Faith in Defiance.

To my dear God,

I want to write this letter to You to let you know that I have complete trust in You. You are the one who hold the key to everything in this world. Your love is everlasting, so much so that you teach us to love our enemies and pray for them. All Your ways are just, and You rewards every man for his righteousness and faithfulness. You will always protect me and save me, and even though I might face difficulties and hardship, I will learn to be patient and keep praying. I will be strong and courageous, for I know You’ll be with me wherever I go to.

You will relieve me of my sadness, my belittlement, my disappointment, my fear, my anger and my worries. Nobody can attempt to take that grace away from You except Yourself, and You are the only one who can judge me. Things may appear bad or difficult, but because I live by faith, not by sight, I know You have everything arranged and I do not need to be worried. You have me covered in difficult times, and I will not be defeated, just like how David’s faith in You allowed him to defeat Goliath. God You’ll forgive my sins, my every mistake, my every wrongdoing. The whole world may be against me, but You are my hiding place and protect me from trouble.

My Lord, I want to praise You for the grace that You have bestowed upon me. I am weak, my kneeds tremble in fear, but You have me under Your care. You listen to my prayers and give me what I ask for. You give me energy, confidence, power and I will always follow You.

*******************
References:
Matthew 5:36, Deuteronomy 32:4, 1 Samuel 26:23, Psalm 57:3, Romans 12:12, Joshua 1:9,
2 Corinthians 5:7, Psalm 32:7, Matthew 7:7

God’s Talking to You…

I have been quite puzzled at a question “how does God speak to me?” for a couple of weeks (well, that means ever since I’ve converted since I’ve converted for a couple of weeks only). When I get to read or hear the witnesses from other brothers and sisters, I always seem to hear them say “… and then God told me…” and I always wonder “how?”. Especially in the past week or so, when things have gone a tad unnerving, this question just kept running in my head. So I approach Sunday with this question.

I started Sunday with a breakfast with my Dad to celebrate his birthday. During the meal, he was telling me quite a bit on those things that I was confused about. He gave me some encouragement (though it definitely didn’t sound like encouragement), but I was still confused.

Then during the Sunday morning service (which for the first time I was attending on my own without anyone I know), Rev. Leung was talking about how to become Jesus’s disciple. One of the things that we have to do, according to the Bible, is to let go of things. My interpretation was that we’ll have to let go of things that bug us or trouble us completely in order to become Jesus’s disciple. Still confused.

Then after the service, I went to have a chat with Rev. Chu, and asked him my question “how does God speak to me?” His answer was quite straight-forward – “God doesn’t really post a signboard in front of you to see which direction you should take, but when He does want you to go a certain path, He will let you know”. Hmm… getting a bit, but still confused.

I was still munching on Rev. Chu’s words when I went to the Gospel Roadshow at the Lek Yuen Church. DJ Sammy Leung was sharing his witness, and he shared about the difficult times he faced a couple of years back in his job. His main point, however, was about having an objective in life – “We should live and work with a belief, so even if we were to fail, we can still lose in style”. Rev. Chan built on what Sammy said, and said that God forgives and treasures us. At that time, I began to understand what Rev. Chu was saying. Clearer, but not 100% clear yet.

At the end of the day, I went back to campus for the Faith in Practice Talk by Dr. Choi. He mentioned about the vocation of each and everyone of us, and he said that we have to recognize our past to know our identities, and if we want to know our vocations, we must recognize our identities. Ding-dong! I think I’ve got the answer to the question!

So yup, I think God really spoke to me yesterday, and I think I know what I should do! Thank You my dear Lord!

“Let your hope make you glad. Be patient in time of trouble and never stop praying.” (Romans 12:12, CEV)

Lecture.

I am sitting in LT13 right now, attending my last ever lecture in CityU (doesn’t mean that I’m all done with studies – I still have a small issue of a final year project to finish up by mid-May). I’m attending this lecture primarily because I like the instructor, and secondarily I’m actually required to attend 9 lectures in total, and because I didn’t know if I have met the criteria, so I’m here today. Not that I’m complaining (the rant on this class is on other things, and I must stress that it’s not the fault of my lecturer).

I’m not sure, but I think I might be falling in love with some people I shouldn’t be falling in love with again. I think I need to sort my thinking out again – maybe I could head out to Tao Fong Shan to do some deep thinking about what God has arranged for me.

Karaoke.

I went karaoke with my primary school friends this evening.

When I go to karaoke, I tend to keep those songs that I can really stretch my vocal limits towards the end because by then I would have warmed up nicely and can really raise the limits. And I tend to think that whenever I sing, I do put in quite a bit of emotion into the songs. It’s like, I don’t just look at the words and get the song over and done with. I usually would put my emotions into the song, and try to think of situations that fit the description of the lyrics. For example, when I sing Eason Chan’s 十面埋伏, I would think about the girl whom I missed when I was back in JC (I don’t usually sing that song, but after Peter wrote the song’s lyrics after that post in FB, it just stuck with me) and boy, I can really feel the emotion of losing someone without ever having her before! I find that when I put my emotions into the songs, I tend to sing better! If you were with me this evening and heard the songs that I was singing, you probably would know what kind of emotion I was putting into the songs!

Suddenly I just want to keep singing – I guess it’s a good way to relieve some of the things that are troubling me lately. There are too many things on my mind lately, and it’s not just work that’s bothering me. I know I shouldn’t, and indeed needn’t be bothered by some of these things, but I just can’t help it. Some of these things that are happening do send blows to my heart and it’s not really fun. The worst thing is, I don’t even know if it’s my problem.

Let me keep singing.

Lab.

As I come into the last day of my extended Easter holidays, I am sitting inside the FYP Lab, again working on the project – which to be honest I am finding inspiration a bit short in supply. I never like programming projects, and it looks like it’s going to stay that way for a while to come.

The holidays pretty much just zoomed past, and as I look back, I think I did quite a bit of things. I had a full day rest on Friday before heading out to the Lek Yuen church for the Good Friday service; then I went to Lek Yuen again for the Introductory Bible Studies course on Saturday; Went to Siu Lek Yuen for the Sunday worship before heading back to Lek Yuen to witness the baptism of one of my cell group mates; Came back to school to work on the project yesterday; then sitting in the lab again today. Quite exciting, eh?

I think I’ll take a quick break and perhaps get something to munch before coming back to the lab and continue with the programming. Oh, and I need to go collect a cheque too!

Holiday.

The Easter holiday is here and this time round I get to have a total of 5 days away from office, and that is a good thing! It’s a good time to really recuperate from all the work and tiredness from the past couple of weeks during the organizing of the speech contest. Praise be to the Lord for a successful event, and I hope I can really take a good break during these couple of days.

I was in Shatin earlier for the Good Friday service, and it was unlike the normal services where the mood was usually quite joyous. Today’s service was more solemn, as we commemorate the cruxification of Jesus Christ. There was a definite sense of sadness within the crowd, and there were a good number of brothers and sisters who were quietly sobbing away at different points of the service (myself included). A very special occasion indeed.

Anyway I realised that the more I go to Shatin for church services and gatherings, the more I think Shatin is really not that far from where I live. Usually on Sundays it takes me about 30 to 45 minutes to get to the church over in Siu Lek Yuen (one side of Shatin), and this evening, it also took me just 45 minutes to get to the church at Lek Yuen (another side of Shatin), even though the bus is supposed to travel a longer distance to get there. Perhaps it’s His will to cut short my travelling time so that I will keep going to services and gatherings. In fact, I’ve just signed up for an introductory bible studies course, and for the next couple of Saturdays I will be spending the afternoon in the Lek Yuen church!

Yesterday something rather disturbing happened to me and I was really upset about it. I guess nobody likes to be accused of something that we did not do, and it did make me wonder for quite a while that whether it’s worth it for me to continue working in this job. When you hear someone who criticize and accuse you easily (sometimes without solid proof), it’s natural to feel down, angry and upset. You’d go around and think what you have done to be accused of such things by irresponsible people, especially when you are trying your best to do your work well. At that point of time, I fully understood why some people say “words are the greatest weapon of mass destruction” because while they don’t hurt you physically, to be hurt emotionally is a much worse thing. I am trying to love my job and love everyone around me, but when things seem to look on the up, something like this just had to happen. I mean, what have I done? I was pretty worked up at that time and I think all my colleagues noticed how upset and angry I was.

Unable to difuse my frustration, I sat alone in my room after lunch, had my office room door closed for a while and decided to pray. I prayed to God, asking Him to teach me to understand the accuser, asking Him to teach me to forgive the things that was said, asking Him to teach me to see beyond the accusation. At the same time, I also prayed that God could guide my accusers to learn not to generalize things, and not to point an accusing finger at people who have done them no wrong.

After my prayers, I felt more at ease, and I began to think deeper into the situation. Perhaps it was understandable – when people are frustrated about situations, they will link everything to the situation that frustrates them. To be honest, I can’t blame them! I have done it myself too – when bad things happen to me I always associate it with something, thinking that it’s the result of something else. But I guess most importantly, I learned that it’s not up to me to judge others. Whether or not someone has done right or wrong, it’s not up to me to decide. I may perceive someone has done me wrong, but if He doesn’t say so, then my perception is still wrong. And as long as I am doing something that He has asked me to do, no matter how many accusing fingers come pointing my way, I can still declare with much conviction that I am doing the right thing. Also, perhaps it’s His reminder to me that my job is not as easy as I thought it is, and I need to be making a greater effort to do it well. Maybe I have thought that I am doing well, but the wonders of the Lord is that He will give you timely reminders and good reality checks to keep you from being too proud of yourself. I guess maybe this so-called crisis is His reminder to me.

“The Lord rewards every man for his righteousness and faithfulness.” (1 Samuel 26:23, NIV)

Confidence.

I think confidence is something that I don’t lack – some may think that I have too much of it at times – but I guess sometimes confidence is a rather related term, something that is related to time, experience and perhaps even company.

For example, when I was tasked to organize the speech contest last year, I was feeling really worried and was so afraid that things would screw up here and there. But this year, after having the experience of the last contest, I was much more confident approaching the contest and there were fewer things that I need to be worried about because I knew I’ve got them covered. As such, experience is definitely something that would build up the confidence in people. Also, usually experience is pretty much associated with time – you build experience with time anyway – and if you have been doing something regularly for the past 3 years, even if I were to ask you to do it today without much preparation, you probably would still feel confident in doing the thing, probably much more comfortable than if you have lots of preparation but have never done the thing before.

Then of course, company, or the people you are with, can give you much confidence. If you are with a group of assured people, chances are you would feel assured too. But if you are with a group of worrisome people (or in a Singaporean term “kan cheong spiders”), it would be natural for you to feel worried as well. In a group setting, if there is a person who can give these “kan cheong spiders” an assurance that things will be alright, chances are this person would be the leader. But sometimes we may not be so lucky to have such a leader in our group, so we may all end up being really scared and worried, and more often than not, “kan cheong spiders” are the ones who screw things up because they are constantly worrying about something, though it would be things that they forgot to worry about that would get them down.

The Bible verse “I can do everything through Him who gives me strength.” (Philippians 4:13, NIV) is a very good illustration on this thing about good company being able to build your confidence. For believers the verse is quite easily understandable – we depend on God to give us strength and confidence in doing things. But even for non-believers, I think it’s quite true also. Think of the scenario mentioned earlier. If there is someone who can give you an assurance on your role and job in the group, chances are you’ll feel more at ease and actually have the confidence to really carry out your duty well. This person may be your boss, your supervisor, your colleague or even your client. Comments like “Things are looking good, keep up the good work” is definitely going to be a better morale booster than “I’m not sure how things will appear even though we seem to be following all the procedures”, don’t you think so?

Building confidence is not an easy job – sometimes people go through their whole lives being worried – but I guess as we build on our experience and mixing with the right people, we can build confidence with time. It’s always good to have self-confidence because that would gear us up to face challenges no matter how big. The key challenge, in my opinion, is that we need to make sure that we don’t become over-confident because that breeds arrogance and contempt, which are ingredients of failure.

Control.

Maybe for once I’ll start my journal without saying “ever since I become a Christian” because it’s going to sound cliche… I can already hear people shouting “I know you’re a Christian and you’re happy about it, but why don’t you start with something else?”

I promise I’ll try.

Anyway I discovered that even when I know I’ve got God’s support and guidance, sometimes there are still problems on Earth that I need to deal with – espeically those at work. And even though I’ve said that I enjoy working with the students in my university, that doesn’t mean that handling their affairs is an easy task. You get students coming to you asking for the sun and the moon and you know you can never give it to them, and then when you can’t give it to them they’ll start to complain or threaten to write you some big posters on the Free Speech Wall. And then there will be some people who will give you some crazy arguments just to try getting their ways through. The challenge is perhaps really to first cool down and not act up, before trying to see their arguments through and perhaps offer a solution. Sometimes students say things that they don’t really mean, not because they are not serious about what they do, but more like they are not trained in proper communication skills. They have difficulties in letting us know what they want to do, so in the process they use words or put up stands that do not reflect their status as university students. But I do think if given some proper guidance in communication skills, they will be much more affluent in making their point across. I used to get fed up and really upset about their attitude – I still do now – but I’ll try to remember that even God forgives people for their sins, so who am I not to do forgive the students for some for the horrible things that they say or do?

I used to believe that the students argue for the sake of arguing, but as I spend more time in this job, I am beginning to realise that if given a proper opportunity to really communicate and interact, I can have a good chat with even the most confrontative students. But of course, things go both ways. I can offer to really communicate nicely, but if they refuse to shake off their confrontative stand, there really isn’t too much we can do for them. Communication goes both ways, and it doesn’t help when one party is willing to stand down but the other party insists on being confrontative. But of course, someone needs to soften first – if both sides are confrontative nothing will ever work out – and I tend to think that as staff members it’s easier for us to do the softening. I’m not sure if my boss would agree with me on this, but I do think that we as staffs are often seen as an authority and “someone to ask permission from”, and not someone to talk to or consult with. So I guess in a confrontational situation, it might be easier for us as staffs to back down. But of course, when some fundamental principles are being challenged, it would not be a good option to soften our stands because that would violate the very beliefs that we hold in regard. For example, if someone were to do something to challenge the Christian belief of the university, then it would not be acceptable because that is against the mission of the university and it’s not right. Sometimes it may be hard to draw such a line, especially as a university with a Christian background, but I guess it takes experience and perhaps more importantly, common sense.

I think I am beginning to appreciate the wonderful things about my job now. I know it would not be easy to handle all these different aspects, but I guess the same thing happens everywhere in the working world. There’ll always be difficult situations, there’ll always be unpleasable bosses, there’ll always be people who make life difficult for you. But I’m sure with the confidence given to me by God, I can get through them alright. And after all, should I ever feel down or discouraged, I know I have a lot of people, and most importantly God Himself giving me support, so I’m not worried. I honestly hope to be able to stay in this job for quite a while to come. So I’m sorry to those of you who might be eyeing my post – time to look elsewhere (or hope that we are hiring)!

“The Lord is my shepard, I shall not be in want.” – Psalm 23:1 (NIV)