If, and Only If

While it is a tad bit negative to think about a personal eulogy, MH370, and then the South Korean Cruise incident did indeed evoke much sentiments about life in general- particularly, the frailty of life. 

If one day, seconds before breathing our last, what would go through our mind. Many say it would be the unfinished business or a life regret, some say it would be flashes of the memories of the our loved ones, others say it's probably the wonders of the many what-could-have-been. For me, I haven't really found or built a relationship that would take up my most important seconds in my life, neither have I forged any great plans or visions that I am in the midst of doing or working toward. 

One thing I wish, is that I have made a positive impact on those whom I've touched lives. I'm not the nicest friend you would find, but I'm the most transparent me I can be; I'm not the most agreeable, but I wear my heart on my sleeves; I'm not the most practical, but I would go the distance to make things happen. Making a difference begins with impacting the lives beside you- small efforts, but all it takes is for us to do something.

Keep believing, and God will bring to past His promises for all our lives. The Gospel is not complicated, but it is not easy either. Learn "love" and we are almost there. 

Counterculture, stand up for what we want, know the heart, take the effort to know the person, right the wrong, get our priority right, make a difference, live life, love joy, be the impact~

The Final Year

"Further research is needed to verify this."

Those were my exact last words of my academic pursuit, and at the insertion of that full stop comes the conclusion for this phase of my life. I have been looking forward because at some point, it had felt unbearable. Other times, I was just going through the motion; yet there were times where fun and laughters tranquilized any surge of anxiety. Those, were my uni years- full albeit short; fun albeit frustrating; meaningful albeit... sometimes this helpless sense of purposeless take over and I questioned about the applicability of what I was learning. Come on, I'm sure even the good students had those moments as well? Who would use algebra in the real world except perhaps mathematic teachers? 

Over the past 2 weeks when the reality of graduation slowly began to set in, the reality of departure also entailed. 3 years weren't that long, and precisely so, that's why many of the memories were still fresh in my mind. In fact, my memories of NUS stretch back to matriculation day. 

Loneliness marked my first year, with all my friends yet to enter university. I felt like a pioneer, and to some degree an obliging senior to share and teach the ropes. I thought one year, and the subsequent one would be better. Fellow easties would become my travel mate, but never quite. Ever felt the sense of abandonment- like at one point in time, you become irrelevant in a friendship and the paths just split, and the deepest things are not to be shared? Yea, that's when the distance began. 

But thanks be to God that He meant it when He said it is not good for man to be alone, and new friends came along. Some of these friends would become friends for a lifetime (not because of similarity, but because of the heart). 

How does word capture the full richness of emotions? It can't! Right now, I'm just glad I've come through moulding, pulled through battering, impacted on breaking, befriended with inspiring, and acquainted with divinity. Some friends are breezes who share in the joy and glory, but brothers and sisters come alongside to share in all circumstances, especially the low and the broken. 

Thank you Zoeleen who is always one of the first few to come alongside to simply just walk along. You are a very precious friend who always send a delightful smile no matter how low I've sunk. Love you much!

Thank you Bryam who is so humble and so welcoming. You are one of the few who allow me to be myself, and continue to love me for who I am. I really appreciate you a lot for being you. You are awesome!

Thank you Bernadine. I thank you that we met, that even though our friendship is not deep, but your heart of gold has just found so much favor in me. I want to appreciate you for being an inspiration. Above all, your constant desire to seek God first is a big reminder for myself to always do the same!

Thank you Rebecca for being a sister. I don't know why, but there are some people whom you are just really comfortable with, and despite the lack of depth in our friendship, I really like spending time with you. Thanks for being available, and thanks for... (I don't know what)... but just thank you!

Thank you Jason. There are many ways and many areas that our friendship could have become a lot a lot deeper. In some ways, I find many connection points with you, but in our interactions, I just can't seem to find that breakthrough with you. But nevertheless, thanks for being so fervent in your walk with God. You modeled so well someone who is faithful in his service toward God and His people, and that I'm always looking up to you.

Thank you Chloe. You are my little sister who found a special place in my heart, no reasons why. 

Thank you Ge Wei for being a friend. In my bible, there's a verse that says " A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother." I think you are such a friend. I don't joke with you all, but somehow in you I find the assurance that you'd be available when I need help. Thank you!

In conclusion, I realize that the friends whom I cherish a lot a lot are friends whom I don't really talk to often. It's the heart- something within resonates and we become true friends. Even without the depth, they become so dear♥

Follow up

It's not pulling from front; it's walking alongside.

Follow up is a commitment; it is put in place to ensure continuity; it is to prevent settling on the superficial; it is to dive deep. All these fix the end goal to be an ultimate transformation into His likeness: follow me as I follow Jesus.

So has anyone realized that the term "follow-up" was non-existent throughout the 66 books in the bible? Much like the term "apostle" was missing in the Old Testament, "follow-up" has only been put into the frame of Christian ways of doing church quite recently. 

In the Old Testament, prophets took up important roles in advising the kings, and in the New Testament, the kings became figurehead. The last addressed prophet in the likes of John the Baptist was more persecuted than heeded. So came the apostles. In 1 Corinthians, apostles were ranked first, followed by the prophets, pastors, teachers, evangelists. Of course I don't have much basis for this hypothesis, except my very brief understanding of the contexts.

Likewise, follow-up is put in place with the end goal of achieving discipleship. That, is a familiar term, and today they have become somewhat of an unhealthy synonyms.

Follow-up is a secular term in the mold of a task: When I say I want to follow up on you, it's akin to saying that now we have gotten over the first phase, let's get on to the next phase. Where else do we hear this term most commonly? Right, insurance agent- now that you have filled up the survey for me, I will follow up on you. 

On the other hand, discipleship comes in the form of a relationship. It's genuine investment into the lives of the disciple such that both grow in their relationship with Christ in an intimate way. It goes beyond bible studies but it focuses on doing lives together. It means becoming vulnerable with each other, with the disciple submitting and trusting the discipler, and the discipler honoring and guiding the disciple. 

It's ok to actually mean discipleship when we say follow up, but that must be done in the assurance that the heart of discipleship is caught. 

錯過

心裡感言：

特别有feel. 早先讀了一段有關死黨的article, 心里很不是滋味. 看到别人这里十年共識， 那里九載共處；再看看自己，除了狼狽，就只剩下許多的無可奈何. 得失心放寬一些，或許会好過點儿. 

失望，背叛，失信，重傷. 很難可以再與往相同. 珍重再見.
友誼不在于日子的長短，只在于心靈的互解.

所謂：“酒逢知己千杯少，話不投機半”。 

我原諒你，不代表我繼續包容; 我對过往既往不咎，不代表我继续讓自己受傷害. 我曾經將主導權遞給你，看你如何表現. 可是你的漠不關心讓我心寒. 不要再喚我为知己，因為在我心里我们无非只是認識很久的朋友.

About Prayers

2 days back I got impressed upon my heart about the topics to continue my exploit to write; this morning I was reading some devotions, and yes the same topic came. Prayers: how exactly do they look like?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating a standardized correct form of prayer! But can I also suggest that if certain truths ring true in our hearts, then there is something fundamentally very wrong about most prayers (not all).

When I first came to Christ, prayer is something that I struggled with a lot. More precisely, I was still in my seeking phase, so yes I wasn't even sure if He existed, so I was desperate, I needed and wanted to hear from Him so badly. To this day, that remains one of my most sincere prayer- a genuine cry for help. See, it's the heart... Like many of my previous posts tended to suggest, it's always the heart!

So how then do we gauge a person's heart? I think we can't quite and frankly we don't have to, especially in the area of something as personal as our prayer walk.

The widely accepted notion of prayer being a conversation between God and us gives us a good understanding of how it should look like, so I'll use that for my dissection to reveal the fundamental flaws.

1. Many people pray and don't believe. In Mark 11, many people like to quote how faith can move mountain, but not many pay attention to the adjacent verses. Whatever you ask in prayer and believe that you have received, it will be given to you. Prayer is an integral expression of faith, it is about us asking our Daddy for something which we have not yet seen and then trusting Him for them. Have we ever prayed exorbitant requests and then the next immediate moment, we convince ourselves (and perhaps those around us) that those were too much to ask for, or worse still "I don't think it works this way." It's not for us to think, but Him to grant, for He also mentioned "I can do immeasurably more than you ever imagine". A prayer can only be powerful when you believe. I'm not saying that our unbelief restrains God. Far from it! There are people who come about and in their ever supposed good intentions, they try to explain situation- you know people don't get healed because they ask and they don't believe, or that the people didn't have faith to receive. THIS IS COMPLETELY WARPED! I can't give you the reasons why, and I believe God has specific message to allow some bad things (read my previous post). We can't draw conclusions for God because it is potentially very repelling. Let Him do His work, and my concern here is that when we pray, believe or at least try to believe. Otherwise it becomes a hypocritical act to impress. When we take faith out of prayer, there is practically no reason to do it at all. Pray this: I want to believe, help me overcome my unbelief.

2. Prayers are supposed to be powerful. Is this not linked? Let me digress a little- do we have the right perception of who our God is? Recently I was doing a module called understanding the universe, and was always so marveled by how big our God is! Imagine the sun, the Milky Way, and then beyond that, the hyper giant stars etc. our Creator God made all these! Then, we zoom in many many times and we find this protein strain called lemenin. God cares about the biggest and the smallest of our issues, and as long as we submit and commit, He cares enough to take over control of that particular issue. Ok, now back to the topic on prayer, you see the link? Don't ever think that God is too busy or too far to care!
Now the second part to this point: prayer has to be powerful! I think many of us grow up with a preconceived impression of how prayers look like, and then conform to that mold. (I'm not saying that our predecessors prayed weak prayers! Look at all the great things that have happened down history- I'm sure they were all fruits of powerful prayers!). What I am saying though is this: many caught the form, but few caught the heart. I ever seen self-battering prayers that focused on how we are suffering so badly and it's only gonna be worse. Remember Jesus's prayer: take this cup away from me, but if it's your will for me to drink it, let your will be done and not mine. Or even Paul's lamentation to his fellow colleagues in ministry. The heart is a genuine dreading of how difficult this is and then despite that, coming to a point of ultimate submission. We need not seek suffering! We seek glory, seek blessing and seek Jesus, suffering will follow and we endure it, not seek it! The crux of it is to be genuine, don't try to appear more righteous than we really are.

3. Prayers are being used to impress rather than express. See, I'm not particularly concerned about how fluent our prayers are- that's the form. So there's no need to have many words, big words, or a particular intonation. But can I also suggest that if prayer is such a big part of your life, it will transform and bear fruits as we mature and grow? It's like the more you do something, the better you become at it? So if we commune with God often, we get to know Him more, and the way we relate with Him changes? I will not name names, but I do have friends (and I'm sure it's not just them, but many others too) who repeatedly say "Lord, Lord". It comes to the extent where it began to feel a little annoying for me- either that or it has already been normalized in the church because basically everyone does that. Twice I've seen people take the stage and did prayer and they mumbled something like "Lord, you may take your seat now, Lord...". And I was like... This is the speech fillers of Christianese- you know like the erm and eh in our usual speech? Except that Lord is such a widely used Christian term that we get by with it rather easily. It becomes rather scary when we don't mean "Lord" when we say "lord". The example above- he was actually trying to get the congregation to sit down. Look at the credible speakers, listen to their prayers. You may say that those Americans are native speakers, so they are naturally more fluent. Then look at those who are near you. Look at your pastor, your leaders or even some of the Godly adults! Don't misunderstood me, I'm not saying that all who are fluent in their prayers are Godly, but I am definitely implying that prayers are an outward expression of our walk with God. If for five years, the prayers remain at "Father, thank you for the food, amen." Then there's a cause to be wary of where the relationship has grown. Besides, a good gauge is to look at how we normally talk to our friends, authorities etc.

4. Much more attention is being directed onto the form rather than the heart (yes, we are at it again). I grow up in a culture whereby the general society is uncomfortable with silence. It's like what Morrie said in Tuesdays with Morrie- what's wrong with silence. Allow me to elaborate. If prayer is conversation with God, isn't it right that it should be two ways also, then why can't God speak also? So what's wrong with us pausing? So why try to fill up every gap with one word or the other? But as of now, I am very uncomfortable with how prayers become like checking off a bucket list. Now you have 5 minutes and in the 5 minutes, your prayer should cover these points and sub points. So where is God really? I'm slowly beginning to wonder how come the Gospel and the bible in general pay so little attention to prayers when it's supposed to be the foundation of a good relationship with God. Don't get me wrong, there are specific teaching and specific mentioning about all these, but the ratio just didn't quite seem to match up to when the bible mentioned about praying unceasingly and praying day and night. I've been baffled for a while how praying unceasingly (without stopping) look like, and I've come to some sort of a personal conviction about it. I'll probably write about it another time.
But if 5 minutes is so short and insufficient that there's no space for God to interject, then how come so many spent at least half the time describing the situation (God, you know currently...). Did we really think that God hadn't already known?

This entire post came like a rant, and is perhaps confounded with some personal frustration, but if you have managed to read until here, I ask that you read it with an opened heart, and better still, do some self-reflection on our own prayer life.

By the way, I'm a native Chinese speaker, but I pray in English, and I've only come to Christ for less than 6 years.

God bless you! :)