R³

Imagine if you have 5 minutes with any person in the world, living in any era, and you are allowed to ask him or her only one question, what would it be?

Bill Hybels. Rick Warren. George Bush. Mother Theresa. Andy Stanley. John Ortberg. CS Lewis. Bill Gates. Bono. Lee Kuan Yew. Billy Graham. George Soros. Warren Buffet. Ravi Zacharias. Hillary Clinton. Barack Obama. Adolf Hitler. Mao Zedong. Donald Trump. Angelina Jolie. Martin Luther King Jr. John Wesley.

What are your convictions?

These beliefs alter destinies. It determines how these people lived their lives. Given that the life is lived proper and consistent, this question becomes rhetorical.

No one doubted Hitler’s conviction, he wrote it in the war. You can’t miss Chris, Torch & Shirley’s convictions*; it’s penned down with their lives!

I pray that question remains rhetorical in my life.

PS: For those who want a copy of the sharing of their convictions they did in Careleader’s Meeting, drop me a comment with your email address and I will mail it to you. I couldn’t seem to host the files online…

Question: What would you attempt for God if you knew you could not fail?

Credits: Ripped from Chris Bee’s. A highly entertaining read.

I’m going to Auckland tonight for missions. That’s one step closer to fulfilling my dream for God.

I once watched a sermon that was preached by a famous doctor. He mentioned about people having big dreams for God. He attended many evangelistic conferences and movements. Many of the leaders expressed big dreams and lofty ideals without any real and practical means of realizing them. He termed those as useless talks, even if they are from respectable leaders. Those are just hot air balloons.

I think this is the real challenge of dreamer; to be more then just a dreamer.

Real dreaming is mental hard work, but its not because of the efforts to think of the ideal. The ideal is easy, it’s the planning taken to reach the ideal that is hard. It’s the process where we evaluate if the proposal is feasible, the resources sufficient, the effort sustainable and the duration reasonable.

Let’s go behind a dream.

Imagine if we decided to win half of Singapore to Christ in the year 1990.
Sounds good doesn’t it?

We had 3 millions people then, hence half of Singapore would mean 1 500 000 people. Statistically, an average American church size would be about 100. (We aren’t even talking about planting mega churches like City Harvest and the likes…) That means that we would need 15 000 churches. Well, accord to the statistics I had, it was about 500 churches. Hence we would need to plant 14 500 churches.

Now, who was saying that we have enough leaders already?

In Breakthrough Camp, when Pastor David Chen opened a time for sharing, in order to snatch my share of the triple anointing, I shared to the church I wanted to be a youth apostle, planting youth churches around the world. And I have already started taking my steps to accomplish it, however small it may be.

I’m sharing this not as to boast, but I really hope it would inspire some of you to go out there and do likewise. Don’t dream dreams, chase ‘em!

The world as it is, is not the world that it has to be.
-Barack Obama

Disclaimer: I’m not an Obama supporter; I’m a Singaporean for goodness’s sake! However, this guy said something that really stirred the inner recesses of my heart

People often ask why I liked Superman that much. I kept telling them its a symbolic representation of the power I wanted from God, but I never really did explain it thoroughly.

Well, like any other idealistic youngster, I wanted to change the world for the better. It took no doctorate or religious brainwashing for me to realize that the world is screwed up. I am sick of the injustice present in the world. I cannot stand by and permit evil to take its course. My conscience would not allow me to commit inaction. I should not, I will not and I must not. In that aspect, I totally agree with Bonhoeffer.

“If I see a madman driving a car into a group of innocent bystanders,” Dietrich Bonhoeffer explained to his sister, “then I can’t, as a Christian, simply wait for the catastrophe and then comfort the wounded and bury the dead. I must try and wrestle the steering wheel out of the hands of the driver.”

The German theologian, a pacifist, was attempting to convey why he had joined with others to plot an unsuccessful assassination of Adolf Hitler. The most extreme ambition is to attempt revolution. Bonhoeffer tried and failed and was executed on April 9, 1945, as a result.

Perhaps I might need to start a revolution, create a revival, raise a riot, by any methods, using any means. I do not fear hard work, but I only fear helplessness in stamping out evil.

Hence I came to a conclusion. To have any visible and impressionable impact on this world, we will need power. We will require as much power as possible, as much power as we can get and we cannot be ashamed to ask for it. Without it, there can be no hope of a change. No hope of a significant change.

Therefore I strived for power, or positions of power. I wanted to be a politician; perhaps I can redirect a country. I wanted to be rich businessman; perhaps currency can readjust the world’s trajectory. In that sense, I would love to be an “Obama” - Someone who asked for power so that he can change the world.

“…because good intentions were not enough. We’re not fortified with political power… and political will.“
-Barack Obama’s Speech in Youngstown [1.00-1.08]

However, as I mature in Christ, I have come to understand that secular power is not enough. Policies cannot change our human condition. Legislation cannot stop us. Economy cannot save us. Education cannot mould us. We are still greedy for money, unkind to the minority. We are still committing murders, starting wars. We are still poor in spirit. I have come to realize, what we need exactly is actually the redemptive power of Christ. If you know the history of this term, you would know its irony from its usage by the predecessors. Yet my limited vocabulary can express it in no other forms.

Christ is our “Final Solution“.

Make no little plans. Make the biggest plan you can think of.
-Harry Truman

An Excerpt from Paulo Coelho’s “The Alchemist”

“I’ve had this shop for thirty years. I know good crystal from bad, and everything else there is to know about crystal. I know its dimensions and how it behaves. If we serve tea in crystal, the shop is going to expand. And then I’ll have to change my way of life.”

“Well, isn’t that good?”

“I’m already used to the way things are. Before you came, I was thinking about how much time I had wasted in the same place, while my friends had moved on, and either went bankrupt or did better that they had before. It made be very depressed. Now I can see that it hasn’t been too bad. The shop is exactly the size I always wanted it to be. I don’t want to change anything, because I don’t know how to deal with change. I’m used to the way I am.”

The boy didn’t know what to say. The old man continued, “You have been a real blessing to me. Today, I understand something I didn’t see before every blessing ignored becomes a curse. I don’t want anything else in life. But you forcing me to look at wealth and at horizons I have never known. Now that I have seen them, and now that I see how immense my possibilities are, I’m going to feel worse than I did before you arrived. Because I know the things I should be able to accomplish, and I don’t want to do so.“

“You never have to advertise a fire.”
- Leonard Ravenhill

Hosanna by Hillsong United

I see a generation
Rising up to take their place
With selfless faith
With selfless faith

I see a near revival
Stirring as we pray and seek
We’re on our knees
We’re on our knees