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Wrote this awhile back. 1 December 2010.
But never posted it up here. It's just one side of the coin :)
Not sure if it's clear either.
Opinions?

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I think we’re too caught up in this, these days.

Some time ago people used to see evangelism as directly sharing the gospel.
Some time ago people used to see “worship” as what occurs on stage. The paradigm used to be as such – music and singing in a church.

Now, theologians have gotten smarter.
You see, now it all ties in. And this is what we get.
Convenient Christians, living convenient lives and doing convenient evangelism.

Ever heard of this…?
“The first step to evangelism is your way of life. Living different and reflecting Jesus.”

So we do that now, and feel we’re doing our duty. We feel good about ourselves being good. We feel we can wash our hands off sharing the gospel cause well, our lives seem to be more decent. We feel as if we’ve sacrificed a wild, enjoyable life to live like Christ would want us to and that’s enough.

But we forgot the first part of that statement.
It says, “The FIRST step to evangelism”… In other words, there’s more to it.
But nah, we’ve chucked that aside a long time ago since we were taught this new perspective – which actually isn’t all that new, but someone along the way made it easy to understand and something smart to say.

It’s not wrong. In fact, I think it’s an essential component of BEING Christian. But I think we’ve swung to the other extreme of not sharing at all, and not feeling anything about it. Not feeling the urgency of it.

Know what I mean?

In the past, we don’t share the gospel and we feel this little sense of, “I’m not doing what I’m supposed to be doing” on the inside. But now? That new paradigm we digested and took on, about living out the Christian life, has taken away even that inch of “guilt” … Or “good guilt” which would have once driven us to do something about it. To act. Now many of us (maybe including myself) sit back, and let life pass us by without even saying the name “Jesus” to anyone.

The paradigm shift in churches these days in terms of worship may have contributed to this grave imbalance.
“Worship isn’t just what we do on stage, worship is our life bringing glory to God. Our every action.”

I’m sure we’ve all heard of that by now. True. But perhaps this is why we’ve sunk into this pit of complacency.

As the famous and gifted theologian and preacher, John Piper, once said,
“Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Mission exists because worship doesn’t. Worship is ultimate, not missions, because God is ultimate, not man. When this age is over, and the countless millions of the redeemed fall on their faces before the throne of God, missions will be no more. It is a temporary necessity. But worship abides forever.”

He made a statement I strongly believe in. But I think some of us have taken this a little too individualistically and missed the point of this.

We think that we know Jesus, and our lives are worship, therefore we’ve reached the “goal”, because we ALREADY “worship” and we’re ALREADY evangelizing cause we’re living our lives for Christ etc (as mentioned above).
After all, it’s biblical. Romans 12:1-2 says our lives are meant to be offered as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to Him. That is our spiritual act of worship.

Maybe we don’t explicitly say this, cause if I said this straight, it sounds outright wrong. But in our subtle ways, this is how we live.
I’m saved, S-A-V-E-D. And it stops right there. Period.

But John Piper shared that missions is a temporary necessity. And guess what, like it or not, we’re living in that “temporary necessity” age where worship may exist in OUR lives, but not someone else’. In other words, missions has to exist. Still.

Not in convenient ways, but in dynamic ways without fear.

This was written some time ago but was contemplating on whether or not I wanna post it ;p

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2 trips were all it took for me to fall in love with Timor. I wondered if I truly loved the place, the people and everything about that nation. My first trip, I must say, was with a whole bunch of my “comfort people”… I went the second time wanting to know if my heart was truly there, or maybe I was lured by the first good experience with people I enjoyed spending time with.

I could call that doubt. But it’s valid to question in this area. So I’m back from my second trip and in my heart I’m only ever so desperate to go back. I seem to be experiencing a new lease of clarity, even certainty that I may not be living here for the rest of my life – in contrary to what I used to believe, that I’d never live anywhere else besides Singapore.

Someday, in His time, I’m pretty sure He’ll send me somewhere. I’d leave that door wide open. As much as I love Timor and sense in my heart I’ll be back, I don’t limit God. I don’t limit His ability to put another place in my heart or open another door for me to reach a different group of people.

I’m missing the people there – especially those from NYC and a 15 year old girl I met who lived close to where we stayed. She could speak a bit of English and happened to remember that I was playing basketball/volleyball with her in September. I spent a whole lot of time with her during my in-between times there. She invited me to her house when I was alone taking a walk with her. So I agreed.

It wasn’t the wisest thing to do alone, but I confess it was a spur of the moment thing on my part. It felt like trust was there and 1 barrier was broken in building that relationship with her. Entering her home with her entire family present made me feel slightly overwhelmed. Yet I had an ever so reassuring sense of peace in my heart. I learnt to trust these people. They passed me a guitar to play and sing so I did. A couple of English songs they were familiar with, and the only song in Tetum I knew – Jesus lover of my soul. They loved the time, and in my heart I was simply wishing I could do more than sing a song. I wished I could share the freedom that comes from His resurrection. But this was just a start. I receive a message from Timor every couple of days now, and it truly warms my heart. It’s almost nostalgic, making me think about those times and how I long to be back. It felt like… home.

You see, often on mission trips we build relationships. Isn’t the aim of building relationships for villagers and the people to trust us so that we can do a greater work there? We expect them to trust a bunch of foreigners from out of nowhere, but in our hearts we’re more cautious than trusting towards them too. I’m not saying that being cautious is a wrong thing. It’s wise, but there is a fine line we have to draw with being distrusting and aware. Boundaries and limits come into play here. I guess that’s one thing I learnt. And indeed, these trips do prepare the way for future work to be done. If it wasn’t for the familiarity and the work other churches did there too, I don’t think spending that much time with that girl I met would have been possible either.

One of the youth I met from NYC this trip was another person who made an impact in my life. I never knew I could sincerely enjoy a conversation with someone I only knew for a week. What’s more, we had to take much more patience listening and speaking to one another cause of the slight language barrier. I can’t speak his native language and he wasn’t excellent at mine, but it’s even more amazing that way, to see how I find myself missing that good friend I made in Timor. Even more than I missed being here in SG while I was there. Hmm... You could say that we tend to take the common things for granted, but I’d say that it’s the conversations we had which were memorable and real. It was real life, real struggles, and real joys. Not just dreams of the future even though those were interesting as well. I appreciated those times very much. Talking to him felt like I was face to face with an overturned life. One turned the right side up by God and for God, away from the darkness which used to be present.

The trip hardly went according to plan and I loved it that way. I loved it that we were flexible about it and not merely sticking to the books having something to do every minute. There were many times we had to wait but the first day at Bali was a reminder when the song “Still” came to mind. “When the oceans rise and thunders roar, I will soar with You above the storms, Father You are King over the flood. I will be still, and know You are God”. Again, His plans supersede our plans. It was during those gaps of time I realised, we were able to build friendships and spend time relating rather than doing. Even the flight delay gave us time to intercede for Bali, reminding me that missions didn’t only start when we arrived in Timor. It starts where we are.

Meeting 2 missionaries there was an inspiring part of the trip. They were live testimonies that you don’t have to look as tough as Steve Irwin to be in the field. They were the most unassuming couple. Ordinary, but the only difference was that they responded to a call to missions. Nothing big and spectacular about their “calling”, but they responded. I admired that a lot. They showed me that God isn’t just faithful to us; He’s faithful in raising His people for His work. And missions didn’t have to be direct preaching; the character change in people we influence brings them a step closer to Jesus. That counts.

The time painting a school in a village was heart warming as well. Seeing the villagers coming together to help with the painting gave us that platform to interact and I was so glad it really didn’t feel like a school humanitarian trip. It felt like an intentional relationship building time with them, and the villagers helping us when our cars were stuck in the mud was evidence to that. I wouldn’t forget the principal’s act of servant leadership in the project either… highly commendable. I wonder how many principals here would do that without having recognition of any form.

After all this, it’s tough to summarize everything and share it with someone. Words simply don’t seem enough to express all that was going on and the lessons learnt from the trip. But that doesn’t make sharing about it something to shun from. Personally, it’s something I need to grow in – to point others to a work greater than ourselves, which requires greater dependency on Christ. Remembering missions here gave me a new zest and enthusiasm for being a Christian in school and greater sense of motivation being part of a Campus Ministry. If I can’t do missions here, it doesn’t get easier in the field on a long term basis. I’m on training ground. It starts where we are. Where I am :)

That’s just what I need right now. To grow out of this.
From the root that’s probably what’s hindering me from many things…
From searching, from putting to action, from going the extra mile, from making clear and certain decisions,  from setting schedules way in advance. I can do all that. And things will work out so much better. Life would seem… Smoother. More predictable.

But no, I can’t. Because emotions overwhelm my cognitive reasoning. Because my heart leads, my mind follows. Because I can’t decide to do what’s logical and lose what’s on my heart. I’ve mentioned before that I don’t like to do things out of obligation or law, I do things because I love… Something, or someone, or some dream.

So I found my root problem. Love. I need to grow out of thinking of nothing but the loves of my life (I'm not talking about anyone in particular, dreams are worth loving too, aren't they?)... I need to grow to find a balance between what’s right and logical, rather than sufficing to have a temporal space for … love. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not contradicting myself, I need to set things right into perspective to act based on what I love in the long run. Not for grabbing the here and now.

But it’s all easier said than done. I live with this fear of not knowing when the next time is. Not knowing if I’d ever be able to do a certain thing, see a certain someone or live a certain dream. When it’s there, it’s instinctive for me to wanna grab hold of it. And because of that, because I know that deep down, those moments of holding on and grabbing onto those are things which keep me going… I leave space for that as much as I can. And for all other things, I’d rather leave them on hold. However important. Just to fulfill, just to leave that gap in case what’s on my heart jumps by. Whether it eventually does or doesn’t is another story altogether. But my point is… It hinders me.

I need to grow. I need to learn. I need to let go.

God, help this soul genuinely humbled by inadequacies & Your holiness, greatness and ... true love.

February 2010

I think I'm starting to see answered prayers.
Especially after the Timor trip :)

I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight
U2

She's a rainbow and she loves the peaceful life
Knows I'll go crazy if I don't go crazy tonight
There's a part of me in the chaos that's quiet
And there's a part of you that wants me to riot

Everybody needs to cry or needs to spit
Every sweet tooth needs just a little hit
Every beauty needs to go