muses

If you had noticed, last Thursday was Thanksgiving holiday in North America, and hence the many related blog posts by Christian authors and pastors during the week. I enjoyed this post by Mark Galli from Christianity Today, which reminds me that the ability to give thanks is really a gift and grace of God. Here’s a paragraph from the article that raised a chuckle, yet reminded me of my own reluctance to give thanks:

Here we are, aware of the multitude of blessings that God has showered upon us, claiming to be people who love God and yearn to be in his presence—and then we find ourselves at the dinner table. The father or mother turns to one of the children and asks her to return thanks. If the parent absent-mindedly calls on the same person two nights in a row, they’ll hear, “I did it last night! It’s Susan’s turn!” As if saying grace was a punishment. You’d think, given the abundance of grace poured down upon us, we’d all be waving our hands to be recognized so that we could return thanks! As the parent who initiates this little liturgy each night, I’ll admit that many nights I feel exactly like the person who says, “It’s not my turn!” and I’m glad I can appoint another person to pray. Yikes! And this from a supposedly dedicated and devout follower of Jesus. And I suspect I am not alone! This little iconic moment around the dinner table reveals so much about our hearts. How funny we are. And so it seems that Paul’s encouragement here—to give thanks to God always and for everything—is the perfect message for us.

The giving-ends session on Fri about Counselling skills for dealing with depression and homosexuality also caused me to see the importance of thanksgiving. Point six in how to CONQUER depression in Christ is to ‘Exchange hurt for thanksgiving. Choose to give thanks even when you don’t feel thankful. Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus (1 The 5:18).’ Some of these handlers are not just for use when we hit depression, they are to be cultivated and nurtured now. So is the point on ‘Nurture your thoughts on God’s love for you’. So we must learn to do these every day.

Anyway, I told myself that if I’m called to give thanks for food, I will do it willingly, with a sincere heart, and to daily, deliberately give thanks for God’s provision
(Ahem, I would like to remind everyone that the noun for ‘provide’ is not ‘providence’ but ‘provision‘. ‘Providence’ means ‘a manifestation of divine care or direction’ (one of the meanings). Sounds like ‘providing’ but isn’t.)

Below is an extract from John Piper’s meditation on the said Taste and See article. I love how-to articles. What could get simpler than a how-to article, right? But I would be a fool to think that I can be Spirit-filled just by following steps 1-2-3. Any desire and ability to be led by the Spirit is the work of the Spirit Himself, by the grace of God.

My Father in heaven greatly desires to give His children His Spirit. We just need to ask (Luke 11:3). What a wondrous and thrilling thought! But how can we be filled with the Spirit? As explained by Pastor Piper in the article, we have to imbibe the word of God deeply when we desire so.

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Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit. Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

Ephesians 5:18-21

Oh, how we need to be filled with the Spirit! Let’s seek it! Pursue it!

But the crucial question is, how? Start with the closest parallel: Don’t be drunk with wine, be filled with the Spirit! (verse 18). How do you get drunk with wine? You drink it. Lots of it. So how then shall we get drunk (filled) with the Spirit? Drink it! Lots of it. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 12:13, “For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink”. Jesus said, “On the last and greatest day of the Feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, ‘If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.’ By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified” (John 7:37-39).

How can you drink the Spirit? Paul said, “Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires” (Rom 8:5). We drink the Spirit by setting our minds on the things of the Spirit. What does “setting the mind on” mean? Colossians 3:1-2 says, “Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things”. “Setting the mind on” means seeking, directing your attention toward, being very concerned about (Philippians 3:19). It means being devoted to and taken up with. So drinking the Spirit means seeking the things of the Spirit, directing your attention to the things of the Spirit, being devoted to the things of the Spirit.

What are the “things of the Spirit”? When Paul said in 1 Corinthians 2:14, “The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned”, he was referring to his own Spirit-inspired teachings (2:13) - specifically his teaching about the thoughts and ways and plans of God (2:8-10). Therefore, “the things of the Spirit” are the teachings of the apostles about God. Jesus also said, “The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life” (John 6:63). Therefore, the teachings of Jesus are also the “things of the Spirit.”

So drinking the Spirit means setting our minds on the things of the Spirit. And setting our minds on the things of the Spirit means directing our eager attention to the teachings of the apostles about God and to the words of Jesus. If we do this long enough, we will get drunk with the Spirit. In fact, we will get addicted to the Spirit. Instead of having chemical dependencies, we will develop a wonderful Spirit dependency.

One more thing: The Holy Spirit is not like wine, because he is a person and is free to come and go everywhere he wills (John 3:8). Therefore Luke 11:13 must be added. Jesus said to his disciples, “If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” If we want to be filled with the Spirit we must ask our heavenly Father for it. And that is just what Paul does for the Ephesians in Ephesians 3:19. He asks his Father in heaven (verse 19) that the believers “know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” Drink and pray. Drink and pray. Drink and pray.

The session planners for this month’s Adult ministry content started us for the month with an eight-day devotional guide to reflect upon the character of God. Despite attending the CGL training and knowing the emphasis of the month, the theme proved to be quite a challenge in terms of embracing the character of Christ. Tension between my head and my heart arose in me: my head acquiesce in Christ’s character is beautiful, but my heart was doubtful and sceptical of what he did was really beautiful. For example, in reading the account of Jesus healing the leper by touch in Matthew 8:1-4, I was thinking, ‘it’s not very wise to touch a leper, is it?’, and even, ‘why did Jesus present himself as such a strange person to the Jews?’. At the same time, as I reflected upon the difference between the character of Jesus and mine, I could only think, ‘I’m so far from the standard of Christ’.

Thank God that the month’s Adult Fellowship session refreshed and encouraged my heart. Testimonies from Baoling and Christel reminded me of our identity as children of God and we emulate Christ because Christ has the nature of our Heavenly Father. Also, as we shared our reasons for the gap between our display of the character of Christ and our perceived value in the beauty of His character, I realised that my gap lies in me wanting to protect myself. I don’t want to do risky things like loving people different from me nor allow others to take advantage of my kindness (if there’s any). So I just let my ‘conventional wisdom’ kick in and stop myself from doing ‘radical’ things. But in doing so, I’d devalued the beauty of Christ. I couldn’t see how indefinitely beautiful Jesus is, and much less to want to pursue that.

But God grants me hope through His word. As we read Rom 8:28-30, 2 Cor 3:18 and 1 John 3:2, it thrills my heart to be reminded that it was God who predestined us to be like Christ and it is His work in transforming us. We will be perfectly like Christ when He returns. Baofang’s exuberant sharing that we are all God’s Works-In-Progress who will be perfectly like Christ one day, and that we will be led by God’s Spirit when we heed His prompting and are saturated in the word of God also greatly encouraged me. Growing in Christ-likeness is a possibility. (Actually, this reminds me of an article by John Piper that I’m inspired by as well. Will blog about this later

My prayer in growing in Christ-likeness is from Michael Card’s song, Know You in the Now:

Lord, deliver me
Break my heart so I can see
All the ways You dwell in us

That You’re alive in me

Perhaps my heart needs to be broken to see how little I value the beauty of Christ’s character, and also so that I would know His Spirit is working in me, changing me.

The claims of the Nigerian pastor at the start were so outrageous that I wanted to pull out my hair (but i resisted, ’cause i already have thin hair and thinning scalp…). How could anyone say that faith is proportionate to giving, and that they must give in US dollars? I’m sorry (wait, actually I’m not) to say that I think the pastor is fleecing the people.

The Prosperity Gospel from The Global Conversation on Vimeo.

In November the Global Conversation focuses on the prosperity gospel—the teaching that true Christian faith results in material wealth and physical well-being. While it has its roots in America, it has found fertile soil on other continents as well. To accompany the lead article in Christianity Today by Ghanaian scholar Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu, director Nathan Clarke went to Ghana to explore the forms the prosperity gospel takes in that West African nation.

Read about the “behind the scenes” story - http://bit.ly/1oRzUb

Read this in John Piper’s book Taste and See, and I was like, omg John Piper wrote this for me.

You can feel proper remorse that the ‘want to’ is very small and weak - like a mustard seed - and then, if it lies within you, do the ‘ought to’ by the exertion of the will, while repenting that the ‘want to’ is weak, and praying that the ‘want to’ will soon be restored. Perhaps it will even be restored in doing the ‘ought to’. This is not hypocrisy. Hypocrisy hides the absence of the ‘want to’ and pretends it’s there. Virtue confesses the defective desire in the hope that grace will forgive and restore.

You can seek, by the means of grace, to have God give the ‘want to’ so that when the time to do the ‘ought to’ comes, you will ‘want to’. Ultimately the ‘want to’ is a gift of God.

Yes! I must pray for the ‘want to’!