the Thing about Light
So now there is light, a light to guide the way, not just in the big things, but even the little things. When Jesus said that he is the way, the truth and the light, he’s not kidding. The holy spirit left by him to his people guide the path for his sheep with HIM as the sheperd. We are his sheep, and of course the sheperd guides. Here’s the thing about it all: We know, but too many times we do not follow.
We see the light, the truth, that what we are about to embark on is wrong. We see the light on the other side, but walk away from it. Wait, let’s not use we. I walk away from it. The sheperd points onwards towards greener pastures and crystal clear waters. The sheep CHOOSES to chew on cowgrass. That’s me. Sometimes that light is so clear, but it is too hard to let go.
At times like these, I always make a prayer, like the ones I made to him before. ‘ Lord, help me. Force me to let go.’ I see, hear, and understand that there IS greener pastures, a better, more purposeful life. But the body doesn’t move. WHY? Its flesh, that’s why. The brain is flesh. The heart is flesh. Flesh controls flesh, so the decision for the flesh will never change. ‘Let’s stay here. Look! There’s cowgrass 
‘ Only the spirit can also move the flesh. the Lord will work within you and he can also change you. Out of the two things that can change you, one will not, the other will. Therefore I pray that the only other thing that can WILL do it, and I allow him to be the authority over my flesh.
The way, the truth, the light, these are visually external things. But when Jesus said these, he did not refer merely to what we can see. So, if we fix Jesus into our knowledge of the way, the truth, the light, then you will see it, but the body does not dwell IN this. The way, the truth, the light needs to be WITHIN. ‘He who remains IN me WILL…’. The reason why Jesus says this is preciely because he is NOT an external worker that saves the outside. He seeks to mend and salvage the INSIDE.
Father in heaven, I yearn not to see the way, the truth and the light. I’ve seen it many times, and all the time I do not follow. I yearn to know and be IN the way, the truth and the light, as the flock of the sheperd, and wish that it may be IN me. Then I may not see it, but I am clear that the path I walk is that which pleases and glorify your name.
Thank God for Bananas
Yup. To today’s review of God’s glory: The banana. Praise the lord most high for this fruit. Cheap, delicious, salubrious, and most of all, loving.
Now, let’s review:
1) Banana as power. Like God’s abundant power filling us, so does the banana. It contains three natural sugars: sucrose, fructose and glucose, and these instantly available fiber at cheap prices are able to provide substantial energy for the body 24 hours. To be exact, 2 can provide for 90 minutes of athletically demanding workout regimes. What other fruit does the same? None even close.
2) An apple a day keeps the doctor away. Or does it?
The following is an extract from an email given to me by Wei Jiat:
‘ It(banana) can also help overcome or prevent a substantial number of illnesses and conditions, making it a must to add to our daily diet. Namely:
Depression: According to a recent survey undertaken by MIND amongst people suffering from depression, many felt much better after eating a banana. This is because bananas contain tryptophan, a type of protein that the body converts into serotonin, known to make you relax, improve your mood and generally make you feel happier.
PMS: Forget the pills – eat a banana. The vitamin B6 it contains regulates blood glucose levels, which can affect your mood.
Anemia : High in iron, bananas can stimulate the production of hemoglobin in the blood and so helps in cases of anemia.
Blood Pressure: This unique tropical fruit is extremely high in potassium yet low in salt, making it perfect to beat blood pressure. So much so, the US Food and Drug Administration has just allowed the banana industry to make official claims for the fruit’s ability to reduce the risk of blood pressure and stroke.
Brain Power: 200 students at a Twickenham (Middlesex) school ( England ) were helped through their exams this year by eating bananas at breakfast, break, and lunch in a bid to boost their brain power. Research has shown that the potassium-packed fruit can assist learning by making pupils more alert.
Constipation: High in fiber, including bananas in the diet can help restore normal bowel action, helping to overcome the problem without resorting to laxatives.
Hangovers: One of the quickest ways of curing a hangover is to make a banana milkshake, sweetened with honey.. The banana calms the stomach and, with the help of the honey, builds up depleted blood sugar levels, while the milk soothes and re-hydrates your system.
Heartburn: Bananas have a natural antacid effect in the body, so if you suffer from heartburn, try eating a banana for soothing relief.
Morning Sickness: Snacking on bananas between meals helps to keep blood sugar levels up and avoid morning sickness
Mosquito bites: Before reaching for the insect bite cream, try rubbing the affected area with the inside of a banana skin. Many people find it amazingly successful at reducing swelling and irritation.
Nerves: Bananas are high in B vitamins that help calm the nervous system.
Overweight and at work? Studies at the Institute of Psychology in Austria found pressure at work leads to gorging on comfort food like chocolate and chips. Looking at 5,000 hospital patients, researchers found the most obese were more likely to be in high-pressure jobs. The report concluded that, to avoid panic-induced food cravings, we need to control our blood sugar levels by snacking on high carbohydrate foods every two hours to keep levels steady.
Ulcers: The banana is used as the dietary food against intestinal disorders because of its soft texture and smoothness. It is the only raw fruit that can be eaten without distress in over-chronicler cases. It also neutralizes over-acidity and reduces irritation by coating the lining of the stomach.
Temperature control: Many other cultures see bananas as a ‘cooling’ fruit that can lower both the physical and emotional temperature of expectant mothers. In Thailand , for example, pregnant women eat bananas to ensure their baby is born with a cool temperature.
Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD): Bananas can help SAD sufferers because they contain the natural mood enhancer tryptophan.
Smoking &Tobacco Use: Bananas can also help people trying to give up smoking. The B6, B12 they contain, as well as the potassium and magnesium found in them, help the body recover from the effects of nicotine withdrawal.
Stress: Potassium is a vital mineral, which helps normalize the heartbeat, sends oxygen to the brain and regulates your body’s water balance. When we are stressed, our metabolic rate rises, thereby reducing our potassium levels. These can be rebalanced with the help of a high-potassium banana snack.
Strokes: According to research in The New England Journal of Medicine, eating bananas as part of a regular diet can cut the risk of death by strokes by as much as 40%!
Warts: Those keen on natural alternatives swear that if you want to kill off a wart, take a piece of banana skin and place it on the wart, with the yellow side out. Carefully hold the skin in place with a plaster or surgical tape!
Forget about that old saying. Adopt the one Min Min invented: A Banana a day, makes Di Wei gay! You can do it too!
3) The skin. Other fruits have harmful skin (durian anyone?), or edible ones. But the BANANA skin can be used to polish boots. Use and wipe with dry cloth. WE HAVE A WINNER!!!
Bananas are also more artistically presentable as a single fruit compared to other fruits. Its pretty and slim, as well as lustful curves are not to be trifled with. Its beauty is not only skin deep, as deeper into the fruit is an even more tender, juicy, MORE YELLOW meat!!!! WOAH!!!!
Now you know, the power of bananas. Not that I’m biased, but thank God for bananas.
He is Truly with Us
As if laying down his life for us isn’t enough. As if giving us the holy spirit and only son isn’t enough. Now, God goes beyond all comprehension and stands there beside us, all the time. Why does he do something like that?
Moses was 120 years old, and one fine day God told him he will NOT be following his people into the promised land. Can you believe what went through his mind at that time? After the lord got him to lead his people? After giving his life to the service of god for 120 years? After all he has abide? But as his last words to the people of God out poured from the mouth that God used to speak to his people, Moses, instead, whispered words of plentiful assurance. “He WILL never leave you NOR forsake you.” Imagine a man told that he would NOT set foot into the holy land. Where is the anger? Where is the anguish? None. Because Moses knew, that for 120 years of his life on earth, his heart holds the truth about the God he serves. He never leaves, his words never fails, his love never changing. For 120 years all the way till his death, Moses lead a life WITH God. He knew he was nothing, but God was everything. God did not forsake him. I believe that his task for God ends there.
Do we not want to learn from 120 years of experience? That albeit all circumstances that can unfold, neither death nor anything else can ever separate you from God unless you choose not to follow. He has the authority, seated high above the throne, and yet he chose to give us freewill. What says he, lord of lords? “Seek and you WILL find.” He stands, waiting to be sought, to show his tremendous power and grace to you, if only we might search.
Man knows b sight, hearing, taste, smell feel.
Who but you knows before?
Man pass judgment perceived and gained.
Who but you look into the heart and give mercy?
For man treat gold as he sees and filth as he sees,
But you find dirt and deem it treasure.
Then what part of you is not love?
What things you give is not grace?
Praise to the lord! Who deems me fit for his kingdom!
Praise to the lord, who wants me for his kingdom.
For he who loves me, will he abandon?
For he who wants me, will he bear to hurt?
But should he not put me in fire to mold me,
Nor pain and sorrow to see value in joy?
Praise be with you, who hardens to give me new life!
Then new life given, it shall be as he wills.
Let only you be sovereign to put flowers and needles in my garden,
Let you be my only light.
Let me harden the walls to all things else,
but vulnerable to all of you.
And here I declare to Lord most high:
That as his will hath gave me choice,
My choice to bide his will.
Praises to El Saddai!
Hypocrisy
Something that really struck me while listening to Johnny Piper preach about it. The topic was ‘Let Love be Genuine’. Something really struck me. He said, “Let’s clean the outside of the cup, so that it looks, you know, all shiny. On the inside, its dog poop.” As funny or weird (which ever you decide on), it made me stand up and take notice of the uncanny resemblance of that cup to me and the people around.
In a post modern world where there is a need for control and order, where overwhelming competition due to globalisation has cause an increasing need to be confident, knowledgeable, capable of handling your job scopes with millimeters worth of accuracy, it seems impossible to put on such a facade. You need to meet requirements. If you don’t, you need to make yourself meet it with upgrading ad honing of skills. But there are still some that fall from the mark. For these people, they fake to meet the mark.
It is not just for work related issues only. Relationships today can seem such a fine line between friend and foe. Political struggles emerge like volcanoes covering every possible land untouched, its effects devastating. The need to be recognized have become a full-grown fight for survival. HOWEVER, contrary to popular belief, I struggle MORE when I’m with Christians, and become MORE hypocritical in front of them. Why?
I thank God for putting truthful friends around me. My 05S68 classmates and friends, who do not hesitate to do the lamest things with me, even though somethings might be embarrassing (remember the Wii?) I would forget them, as they really have shaped my character. This people have humbled me about myself (thanks Brent), and within these people my weaknesses shone like diamonds. But I thank them, for it is precisely because of this that I am able to acknowledge my abilities and feel blessed with those I have been given. I can appear weak to them, strong to them, act gay to them, talk nonsense to them. It doesn’t matter, and within them I do not need a masquerade, cause they know. When I’m not myself, they know, and they spank me for that. When I’m not within the same wavelength as them, I’m not. They accept it, I accept it.
However, contrary to my belief, it is within my own Christian fellowship that this seems most difficult. The values we must uphold seems so difficult. The other day, after being in charge of the youth fellowship, I went up to the hall and stared blankly at the cross, tired. Why? Because I just taught the kids something even I am not able to do. I told them we must stand by our values and not falter when we enter into our daily lives, but my patience for a fellow Christian is almost up, and am slanting towards the political side of the office, almost trying to get rid of him. In front of my brothers and sisters in Christ, have I not just put up a false image?
While my brother is away in London, I know I’m almost the oldest here left in church, and have to guide the younger ones. But who am I to do this? Am I yet fully prepared to carry all these responsibilities? I feel fake teaching the younger kids kids about God, like I am depriving them about the truth about God, for I have not yet understood the bible myself. Yet I stand there, full of authority, full of control. I am forced to set an example for the kids, for I am a teacher. Yet I yearn to do just what any other kids wants. But NO.
I am made to take up positions in the worship and teaching, but am restricted by the rules that I must abide. Can I not be a friend to the kids? I love to worship God, for it is what I feel I am made for. Why then must I worship with such false appearances? I get glances of suspect when I raise my hands to praise the Lord. Is it weird? I find myself looking more and more at the reactions of my fellow Christians to see if I have spoken anything wrong. If their reaction is unpleasant, then I will stop there, hoping not to offend anyone. To the people I love most, I have become more and more reactive, because I dare not hurt. My face is binded by the tightest mask of hypocrisy I can ever imagine, and that is when I’m with the people I love.
In comparison, I talk so normally, so openly, so sincerely me to my other friends. What have happened? I admit, I am not like that to all my Christian friends. To some, I am really just me. I thank God I can be like that in front of them. But what about the others? I become more and more tired as I go along, just as my friend has noticed. I am ‘grinding’ on the way to heaven.
Listening to the sermon, I was edified on a few points:
1) the reason I hide my flaws. For I and starting to grasp the holiness and greatness and majesty and mercy and beauty of God’s glory, that I do not want me to taint his image in ANYWAY. But that is wrong. I try to make myself appear beautiful but that is not the way. I need to change from within. The filth must pour out before cleaning the cup, or the cup remains as it is no matter how hard you shine the outside, and that is down right dirty. I FORGOT the inside. In a nutshell, I have been feeling that I NEED TO OBTAIN GLORY FOR THE LORD instead of HE NEEDS TO BE GLORIFIED. To purge myself of such hypocrisy, I need to forget about myself and what people think of me, but Jesus and what people think of him. I need to let him be my thoughts. Its not all about me. Its all about him. My salvation is in him, and in him be the glory. Not in me. I need to stop pasting scripture on my clothes. I need to eat them.
2) I think that I need to carry these responsibilities because I owe it all to him. I pick up all these tasks because nobody wants to do it. I want to do these things because I think I can make them good and so there is praise, and I can bring these praises to God. Wrong. All wrong. I do not need to get/obtain praises. These praises only come to me. I should not, and more so they should not boast in my name. They need to boast in his. I must be like John the baptist, and become smaller so that he becomes greater. But for these praises, I have been doing things myself, and not seek God during these times. Then where is his glory being shone within? To let his name be praise, I must first put MY praise in him, but I am not, spending my time lamenting about these tasks, yet not using the time to praise the lord.
So, once again, as I thought I was nearing his expectations, I miss his mark again. However, this struggle has become yet another step closer to him in many ways. In romans 15:15-16, you see that Paul seeks to make the gentiles acceptable as a sacrifice. However, the next sentence changes all. ’sanctified by the holy spirit.’ Paul recognizes that he is unable to do even peanuts. but the holy spirit sure can. Mu Shi has told me to same, that I must ask for the holy spirit to descend and come into my life. Then, I must read the truth from the bible. the only way to really change a man is by the word and the spirit combined. I am heaven bent on doing that.
In Matthew 5-6, Jesus called the people hypocrites, and they have received their just ‘rewards’. Lord, I do not want my rewards to be praises. It is useless. Help me to love without dissimulation. Help me love with the true love of God, and worship boasting only your name. Help me, so I may receive the true rewards you have prepared for me. All in Jesus name, with the holy spirit within me I pray, amen. May all who are willing seek this path with me.
