So You Don't Want To Go To Church Anymore

So You Don't Want To Go To Church Anymore by Jake Colsen

This book is good....Beware, though.. it will turn your life upside down. I must admit, as I read this book, some of Jake's behaviour reminds me of me. Here are some of the things I read and would like to share with you.

This book basically tells us that we shouldn't be so caught up with being in a good Christian family, attending the biggest church in town, using all our energy in so many different departments, trying to outdo our fellow brothers, trying to impress our leaders, setting lots of rules and regulations so that everything will be in perfect order, forcing ourselves to go to meetings just to keep up with the attendance,... and many more. Pretenses are not what God is looking for. Looking holy once a week is not God's idea of a loving relationship with men.

You may have read the bible 100 times over, graduated with Honors in Theology or even helped built a church but it doesn't mean anything if you have lost your first love for God.

Living a Christian life is strange sometimes. When you first become a Christian, you want to do so much for God. You planned and envision how your future would be with new Christian activities that would draw people to Christ. You hoped to contribute to every one of these activities so that the whole church would know how much you love God. You will get an applause from the congregation when the Pastor reads your name out loud but what really counts is God's appreciation.

You can be in so many ministries, maybe serving God 7 times a week but all He wants is your company. So many times we are busy with God's work, that we have no time to fellowship with God. It makes the things we do for God not only meaningless but to a point of destructiveness. And I quote this from the book, page 34 "We are so quickly captured by a work-driven religious culture that thrives on guilt, conformity, and manipulation that it devours the very love it seeks to sustain."



Sometimes we are so bored with going to weekly meetings, so fed-up with praying the same prayer, fasting but hating it, talking to newcomers but wishing we were somewhere else and we don't know why we go through it. Is it because it's routine... or categorized as what Christians must do? Or if we don't do, God will not reward us? Have we just lowered God to our standards when we think this way?

Guilt is a terrible feeling. Some people question others when they don't turn up in church. Some people ask with a concerned heart and some just want to make them feel terrible. The problem is, most of us try to encourage people to come to church by making them feel guilty. We don't spend enough time with them and to get to know their worries and we make them feel worse when we question or even worse.. gossip.. when we don't see them in church.

What about failures? We seem to think that we fail because we don't pray enough or we skipped a weekly meeting some time back.. or we didn't help Bro Lee with his troubled car last weekend.. or.. the list can go on. We fail because we don't trust God, our Creator enough to see us through the project or problems. We thought we could help God help ourselves and we fail to remember that God is Sovereign and He alone knows how to deal with our situation. By trusting God, we can experience real freedom. Be frank with God. He is big enough to handle all our troubled thoughts and difficulties. He knows how to get you through the mess you are in now and when we trust Him to be Lord over our lives, He will lead us to greater heights, higher than we can even imagine.

Some of us may have prayed like this before, "God bless me, bless me.... I am Your child God, I did so much you Lord, saved a thousand people for You yesterday in the Youth Rally....". I've learned that we should give up the illusion of controlling our lives or that we would manipulate God to bless us. He knows what the best is for us and He will provide. No matter how bleak the future is, God knows our every need and He provides accordingly. God doesn't bless us on our terms. We will all be goners if God did exactly what we wanted.

So often we are in this religious system with invincible laws and one of it says we can only be friends if we are in the same activity or ministry. We create cliques and ignore others who are not serving in the same ministry. We try to win our brothers' hearts by praising them. In return we want praise and approval from them too. We are owned by "friends" who praised us. We are obligated to do things for people or to feed their egos and we convince one another that this is the best ministry to serve in. We create false expectations among our fellow brothers and focus too much on what the group needs rather than the presence of Christ.

I could go on and on with this book... but why don't you get one and read it for yourself? BTW, I'm not paid to advertise. :)

Missionette's Coronation 2008

Last Sunday, the Missionettes in Agape had their 14th Coronation. Missionettes is a program for girls which provides an environment for them to grow in their walk in Christ and to develop their gifts and talents.

The Friends Club led in the praise and worship session with Jess leading the worship.

The Daisies, Prims and Stars presented a few songs.

This year 5 girls graduated and were crowned. It was a happy occasion and many turned up to support the Missionettes.

Shifting house

No, not I. My cousin planned to shift house today. I went over to help her pack but when I reached her place, there wasn't much I could do. My parents and Aunt Chris were there since 8.30AM. I may have come a little too late (1pm) and there were things to do but I couldn't help much because my cousin wanted to know exactly what goes into which box and it was best that she do it alone. I must say, I was really amazed at how organized and efficient my cousin was. We could only help her by wrapping all the glassware with newspapers, tying the boxes with raffia strings, folding all the bedsheets, blankets and putting them outside the living hall.

We couldn't shift the big items today because the lorry was too small. We needed at least a 3 ton lorry. We could have gone a few rounds but the lorry came late. It was supposed to come at 5.30 pm, but came only at 7pm. Furthermore, they were charging RM120 per trip... within the same garden. Ridiculous isn't it?

So tomorrow, they are going to engage another lorry. Hopefully she is able to shift everything by tomorrow.

The breadmaker machine has to go

So what do you make out of this picture? Flat white bread and ugly looking distorted wholemeal and poppy seed bread.

It has been 1 week since we had this Kenwood breadmaker machine and we made about 7 loaves as of today. The white loaves turns out the best (although it looks as it we didn't put any yeast), but the wholemeal ones were lousy.

My mom will be sending the machine back to let them check for flaws. My guess is, it's something to do with the heating element.My reasoning is simple; sometimes in the middle of the baking session, there is no heat generating from the machine.

Let's hope they give us a new machine fast, because I really do enjoy fresh homemade bread. :)

Do not worry

It's so easy to say... "ai yah... don't worry so much lah" when you are not in the other person's shoes. It's so easy to say to others.... "God will bless you" when you are not in need. It's so easy to say so many things when life is good, but when we face trials and hardships, we worry, we ask God why these things must happen to us. We forget God, our Creator and dwell on our problems.

Ever since my neighbour moved out 2 months ago, the garden was filled with all sorts of weeds. Even in this dry season, the plants grew... taller and taller each day. Today I spotted some wild flowers in this unkempt garden. They looked beautiful. It reminded me of this passage of scripture taken from Matthew 6 :28-32 -

And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labour or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, "What shall we eat?" or "What shall we wear?" For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them.

The key verse is this - Matthew 6:33

But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well.

And continue with this verse..

Matthew 6:34
Therefore do not worry about tomorrow,for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of it's own.

I, like every other person have my own share of worries. Some worries are cannot-sleep-worries and some are worry-for-the moment..... and some worry-for-the-future. I once thought,what if my sister dies? How will my life be?.. and I started crying. Silly, right to cry for what might or might not happen in the future?

At this point there are some worries which are constantly bugging me everyday, and I'm still learning how to trust God completely, so that I will have a worry-free life.

Belalang

Spotted a belalang (grasshopper) in my house compound. I zoomed and managed to capture this pose before it hopped away. Can't believe that in certain parts of the world, people eat this as a delicacy!!

The muffins were delicious

Earlier today, I was contemplating on whether to make muffins for cell, or just spend the rest of the evening doing what I was suppose to do. As you can see, I hauled my lazy self to the kitchen and started baking muffins.

I didn't taste it this time, but according to my cell members, it was superb. (Thanks to Ruth who gave me the recipe) Even Uncle Chong who almost never eat cakes, took one and had no complains about it.

Maybe I will make some on Sunday, and for those volunteered guinea-pigs (eg - kg, Jian and JoelC), you will get your share, ok? :)