Moving ahead

However, I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me—the task of testifying to the gospel of God's grace.

I was reflecting upon this verse while I ran the marathon on Sunday. As I enter into my 4th year in Christ, I realised that this verse applies a lot to my own spiritual life and my own philosophy as a believer and a disciple of Christ.

I consider my life worth nothing to me. I have a tendency to think about my own life and all that I can do and achieve in my career, even as I start my career in MOH, if I ever have a career there. I was thinking what's my CEP and how far I can go in MOH or even the civil service. Yet, I have to keep reminding myself that my own life is worth nothing and I need to consider all things rubbish. Coming 4 years, I have to admit that compared to God and His presence in my life, the rest seems rubbish in comparison with that. It often came across my mind what I could have done if I have gone for NOC, or SEP, or even gone on to do internship or what. But to tell the truth, I made a decision to sacrifice all these the day God called me to become the shepherd of a flock. It sounds silly, but that was my decision. My life simply continues to pale in comparison to the eternity I am going to have. It occurs the same here as I start work. My mind has already been made up, to start preparing for missions and church planting and I am going to do that by upgrading myself spiritually. Whether I go or not, it is of insignificance because I will be operationally ready in 2 to 3 years time. So when He says 'go', I can be ready to go.

if only I may finish the race. Life is like a race. Paul likened his own walk with God as a race and this is not the only time he alluded to that. As I was running the marathon, or everytime I run a marathon, I can feel what is it like. The beginning is always the easiest since I am still fresh. But there will come points in time when I feel like dying and I want to give up. There will be times when I feel lonely because I am the only one running the race. There will be times I will feel more energised because someone encouraged me, like one lady who has Philippians 4:13 written on the back tag. In real life, I think I am lucky to have people around me who will be able to encourage me and spur me on. Yet, I believe at some point, I have and will experience the different stages of a marathon race. Scream and cry and shout, but I know that ultimately I have and will experience them. Even so frequently, I feel that I am on a lonely battle. I was sharing in unit the other day that I am truly frustrated by people who dun dig into the Word enough and who dun study the Word deep enough and are contented with elementary teachings and such. I am disappointed by the way some Christians (including leaders) interpret the bible and some verses, taking verses out of context. Scream, cry and shout, but this is the situation I see and I know this is something I want to fight for.

Complete the tast the Lord Jesus has given me. Yes, and I want to complete the task of testifying to the gospel of God's grace. Outside of this, it is in my deepest conviction that there is no other reason why God would keep us here on Earth. Without this task, there would be no such thing as a Christian life. Yet I am convicted with this task because I believe and am convicted by the reality of God in my life.

But it is here that I would like to digress a bit and 'cry father cry mother' a little bit about what I see in our own system. Testifying to the gospel of God's grace is a thing that believers do that must be accompanied by a strong relationship and a strong conviction in God, and be built up by strong discipleship. It laments me to see the quality of discipled Christians who are transferred over to the Uni-YA group (ie the youth). From what I know, the youths are very strong in their evangelism, which is good, but I realise that the attrition rate from youth to uni is very high also. I ponder over a case study and a real life example, and think about the youth transfers over the past few years to the Uni group. The strong giants are really the strong giants but those are quite few in number. A lot fell or became stagnant in their faith while in uni. My diagnosis is because there is a culture that asks people to share their faith that is not augmented with a strong conviction or strong relationship and supported by strong spiritual discipleship. This is of course not unique to youth transfers but I see it quite often in these group of people. And I am not saying that the youth group is lousy. Yet, as I reflect upon it, I realise that a lot of time, in the bible, people share their faith as a result of a direct experience with Jesus. The Samaritan woman had a personal encounter with Jesus and it was not supernatural. The blind man had a supernatural encounter with Jesus. Paul had one. Peter and the disciples who received the Holy Spirit baptism had one. Basically all early Christians are able to share their faith and testify because they had a conviction and faith that is augmented by a strong relationship with Jesus. In our context, we need to think about are we asking people to share Christ too early in their faith, when the relationship is not strong enough, or when there is no conviction, ie their sharing is not built upon a foundation of convicted faith. This is in view that not all believers who receive Christ initially know what they are doing or fully understand their decision. This is something for us to think about and something I have been reflecting upon.

Another issue for me to cry father cry mother as I reflect is this, that believers nowadays come to church with a consumeristic attitude. This is something that I realise, that the PnW must be good, that the preaching must be funny etc. Granted that we dun need someone who goes off key to lead PnW or someone who knows no rhythm to play the drum on stage, or someone who cannot understand the bible fully to preach the word, nonetheless, do we really need a super inspirational speaker, or do we really need a super good PnW in order for God to speak to us? And a lot of people come in here and ask 'what can God do for me today?' Sometimes when I think about it, I feel mad you know, seeing that people come in with such attitude and just to mention, I am not immune to such sentiments too. I will leave the issue here as such and not go on further.

As I enter into my 4th year, I think all these things that I see and I understand only serve to confirm that I made the correct choice in believing in God. And I hope that another 4 years from now, I will be an even stronger disciple than I am now.

Till then, akan datang.