Monthly Archives: February 2017

Uncategorized

Three to Read (Feb. 27, 2017)

2 Comments

This week, instead of 3 readings, there’s just one. And the reason is, its a little long, at just over 2,000 words.

The article is about reading the Bible…or better yet, about letting the Bible read us. I think there is a lot in it that can help us broaden (and maybe even simplify) how we read the Bible. And if you read closely, you’ll find a lot that connects with the talk Esther gave this past Sunday on hearing from God.

Here’s a quote from the article:

Go back and read [the] passage again. But this time, be open to receive whatever God has for you. Don’t manipulate God; just receive. Communion with him isn’t something you institute. It’s like sleep. You can’t make yourself sleep, but you can create the conditions that allow sleep to happen. All I want you to do is create the conditions: Open your Bible, read it slowly, listen to it, and reflect on it.

If you didn’t know Lent starts this Wednesday, Mar. 1. Lent is a season where we subtract something so that we can add something new. One thing we could try is to get rid of something we know is a time-waster so we can carve out some space in our lives to create the conditions that will allow us to receive what God might be saying to us.

Happy Reading!

  1. James Bryan Smith: Who’s Reading Whom?

 

P.S. If you would like a passage to contemplate, try Matthew 25:14-30 or Matthew 25:31-46.

Formation

Sweetly Broken

Leave a comment

Today we have a special post from guest blogger, Brandon Chuang (Ken’s son). Brandon is currently attending optometry school in Boston. His post is a timely one as we head into Lent – a season of self-reflection as we consider our own sinfulness that led to Christ’s death and crucifixion.

Luke 7:47

“Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven–as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little loves little.”

I love the NIV version of this verse. I feel that it perfectly captures my greatest struggle, acceptance of the full extent of my brokenness.

We’ve all had those piercing moments. Those moments where the weight of our transgressions comes crashing down on us. It could be something from the past, triggered by something you saw while casually perusing social media. It could be falling, yet again, into a pattern of sin you swore off so many times. These are largely the ways in which it’s manifested in me, but it could be anything.

The past two weeks have been 2 of the most emotionally and spiritually difficult weeks of my life, and I don’t want to minimize that. I’ve been barraged with sins from my past that I’d swept under the rug unknowingly. It’s not that I didn’t confess them to God and ask for forgiveness, but I never let my heart experience just how vile these sins were. I made excuses to minimize them. “Everyone goes through this, it’s a normal struggle.”

My constant coping mechanism stems from this idea that, “I’m not that bad of a person.” This can also be referred to as, “I don’t need that much of God’s grace.” And it has worked as a temporary fix, temporary being 25 years of life. However, as I’m growing older and continually being faced with the magnanimity of my sins both past and present, “I’m not that bad of a person” really doesn’t do it anymore.

These past two weeks, God has been forcing my hand, and I could no longer defend myself. “I’m a really, really, broken, messed up person, and there’s no excuse for all these things I’ve done.” In that moment, the standards I’d set for my life and my self-image were shattered… Yet it was this “crying out” that opened my heart to even more of God’s forgiveness and love, it was what He was waiting for.

We need to understand the degree of our brokenness to fully understand what God’s love and grace covers and redeems. And let’s be clear on one thing, I do NOT fully understand my own brokenness. I don’t think I ever will until I see Him face to face, but I firmly believe a tell-tale sign of maturity is the deepening of our understanding of our own sinful nature, coupled with the further surrendering of our lives to “the One is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine.”

Only when we have been forgiven much, can we love so boldly.

It’s been 3 days since that desperate cry. Already, I feel myself reverting to my old ways. It’s okay. I know it’s a process, a lifelong one at that. I want to encourage you, friends, to fully embrace your brokenness, knowing our God redeems and restores us.

I recently re-uploaded Sweetly Broken by Jeremy Riddle to my Spotify playlist as a reminder of these past 2 weeks. “At the cross You beckon me. You draw me gently to my knees and I am lost for words, so lost in love. I’m sweetly broken, wholly surrendered.”

I pray that these words mean more and more to me every day, and I hope they bless you as well.

Uncategorized

Three to Read (Feb. 21, 2017)

Leave a comment

Here is this week’s Three to Read. The first is a Q&A interview with Old Testament scholar, Walter Bruegemann. He is asked some difficult questions about some pressing questions facing the church today. His responses may be a bit provocative and bring up more questions than answers. By doing so, hopefully, it will spark some good conversation.

The second article, takes us back to a recurring topic we have been discussing as a community: Noise and Distraction. And it asks: What is it costing us spiritually? (You’ll hear more about this in the coming weeks as we head into the season of Lent.)

The last article is a kind of devotional commentary on the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37). It would be worthwhile to take some to read this post alongside the passage in Luke to help you reflect more deeply on a familiar story (and our current political climate).

  1. “It’s Not a Matter of Obeying the Bible”
  2. The Spiritual Cost of Distraction
  3. Does Your Heart Break Like a Samaritan?
Uncategorized

Three to Read (Feb. 14, 2017)

Leave a comment

Each week I’d like to try and give three hand-picked blog posts or articles that I found interesting or informative from my explorations around the web.

For this week, the first two articles are related to some of the things we talked about on Sunday – namely, sleep and reading as basic spiritual disciplines we ought to try and incorporate into our daily routines.

The third article is an insightful (somewhat academic) exploration of what it means to have “the mind of Christ,” a phrase the Apostle Paul uses in 1 Corinthians 2:16. It’s written by my New Testament professor from Fuller seminary, Marianne Meye Thompson (loved her!). It’s a bit long, but well worth the read.

1. God Wants You to Get Some Sleep
2. 8 Ways to Read a Lot More Books This Year
3. The Mind of Christ in the Gospels

Happy Reading!

Uncategorized

Stephen Colbert vs. Ricky Gervais on God’s Existence

2 Comments

I came across this clip form the Colbert show the other day, where he had Ricky Gervais on. Colbert brings up the topic of God’s existence and here’s how their debate went:

Gervais gets a rousing applause after saying this:

“If we take something like, any fiction, any holy book…and destroyed it. In a thousand years time it wouldn’t come back just as it was. If you took every science book, every fact, and destroyed them all, in a thousand years they’d all be back; ’cause all the same tests would be the same result.”

On the surface, there seems to be an undeniable logic at work in what Gervais is saying. Science is more “true” than any truth found in a holy book. Why? Because you can prove it over and over and over and over and over.

Colbert even seems persuaded by it. He has no rebuttal except to say, “That’s good. That’s really good.” (Or maybe he just got caught up in Gervais’ charming and alluring English accent!)

But as I thought about it some more, the logic ends up being rather hollow. The truth of a holy book, and more poignantly, the truth of someone considered holy, like Jesus, is not that it can be proved over and over. The opposite is actually at work.

For Christians, the truth of Jesus is that he shows us something we would never have thought to be true had we not encountered the truth in and through his singularly unique life. In him, we are brought face to face with something we couldn’t and wouldn’t have figured out on our own.

Our problem is not that we need to discover what can be proven by anyone at any time in any place. Our problem is that we need to be shown what we cannot know except through revelation. That’s what, as Christians, we say Scripture is all about.

It is revelation.

And that is ultimately what we believe is given most fully to us in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Here we are given the truest and most complete revelation of God and God’s good intentions for us. Of course, it’s not something that can be verified or predicted in a test tube with a Bunsen burner. But that’s precisely the point.

The best and truest things in life are often things that are not repeatable.

The fact that science is reproducible in every generation, while significant, isn’t all that exceptional. What is exceptional is a life that was lived so truthfully and so beautifully that death could not hold it down. And over the course of history, it is one that has proven to be one in a billion.

Which, seems to me, makes it all the more truthful.

Uncategorized

Fasting

Leave a comment

Matthew 6:16-18 (NIV)

“When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show others they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that it will not be obvious to others that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

Fasting is one of the more important spiritual disciplines that we practice today. As Christians, we believe abstaining in some significant way from food teaches us a lot about ourselves. in other words, fasting reveals to us how much our own peace depends upon the pleasures of eating, and we are reminded that we often use food to ease the discomforts caused by our unwise and fearful living attitudes – lack of self-worth, meaningless work, purposeless existence, or lack of rest or exercise. However, in ancient times fasting was more than simply refraining from food and learning about oneself. Therefore, what does it mean to fast? What is its purpose? How should it be done?

In the Bible, the word “fast” simply means to voluntarily abstain from food. However, the basic purpose of a fast was to demonstrate the humility and dependence upon God in times of sorrow or great pain. It may be the anguish of repentance, it could be the distress of impending danger, or perhaps a response in mourning when a friend or loved one is ill or dead.

Jesus is calling out the religious people as “hypocrites” because he knows that they are seeking the wrong reward by receiving esteem from other people. To be seen as a righteous or spiritual individual seeking and loving God. Does this mean that you must keep ALL fasting a secret? No. Jesus is not articulating or commanding that fasting must be done in private. What Jesus is saying is that it is wrong to fast for the purpose of impressing people. It’s not an issue of who knows about it or what they think of it, but what is the motivation for doing it.

The intentions of the heart belong to a man, but the answer of the tongue comes from the Lord. All a person’s ways seem right in his own opinion, but the Lord evaluates the motives.

Proverbs 16:1-2 (New English Translation)

  • Why do you think fasting along with prayer is so uncommon among Christians today? Why do you think it is common?
  • What’s the difference between abstaining and fasting?

 

Uncategorized

The Lord’s Prayer

Leave a comment

Matthew 6:5-13 (NIV)

“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 others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full.  But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. 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.

 “This, then, is how you should pray:

“‘Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
 your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
 Give us today our daily bread.
 And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
 And lead us not into temptation
but deliver us from the evil one.

Unfortunately, as Christians, “The Lord’s Prayer” often falls into the category of vain repetition for us. Therefore, we sometimes forget of the importance of the prayer and assume this Matthew passage is just about Jesus revealing the selfishness of the religious leaders of his day. Jesus does indeed exposes the self-righteous and self-centered practices of these religious leaders in this passage, but we need to be reminded of why Jesus also explains how we ought to pray.

We are accustomed to thinking of prayer as a good strategy for getting what we want. Often times praying calls up the imagery of a genie granting our dreams, desires, and needs, and we believe that invoking Jesus’ name would make our prayers true (“in Jesus’ name”). However, all prayer-including The Lord’s Prayer-is not for getting what we want, but rather for bending our wants towards what God wants.

The Danish philosopher and Christian thinker Soren Kierkegaard said it best, “The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.” In other words, prayer is an active process for us to bend our lives towards God in a way that is not of our natural inclination.

“[…]that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” Ephesians 3:17-19 (NIV)

  • How much is prayer a part of your interaction with others? How much do you think it should be?
  • How would we make prayer more central to our shared lives?
  • What are some ways that can help bend our lives to God through prayer?