Microwave Christianity

Photo by Brendon Thompson on Unsplash

If you are anything like me, you’d be a little concerned about the amount of radiation that goes into your food after putting it into a microwave. In fact two of my past recent posts were about radiation. See Is It Dangerous In The Long Run To Use A Bluetooth Earpiece? and Does Using A Handphone With A Cracked Screen Emit More Radiation? 

So what is my solution to this concern? I usually keep the timing for my food being in the microwave short or, more often than not I would prematurely open the microwave door should I “feel” the food is heated enough.

But the problem in doing so is that my food often remain cold after taking it out of the microwave, and I’ll likely pop it back in for another 20 seconds or so. I feel this normal activity in life; using a microwave reflects a simple truth about our faith towards God.

We think that short amount of time under the “microwaves” will produce results in our intimacy with God. We think that 15 minutes complain session to God suffice as prayer, or that verse of the day on your bible app counts as bible reading. We’re not willing to expose, or perhaps a better word, wait a little longer under the waves to “cook properly”. And we wonder why there’s no breakthrough, no growth. It’s because many simply choose to touch and go, and the funny thing is that we expect God to bless us for it. We expect to hear His voice,  feel His presence, develop strong faith just by doing bare minimum. We’ve come to the point of having microwave Christianity.

But we see in the bible that many great lives lived were the ones that slowly “cooked”. They were the ones that underwent many great trials and testing. They were the ones who had their faith tested by fire. Two in particular, Joseph and David who waited a long time for their destinies to unfold stood out for me. Things didn’t happen overnight for them, but in fact took years until their dreams and promises received were fulfilled.

Joseph the dreamer, was sold into slavery at the age of 17. It took him 13 years, for his dreams to materialize. Years where he went through betrayal, misunderstanding and even imprisonment. But finally at the age of 30 (Gen 41:46), he was elevated to Prime Minister of Egypt, something his dreams have foretold.

David the anointed king, was only around 15 years old when Samuel the prophet poured oil over him declaring him the next king of Israel. He spent a good many years on the run for his life against the then king, Saul. David was also 30 (2 Sam 5:4) when he finally actually became king, making it a good 15 years or so of waiting.

These were not short periods of waiting, they were more than a decade! I would have surely lost faith by then, if I were in their shoes. But we see that great stories of growth and victory came about from these prolong periods of suffering and waiting. The thing is I see 3 things in common with Joseph and David that made them exceptional characters and men of God in the bible.

• They had the right perspective in waiting
• They had the fear of the Lord
• They passed the tests while waiting

They didn’t grow bitter or angry with God while waiting, they continued to believe in the dreams and promises. They exhibited the fear of the Lord (meaning reverence towards God) in different situations presented and they passed the tests that came their way. Joseph passed the purity and integrity test with Potiphar’s wife while David who had 2 opportunities to take out the only person standing between him and the prophecy –  King Saul – but chose not to and to leave his destiny in God’s hands.

So the next time you are thinking why isn’t my walk with God where it should be. Could it be because you are taking a microwave approach to your Christianity? Could it be you are not cooking under the waves of training God wants to put you through long enough?Let’s make it a point not to simply touch and go when it comes to our walk and faith, and let us begin to see the value in waiting in prayer and seeking God for the answers. Let us also learn from the lives of Joseph and David what it means to be victorious in waiting!

Managing Expectations

Photo by Cristian Ungureanu

I thought about writing on this topic because I think this is a pretty big thing in everyone’s’ lives; expectations. Often we see a comparison on the net about this thing called expectation and reality, and they paint a deflated, albeit humourous picture of how our expectations fall short of reality. And while those have more to do with advertisements or memes, I want to talk more about the expectations of life.

You see before I landed in Ukraine, I had an expectation of what it looked like, but the truth is I could only imagine until my feet truly hit the ground. You may have an expected time to go home from work, a meeting or from doing a project. But often than not, last minute work comes in, people don’t work as fast as they should, things happened, and many times that expected timing gets pushed back.

Expectations can come from entering a new job, stepping into a new school, a relationship or any new frontier in life for that matter. The reality you find is often very different from what you expected.

But the main point I really like to drive home here is to talk about our expectation of others. Why does expectation often not meet up with reality?

I think the reason for this is that sometimes our expectations tend to lean heavily to one side. Simply speaking we over expect. Our expectations is often based on a perfect world scenario. We naively believe A to Z will fall into place nicely in our favour, in our time frame, in the exact way we envisioned it to be. This is why many a times disappointments come out of expectations.

I’ll use myself as an example. I made a list of things I look forward to for my return to Singapore. I had been away for 11 months in Ukraine as a missionary and was looking forward to many things (local food, driving, etc) in particular to meet a girl I was interested in. I was hoping to see her at the airport.

But guess what?

Reality check. I later found out she had classes on that day. And from the very onset, the expectations were not met.

This is just an example but quickly I learnt a few things in life about managing expectations and I would like to share it here.

PEOPLE ARE PEOPLE

Another thing after I came back was that I truly thought people will be a little more excited about my return. After all, I had been away for nearly a year! After all, I had toiled hard, I had given my life to a cause. I’m sure people would have missed me or be eager to find out about the happenings in Ukraine especially those in the church! And perhaps this expectation was greater from different ones who had also gone out to the missions field.

I realized this expectation spilled over to even people I’m not close with. There were different emotions and feelings I felt upon coming back, even feelings of self pity. I came to see I was longing for appreciation and approval.

But people are people, they too have been busy with their lives and affairs. They too have moved on. Don’t be offended when they don’t notice. Don’t take it to heart when their response is not what you expected. People are people. They have their set of problems in life to deal with too. I quickly came to the realization, I was not on their minds as much as I thought I was. Sometimes we can have an inflated worldview of ourselves (something I will cover in my next point)

I’m not saying that no one bothered to ask how am I or how was Ukraine, in fact many did come up to shake my hand at the airport, in church. Many did ask how was I doing or if I was adjusting well. It was just perhaps not in the amplitude I’d hope for. Which brings us back to managing expectations.

HAVE AN ACCURATE WORLDVIEW OF YOURSELF

You are not as important as you think.

Yes you heard me right. No I’m not trying to degrade you or bring you social worth down. (This depends on the individual) But I think more often than not we think we’re somebody. We think we are the one who will bring salvation to mankind, and that the world cannot operate without us!

Well maybe not quite.

But I speak for myself that sometimes we think we’re much more important than we truly are. And again, this is not to disregard the intrinsic value of a human being, but more to highlight the reality of life. Often times we view ourselves as the centre where our lives revolve around the people, and we assume everyone else holds this same view too.

*News Flash* Just because you have 2564 followers on Instagram or 432 likes on your posts does not make you actually very important.

In the day and age of social media, I feel blind spots in our worldview of self is a result of our inflated persona online. We think people really care about what we post. But nothing truly spells I care, like skipping through all your stories on Instagram, which many would be guilty of.

Have an accurate view of yourself, and of how people view you. Consider how people actually respond to you or if they actually made an effort to speak or text you. This will probably be an accurate picture of what reality is, and again don’t be offended if it doesn’t add up. Remember, people are people.

I believe having an accurate view of yourself is a key to managing expectations of people around us, even from those we think we are close with.

APPRECIATE THE ONES WHO TRULY CARE 

I looked back at this past month, and actually many different ones asked me out to buy me a meal, or drop me a text to see how I was doing, some even gave me some money. In fact I recently started a thankful journal too to record the different testimonies, blessings received by friends and people around. This is keep my heart in thankful mode.

I came to see that somehow my focus was on what people didn’t do than what they did. It was this sense of entitlement that was in me that I thought I should receive and this wasn’t something I liked about what I was seeing of myself.

And sticking to the point about expectations, even as we have certain expectations of people, make room for them that many times the delivery will not be as expected. Appreciate the effort that people put in, appreciate their time. Appreciate the fact the conversation didn’t go the way you wanted but still they were willing to talk to you. Learn to look out for those who truly care instead of focusing just on the spectators of your life.

CONCLUSION OF THE MATTER

Now the point of this is not to ask you to lower your expectations with people in life but to have them realistically. Continue to live life with expectation. Expect good things to come your way, expect breakthroughs, expect new seasons, expect new friendships. But also to bear in mind the three points being mentioned above.

People will always be people, make room for failure and try to give them the benefit of the doubt. Learn to see yourself accurately and don’t freak out if you realize you are really not that important. Lastly, appreciate people’s efforts, this will help you to go easy on expecting too much. And the next time if things go your way, great, and if they don’t, that’s fine too.

Are there other ways you know of to deal with managing expectation from people?

Missions Experience: Ukraine

It’s been slightly over 3 weeks since I came back to Singapore. I have not blogged much about my missions experience but I think I should do so to capture some of these memories while they are still fresh in my mind.

I haven’t wrote much about it during my time there because firstly there was so much to do, and frankly there wasn’t much motivation for writing. Secondly, I think most of activities day in-and-out were pretty repetitive and routine. I mean a lot happened in 11 months, and if you count in the training months too, that’s a total of 13 months involved in missions. But a lot more was learnt in the consistent repetition of things. I wrote in my church bulletin that this period had been a time of self discovery, stretching and growth and how I likened it to the moments of obscurity David must have felt tending his father’s sheep.

The invention of instastories, though great for keeping up to date with current happenings of friends or things back home, can also make it seem like the whole world is getting ahead of you. Friends getting married, people going on vacations, families enjoying the festivity and holidays. It can all make it seem like you’re missing out on life altogether. The challenge is there to remain faithful in doing what is needed even as the world passes you by. David may have felt a little like that, overlooked doing the menial task of watching over sheep. But we also realize that in this story, that his time tending sheep ultimately prepared him for the fight against the giant Goliath.

This is a reminder to self too, that the race of life is just set for yourself, this is not a competition with others, but rather to live it out purposefully, through the seasons that comes your way. I believe this season God put me through was a good training ground for future challenges and battles.

In fact, the word ‘seasons’ was the word of 2018. It was not only the name of one of my favourite songs by Hillsong, but also a reality for me because it was the first time in my life, I lived through the four seasons. Singapore is summer all year round in case you didn’t know. But seasons shows us there is a time for everything, from sowing to harvest time to barrenness. It teaches a little bit about patience and endurance. And to see the clear defining lines of what Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter was like, was truly one of the highlights of this journey.

Seasons the song, had a line in it which goes “from seed to Sequoia”, and this holds a powerful truth in it. You might be aware the Sequoia tree is the largest tree on earth, where the width of its trunk could be the size of the width of a road. Google it! But its an amazing thought to think that it all started with a tiny seed. In fact its a mind-blowing thought! God saw it fit that the process of growth takes time. How often in life do we just want to skip to the good parts? I want to quickly graduate school, I want to get married fast, I want to clear this season or I want to skip past this hard part. We’re thinking God let this cup pass, but God says I put you here for a purpose. Someone once said, as we grow older we realize our lives play out in seasons, and this is so true.

So being on the mission field taught me how God is much more interested in developing our character than just bringing us to a destination. We can see this in the life of a Sequoia tree – or any tree for that matter – growing strong and sturdy through the seasons instead of just springing up immediately. It took years upon years for it’s grandeur to materialize.

Over this period, I got to play a small part in advancing God’s Kingdom. In the grand scheme of things, our efforts were just scratching the surface, but just like a seed being planted, I don’t know the end result yet. Time will tell. It still amazes me how different individuals or families we simply met on the street responded and opened their home to us to hold meetings there. It was even more amazing we got to baptize 4 different individuals! Us as Asians who had a hard time speaking the language, but them entrusting us with their time and with the Word of God was truly a humbling experience. I wouldn’t be surprised if collectively the 4 of us spoke to a thousand people, but only a handful remained and these were the God prepared ones.

Some interesting experiences I had in my time in Ukraine, besides holding bible studies, was that I got to witness a deer being operated on at a vet clinic where someone I befriended was working at as an anesthesiologist. I got to walk a husky! One of our contact’s dog. I got invited into a few homes and had the pleasure to play some music for those who had a guitar or piano. Also got to have bible lessons pretty regularly with one of our disciples on his bus during his break time, which was rather a unique experience! Had the blessing of travelling to two other parts of Ukraine for a short getaway too; Kamyanets Podilsky a small town with a castle and Lviv, said to be the most beautiful city in Ukraine.

Overall, it was a pretty fulfilling time there. Sure there were tough days, days where I was just thinking “What in the world am I doing here?” Days where I just look at the calendar and count the days or weeks left till I return. But hindsight always look sweet. I’m glad I made it, and finished the journey I committed to start. Now for the next chapter of my life!