Being alone is more painful than being hurt - Luffy

"The reason that marriage is so painful and yet wonderful is because it is a reflection of the gospel, which is painful and wonderful at once. The gospel is this: We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope. This is the only kind of relationship that will really transform us. Love without truth is sentimentality; it supports and affirms us but keeps us in denial about our flaws. Truth without love is harshness; it gives us information but in such a way that we cannot really hear it. God's saving love in Christ, however, is marked by both radical truthfulness about who we are and yet also radical, unconditional commitment to us. The merciful commitment strengthens us to see the truth about ourselves and repent. The conviction and repentance moves us to cling to and rest in God's mercy and grace."
- Tim Keller, Meaning of Marriage pg. 48

The older I get, or maybe the older the people around me get, the more materialistic people seem to be. It is probably because now we have more money in our bank accounts (versus relying on our parent's money). Maybe it is because we have more control over our lives (instead of family and school dictating our decisions).

I feel like it is pressuring me to seek younger and younger company, those who are still too naive to realize how tempting the world can be. People whose cares are only the homework that is due next week or how many tickets they can win at Dave & Busters. And of good company.

Oh how good company is harder and harder to find as you grow older.

Now...the question of the day is this: is taking underclassmen to taco bell and Dave & Busters and playing bioshock infinite with them living radically for God?

More than the people serving on Philly Missions? More than the SMs preaching the Gospel in Turkey?

Am I just trying to compare myself with others, and am I trying to serve out of my own strength/by means of the flesh? I think this question is the root one I must ask myself.

Sigh...it is so easy for me to forget my age when I am with them. But then again what am I supposed to be doing at my age anyways?

Do I want a pat on my head, or a punch to the gut? Maybe both?

(pat on head = wanting to be recognized for my humanly efforts to do good or bear fruit, or just be acknowledged by someone; punch to the gut = wanting someone to rebuke me for comparing myself to others and/or be reminded to be humble and my works are not the point)

It is Pride which has been the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began. Other vices may sometimes bring people together: you may find good fellowship and jokes and friendliness among drunken people or unchaste people. But Pride always means enmity—it is enmity. And not only enmity between man and man, but enmity to God.
 
In God you come up against something which is in every respect immeasurably superior to yourself. Unless you know God as that—and, therefore, know yourself as nothing in comparison— you do not know God at all. As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.

That raises a terrible question. How is it that people who are quite obviously eaten up with Pride can say they believe in God and appear to themselves very religious? I am afraid it means they are worshiping an imaginary God. They theoretically admit themselves to be nothing in the presence of this phantom God, but are really all the time imagining how He approves of them and thinks them far better than ordinary people: that is, they pay a pennyworth of imaginary humility to Him and get out of it a pound’s worth of Pride towards their fellow-men. I suppose it was of those people Christ was thinking when He said that some would preach about Him and cast out devils in His name, only to be told at the end of the world that He had never known them. And any of us may at any moment be in this death-trap. Luckily, we have a test. Whenever we find that our religious life is making us feel that we are good—above all, that we are better than someone else—I think we may be sure that we are being acted on, not by God, but by the devil. The real test of being in the presence of God is that you either forget about yourself altogether or see yourself as a small, dirty object. It is better to forget about yourself altogether.
- C.S. Lewis

“Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. We say people are proud of being rich, or clever, or good-looking but they are not. They are proud of being richer, or cleverer, or better-looking than others.” 
- C.S. Lewis

 “For pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense.”
- C.S. Lewis

“The real black diabolical Pride comes when you look down on others so much that you do not care what they think of you. Of course, it is very right, and often our duty, not to care what people think of us, if we do so for the right reason; namely, because we care so incomparably more what God thinks. But the Proud man has a different reason for not caring. He says ‘Why should I care for the applause of that rabble as if their opinion were worth anything?’”
- C.S. Lewis

If you want God to humble you, go do ministry. Nothing humbles you faster. See passage about feet washing, first shall be last. Imagine handing out gospel tracks to your classmates, to your department, to your professors. Imagine the humiliation you will probably face. "Oh Daniel, I didn't know u were religious." Yeah. And God delights in this. As Paul Washer says, it is the killing of the flesh.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tms4NuPVNpo

Retreat Notes

Marriage is for ministry, singleness is for ministry? Are the reasons the enter either selfish or for God's glory?

God has tons of gifts for you, and will give them to you. But if he gives it at the wrong time, you will mess it up.

If you cut the Gospel in half, then there will be no Gospel.

- Pastor Wilson Chang (Phil's dad)

You work with God, not for God.

Think about it, if you work for God, then He is your boss. A boss with impossible standards. One whom you can never please with your projects or works. You will be fired. There will not be any good recommendations. Just the streets from there.

But if you work with God, then He is your team leader. Someone who will make sure the project wont fail. Someone who will keep everyone on track and create the best product possible. Is it a joy to work with Him and He continually humbles u with His work ethic and natural ability to lead. He will take responsibility of your shortcomings and u will partake in the champagne and partying when the whole team gets promoted.

Holy Spirit in Action!

The question of the day: How does the Holy Spirit work?

The Holy Spirit acts whenever we do something that is not possible due to our depraved, selfish, sinful nature. Every act that falls under one of the fruits of the Spirit (love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control – Galatians 5) is living proof of the Holy Spirit’s work. He is there in compellings, in urges, and in tugs on the heart that pull you away from selfish desires. The Holy Spirit is not flow of strong feelings (charismatic view).

That is not how He worked in the early church, and is not how Christ revealed the Holy Spirit. The titles the Holy Spirit has, counselor, comforter, guide, helper, champion of faith, sealer of souls (I kind of made the last two up according to scripture) do NOT reflect something that provides strong emotions. So it is okay to be skeptical when you think you feel a strong conviction toward an action or decision to test if it actually is the Holy Spirit speaking or just strong emotions that your brain came up by the flesh. Remember that in spiritual warfare, Satan can and will use strong emotions to misguide us, look at any example of Satan’s temptations in the Bible, while God doesn’t ever have to use feelings at all (though feelings are very important in worship and praise). Faith is the greatest example of this, as there is absolutely no need for feelings in faith.

So this leads to the other side of the playing field, where people will ask “well, if feelings are not how we know the Holy Spirit is working in us, then how do we sense the Holy Spirit?” This leads people to be confused about the nature of the Holy Spirit and He becomes some kind of abstract thing in our lives. But like I said before, we do not give enough credit to the Holy Spirit. I will use an example to show this. Say at some ACF/IV large group, you see a new visitor in the corner. You easily think to yourself that you don’t want to talk to that person, that it will cost you in time and energy and that someone else will talk to the stranger. This is the innate selfishness in all of us talking. You know it is true. You rather talk to the people you do know, spend your time/energy/resources for your own benefit. But then you get up and go over to talk, because you somehow know the right thing to do. And when you talk and introduce yourself, you feel good, because showing this little bit of kindness/care/love is a good thing. This is the Holy Spirit working in you. You know this to be true because there once was a time when you were the stranger. You were afraid of talking, already exhausting all of your energy to just go to a new community. You remember the first few people who reached out to you, and you were very grateful they did. Those first moments made lifelong impressions on you, and you will think of the first people who reached out to you fondly. And you wanted to follow in their footsteps, using their love and kindness as an example for you. If you know Church history, you know that the Holy Spirit was moving in them to talk to you, and what you actually saw was Christ in them. Because you know that someone in their past made them into the disciple you met, just as they made you into their own disciple. And this was repeated time and time again, for two thousand years, until you can trace every Christian back through the (apostolic) discipleship lineage back to Jesus Christ Himself (even Paul). This is the Body’s family tree, proving we all are family together. This is truly the power of the Holy Spirit in each of us to enable us to make disciples, produce fruit, and show love to the world. Remember, the mark of the Christian is to have the Holy Spirit in us (Romans 8:16, Ephesians 1:13, 1 Corinthians 12:3). He is our bloodline to Christ.

Update: So this actually occurred last Friday during LG. It was towards the end LG where a stranger walked into the room and hid himself in the back row. I believe I was the only person who saw him, and I didn't recognize him. In my head I was debating with myself whether I should talk to him or not. There were people I wanted to chat with, and I felt like someone else would engage him instead of me. But I saw him leave, and then the Holy Spirit said "Dan, u lame butt, go talk to him," so I chased him down as he was exiting the door out of the Cathedral. Turns out he was a senior from Cornell who was a PhD candidate at CMU. He ended up getting lost outside and inside the Cathedral of Learning and so only made it to the last 5 minutes of LG. I ended up chatting with him and inviting him to board game night. Throughout the evening he kept on telling me how grateful he was for me to reach out to him, but I know that it was all the Holy Spirit and not me. If it were up to me, I would have left him at the side of the road (figuratively) in a heartbeat. To him, all I did was nod and go “mhm." If I hadn't reached out to him, things could have been different. He could have left w/o talking to anyone and returned to his hotel. This single act could make him decide to come to Pittsburgh instead of Seattle. This moment may have changed his entire life as a new Christian. I don't know, but I do know the Holy Spirit was totally working in this event.

So to give credit to the Holy Spirit means to realize it is by the Holy Spirit’s power, He who is the conduit for God’s love to be poured into us (Romans 5:5), that causes to care for people. We know that we suck at loving. Try replacing the word Love in 1 Corinthians 13. Are you always patient? Are you always kind? Nope nope nope. Those things are a struggle. By our human nature those things are unnatural to us. Hence every time we are able to do something that supersedes our naturally selfish nature, it is actually the Holy Spirit working. He is doing all the heavy lifting.

Now then, why is it hard as Christian to love, still? Yes there are human limits to how much time and energy we can do before our bodies are spent. But let’s be honest with ourselves for a bit. How often are we truly pushed to that limit? Instead I believe most of the time we try to love others with our own strength (which is like nil) instead of relying on God’s strength. To overcome that, we need to remember to continuously ask God for strength and the capability to love others unconditionally through prayer. I know myself I often forget to ask, and then I get burnt out and exhausted. I start to complain and start making the situation about me. “I’m giving it my all, but why isn’t anyone feeding me or caring about me?” It is all too easy. If the Holy Spirit is the hose we use to pour out the water of love onto the people we care about or are called to love (aka plants), prayer is the act of turning on the faucet. We just forget to turn on that faucet.

Treasures in heaven

What if...and this may be borderline heresy, but what if the treasures we store up in heaven are actually the relationships we build on earth with our brothers and sisters, and especially those we met as lost but became found because we preached the Gospel to them? What if the treasures are the joy contained in these relationships, made complete and full once we all are in heaven in the full presence of God? Fellowship is truly the taste of heaven. Relationships are literally the only thing that we can bring into heaven. Literally. Christ has made brother and sisterhood such an important thing.

Phil 4:1
Therefore, my brothers and sisters, you whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, dear friends!

1 Thess 2:19
 For what is our hope, our joy, or the crown in which we will glory in the presence of our Lord Jesus when he comes? Is it not you?

Mark 10:29-30
Jesus said, “Truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or farms, for My sake and for the gospel’s sake, ³⁰ but that he will receive a hundred times as much now in the present age, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and farms, along with persecutions; and in the age to come, eternal life.

Note to self when finding a church

I want to serve at a church small enough where the pastor knows me by name. That is where I want to serve and raise a family.

Church family FTW!

Thoughts for the week

Love was, is, and always will be the answer. (See multiply part 3)

Life is in the relationships. Not work. Not accomplishments. Though they may put food on table. That is why Christianity is real. It’s the only religion of love. Only religion that is a relationship.

Intellectuals also need the Gospel. They also need Jesus. 

Remember, a faith based on feelings is a very singular faith based on a very singular Gospel. If the Gospel you believe in is not universal for all men, then it isn't the Gospel at all. Faith is believing the Gospel is real, not that we feel it is real. Feeling and knowing are two different things. We don't say "I know Jesus is real because I got a feeling He is," we say we know Jesus because there is testimony and evidence and transformation that points to Him being real. We don't go up to our friends and say they are real to us because we feel them, we say that because we built a relationship with them, and this is the same with Jesus. Feelings then come into play in delighting in the fact we know Jesus and He knows us.

The point of love is that it does NOT come naturally. We are naturally self-seeking prideful individuals. Love asks us to sacrifice, to put another above ourselves, to search deep for a strength that doesn't belong to us. There is nothing humanly natural for someone to be patient, to be kind, to be humble, to never get angry, to always trust, hope, and persevere. Nothing at all. That is why love is profound, and most of the world does not get it. They may understand the self-denial part, but will miss the other part that there is inherently no love AT ALL in us. Love is action. Love is hard work. Love is utilizing energy from a source not of ourselves (or other people).

There are underlying laws governing the behavior of man. One is that we function best when confined in a box, and yet there is an underlying passion in the hearts of men to defy all established laws and break out of that box. The irony is that it is a law in itself that we desire to break laws. It’s our nature to be proud.

What are the two greatest commandments in the Bible? Love God and love people. So if you believe and trust in God's sovereignty and control for His kingdom, do you believe that ministries that involve brothers and sisters being called to serve in intellectual areas (doctors, lawyers, businessmen, professors), serving the poor, or becoming fathers and mothers, and serving the local church, if these ministries are done with a motivation of self-sacrificial love and in a selfless manner following God's calling, don't  these ministries have equal if not greater importance than a ministry of missions in foreign countries? Are these ministries not preaching the Gospel in a more glorifying and Spirit-directed manner if they are truly under God's will? Remember what the Gospel is before preaching it to others.

All ministry/missions can be turned into idols. That is the message of "God is first love" in Revelations 2.

The more Christian you are, the more broken you are, because the more your sins are revealed.

Mother Teresa did not feel God for the decades she was in India. Yet she persevered.

Christian life is like wack-a-mole. When you beat down one sin, several more will pop up.

If you are not anchored yourself, you will not be able to save those who are drowning – A. Tsai

One of the things non-believers most commonly point out is that we are weak. We run to God to avoid our problems, instead of face them head on. We also tend to lack resolve. One of my classmates who served in the Singapore army once told me that during training, there was an exercise where the military performed a test where they pressured/tortured the initiates to see how long they last before breaking. It turns out, the people who broke first were those whose resolve were based on faith, and those who lasted longer where soldiers who held onto thoughts like family or pride. Why is that? Why are Christians the first to fall when suffering occurred, and should it be this way? Food for thought

In Mark 10, Jesus promises us family, brothers and sisters, if we go to Jesus. So as the body of Christ, we need to man up. Brotherhood and sister is something serious. Sacred. Eternal. Another take on setting our minds on things above right? More important than marriage, for even marriage is temporary.

Remember, being a child of God means you have a strength to face head on and overcome your fears. It doesn't give you an excuse to run and hide from them.

This picture...almost made me cry during the exam I was proctoring. Tower of God, why you give me the feelz.

I must forgive others...if I want others to forgive me.

Can we metaphorize God?

"You can’t approach the subject of God without metaphor… literalism like legalism is an attempt to shrink God to recreate him in our own image.”

—

Bono

I know he meant well, but this quote, if true, means we are still all completely doomed. It only captures half the story, ignoring the Son of God who came so that we can have a literal image of what God is like (John 13-17). He is trying to attack literalism of the Bible, but very few Christians even believe in full literalism, and the parts that are under contention have been under contention for millennia and we will probably never know the truth. In any sense, literalism is not equivalent to legalism. He may also be referring to Biblism, which many people quote him for this purpose. This is another story altogether: a straw hat whose core tenants are disbelieved will lead one to a half-assed Gospel that can be dismantled easily.

Where this falls is without the Gospel, both literalism and metaphor both fail to describe God (subject of God).

Let us take a look at Revelations 1 where John makes a valiant attempt to metaphorized God/Christ.

12 I turned around to see the voice that was speaking to me. And when I turned I saw seven golden lampstands, 13 and among the lampstands was someone like a son of man, dressed in a robe reaching down to his feet and with a golden sash around his chest. 14 The hair on his head was white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like blazing fire. 15 His feet were like bronze glowing in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of rushing waters. 16 In his right hand he held seven stars, and coming out of his mouth was a sharp, double-edged sword. His face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance.

Ya…I really cannot envision what John saw. I can try, but the metaphor will fall short.

Before God’s full revelation in Christ, all we have are facts about God, mainly from Psalms about His omnipotence, omnipresence, and sovereignty. From His care for the Israelites, we got to see His mercy and love, and to the enemies of God, we saw His justice and wrath.

Yes, Adam and Eve got to see God in person in the Garden of Eden, but they were the only ones (maybe Isaiah in his vision). Remember, God told Moses that if he saw the full glory of God, he would disintegrate. We only have other partial revelations of God in the OT in the form of a burning bush, pillar of fire, cloud, a stranger in the night, or a voice. Even seeing God as our Father, something we inherit through Christ, is to help us understand His love. But this is not a metaphor, but a reality.

We know from Romans 1 where though all mankind have seen God in nature, through the life-giving power of the sun or the creation of life through a seed, because all have seen God and then rejected Him, we are guilty of rebellion.

The point again is that all metaphors will fall short of the glory of God. In scripture Jesus makes a point that only He has seen God and know the Father. In 2 Corinthians it says only the Holy Spirit know what God knows, and so through the power of the Holy Spirit we children of God will know God’s heart and Word. The point here is that only God knows Himself, and mankind’s attempts to metaphorize God will all fall short. To use metaphors to describe God is really trying to put God into a box, a box made by our own imaginations limited by what we can perceive in this world. But God is transcendent of this world, and so He sent His son to give us a clear and concise image of what He is like. That is call full revelation. That is the message of the Gospel.

The concluding point is this: we cannot possibly comprehend God, metaphorically or literally, without the power of the Holy Spirit and understanding of who is Jesus Christ.