A New Year’s Re-solution

One more day and it’s the time of the year when I try to attempt a new start. While I am not a big fan of New Year’s resolutions, I do believe in this exercise of re-examining our lives and re-assessing at the onset of new year and then ask the One above for His grace and power, where we need our lives to improve. Though more often than not, these new year resolutions fall short because;
1)      I tend to grow out of self-assessment rather than asking God to examine our lives.
2)      I tend to be pursued with self-determination and self-effort rather than trusting God to work in and through me.

Is it any wonder so many of my resolutions fail?

For me, I’ll survey my life this past year, praying as I’ll ask the following questions.

How has my life affected those in my sphere of influence? Hopefully I would be able to say that God used me to bless and build up other people rather than criticize or tear them down.

What have I used to guide myself in serving and making everyday decisions? Hopefully I would be able to say that I looked to God and His Word for direction rather than leaning on your my understanding (which often is the case) or following after the ways of the world.

How have I dealt with problems, conflicts, or mistakes made by others or even myself? Hopefully I was able to apply both grace and truth rather than going to one extreme or the other.

When I use the New Year as a time for reflecting on the newness He brings, I realize that with the new year come new opportunities to live out that new life.

Perhaps I wasn’t able to answer all of the above questions as I hoped, or at least not consistently so.  But there is good news.  I will have a new year ahead of me to change my answers, unless God takes me home to be with Him or if Jesus comes first.  Those aren’t bad options but don’t I want my life to be on track with Him in the meantime, to make a difference now.

And that is why…
… my circumstances might not change, but my perspective toward life will change as I see through new eyes. — I have faith.
… the world might seem to keep getting worse, but my reactions toward it will change as I understand with a new mind. — I have hope.
… people around me might not change, but my attitude toward them will change as I respond with a new heart. — I have love.

And so I pray…

Heavenly Father, it’s New Year’s Eve. In some ways this past year feels like it has flown by; but on the other hand, when I consider some of the painful events of the year, it seems like it was a year that would never end—a year that would never go away. The “already” and “not yet” of knowing you were clearly evident over the past twelve months. Joy and grief are both comfortably at home in my heart at the end of this calendar year.

Thank you for your steadfast love and fresh mercies that came every single day this past year—when I was aware of them and when I wasn’t. You remained faithful to everything you’ve promised me in Jesus. Great is your faithfulness.

But Father, it’s because of your love for me in that I can also own my grief and sadness. As much as I believe and love the gospel, there were stretches when I clearly didn’t act like it. This past year I joined naysayers in saying, “So where is your God?” You usually heard this complaint from me when you were seem quiet and not there catering to me.

When you didn’t act of quickly as I expected or in keeping with my agenda, I sulked and whined. When I experienced the reality of life in a broken world among broken people (which was a lot this year), I wanted relief more than a changed heart; I wanted you to vindicate me more than I wanted to glorify you; I wanted to give up more than I wanted to grace up. Many times I trusted my voiceless, sightless, senseless, powerless idols more than I trusted you. I own my sin and grieve my foolishness.

But until then, on the eve of a new year, prepare me for twelve new months of groaning and growing in grace. I resolve to trust You plus nothing for my everything. With palms up, I offer you great praise and fresh surrender to your purposes. May 2019 be a new year of new creation and fruitfulness. So very Amen I pray, in Jesus’ tender and trustworthy name.

A Blessed New Year to all!

Giving Tuesday

During my younger years, I used to see Philippine calendars with Saint’s Day (name of Saints) and the rest of the days are noted down as special holidays. Nowadays, calendars  are marked with ‘Black Friday’ and ‘Cyber Monday’;  days in which we are supposed to open the Internet and buy for ourselves what we have always wanted. I just read today that there is day called ‘Giving Tuesday’ which this year falls on 27th November - a welcome attempt to counter this commercialisation of the calendar days. It is an opportunity for ‘everyone to take a moment and support the charities that are doing good work in their local communities’.

This day gets my vote. Giving needs encouragement: after all, as the saying goes, ‘when it comes to generosity, some people stop at nothing’.

Giving is something that is vital but frequently ignored. If you’re tasked to give a talk on Giving and announce before-hand, I guess it is a safe way of guaranteeing empty seats or attendance will be lower than expected.

Yet we need to be generous, and let me suggest four reasons why giving is important.

First, giving is an act of liberation. The grim reality is that money and things entrap and snare us: they come with strings attached. Whether we want things because we think – falsely – that they will bring us security or because we think – again falsely – that they will give us self-fulfilment doesn’t matter. Clinging on to what we have is the spiritual equivalent of putting our hands around our throat and squeezing tightly: keep going long enough and it’s all over. The lives of the great misers, whether fictional like Scrooge or real like Howard Hughes, are depressing tales. For us to decide to give abundantly is to take an axe to the powers that entangle us and to say to the world – and the devil – that we cannot and will not be bought or bound by wealth. There’s a profound logic here. Because God is good and giving and because we are made in God’s image, to be authentically human is to give. Paradoxically, selfishness makes us losers: we become less human than we ought to be. It is by giving we receive and by grasping we lose. To give is to live.

Second, giving is an act of appreciation. Behind giving is the acknowledgement that our giving God has, through Jesus, paid an infinite amount in order to save us. That is a price we could never pay ourselves; we can merely accept it with thanks. The best evidence that we have understood what God has done for us is shown by how we live and give. Generosity demonstrates that we have understood grace: there is no stronger evidence of our conversion than our giving. As an example, read the story of Zacchaeus

Third, giving is an act of dedication. To give to a cause is to affirm our support for it. Our giving to the work of Christ is a very real demonstration of our commitment to him. We are quite literally ‘putting our money where our mouth is’. A lot of giving today is impulsive, often triggered by some emotional appeal that has moved the heart. The concept of dedication reminds us that the best and most lasting sort of generosity comes from a decision of the mind and the state of our heart. Do you prefer to give until it hurts or give until it feels good?

Finally, giving is an act of celebration. One of the problems with showing gratitude is our attitude. We tend to view giving entirely in negative terms as something that should be avoided. Yet as Jesus is quoted as saying in Acts 20:35, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’ We should give widely, wisely and willingly. As Paul writes, ‘Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. To give generously is to make a joyful statement of who we are, what we stand for and what we want to be.

Most of St Paul’s letters in the New Testament is a testament of how giving value to giving is something of enormous importance. Paul spends a substantial amount of encouraging the Corinthian believers to give. So important is this to him that he resorts to two of the very strongest ways of encouraging them. First, he sets before them the example of the believers in Macedonia who, under very difficult circumstances, have enthusiastically given more than they were able to afford. Second, he threatens them with embarrassment if they don’t give because he’s already been boasting about their generosity.

I’d love to use Paul’s example of others and the threat of embarrassment but realise I’ll be bully doing so – I cannot force people to give! Nevertheless, in terms of example, it’s hard to forget instances of extraordinary generosity towards God’s work by followers of Jesus in Africa and Asia whose daily wage is what we might pay for a coffee and a croissant. And in terms of embarrassment, I could mention that history (possibly) and God (certainly) could judge us as a generation who talked a lot about receiving from God but knew little of giving in return.  Saint Corrie Ten Boom wrote: ‘The measure of a life, after all, is not its duration, but its donation.’ How will we be measured?

So, let's start practising this ‘Giving Tuesday’ this year and let us review our giving to our local church, to charities and to our community through our tithes and first fruits. If the Lord lays on your heart to give today and expand our personal ministry of love and sharing -  it will be gratefully received – and then we can finish the year well and enter a new year filled with immense opportunities. And as Advent Sunday comes in this weekend – let us wait and anticipate the coming of the man God who gave everything, his life and love for us.

The Need for Lent

Ash Wednesday, this year on 14 February, marks the start of the forty-day period of Lent that runs up to Easter Day. Some Christians follow a longstanding tradition of fasting during Lent; denying themselves something – chocolate, alcohol or even social media – that is good but not essential. Today, this whole idea strikes some people as bizarre but in fact the idea of Lent and fasting has perhaps never been more relevant.

Our modern culture is fixated not simply on having things, but on having them now. Advertisements encourage us not to save but to buy on credit and have what we want immediately: instant food, instant messaging, real-time meetings and instant downloads of music, films or books. We don’t ‘do’ waiting anymore. Whether it is food, pleasure or possessions, we expect to have them all now.

Yet there is something very dangerous about this demand for ‘instant gratification’ and it’s not just Christians who say so. The reality is that all good things (whether food, pleasure or possessions) are truly at their best when they are taken at the right time. Intentionally delaying a pleasure (and that’s what fasting in Lent is all about) is a wise thing. The ability to postpone our gratification may actually be critical to making us fulfilled human beings. After all, if we want our pleasures now, we are going to struggle with things like learning to play the piano or acquiring a foreign language where it may be months before we can tap out a tune or engage in a meaningful conversation on holiday.

Postponing a pleasure may even have been fundamental in making the human race what it is. A great breakthrough in history was when people realised that instead of eating grains of wheat or rice they could plant them and wait a few months until the crops sprang up. The discovery of cultivation allowed settlements, farms and ultimately civilisation to flourish.

In the bible, the chosen people of God has to wait for over 500 years – from the last message of the book of Malachi in the Old testament to the starting verses of the Gospel of Matthew in the old New testament - before God to reveal the new covenant and their salvation through the coming of Jesus Christ.

It’s not just history that teaches us about the disadvantages of instant gratification; there is also some hard psychological evidence on the subject. In the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment in the 1970s a group of four-year-old children took part in a psychological study. Each child was given one marshmallow and promised that, if they could wait twenty minutes before eating it, they would be given a second one. Some children could wait the twenty minutes and others couldn’t. Records were kept and sixteen years later children were revisited; those who had been able to delay eating were found to score significantly higher in academic tests. The ability to say ‘no, not now’ seems to be vital to both civilisation and education.

Lent helps us to learn to say ‘no, not now’; it teaches us self-control and an expectation and an anticipation of what God may reveal to us. Patience is the companion of humility and the enemy of pride.

Lent is then not just a human exercise but a sacred discipline.