R³

On Tuesday, April 22, 2008 ; 10:44 AM
Xiangyu wrote:

Inspired by 1 peter 3 :15, which urges us to

Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.

So here i am, i am going to challenge you ! yes you reading my post. If you have an online journal, post about YOUR reason for the hope that YOU HAVE. Otherwise, please leave a tag to tell me about it. I’m really very interested to know…seriously!

Tell me, what your convictions are and why are you so sure of Jesus?

I can tell you guys why I’m so sure of Jesus, but I hope I never have to tell you of my convictions again. If it can’t be seen, then it means that I’ve failed to live them out. (See the post on Rhetorical Lives)

My walk with God has came to a point where I can never deny his existence. It’s not yet deep, but its deep enough to confirm that fact. It’s just like a child who is certain that he has a Dad, even though he may not know everything about his dad.

I have studied Him with knowledge and experienced Him with encounters. I would compare his existence to that of the Australia continent; I’ve not only seen it on the atlas, but I have set foot on it.

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.
-C.S. Lewis

If I ever do backslide, I cannot hope to escape with the plead of ignorance. I cannot say things such as “I’m not sure whether God is real.” or “I’m having doubts about my faith in Him.”

If I ever do backslide, it can only mean I have degenerated to the state of stubborn self denial where I know God, but I just don’t want to serve Him. It doesn’t make him any less real, just like how sticking my head into the ground doesn’t switch off the lights.

Don’t ever perform the ridiculous “Ostrich Maneuver”.

How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg.
-Abraham Lincoln

Someone that is nearer to perfection should be more enjoyable then those who are miles away from the ideal right?

I beg to differ.

I rather be in a community of people that know nothing about Christ then be trapped in a community that profess to knows something about Christ and nothing more.

Cause these people tend to use whatever minor (mis)understanding they have of the Christian principles and twist it to their advantage. Haven’t you heard of the classic “I thought Christians should not (fill in the blanks)?”

Somehow, those who are really trying to follow Christ are held to ransom by their faith.

I guess this highlights the fatal effects of wrong foundations and wrong understanding. It’s really hard to realign slanted pillars. For this purpose, I join Paul in his crusade of nurturing the puritan Christian.

It has always been my ambition to preach the gospel where Christ was not known, so that I would not be building on someone else’s foundation.
Romans 15:20 (NIV)

I have (perhaps) come to realize how to benchmark faith tangibly.

Our faith is not only measured in our beliefs, but in our disappointments. Disappointment fundamentally stems from failed expectations. We get disappointed because we place our faith in something we trust. We can say that we truly believe in somebody, but that can be merely lip service. True faith is only reveal in the presence of disappointment. This is why our enemies never disappoint us; we expect only that much (or that little).

Hence, only those who are disappointed with God can profess to have truly placed their faith in Him. Not that God ever fails, just that our expectations are flawed to begin with. How can we say that we believe in God’s healing powers yet not be disappointed when the ill are not healed? Either we are really mature, or we did not expect the healing to occur in the first place. Come to think of it, it is little wonder why children cry easily; their child-like faith made them easily disappointed by the numbed adults around them.

Faith asks for the gambles of undiluted joy or intense sorrow. She would have none of that in-between nonsense.

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) - Cite This Source

And to think that I thought “mundane” meant boring. What an apt word to describe the life on earth.

Mundane

Life on earth is meant to be mundane! God created it precisely this way in hope that its mundaneity* would spur us on to look for the real deal. Compared to heaven, earth is indeed mundane. Sadly however, when humans do without a thing for a time long enough, they forget the existence of it. They find themselves adapting to its absent and taking it to be the norm.

We take earth to be all there is, comforting ourselves by busying ourselves around a track without a finish line. In a way, we have assimilated ourselves into a perverted edition of “The Sims”. Leading virtual reality-lives and forgetting reality; we led our reality-lives forgetting eternity. As entertaining as earth was created to be, when placed in comparision with heaven, there can be no word more apt to describle but “mundane”.

“If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing.”
-C. S. Lewis: Christian Behavior

*Imaginary word

Albrecht Durer’s “The Praying Hands”

May the words I speak be the words you want me to speak.
May the thoughts I think be the thoughts you want me to think.
May the feelings I feel be the emotions you want me to feel.
May the things I do be the things you want me to do.
May your will, not mine, be done.

“Let me look upwards through the branches of a towering oak and know that it grew great and strong because it grew slowly and well. Slow me down, Lord.”

Remember this prayer that was popularize a while ago at Shuyi’s and Pastor Jeff’s blog? I printed it out and pinned it at my work desk just like what Eelee used to do. Was staring at it recently when this part of the prayer hit me like a train. This may be good enough to be the revelation of the year for me.

How does the seed grow to become the oak tree?

It simply does. (Pardon my bluntness in phrasing things.)

Plant a seed into the ground, water it and then wait. In this world of instant gratifications, there is an unknown eagerness wanting things faster. Yet the truth is that for some things, we simply have to wait. For a seed to grow into a towering oak tree, It must slowly grow stronger day after day, year after year. It cannot grow 20 year’s worth of height in one day, just as how we cannot eat tomorrow’s breakfast today. We cannot stretch the seed, encourage the seed or fertilize the seed in any reasonable way to accelerate its growth to expect a towering oak tree the day after it was planted.

On the seed’s part, the way for it to grow in the fastest possible speed is simply to choose to grow daily. You might not be able to accelerate your own growth, but you can sabotage your own growth. A child may be destined to outgrow his dad eventually, but he can skip today’s meals to keep that from happening one day earlier.

I hate the implications of this revelation on my spiritual growth, but it seems like the conclusion is inescapable. There are no shortcuts in Christianity, only daily steps to be taken in the long journey.

I must quickly learn to be patient.

Let me be like the oak tree that grew great and strong, because it grew slowly and well.

“Slow me down, Lord. Ease the pounding of my heart by the quieting of my mind. Steady my hurried pace with the vision of the eternal reach of time. Give me amidst the confusion of my days the calmness of the everlasting hills. Break the tension of my nerves with the soothing music of the singing streams that live in my memory. Help me to know that restoring power of sleep. Teach me the art of taking minute vacations of slowing down, to look at a flower, pat a stray dog, to chat with an old friend or make a new one, to watch a spider build a web or smile at a child or to read a few lines from a good book. Remind me each day that the race is not always to the swift. And that there’s more to life than increasing its speed. Let me look upwards through the branches of a towering oak and know that it grew great and strong because it grew slowly and well. Slow me down, Lord.”

Well, a few posts ago, I was talking about counting the temporal; matchsticks.

Just to keep us in perspective. The things we are doing must count in eternity, lest we labor in vain.

So, what counts in heaven?

The things that count for eternity are simply the things that can be counted in eternity: Human souls.