Read This Lah: October 2008

Hey all, I’ve got something to share here. Quite long but read slowly ya.. :)

Keith preached last week to us about the true satisfaction in our lives. He mentioned that we don’t find true satisfaction in PLEASURE, PERFORMANCE or POSSESIONS. All these things might fill up the emptiness in our hearts, but all these won’t last..

People always chase over pleasures, fame etc in life as we can often be self-sufficient through those things that we gain. When you think in a deeper way, we are actually trying to cover up our imperfections by achieving great successes, having a lot of possessions and so on. This is a common way people will hide themselves from God. We are not perfect since the moment we were born into this world, we are not whole but “broken”. God can choose to just leave us alone for us to forever deal with the sin nature of this world such as anger, greed, lust, violence and death. But He loves us too much to just leave us alone and don’t have our “brokenness” be healed. From the beginning Adam & Eve hid from each other when they realized their nakedness, and they make coverings for their bodies, then hid in the bushes from God. (Gen 3:7-9) This illustrates the world, ever since sin entered the world, everyone is trying to hide from God...

Coming before God in total brokenness and admitting our true self goes against our sin nature. We hide as an attempt to cover up our brokenness. What I meant here of hiding means we use achievements, pleasures, materials etc as a “cover” to satisfy ourselves, instead of depending on God and be broken before Him, i.e admitting our weaknesses.

We shall identify how we might have hide from being broken/open to God. All these are spiritual “junkfood” as described by Keith. The most common ways to hide is through self-sufficiency. Humans have sets of rules and guidelines to grade our achievements. We often want to achieve the best results in our studies, to be at the highest position at work, or have the most amount of material possessions. All these are good achievements, and we glorify God’s name through great achievements. But always remember that, non of these will help us to get enough. The Pharisees are one of the example, they were self-sufficient religious people whom observed all the laws. They may seem blameless in the laws but they were never broken or being really truthful before God.

Remember Keith shared that: God is self-sufficient but we are not!

Other than that, some might have chosen the path of anger to hide their brokenness. Anger is a strong emotion. When we harbour our anger, it feels powerful but it always serves the wrong purpose: to help you hide from facing what is really wrong.

The next thing is addiction. There are a number of pleasure seeking ways where we often get to numb ourselves from the imperfections or dissatisfactions that we have within us. Addictions can be drugs, sex, work, sports, shopping, TV, video games and so on. All these keep us from facing our broken condition.

Besides that, we should be aware that sometimes we will try to hide by our spirituality. For example, reading the Bible to get the formula to make yourself feel good about who you are or to get the security of yourself from it. You may do all the good things as commanded by the Bible, but if these are not on a relationship with God, all these are just superior. We may be hiding from God behind all these good actions.

Most of us spend the majority of our time trying to cover up the fact of our true brokenness... God didn’t break us, but He has the power and He longs to heal us. God loves us and want to show us a lot but He can’t get close to you unless you can take away everything else that stands between you and God. And come to Him with brokenness of heart – a heart that knows it needs healing, and lay everything you have before God.

We can clearly acknowledge our insufficiency when we truly believe that only Christ’s forgiveness, and nothing else, is the reason you are able to have a relationship with a Holy God. It took me quite a long time to truly cherish this truth. I knew this from the moment I accepted Christ, but I never feel the need for it, until I experienced the brokenness, and know the meaning of salvation...

“You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly”... Romans 5:6 (NIV)

I'm sure we will know even more deeper about all of God’s truth all along our walk with God. =)

And just be simple before God, let your life be centered around God, and don’t let anything else shield you from Him, and we shall enjoy the intimacy in our relationship with God. ^.^

Love,
Jessie

Hello my lovely lovely W22!!! I miss you all sooo much and I owe you all a thousand apologies for being quite MIA. Anyway I am now coming to the end of my 4th week of my second year of uni. It has been very busy and tiring it is really impossible to understand how I have time to even do my own work hahha. My schedule this semester is terrible!!! I start 9am everyday. On monday, tuesday and thursday I finish at 5, on wednesday at 4 adn on friday at 6pm so you can only imagine that I am averaging 35 hours a week of lectures and this excludes the labs that I am to have in the coming future. *BIG SIGH* anyway that is that for my uni schedule. I have also been really busy organizing the malaysian society here as Nottingham games is only next month I have been sorting out all the sports stuff like registrations, team trials, trainings and coaching. I am currently coaching our netball, volleyball and basketball team which is quite alot. I am also training with our badminton and table tennis players as they have no one else to train with so yeah i've been so busy I barely had time to go gym. But I did have time for a quick trip down to London last weekend for something truly amazing. I and our dearly beloved ms Tung Tung went to watch DELIRIOUS? on saturday night!!! check it out....

Me And Tung Tung

Me and Helena

Helena, Chea Ming & Sara

Delirious? was a most amazing night. It was soooo spirit filled and it really turn up the heat for me. I was truly blessed to be able to attend their concert and whats more, I am seeing them again this weekend as they are coming to my Uni!!! hahaha. How great is our God that he can bless me twice like this. Anyway, I will update soon again, I have to rush off because I have a math test tomorrow. I hope you all are doing well. Take care....

With much love,

Jonson