March 7, 2012
A Timely Word

This morning, I woke up to find that one of my leaders had sent me a text of encouragement, as I had informed them of the current wilderness that I was in. In the text, the leader said she had been praying for me and was lead to Ephesians 4:6-8. As I lay on my bed, I turned to the Bible app and meditated on it. So I just wanted to share how God spoke to me today. Nothing profound, but simple truth.

Ephesians 4:6 - [There is…] “one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

The entire passage of Ephesians 4 spoke deeply into my current state, but verse 6 especially resonated with me. In a place where my current level of trust in God is at an all-time low, this verse was an apt and timely word and reminder of who God is.

God is Father of all
God is a good Father who desires to give bread and fish to his children who ask and works all things for the good of his children. God’s identity as the Father naturally lends to my identity as his son. As a son, I am beloved and cherished unconditionally.

God is over all
The preposition “over” denotes God’s sovereignty. He is transcendent and is in complete control “over” all things, including my life. Nothing happens apart from God’s sovereign allowance. He makes no mistakes, and He never fails. Where my own efforts and striving may fail, God and His Word never fail and accomplishes all that He desires.

God is through all
The preposition “through” reveals God’s active purpose in all things. He has a plan written from before the foundations of the world to prosper me and not harm me. He is faithful to his plan and not one hair falls from my head without His knowing and sovereign control. He has a purpose for every win and every loss, every success and every failure, and every joy and every pain.

God is in all
The preposition “in” refers to God’s presence. He is immanent and close to all those who call on His name. As high as God is over all things, he is also in all things. He feels my pain and sees my suffering. He longs and hopes with me as He calls me to the hope that He has ordained. He dances and rejoices with me in my joys and victories. He never leaves or abandons me.

Thank you Lord for reminding me who you are, which in turn reminds me who I am. Your son, Eric

9:10pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZWubzwHeJoPO
December 14, 2011
Just Listen

Over this past semester, I’ve had to take spiritual direction as part of my requirements for my M.Div program at Talbot. What is spiritual direction you ask? Well basically, my spiritual director and I go into a tiny, dim lit room with pictures of flowers and lilies on the wall, an antique looking Bible on a small nightstand, and two comfy sofa chairs and I get to talk about whatever I want for an hour. Over the course of a semester, I’ve talked about a wide range of things from issues from to my past to current struggles and worries about my future. Meanwhile, it is the duty of the spiritual director to sense how the Spirit may be moving in my life and give guidance (not advice!). He’ll ask questions here and there to keep me on track or to help facilitate my thoughts, but mostly he’ll just sit and listen.

What’s interesting is that after every session I find myself just talking to God freely and with complete faith on the drive home and for a few days after. Two weeks up to that point I may have had the most difficult times trying to pray and may have been feeling like prayer is pointless or that I’m talking into thin air, but after a time of spiritual direction, all that is gone and I have a deep sense of God’s presence in my life.

We all need to be heard. We all need someone to just listen to what’s going on in the deepest recesses of our hearts. We don’t even need someone to tell us things are going to be okay or give us advice that will solve our problems. We just need to be heard. I believe that the reason why these times give me faith to start praying again out of true relationship with God is that in these intentional conversations in which the Holy Spirit has been invited to be present, I find that the tangible, yet finite person in who is just listening to me reminds and assures me there is an invisible, yet infinite God who loves to hear me all the more. My spiritual director reminds me that God too, rather than wanting to tell me what’s wrong with me and fix all my weaknesses, wants to just listen to his child in the depths of his most heart-breaking moments.

Most of the time when I can’t handle the rigors of life (and who am I to say my life is rigorous?) or when I get caught up in my irrational fears and worries, God is the last person I want to turn to. I’ll turn to friends and pastors who know me to varying degrees, but not God who knows my heart completely. The easy thing to say is that this is a lack of faith (and to some degree it is), but I think the bigger issue is that I have the wrong perception of God as one who doesn’t want to hear my problems and my fears and deal with my emotions. I have the wrong view of God as one who wants me to come to Him after having dealt with all my problems rather than before. Seriously, who wants that kind of God? Not me.

God is there. He is ever present in the very midst of the most cataclysmic, catastrophic events of our lives when He seems completely absent. God wants to listen to every one of our thoughts from the most inane and useless daydreams to the most suffocating and immobilizing fears. God wants to us to know how much He understands our hardships and sufferings and how much He enjoys celebrating our ecstatic times of joy with us. God is listening.

12:32pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZWubzwDFbZCI
(Notes: 6)
  
October 18, 2011
The Notebook and The Gospel

Man, I’ve really been wanting to blog for a while and I’ve had countless ideas that have now drifted away into the dark recesses of grey matter and neurons and synapses. Sigh. Life’s been busy, that’s for sure. So let’s keep this short.

The Notebook and The Gospel

So after leader’s meeting today, the leaders and I decided to watch The Notebook (from Pastor Billy’s great collection of DVD’s). I liked the movie the first time I watched it. It almost made me tear up in the end when Allie forgets who Noah is in the middle of their dance. I didn’t get those feelings this time, but as I usually do during a second viewing of a movie, I began to analyze some of the themes and how it might tie in with the gospel.

People note that the movie’s radically selfish and secularized view of love is detrimental to young women, setting them up for romanticized notions of love and promoting infidelity “as long as it feels right.” And to that, I have to agree. But as I watched the movie again, I began to wonder about why the self-centered love in a movie like this seems so much more enthralling and captivating than the eternal, unconditional love of the gospel that is preached every Sunday from the pulpit. Why are we so drawn to the “love that creates miracles” between Allie and Noah, but so bored of the love that is a miracle between God and us?

Personally, I believe that through God’s common grace, even fallen creatures can create beautiful and wondrous things that touch the depths of peoples’ souls and hearts. John Piper uses the analogy of a seashell whose former living inhabitant is long gone, yet as mere piece of calcium continues to echo the intricacies of design and natural beauty. There are glimmers and faint echoes of God’s grand design even through the finite and inadequate love portrayed in The Notebook.

This leads us to my two points:

1. The echoes of God’s unconditional love are found in Noah’s love for Allie.

I find the most poignant and moving scenes of love in this movie not when Noah and Allie are young and foolish, but when they’re old. Allie has senile dementia and cannot respond to Noah’s affections, yet Noah relentlessly pursues her and cannot stand to be apart from her. He even turned their old home into a senior home so that he could continue to be around Allie without her freaking out.

Let’s face it, Allie is a completely immature and self-centered girl who ruins two men’s lives with her infidelity and fickleness, and Noah knows it. But he’s absolutely, madly, and crazily in love with her. He’s willing to bear it and take her back again and again. Kinda like Hosea taking back Gomer infidelity after infidelity. Kinda like God taking us back through Jesus, failure after mistake after shortcoming. There’s something there in Noah’s love for Allie (and he had his own infidelities!) that tells us that’s what true love is like. In that love is a dim reflection of the kind of unconditional love that we all desire that will look past all of our failings and continue to hope beyond all hope. In that love we hear the faintest whispers of a love so unbreakable and so impossible that leaves us straining to catch just one more word. That love, my friends, is the unconditional love of God. Don’t be fooled. You were only hearing one note of a magnificent choral harmony.

2. The way we communicate God’s love should capture hearts and minds even more powerfully than the way worldly love does.

Have you ever asked a dating or married couple how they got together? The story that they share is not a mere recollection of past and long gone memories. Their story is brought to life again and draws the listeners to be part of the excitement and thrill of true love. That’s what good love stories and romantic movies do. It gets us to place ourselves in the shoes of the characters and feel their hopes, disappointments, heartbreak, and excitements.

Yet when we share the gospel, we speak of the most amazing story with such dryness and indifference like it doesn’t matter to us anymore. The gospel is the greatest story ever told! And its significance in our lives is profound and life-shattering. Upon putting our faith in Christ, our old selves have died and we have become new creations! So whether in Bible studies or casual conversations or evangelism, let’s stop spouting the same old mundane Sunday school answers and share God’s story with more passion and power than any romantic film could ever do. We get so excited and moved about made up characters in a fake film. Is not the real story of a creator God sending His Son to reconcile hostile sinners and redeem a lost and broken world that much more amazing? It’s up to us to bring this to life in our communication and sharing.

8:08pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZWubzwApuL9C
(Notes: 4)
  
September 5, 2011
Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ

The end of summer is always an exciting time for E-College ministry (well for me anyway), as freshly stamped juniors filled with mixed emotions of trepidation, excitement, pride and self-pity decide to pick up that sacred leadership application. I still remember myself entering into junior year, a hothead filled with ambition, pride and book knowledge going up to Pastor Jeff and stating my intentions to revolutionize LA Recomm (that is, after I had heard he thought I wasn’t ready for the position). We’ve seen it all - the good leaders that inspired us and set examples for us to follow as well as the bad leaders whom we pridefully look down at with derision as we plot how we’re never going to be as bad as them - and after two years of being served, we now want to step up and make our own contribution.

Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 11:1, “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.” As part of his “imitation theology,” Paul exhorts believers in multiple places (1 Cor. 4:16; Phil. 3:17; 1 Thess. 1:6; 2 Thess. 3:7) to follow his example in being Christ’s disciple. This is truly still a valid and important application for believers today, as the role of human models and examples are indispensable to the development of our own faith practice. Here, the inerrant and infallible Scriptures encourage us to look to error-prone and fallible men as examples to imitate in following the Lord Jesus.

What a huge burden of responsibility on leaders! The authoritative Scripture is pointing eager followers who want to grow in their faith to who?! You and me? We better be setting the right example then! Better make sure that we stand in front of the chapel and raise our hands extra high and sing extra loud (hitting beautiful harmonies if we can) and pray extra fervently. Better make sure we tuck away in our pockets all our sins and struggles and put on a happy face for Sundays. And Mondays. And Wednesdays. And Fridays. How in the world are our members and disciples going to grow in the faith if we don’t set the right example for them! We need to be worthy of imitation!

Now I’m obviously being sarcastic and I’m not trying to argue against setting good examples and modeling the Christian life. Paul says to imitate him as he imitates Christ. What is he imitating about Christ? What example is Paul following that he wants us to follow? I want to say as strongly as I can that Paul is NOT primarily following Christ’s example of a perfect, sinless life! Not even the great apostle Paul could accomplish such a moral feat. And then to pass to us the same demand - what a hopeless Christian life.

I’m hoping that you can see the kind of self-fueled Christian moralism that is inherent in such a model of leadership. It only sets us up for failure as leaders as we try to set an impossible standard of righteousness and then meet it. It only sets our followers up for failure as they (assuming they are a tad behind in their spiritual maturity) see the example you’ve set as leader and feel incompetent and unable to even imitate a human example.

Yet I think we fall into this mode of thinking and buy into this model of leadership far too often. And we sprint out of the gates with all of our excitement and energy only to realize that within a few months or even a few weeks, this was all more than we bargained for. The worries of life, the demands of school, and the stress of family and friends all end up taking more of that “example setting” energy than we thought it would.

But my brothers and sisters, my fellow leaders and co-laborers in the gospel, can I point you to the easier and harder way that is found in the gospel of Jesus Christ? Can I point you to the yoke of leadership that is easy and light because Christ our true leader did not only set a great example, but paved the way to such a life with his blood? It did not content our Chief Shepherd to merely lead the way for lost and wayward sheep. Those that went astray, those that got tangled in the thickets, those who were hurt and injured along the way, our Lord and Savior sought after, ran after. The King of Glory humbly stooped down in all His majesty, to dirty His hands and feet for a people so undeserving. Now this is the easy invitation of the gospel, even to leaders, that in the end, we need not hinge our leadership (let alone our salvation) upon the examples that we can set with our mere human strength and effort.

But it does not end here. No, we must still heed the call to be examples of Christ to others as we follow the example of Christ. It is no longer the way that Christ set an impossible standard for us, but it is now the way that Christ came to serve us to the point of death that we must imitate. Christ came to serve, and not be served. The King himself set for us the greatest example of leadership when he took the servant’s role and washed his disciples’ feet. He considered His priceless life to be of no worth that He would die to make our worthless lives be of priceless value.

Friends, this is the true hard call of gospel leadership. It is not setting the example for others to copy. Anyone can fake this. Anyone can come to a point where they don’t feel it anymore but they continue to force themselves to smile and serve because we want others to imitate us as we imitate Christ. The true hard call of gospel leadership is one that calls for us to put ourselves to death for the sake of others. This is the demand Paul makes of us as he imitated in his own body the sufferings he was willing to endure that by any means he might save some.

We cannot truly lead and serve others until we truly die to ourselves. Our desires to do a good job, lead well, have successful ministry, and bear much fruit must be crucified or else we will be serving for our own sake, rather than the sake of others. Do you know what it practically means to die to yourself as a leader? Do you know what it means to leave the ninety-nine to chase after the one lost sheep?

This means chasing after all the outcasts and fringe members in the ministry, even when they in their own fear or selfishness would rather have nothing to do with you. This means having the utmost patience and perseverance with members in your group that are bored, aren’t trying, and don’t seem to care about anything. This means laying down your very important and precious time that could have been spent relaxing or with friends to answer the call of someone in distress and despair. This means never losing hope and never getting discouraged even when all your efforts have come to nothing, and trying again the next day.

So my brothers and sisters seeking to be leaders, count the cost of imitating Christ. It cannot be faked. It cannot be done halfheartedly. Imitating Christ is not a show, but an act of service unto death. But it is a death from which new life springs forth. It is a loss from which many gains are found. It is a suffering from which the purest joy of seeing people come to know and worship God is found. So will you join me in imitating our Lord Jesus Christ?

(Disclaimer: I’m only entering my fourth year of serving in a leadership context, so whatever I know about leadership has its many shortcomings. But whatever I do know, it’s because of God’s gracious provision in setting great leaders and pastors before me, as well as some awesome books I’ve read and have tried to apply in my life. So if you agree with what I have to say, kudos! Praise God! If you don’t, I’m always open to a rousing discussion.)

11:13pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZWubzw92EAKa
(Notes: 2)
  
Filed under: Leadership 
August 28, 2011
New Beginnings

As a new chapter of my life begins, I thought it’d be fitting to start a new blog. Moving out of my parent’s home (with my own money!) and starting seminary marks a hopefully exciting and transformational chapter in my life. My old blogspot will remain a relic of my past in Thailand. It’s time for the future with tumblr! (So says everyone who has apparently moved here.)

Writing a blog is always a difficult issue for me; it seems to unearth a lot of different species of pride in my heart. I have an opinion on just about everything, and I seem to think I’m right on mostly all of them. But says Strengths Finder 2.0 and Pastor Jonathan Kim, my brain needs an outlet for all the unnecessary thoughts and ideas constantly running through my mind. So I hope that a bit over a year removed from Thailand, I can sit here on my computer a little more mature, a little more humble, and a little more knowledgeable and type out some posts that by God’s grace will edify, encourage, instruct and challenge whoever reads this.

As per my blog title, “Inward, Outward, Upward,” I hope that this blog will be an intellectual and reflectional breeding ground for things that I wrestle with in my heart, my observations and thoughts on practical and cultural issues, and lastly, my musings about Christianity and devotionals about God. A wide range of topics, I know. The unwritten rules of blogging state that a blog should concern itself with specific issues for an intended audience. But screw rules haha. I will write about whatever the hell pleases me.

So something for all, maybe nothing for anyone. Let’s see how this goes…

7:12pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZWubzw8rwBI3
(Notes: 1)
  
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