breakthroughs

today was certainly one of the better sundays in church that i recall in recent history. it had, everything. well, enough of everything, anyway.

i set the alarm at 745 to get up today for first service. now i still must admit to flip-flopping a lot on which service i go for, chiefly for the fact that most of our cg people do so as well, and service is quite boring without people to talk to in the row. so it's usually that we'd sorta poll on friday nights and then settle on first or second. there's even so many agendas involved just for something like choosing which service to go to. haha. that's amusing.

anyway, having managed to be there on time, i talked to edwin and andrew wong abit. also auntie wong. haha. i'm very good with older women, frankly. it's really, really easy, too. the most important thing is to be polite, and to be funny. older women are very very easy to charm. but it's sort of a compliment as well that you talk to them properly, like a gentleman, and charmingly. i don't really know why guys complain about mothers-in-law. haha unless of course you're so charming that they don't trust you with their daughter. which is... fair enough.

so anyway i went in with edwin, and i was telling him that like, i was waiting for people my age. and i mentioned that just as i wasn't quite his height, he wasn't quite my age. haha. (he'll never be my age. get it?) so anyway chia was there and i went to sit there.

i felt like sleeping through the sermon but there was ony of the littler guys sitting next to me so i thought i'd better not. and i went through the motions of taking notes, which is exceptional. i don't like to take notes for sermon outlines because i'd rather listen, pay attention and remember. and the sermon outlines are very non-specific so it's hard to remember the context of the speaker, or you'd have to refer to the verses, and besides i don't ever refer to the notes. it's in the bible, anyway, right? a sermon is just an interpretation and a reminder, if you look at it that way. unless it's something that nobody's ever said before, and makes all sorts of Spiritual sense, it's just gonna be like writing down a reminder. yeah.

so during the announcements they say the global missions watch will feature a doctor working in china, and i thought hey that's cool. so i went with chia and joanne and john to the thing. okay wait. for those of us who aren't aware (c'mon guys), global missions watch is this sorta talk run by Pastor Alvin and crew who kinda give the church updates on missions happenings, and the recent m.o.b., and so on. so we're sitting there listening to stuff and then we get a handout with the usual sort of lists of things that missionaries update the church about, what they're thankful for, need prayer for, etc. and then, we got to pray for them, which was a bit of a surprise to me. well, as first times go. anyway, john wanted us to pray together, as we were supposed to, to which i replied that i had no feelings for this, and so he bravely prayed aloud for the both of us.

right. having finished that, we went back to listening to more stuff, oh no, wait, the room was separated to pray for different regions, and we had cambodia. once again, i was slightly apprehensive about praying in a group for something i hadn't really thought about, and had no real heart for. thankfully, (haha), we were broken up to our own people (jess jo chia john and i), and we started praying. and then i got to thinking about why i was always afraid to pray with people. and i thought, there's never a problem nowadays when i pray to God on my own, in fact it's great. so, what's up!

i struggled with this for quite a long time, to be honest. and in the long time that i've been dealing with this, i've come to quite a few conclusions, leading up to today's sorta breakthrough. haha. one is that when it's one audience, who is God, it's very easy to be honest, and to be humble, and to speak forthrightly, and to be random. when there're people listening, prayer becomes sort of an encouragement and/or warning to this second audience. and it's funny to say the same thing to two audiences who are different in so many ways, like for instance when talking about the problems you wanna pray about, it's so vastly different how much God understands your point of view and how much anybody else does. two is that i usually am sceptical or suspicious of people who pray aloud and pander more to the people listening, than as they would simply presenting their heart to God, and that scares me, to be honest. three, which struck me today, is that i make use of a lot of expressions and worded peculiarities in my accounting of things, especially when i want to describe the things that are close to my heart, and so my english becomes quite fanciful and pretty. i love to talk to God like that, because it's His gift to me, and He understands before i compose my thoughts and words. but i'm afraid that people listening might think i'm showing off, or whatever.

a useful verse for this is:

Matthew 6:5-8 "And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men... But when you pray, go to your room and pray to your Father, who is unseen... And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him."

anyway, what i always do, (stupidly, wrongly), is to dumb down my english, but i'm not any good at it, and i can't pray well. haha. so today as i closed my eyes with the group i thought, oh whatever, at least these people have known me long enough and have suffered enough halting and uninspired spoken prayers from me, that they know i'm not the show off kind when praying. and i thought that God would always understand, and i thought that, whatever happens, i'm going to believe that the people listening would understand as well. and so it went well, better than i've ever remembered when praying aloud. also being able to speak from personal experience when i was in cambodia (and vietnam), i prayed that the people who were still getting to their feet from the oppression of their government (the economic policy of the communist government was what i was referring to, it was quite draconian, actually), the genocide, and these same people who were eking out a survival in their struggling economy, who had to care for their families, would be able to at least attain some level of living standard. and when they searched for the deeper things in life, that God would reveal himself to them, and there would be people to show them the way to Christ. the second thing i prayed for was that the people being reached out to and being saved in prison would be powerful, fearless testimones for Christ, because they would have little left to fear from life. Just like the apostles, and also like Paul.

right. that was a breakthrough, a small, important one. like the first turn of a closed jar of goopers. haha.

and then after that we had lunch and went home. and i got caught in the rain. but it was quite a nice experience to sit underneath a flyover while cars whizzed by, as the rain poured on. seriously, it's very peaceful. it's funny to find it there, too.

i sure hope we get through more stuff like this as a cg, or even part of it. i mean we all have different things we have hearts for, right. like for instance john and i have never even ever been conceivably interested in going for missions global watch right after first service. but we just went, for my being interested in the doc (who was really fantastic. quite, quite an inspiration. quite a hero), for john i dunno, and look what we ended up with. time together, sharing, hearts connecting, and so on.

we could try caring about what others care about. we could, really, we could. and then, we could invite them back to what we're interested in.

right that's all. work hard, study hard, love hard, and faith hard.

lot's of love,

ian :)