How come no asians ever feel called to be plumbers? (3/3)

There was this one older brother when I first came to CCF ten years ago. He was a pre-med student, but unlike any I have ever seen before. He would take the time to bring a basket of peaches on visits to some of the first years during the first months of the year and spend time encouraging them. He only applied to medical school once, and to exactly one school, fully convicted that that he was to remain in this town (I am sure the girlfriend now wife's prescence helped, she is super cool too).

He was already in medical school when I lived with him during my fourth year. He worked hard, but never grudgingly. He even joyfully washes the whole house's dishes (all my housemates are wishing one of us would do that lol). The homeless often would drop by the house asking where he was, and when he was home he would invite them in, make them a sandwich, and speak with them as with a friend.

I never saw him turn away anyone in need, almost always at the inconvienience of himself. Despite his prestigious medical degree, and intense residency, he was a follower of Christ, first and foremost, above all else. You knew, you can see, where his treasure was.

So a prestigious, professional career can passionately glorify God. There are some who are gifted with the strength to not be consumed. It is possible. Though I cannot claim I have fully attained it, I have seen it, and certainly aspire to it.

All of this then leads me to ask, for all the get-in-or-bust post-grad applicants, where is your treasure today?

Maybe we have put our own desires and ambitions into God's mouth, thinking that we are pursuing God's will for us but really just blinding ourselves from seeing our lukewarm priorities today, having vague mental pictures of being more faithful once I get "there"; to neglect offering our lives to His kingdom today and picking it back up when we have achieved what we thought God wanted, when it was really what we (or worse, others) wanted. Ten years on in campus ministry and I am realizing that this is one of the biggest faith-destroying fallacies that students are sucked into today. We do not recgonize that the habits and priorities we live by during undergrad sets the precedent and compound well into our adult lives, positively or negatively.

Little do we realize that "there" is a bait that never arrives. Once passionate believers slowly drift off into a spiritual coma, not sensing that they have diverted their eyes off of God long ago as the thorns of life and career subtly, almost imperceivably, consume them. All the while they search for spiritual comfort by sitting in a pew for an hour or two every weekend, singing a few songs, giving a tenth, and maybe ushering once a month to pat themselves on the back. I always pray that they may return their eyes to their Father, because He still loves them, His destiny and holy calling for them still awaits. Yet the sinking feeling I get is that their gaze has been fixed elsewhere for so long that their necks have grown stiff, and the potential pain of moving, of changing the life path they worked so hard for, repulses them.

Here is a revealing parting question, when you open your agenda/calendar for the week, what is it filled with? The events you see, who are they for? Where is your treasure today?

Please talk to God (head and body) about this.

How come no asians ever feel called to be plumbers? (2/3)

1 Corinthians 1:26 For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. 27 But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; 28 God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, 29 so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.

God called the weak and despised to be His people, precisely because they were not qualified by the worlds standards, and would be humble, reliant, and in awe of Him. Quite the contrast from the comfortable, self-sufficient careers that many Christian students spend everything to pursue.

Ephesians 4:1 I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, 2 with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, 3 eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

Here are the some of the characteristics of living in a manner worthy of the God's calling for us. Apostle Paul subsequently in v11 does give some examples of actual positions (prophets, evangelists, shepherds, etc.) that God might assign to someone, to equip the rest of the believers (the saints) for the work of ministry.

2 Thessalonians 1:11 To this end we always pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of his calling and may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power, 12 so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Worthy of God's calling again, and as the previous verse, nothing about being professionals, but good works of faith by his power that glorifies Christ.

2 Timothy 1:8 Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord, nor of me his prisoner, but share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God, 9 who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began

Goes even further here, we arrive at our calling not by our own efforts and works but by the grace and purpose of God.

2 Peter 1:5 For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue,5 and virtue with knowledge, 6 and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, 7 and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. 8 For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. 10 Therefore, brothers,be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall.

I wonder how is it that young believers would try (often repeatedly) to get into medical/dental/law/etc. school and say it is their calling to dedicate most of their time and energy to it when the scriptures speak nothing of such? I am not seeing doctor or Ph.D or accountant in these passages, but I am seeing humility, gentleness, patience, love, unity, peace, grace, virtue, knowledge of Christ, self-control, steadfastness, godliness.

The thought of career or vocation is not even on the radar in any of the passages on calling. So how is it that so many of us have confused the two? For goodness sake, I myself am an engineer, so I need to ask, can having a prestigious, high paying professional career glorify God?

This all brings back memories of a CCF senior that I met when I first came to Mac. Here are two verses that would explain a lot:

Matthew 6:21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Matthew 6:33 But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

More next week.

How come no asians ever feel called to be plumbers? (1/3)

What our calling is seems to be one of the two most frequent question among young adults, this question of what career does God want me to pursue? (who I am supposed to date being the other popular question, which I have already tackled in previous posts)

I was at a management training course for work once and was sharing about the volunteer pastoring that I do at Westside Hamilton. One of the ladies asked me in front of the class what were the common issues that I counsel undergrads about. I shared about this idea of an identity crisis, that I often hear the question "What am I going to do with my life?!?!". The class reaction was clearly ageist. The younger half nods vigourously and the older half just erupts in "I was that silly at your age too" laughter.

I have observed undergrads, for whatever reason increasingly so over the last ten years, obsess over this idea of calling as a career; a full-blown quarter-life crisis if you will. Many of them then end up pursuing the quarter-life equivalent of a Porsche: a graduate professional degree and job.

This is going to be a shock for some of you. Even though career is often represented as a spiritual topic, the bible has almost nothing to instruct about vocation other than you should have one. In fact the word "calling" is never used in the bible to refer to a career (seriously, do a search. I will go over it next week). It is always a reference to the character and eternal destiny we all should be pursuing as followers of Christ (when used as an abstract concept, not "calling" across the room). God does not seem to care much about our specific vocation. Rather He focuses on who we are, rather than what we are, wherever we go.

Yet forging careers is what most young believers dedicate themselves to, obsessing over professional schools  and persistently applying to one after another, as if they would not fulfill God's destiny for them otherwise. The question of our lives has now become what and where versus who and for whom. We let our significance rest on what we do and where we do it rather than who we are becoming and who we are living for. We build our identities on our careers and our life progress, rather than our character and how we represent our saviour's holiness and grace.

I say asians only because those are the Christians I encounter most, but I have always wondered why there are never any young asian Christians who feel "called" by God to be a garbageman, or a plumber, or a mechanic? Or really any profession other than law, medicine, accounting, engineering, entrepeneurship and all their secure and prestigious off-shoots? Could it be that God has destined all asians to be high-level professionals? That God has told all of us asian young believers to spend most of our time and energy attaining professional statuses?

Or are we being tricked into thinking that God wants us to spend ourselves pursuing what are really just the things of this world?

We will look at "calling" in the scriptures next week.

Dr. House has a Point

A couple of general guidelines to wrap up this topic (for now lol, every year without fail this topic resurrects). These goes for both guys and girls and is most applicable if you are regularly part of a larger faith community such as churches or fellowships, which I hope you are.

Do not start dating or start having one on ones with prospective dates (essentially dating before committing to dating) to try to observe what I outlined in the previous two posts ("I'm just spending time getting to know them" people say).

I cannot begin to count the number of times I have seen those sorts of quasi-trial dates/relationships turn sour and end bitterly when one side gets more sucked in and more emotionally attached than the other. Not just the girls, but I have seen plenty of guys get hurt this way too.

In addition, people consciously (sadly there are playa's in churches too) or subconsciously (simply trying to put their best foot forward), lie about themselves. Girls are notoriously gullible to this, they feel so special when a guy spends more time with them and treats them better than other people. Girls naively think they have found the "real" them. Well guess what, you are going to eventually, likely sooner rather than later, have to deal full time with the "not real" them too!

If you see that the person approaching you treats you significantly different than everyone else, watch out (I advocate that guys should approach girls, not the other way around. If the guy will not even take the risk of rejection for you, to quote a movie, he is just not that into you). No one is trying to outright deceive (well I hope by now you have at least the wisdom to weed out the obvious playa's, male or female), but who does not put their best foot forward and cover up their blemishes, especially when put in a one on one setting when they can look like whatever they want without the possibility of being called out for their cover up?

Rather, try to stay a distance and observe them when they think people are not particularly paying attention, like in group events. Listen to them talk about their friends, their family, their views of God. Watch how they interact with brothers and sisters, with strangers, with people in need. You will get a much more accurate picture of someone by observing them at a distance in public than making your intentions known and having that person, consciously or subconsciously, begin tailor their image to you when you spend time with them.

A great place to see this, as some of you suggested, is at a prayer meeting. Do they reveal their weaknesses and failures to their faith community and ask for support? Do they, both in prayer and in deed, address the needs brought up by others in gentleness and respect? Do they even go? Or pray with brothers and sisters regularly? In the words of an anonymous Australian minister that Jim Cymbala met in Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire:

You can tell how popular a church is by who comes on Sunday morning. You can tell how popular the pastor or evangelist is by who comes on Sunday night. But you can tell how popular Jesus is by who comes to the prayer meeting.

Caution 1: Please do not go to prayer meetings for the sake of finding someone. If you are not praying regularly with brothers and sisters, or at all, you really should apply the above quote to yourself, and figure out where you are really at with God. Because if you do not actually care about God and His kingdom, why attend church events at all? Why limit yourself to dating Christians?

Caution 2: While we are here, I should also warn against church hopping to find spouses. Clearly if you are changing churches solely to find a spouse (I am not saying there are no good reasons to change your faith community, but let us not lie to ourselves here, so many young adults do so for poor reasons, but that is for another post), you have not found, or been satisfied with God's work with your life right now, and we are right back to a lack of contentment and inability to recgonize abundance. Matthew 6:25-34 offers some challenging, yet ultimately comforting words. I will reprint the iconic verse 33 here:

But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

I won't be posting the next 2 weeks to prepare for the discipleship workshop that me and Dan are heading up at Campus Challenge 2012 http://goo.gl/rQap7. Let me know if I'll see you there!

Thing(s) to look for in a Girl

The previous idea about contentment and abundance applies for what guys should look for in girls too. Though there are two specific signs I do warn guys about: insecurity and unforgiveness.

Let us talk about unforgiveness first because it is simpler. Simply put, regardless of how highly she thinks of you right now, if she easily developes and harbours grudges after being slighted, or made fun of, or put down, she will eventually just as easily hold grudges against you, and who wants that? I am not saying that you need to find someone who does not get angry, everyone this side of heaven has their limits, but you can obviously tell when someone gets angry, then deals with it and dissipates it after a short while, even if they might want to hold their distance after being hurt (which is natural, for a time), versus someone who maliciously gossips and shows contempt and is out to get someone continually after she has been slighted by them (nevermind just girls, I have struggled with this one before).

One of the first things I tell guys to look for is whether the girl has begun to recgonize her own insecurity and self-worth issues. Almost all girls (in all my years there have been few exceptions) wrestle with those issues to some extent. Even the really ambitious, bubbly, or out-going types might be doing so to find their security and worth in their achievements or public image or social status, rather than the love and the promises of her heavenly Father. As a guy, you do not want to be the answer to those issues, as much as being the knight in shining armour might feel noble and heroic for a while (as a dear brother once warned me before dating, don't be a hero. It would have saved me a lot of grief if I had listened).

Not that you need to look for someone who has completely conquered them, but you do want to look for a girl that has begun to address those issues with God and with her sisters (some girls will attempt to address issues with ambiguous brother/boyfriend-ish relationships. Bad idea, for reasons I cannot even begin to list here). Because if she does not recognize she has these issues, that God needs to heal them, and that she needs to share in that journey with her sisters, it is almost 100% guaranteed that conciously or subconciously she will expect you to deal with it all. Not only are us guys inadaquate for that (as much as we may aspire to be, we will never be her heavenly Father), but you cannot even begin to try because she either does not see those issues as a source of her relational conflict and hurt, or worse, she will pin the source of those hurts to your lack of love (which is of course always true, because she is expecting the full love of the Father from you. Good luck with that).

A good sign that a girl has at least begun dealing with her insecurity and self-worth issues is whether they take themselves too seriously. Can they laugh at themselves? How do they handle being embarassed? Can they play along and be teased publically (though note, I am not talking about being a doormat. That is just as big a red flag) without being angry or hurt? Do they share and allow themselves to be in situations of weakness? (the "I'm trying and really struggling/failing" type of weakness, not the woeful "I'm a girl I can't do anything but wait for a husband" type. Stay far far away from that one, there is only one name who can be her saviour).

Another thing some people really love to focus on is this idea of submission, but just like the idea of producing for the guys, a girl that follows you and believes your every word (what a lot of young Christian guys foolishly embrace as submission) tells you nothing about where she is with God. You have no idea if she actually submits to God, only that she needs a proxy to God and for now has found you for that role (refer to my previous point about feeling noble and heroic). So actually what it does tell you is that she probably has a poor connection with her Father. Besides, if your spouse is simply going to blindly obey you, you are sunk, because when the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit. As much as we would like to pridefully think otherwise, us guys are blind more often than we would like.

Up next is a short piece how to look for the signs in the previous posts (hint: to quote a TV show, people lie).

Thing(s) to look for in a Guy

Lately I have been talking to God about what makes a guy ready for a marriage, since I am well on my way to being married and relationships being one of the most prominent topics for young Christians on campus besides "calling" (which often gets mistaken as career, but I will I will tackle that one another day).

I have been watching young Christians get into good and bad relationships for nearly a decade and a half now, myself included on both ends. Of course there are many many books and speakers with multiple 3 point sermons on what to look for in a guy, but as I reflect on what I have observed in good relationships this past decade, it all boils down to to a surprising single attribute.

It is definitely not career or education or money, or even scriptural knowledge or ministry serving or spiritual maturity (which tends to be defined nowadays as knowledge anyways). A good sign that a guy is ready for a relationship that aims for marriage (relationships for other reasons simply should not happen) is when he is giving out of his abundance from the Lord.

Note carefully my stress on abundance; I am not talking about just giving here. Giving can stem from many motivations. Some out of obligation (because he has been taught/guilted/scared into giving away his resources, time, energy), some are really giving in exchange (I have this and this and this asset to offer in exchange for someone to address my lack of companionship), but a guy who is ready for marriage is someone who is giving out of his abundance from the Lord; who is giving his life away because he recognizes and experiences that, regardless of his circumstances, God has blessed him abundantly, and he is eager to share all that he has knowing that God will be walking with him and His goodness will continue.

I know Driscoll has done this video where he says guys should be producers rather than consumers, but I think that wording has the weakness that it really says nothing about the guy's relationship with God. We do not produce the fruit, it ultimately comes from the vine, so a guy has to learn to receive from God himself (rather than through human proxies), and be in the relationship to give cheerfully out of the abundance that he receives; to give not out of obligation or exchange, but out of contentment, generosity and joy.

Often girls fall for someone who sounds zealous spiritually. He says things like “I want to grow”, “I want to learn”, “I want to be discipled”, "I want to lead" (this last one is sneaky, read on). Sounds like all the right things, but upon further inspection all of their desires are still just me me me me me; they are still just hungry consumers. Him approaching you for a relationship might really just be him trying to be feel more complete, trying to take that next perceived step in his climb on the public maturity ladder, trying to progress by grabbing the next piece of life. Worse, he is actually never going to be satisfied with you for that because completeness and contentment can only come from God, and it is likely he has never learned to receive from Him if he is still going around striving to add pieces to his life.

I am not at all promoting that silly idea that when you do not care about having a companion, that is when God will give you one, as if God insists on torturing us into submission. What I am saying though, is that readiness (and in a way real maturity) is about contentment, about receiving peace and passionately submitting to what God wishes to do with us today, even while eagerly awaiting a spouse, a career, a calling, etc.

If we are to eventually love our spouses as if they are part of us, as if we are one flesh, then you have to be able to love yourself, be at peace, eagerly pursuing God in who you are and where you are right now, while joyously looking forward to the future. Fine line to tread, but one of the ways you can tell that is simply by who is whining and complaining about their current lack and obsessing over their future plans, and who is just pursuing every day passionately and joyfully while still enthusiastically speaking of and praying for the future.

"Thing(s) to look for in a Girl" is coming next week. Girls who are nodding hard at this piece better not kill me for the next one :P

Discernment (3/3): Be Patient with God

So much of Christian culture today is about shortcuts. It used to be that books would say 21 days to a better prayer life. Now the numbers have gotten smaller: 7 steps to a better marriage, 3 tools that will transform your church. While some of those might work, I will say right now there are no shortcuts to discernment.

A lot of you are reading the bible in a year, and I am sure many of you have felt this at some point these last 2 months, “Well nothing’s really sticking, I don’t think I’m getting anything”. Of course comparatively reading the bible for yourself is not going to as easy or as exciting as sitting through a sermon at first. In a sermon, someone has gone through the trouble of digesting and researching and cross-referencing things for you, and everything comes to you in fast food Mc-Nugget form that is tasty and easy to get down. It does not help with discernment though. Think of it this way, getting someone else to cook for you when you are hungry certainly solves the hunger problem for a while, but it does not do anything for your inability to cook does it?

So you might have a hard time discerning what God wants to say, through scripture, QT, etc. You will inevitably have questions that you want answered, or things that you do not understand, and yes, you can find some middle-aged caucasian gentleman on Youtube that will give you answers for your issue. It feels good to have some answers, but in the long run if all you do is gather rumours, regardless or how trustworthy or substantiated, your discernment is never going to grow.

Discernment requires chewing on unchewed food, unchewed food requires patience, and real patience requires the humility to say that some things are too big for me to chew on right now.

John 16:12 I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.

Jesus was saying this to his disciples, guys who have spent three whole years with Jesus in the flesh! Would it be such a stretch to think that maybe God does not want to tell us certain things for our sakes? Or could it be the more frequent response I get nowadays, “Ken could you read the next couple of chapters before you come pounding at me about it? Perhaps could you read the whole bible once before we take this up? At the risk of sounding too demanding, if you don’t mind, could you read the bible 2-3 times over before we get to talking about this?” And our answer usually is NO, I don’t want to wait that long, or read that much, I WANT MY ANSWER NOW! And then we go on Youtube, find the middle-aged caucasian gentleman who will tell us what to believe, and listen to him instead. Meanwhile God is thinking, “Really? Not that he’s bad, but I thought we were going to talk about this. I was looking forward to our time together before I revealed more to you.”

We are so quick to forget that God’s goal for scripture is not just knowledge, it is also intimacy. It is also about character, of which patience is severely lacking in most of us nowadays.

I have only tracked it this year but I have read the bible heavily in the last 2-3 years. Only now, probably 6-7 times through the NT am I remembering enough of scriptures for the Holy Spirit to be able to make connections for me. For you first time readers, I would be lying if I said to expect major nuances/insights on your first read through. You are really just trying to get in some raw material for the Holy Spirit to work with and bring to mind later. You will see connections begin to build more and more in subsequent reads through your entire lifetime as God begins to reveal to you His grand narrative out of this cloud of scripture in your head.

Yes, in the mean time you will not sound as smart as other kids who heard something amazing over the weekend service, which they will likely forget two weeks later, but yet will likely look at you like why do you not know these things. So what? Who are we trying to impress here? Will you be patient in your relationship with God, or will you tell Him you will tell me what I want to know or I am going to listen to someone else?

Discernment (2/3): Be Less Anxious about Being Wrong

Let's not be so worried about whether we're right or be so afraid of being wrong in our interaction with scripture. That sort of anxiety is the reason people clamour after teaching and become unwilling and unable to develop their discernment.

Here’s why.

Often discernment is defined as knowing what is right. But that definition tends to mislead us, because we then treat discernment as a gathering of knowledge, which nowadays just degenerates into a gathering of rumours because of our reliance on sermons and teachers. Rather, as we said yesterday, discernment is our ability to hear and understand what God is saying. Discernment is the ability to discover for yourself what is right in God’s eyes. Referring back to Bereans, if discernment really was just about comparing what Apostle Paul was saying to what they already knew was right, they would not have had to spend the time diving into scripture.

Again, you have no discernment if you rely on someone else’s.

So, if discernment is the development of a spiritual ability, rather than the collecting of correct ideas, then:

1. As I said yesterday, it has to come from God and your interaction with Him. And,
2. It is going to take time, and we are going to occasionally make mistakes and develop the wrong perspectives

Look back at Acts 17. We have already talked about how the Bereans did not look for someone else to affirm or refute Paul’s ideas; they were dedicated to figuring it out themselves. There is another important attitude that they demonstrate here. They were not worried or scared about spending a lot of time and energy engaging in and really digesting what could have been heretical ideas. The chapter here here makes it seem like Paul spent mere hours in Berea, but historically his missionary journeys took decades, with years at each stop. He could have spent weeks, months, in Berea. They could have been sitting around for that long working through Paul’s ideas which in the end could have been totally wrong. Yet the passage said they received Paul’s word with eagerness.

That brings us to the topic of risk taking. Allow me to throw some passages at you and we will put them together afterwards.

Firstly, the knowledge of God is something that God gives to us.

John 16:13 When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.

Colossians 1:9 And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, 10 so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.

Secondly, God wants us to make use of what He has given us.

Matthew 25

14 “For it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants3 and entrusted to them his property. 15 To one he gave five talents,4 to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. 16 He who had received the five talents went at once and traded with them, and he made five talents more. 17 So also he who had the two talents made two talents more. 18 But he who had received the one talent went and dug in the ground and hid his master's money. 19 Now after a long time the master of those servants came and settled accounts with them. 20 And he who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five talents more, saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me five talents; here I have made five talents more.’ 21 His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant.5 You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’ 22 And he also who had the two talents came forward, saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me two talents; here I have made two talents more.’ 23 His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’ 24 He also who had received the one talent came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, 25 so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.’ 26 But his master answered him, ‘You wicked and slothful servant! You knew that I reap where I have not sown and gather where I scattered no seed? 27 Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest. 28 So take the talent from him and give it to him who has the ten talents. 29 For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. 30 And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’

Now let’s put those 2 together.

First off, what is often taught about this passage is that the last servant was scolded for being lazy. However, his slothfulness (inaction) did not stem from a desire to not do any work. Rather his inaction stemmed from his fear of risking his master’s money. The master recognized this too. He mentions that the servant could have at least chose a lower risk option such as a bank (which in those days had about the same reliability as the US banking system had in 2008), rather than burying it. God scolded the last servant because he was afraid, he sat, and he did nothing with what was given him.

At this point people will shout, YES! We need to risk our lives for God, whoever loves his life will lose it, etc. What they do not realize is that they will not even take the most basic risk of saying that “God said this to me” without someone else saying it first! How are you going to take risks for anything else if you can not even bear the risk or the responsibility of saying God spoke to you? How do you expect to establish any relationship with God at all if all you do is expect someone else to tell you what He thinks?

So many people are in that place. God could be revealing to them so much about Himself, about them, through the scriptures. He could be revealing things that could change their lives and bring them onto His destiny for them, for others even. But they are so afraid of being wrong that they will do next to nothing with these revelations unless someone with perceived authority teaches it first.

Looking at the servants with the 5 and 2 who doubled up, let me tell you, you cannot double(!) your money with no risk. Heck, I cannot even get 1/20th of that nowadays with no risk. I lost money on my 6% (projected) mutual funds this year. Investments with big returns requires risk, big risk at that.

Let’s be diligent and courageous with what God reveals to each of us, through scripture in our particular topic today. Let’s take a risk in pursuing it embracing it, applying it, sometimes be lovingly put back on track by God when that need inevitably arises in our development of discernment. Let’s not sit and do nothing but what other people say is correct, say is safe. You will not double your talents that way, you will not get good and faithful servant that way.

Practical things:

• Firm up. Do not be afraid of concluding an idea like “The NT apostles don’t use the OT scriptures very well in terms of the contextual exposition that people demand nowadays”. You are not discerning for yourself if you are unwilling to make your own conclusions.
• Speak up. It is hard for discern as a community if you are not willing to speak up to wrestle with issues and simply defer to the first opinion or first rebuttal. You also are not helping others discern if you keep the revelations to yourself.

Homework: In groups, answer the following questions: Was the Apostle Paul for or against the use of the sign gifts (tongues, prophecy, interpretation, miracles) in the public church meeting? If no, what were his supporting observations and his reasons? If yes, what were his reasons and what, if any, were his guidelines for their use? Scriptural references will be expected, but for the sake of this exercise, the scope will be limited to 1 Corinthians.

Discernment (1/3): Be Aware of Your Sources

This was our workshop on discernment for Winter Term Retreat 2012

Exercise: Gather in groups and talk about notable first impressions (or other people telling you who someone is like) when that has been wrong

First impressions stick. A long time ago I met this brother who at first meeting I thought was a little overly emotional/sensitive. Back then I was beginning to recognize that I was rather harsh with my tongue and my only solution at the time was to not talk to people who were sensitive so I avoided talking to this brother. At a distance I would observe this brother being exactly who I thought he was and why I should stay away from him. At one point he had to confront me about it and broke down crying in front of me, which of course did not help my mental image of him!  (No this was not Paul)

Back then people used to describe me as angry Ken. And people described me to other people  like that. That Ken is intimidating, he is easily angered, and quite harsh. And soon people started observing me from a distance and filling in all the reasons why my reputation is true. Well of course that caused everyone to keep their distance, just as I did with that brother. The only people who got to know the real me were the people who either were courageous enough or perhaps dumb enough to spend time getting to know me, who helped me become who I am today, people who I now have the privilege to advance the kingdom with at Westside Hamilton.

First impressions count for a lot don’t they? Especially when your first impression  is really just what someone else told you. Technically those are called rumours or gossip.

Weirdly a lot of the same happens with scripture in the modern day church. Our first impressions of scripture are rarely from God, or even from ourselves. Often it is a pastor, a book, or more popular nowadays, a Youtube video. Often we will say we know God, then maybe some of us will finally realize we just know a lot about God. Upon further inspection though, we are one step removed from even that! We actually only know many rumours about God.

What do I mean? Let’s say I want to play ball like Kobe. Sam comes to me saying that Kobe’s jump shot works because he kicks his shooting foot out in the follow through. Now whether I trust Sam or not that comment is just a rumour to me until I go look at a bunch of clips of Kobe playing, find out that yeah, he always kicks that foot out and it seems to help him square up to the basket. Then I would go and try that out for like dozens of hours, find out that not only does it help him square up, it also helps his balance, and draws fouls. Maybe then I could say I know a bit more about how Kobe shoots. After 1000’s of hours maybe I could even say I shoot like Kobe. That is the progression we would see if Sam and I actually cared for playing basketball, not just watching and talking about it.

A rumour is an unverified piece of information that is disseminated and received while still unverified. After that piece of information is verified or discerned, we would call that piece of information knowledge. And after that piece of knowledge has been applied, the results realized and the whole process internalized in our own lives, we could truly say we have learned it. So how much do you think a sermon, the primary source of feeding for most people nowadays, covers in this progression?

Acts 17

10 The brothers immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea, and when they arrived they went into the Jewish synagogue. 11 Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so. 12 Many of them therefore believed, with not a few Greek women of high standing as well as men.

The Bereans were viewed as people of noble character, and often taught as the prototypical model of discernment. Notice that the Bereans did not go find the nearest pastoral authority, or look it up on their favorite coalition’s website, or go find a video sermon. They read the scriptures for themselves! They went to the only divine source they knew of. They would have went to the Holy Spirit too if He were in them (He was not because they were not believers at the time). They were not satisfied with just letting Paul’s ideas remain unverified as rumours. They wanted to know for themselves, together as a community, whether what Paul said was indeed true. They did not elevated any human sources.

I am not saying that teaching is a bad thing. I am saying, as we see here with the Bereans, that teaching is a small part in a much larger process. Teaching here is only the initiator, something that piques our curiosity and draws us into further interaction with God.

I define discernment as our own ability to hear and understand what God is saying. Therefore discernment  cannot be based on non-divine sources, unless you believe that some person has the totality of God’s voice on earth today (technically according to the Catholics that is the pope). It is common sense, you have no discernment if you have to rely on someone else’s. You have no ability to hear and understand what God is saying if you have to rely on someone else to do that for you.

So discernment is not figuring out whether this teacher is good or bad, it is not about whether this sermon is good or bad, because all that is often just a comment on presentation style. Those sorts of concerns are of course worth addressing, but when it comes to discernment, it is simply about whether what has been said is indeed what God is saying, regardless how it has been presented.

Often we are so filled to the brim with other people’s impressions of scripture and theology that we think we are discerning when really we are just subconsciously recalling things taught to us. How much of what we know of God was revealed to you through your quiet time of reading and prayer, and how much of it was taught to you by someone? Nowadays we perceive that we had a spiritual epiphany if something “convicted” us from the sermon, that God “spoke” to me through the sermon. Frankly, that usually is not an epiphany at all, just that someone has effectively persuaded you of something, and it aligned with your innate, sometimes unrecognized theological biases.

Again, I am not saying teaching is bad. I am just saying teaching is of very limited help when it comes to discernment, when it comes to hearing and understanding God for ourselves. And because most of us has been taught so many things so often for so long, we need to be extra intentional in trying to discover things, discern things, especially scripture, for ourselves.

When Westside Hamilton fell apart and us leaders burnt out 3 years ago, I spent the years leading up to now not paying attention to sermons, not going after books or commentaries, not looking for mentors and teachers. I just read the bible, over and over, a concept that Mike first introduced when he first spoke at Hamilton years ago. Even though I had done that as a reaction out of hurt, that time of actively putting teaching aside, a teaching fast if you will, cleared my head and helped me recognize that I had significant sources/biases in my head that skewed my theological preferences; I thought I was being “conservative” by taking a certain stance when really I have just been isolated and ignorant. If we do not recognize that the windows are tinted red, we are always going to think that the sky is purple.

For example, I realized I preferred a theology and view of my relationship with God that focused on having things to do and working hard on them, being a soldier for Christ, because I come from a Chinese Christian community. Asians are taught to work hard, so the idea of rest as a good, Godly thing is very foreign, even frowned upon. After reading through Psalms, reading through Jesus’ life in the Gospels, I realized there were scriptures about rest that had never been focused on before, but carry such an intimate view of resting with God as part of our relationship with Him.

So some practical things as we begin to develop our discernment:

• Read the bible. I say specifically read not study. In churches today “studying the bible” often means internalizing some teacher’s take on scripture. Read to internalize the scriptures yourself and keep foreign impressions to a minimum until you have read the bible 2-3 times over and have a decent idea of the overall contents. For those who grew up in a church, do a teaching fast and read for obvious, face-value meaning.
• Manage your first impressions. Easiest way to do this in our teaching-centric world is to ignore things that do not immediately apply to you. Continue taking notes during teaching/sermons if you wish, but if you know you have a hard time with discernment and are convinced easily, feel free to not bother with the sermon contents until you have finished with your reading plan above.
• Recognize your sources. Spend a little time reflecting, especially for those who have been in church for a long time, on what your long time sources, influences, and bias’ are (I will do another series helping you understand the modern North American church landscape later on this year).

Homework: Read in one sitting all of 1 Corinthians, noting who/what are the sources of the interpretations you currently know

My psalm

Paul encouraged us to write our own psalm during the praise time today, here's mine.

I don't really have the words to say
The songs to sing
The things to bring
That'll ever express have much you've done for me
How you wouldn't let me be
Even when I didn't praise you
Even when I didn't want you

Yet now I stand before you
Clean
Risen
Chosen
My failures ever before you
Yet ever joyful
Ever thankful
Ever remembering that my life is not a surprise to you
My shortcomings are not a surprise you
My trespasses are not a surprise to you

That you've paid for them on the cross
That you've dealt with then at great cost
That all you want from me
Is to pick myself up off the floor
And keep living for you
Pursuing you
Praising you
Loving you

All that I will eagerly do
For your spirit has transformed me
To want your presence
To want your heart
To want your will

Unashamed I will ever lift my voice
Out of the depths of my heart I will praise your name

Theological debates via Facebook comments? Seriously?

1 Corinthians 2-3 talks about how Paul taught only simple things at Corinth, because they were not ready for the mature things as they were divisive and would use such teaching to further divide themselves. Unfortunately most teachers today, especially in the celebrity realm, do not exercise similar restraint. With the reach of the internet, a piece of teaching can quickly turn into seeds of division, as immature members use such articles to rebut and bash other’s view points. Even more so with the relative comfort and distance of social media.

Futhermore, with celebrity teaching being so widely disseminated, so accessible apart from the nurturing guidance of accountable relationships, local leaders are pressured to "pick a camp" or risk having their leadership undermined by celebrity teachers. As a result discernment, well demonstrated in Acts 17 by the Bereans as the process of working through the scriptures with fellow brothers and sisters to validate a truth claim, has now degenerated into simply comparing something/someone to the teaching/teachers that one agrees with; one human source against another human source. A brother once, when I asked if it occurred to him that a certain celebrity teacher could be wrong on the issue being discussed, flatly replied, "Well, he's usually right."

Interestingly, Paul also describes this attitude in 2 Timothy 4 (emphasis mine):

3 For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, 4 and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.

Most will interpret that as referring to the prosperity gospel in the present day, but I believe it also speaks over the other extreme, the hyper-calvinist, pharisee-like faction that is gaining such prominence with young believers these days. Just as true as it is for unbelievers, believers also seek to hear what they want to hear. We pick a church based on which we think has “good” teaching, we surround ourselves with brothers and sisters that believe in the same theological bent that we do, we post rebuttals of articles with articles from the coalition that we align with, filled with scriptural references and twists that we ourselves did not even look up.

We close our hearts and minds and stay away from truly wrestling with God about what we and others think of Him, perhaps because in our zeal to "defend the faith" we have developed the pride to say that we are fully right all of the time. Or we go after teachers to follow and shy away from hearing God for ourselves because others have taught us that without them we do not have the authority to do so correctly, or simply because spending the necessary time in the Word and in prayer ourselves would require too much effort and too much uncertainty, as if trusting God's voice from any man not named Jesus was any more certain.

Maturity is not focused on knowing more to begin with, never mind knowing just one take on the big picture of God. What the apostle was saying in 1 Corinthians 2-3 was that the mature never allows teaching to divide the body of Christ. For those who pursue learning more and more teachings as a path to maturity, but end up using it to fester resentment and disunity among brothers and sisters on Facebook of all things, the Apostle Paul simply calls them immature.

Theology ≠ Scripture

I am not challenging the sufficiency of scripture, I am challenging the sufficiency of our theology, the sufficiency of our understanding and interpretation of scripture. I believe that the scriptures hold a sufficient account of the character and intent of God. I am not so confident about our ability, with full accuracy, to extract that from scripture. So what I’m really challenging isn’t whether the scripture is sufficient, but whether my ability to understand it, or John Piper’s ability to understand it, or Mark Driscoll’s ability to understand it, is fully sufficient. A lot of the time, that’s all people do, to supplement their understanding with some other person’s understanding, ignoring the necessary personal revelation of the Holy Spirit, all the while championing the practice as the sufficiency of the scriptures.

A human’s perception of the world is always flawed. We see white light when really there is a rainbow of colors. We see a solid when really there are billions of separate particles. We perceive us standing still when really we’re moving through our galaxy at millions of kilometers an hour. So it is with our perception of scripture. Apostle Paul said to the Corinthians that only at the end, when we and God meet face to face, will we know fully. He says to them that no eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has imagined what God has for those who love him.

God intends to change that over our lifetime with Him of course, and He has sent us a helper for that purpose, the Holy Spirit. Therefore we must treat the Holy Spirit as the primary source of understanding in our interactions with the scriptures, just as Jesus told the disciples that the Holy Spirit is the one who will lead them into truth, not a video sermon from a celebrity teacher, or the commentary column in their study bible, or whichever theological faction was prominent at the time.

Be in love with scripture (what God says about Himself), not teaching or theology (what others say about God). They are not the same thing.

What is all this hiding?

Maclean’s recently had an article speaking on how the increased joblessness in the US has correlated with an increase in diagnosed mental illness cases; that prolonged joblessless creates stresses and removes the routine, structure and purpose in one’s life. It could also be argued that not having work has allowed the mental distress to surface. Perhaps it is the same for spiritual health, that a lot of church structure and events and busyness hides what’s really wrong with someone’s relationship with God. With that said then, perhaps some amount of structure could make the symptoms more manageable, but none the less the root problems must be dealt with.

Haircuts

God shaping our character is sort of like giving a kid a haircut. Goes great if the kid keeps still, goes poorly if the kid is restless and frantic and doesn’t wanna. Not that God isn’t an amazing barber, but when we’re busy and anxious and running about all the time, those scissors end up lopping off parts it shouldn’t, and missing parts that should. We take His snips as Him hurting us, and God ultimately has to redeem it and fix it back up. Thus a half hour hair cut ends up being 3 hours.