provide enough power (juice) to start up the computer, if there is no backup battery installed. The second one is it can convert incoming AC power to DC power and “regulates” it to a correct voltage level that the computer can function properly. The last one is it can be used to charge the installed backup battery, if any, in the computer at the same time. Without the power strip, the laptop would soon run out of juice and render it to be useless, even there is a backup battery installed. Therefore, to maintain a laptop to function properly for an extended period, it would need a good power strip, or a “properly charged” backup battery.

As we are so depending on computers and electronics in our daily life, the lack of power source is becoming intolerable to most of us. If we view our faith journey, questions come to my mind immediately are “Where is the source of power for our journey of faith? Have we been properly charged by that source in order to ‘function’ properly?” If we recall, the very first source of power to the humankind is God’s breath of life when God created Adam (Genesis 2:7). Adam, as a living being, can communicate with God and work and take care of the Garden of Eden – Adam is fully functional with God’s breath of life, the infinite source of power. However, when Adam decided to act upon his own freewill to eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, his connection to God’s breath of life is unavoidably broken, because God has said, “When you eat from it you will certainly die. (Genesis 2:17b).”

When we came to know Jesus personally and accepted Him as our personal Savior, the connection to God is once again ‘restored’.  The author of the book of Hebrews said it is a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, His body. (Hebrews 10:20). The questions are “Do we realize the importance of the connection, and, do we use the connection to properly charge ourselves?”

The vine and the branches” parable recorded in the Gospel John is a lesson for us to learn the importance of tapping into God’s infinite source of power through the connection. Jesus told His disciples, “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.  If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. 我是葡萄樹,你們是枝子‧常在我裡面的,我也常在他裡面,這人就多結果子‧因為離了我,你們就不能作什麼‧人若不常在我裡面,就像枝子丟在外面枯乾,人拾起來,扔在火裡燒了‧(John 15:5-6)” This is a lesson that is critical to us and the evil one has attempted viciously to sway us from it.  Thus, we need to be alert and constantly ask ourselves, “Have I attached to Him today? Do I have sins and spiritual pride that could prevent me from receiving God’s charging?

If Lord is willing, may the sharing here could benefit you…..

“Entering the Rest” Journal of Reflection 1/6/2013

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

——————————————————————————————–

Last week during holidays, we had an opportunity to meet with our previous pastor’s family. Both husband and wife are still shepherding. We had a great time in sharing and fellowship with them.  It has been 10+ years since the family left the area and we are happy to see them in good spirit and in good shape too. 🙂

The pastors shared with us their journey of faith and reminded us that we need to tell good news to others and learn how to enter the “the Most Holy Place” everyday. Because in there, we are entering the rest – confess our transgressions, seek God’s face and ask for mercies. This is similar to Andrew Murray has said, “… The Lord Jesus will every day from heaven continue His work in me. But on one condition—the soul must give Him time each day to impart His love and His grace. Time alone with the Lord Jesus each day is the indispensable condition of growth and power.”

Talking about “entering the rest”, in the piano music, there is an important symbol called “rest”. A “rest” marks the absence of a note, and indicates there will be no note played in the measure for its duration. It does not mark the end of a song or movement but serves two purposes. One is to “rest temporarily” and the other is to “adjust and prepare” for the coming music measures. Sometimes, it could have a change in dynamics of the song after the rest or starting a brand new measure with different intonation. Thus, it is imperative for a song or movement to have rests in order to present its music dynamics and intonations.

Chinese has an old saying, “To rest is to prepare for a longer journey (challenges) ahead 休息是為了走更遠的路”. It indicates to us the importance of rest as it can prepare us for challenges ahead. When prophet Elijah was afraid and ran for his life, after his great triumph over Ahab and Jezebel, he came to a broom bush, sat down under it and prayed that he might die. “I have had enough, Lord,” he said. It is the angel of LORD provided him bread and water and told him that “Get up and eat, for the journey is too much for you. 起來吃罷 !因為你當走的路甚遠” So he got up and ate and drank. Strengthened by that food, he traveled forty days and forty nights until he reached Horeb, the mountain of God. 他就起來吃了喝了,仗著這飲食的力,走了四十晝夜,到了神的山,就是何烈山  (1 Kings 19:1-8). Apparently, Elijah’s source of energy was provided from God.

In fact, after God created the heaven and earth, He also designated a day to rest. It does not mean God is tired after 6 days’ work but He wants to set an example for us to set apart a day in order to enter His rest – to fellowship with Him. The author of the book of Hebrews also instructed us to “make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will perish by following their example of disobedience. 我們務必竭力進入那安息,免得有人學那不信從的樣子跌倒了. (Hebrews 4:11). Therefore, it is very important in our faith journey that we learn to enter the rest and to receive heavenly source of power, everyday. Without entering the rest, we will be spiritually depleted and burnout quickly – we couldn’t face challenges ahead. Let’s set apart a period of time everyday to seek and to fellowship with Him.  May He continues to impart His love and His grace in you!