Early Saturday, I posted about the kind of love that we all need–the only type of love that I desire in this so-called life: that is, true, Biblical love.  The past few days I’ve been thinking hard and deep about it, and I just wanna reflect about the kind of love I don’t need, the type that we all should not even want.  It’s the kind that is fake, deceiving, fading, and doesn’t mean anything.  some would go as far as calling it the “Greco-Roman myth of romantic love“, or u may prefer calling it lust, or plain evil distractions that steal our attentions from real, Godly, Christ-like אהֲבָה (”a-ha-vah”).

On satruday while I was at Pacific Mall shopping for a new hard drive, I could not help but be distracted by the countless scantily-clad Chinese girls/young ladies that were out and about revealing plenty of skin.  Summer is in and since apparently it’s also the 21st century, modesty is out.  I can run, but I cannot hide from it–it was every where.  It was distracting, and my mind came to think about what I really wanted in life.

Is this love?  Does this all matter?  It often floats my boat, but really, what difference does it make?  Does this immodest present evil age edify me, or my sisters in Christ?  Does it build character, and enhance our relationship with each other or with God?  Does it grow relationships and deepen our friendship?  All the answers were no.  In fact, it causes destruction and discension, it tears relationships apart, and in turn, makes us hurt each other badly for the rest of our lives.  To consider this more deeply, look back on Ephesians 5:3-7 and why Paul says there must not even be a hint of sexual immorality or impurity in us.  *Check out the latter half of John MacArthur’s article about what happens “when love is bad“.

And so, I ended up walking around looking at tech toys and chose not to look a second more.  Who knows, some out there might have even be Christians, and for that I am saddened and pray for them.

“likewise also that women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self-control, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly attire, but with what is proper for women who profess godliness–with good works.”  (1 Timothy 2:9-10)

For a good reflection on this verse, see this post at the Girl Talk blog.

I reflect upon my life and my requirements for my significant other, girlfriend, wiife, life partner.  And then I thoughtfully consider the prospect in my life now. Dark Eyes.  I admire her so much for her godliness, her fear of the Lord… She cares so little about the earthly things that so many others care about… she’s not materialistic, nor thinks about shopping all the time, nor is tempted & itchy to.  She doesn’t have her hair dyed in today’s most fashionable colour, nor adornes herself with the latest style and fads.  She’s modest, and dresses modestly in such a beautiful way, and I praise her for simply that.  I came to be interested in her from her inner beauty of Christ-like humility, and her skin-deep beauty seems to be a direct overflow of that which is in heart: she’s God and wants to glorify Him in and through her whole being, including what what she wears, how she dresses, what she does/doesn’t do to her body.  She’s a woman transformed by His grace and seeking to live her life for His glory, and LOL, I fancy that!

Saturday night I went to ’sauga for a CC worship team meeting/debrief at Kat’s place, and we just talked honestly about what happened at CC in terms of our ministry.  Words flew, tears fell, and many “sorry”s are in order.  I have to say, I do have disappoint in my heart about how things turned out this year, feeling so helpless about what I could have done to make it better.  It’s very possible that Satan really didn’t want us to magnify Christ at CC this year, and as such, circumstances weren’t in the right place logistically, various team members weren’t on top of their game, lead worshippers didn’t handle things correctly, and I in turn didn’t respond to all this correctly either.  I have to apologize for the email I wrote in emotional spite, and I’m sincerely sorry about hurting anybody’s feelings.

From this year’s CC, I just know that it is a huge learning experience… I think I made a big mistake a few months ago that I regret and cannot take back.  It’s evidence that the past still haunts me, that I still have open wounds and scars, that I am damaged, broken, and scary (see Grey’s Anatomy).  As much as I try to completely forget what happened 9months ago, I cannot hide from it, and I’m still trying to let it not hinder my life and day-to-day living.  I strive to forget what lies behind and strain forward to what lies ahead in my upward call in Christ Jesus.  I push towards keeping it all out of sight and consequently out of mind.  If it is in God’s will, God will make it happen.. I’ve done all that I can do, I know it and God knows it, and there’s been growing peace in this thankfully.

At the end of August 2005, my plans for the future got shattered and I stopped planning.  But looking into those Dark, pretty Eyes, I have plans… big plans for the future. I’ve begun to plan again, and there is much joy and happiness because of this!  I need prayers for patience and humility, sincerity.  May it be that my passionate persistence is doing me less good, then that too then, that my pride may be broken… for being quick to listen and slow to speak.  To love a sister sacrificially, as Christ first loved me.

I’m not sure if there’s some glitch in my website’s statistics, but to the 800 plus weekly visitors to my site, grace and peace to you from our Lord Jesus Christ, and glory to God our Father.  I hope this long post would be edifying to you.

I read this today during my daily dose of Spiritually-edifying blog reading.  It’s a very well-explained discussion on love by one my fave pastor/theologians, John MacArthur!  Makes me wanna thump my Bible and scream Scripture at fellow born-again Christians who for various unbiblical reasons still live by the Greco-Roman myth of romantic love!!

“All you need is love.”

So said the Beatles. If they’d been singing about God’s love, the statement would have a grain of truth in it.

But what usually goes by the name love in popular culture is not authentic love at all; it’s a deadly fraud. Far from being “all you need,” it’s something you desperately need to avoid.

The apostle Paul makes that very point in Ephesians 5:1-3. He writes, “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints.”

The simple command of verse 2 (”walk in love, as Christ loved us”) sums up the whole moral obligation of the Christian. After all, God’s love is the single, central principle that defines the Christian’s entire duty.

This kind of love is really “all you need.” Romans 13:8-10 says, “The one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The commandments . . . are summed up in this word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.” Galatians 5:14 echoes that selfsame truth: “The whole law is fulfilled in one word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”

Jesus likewise taught that all the law and the prophets hang on two simple principles about love—the First and Second Great Commandments (Matt. 22:38-40). In other words, “love . . . is the bond of perfection” (Colossians 3:14, NKJV).

When Paul commands us to walk in love, the context reveals that in positive terms, he is talking about being kind, tenderhearted, and forgiving to one another (Ephesians 4:32). The model for such selfless love is Christ, who gave His life to save His people from their sins. “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lays down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). And “if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another” (1 John 4:11).

In other words, true love is always sacrificial, self-giving, merciful, compassionate, sympathetic, kind, generous, and patient. These and many other positive, benevolent qualities (cf 1 Cor. 13:4-8) are what Scripture associates with divine love.

…

The rest of the article is here.

Wowsers! I wish I wrote this:-) LOL  A very objective look at bibliology which seems quite reformed in its foundations.  If only my church, fellowship and friends would endorse such a high view of the scriptures… and move from topical towards a full on expository method of preaching.  I found this very edifying to my understanding of the sovereign place of scripture in faith and life: fully sufficient and all-encompassing for all aspects of life–if only we all continually read it and understood it for what it was originally written for instead of picking and choosing what fits our appetite.

“You may have hopes that you can open your Bible and get a quick dose of spiritual wisdom but the Bible wasn’t written to you. You may want to claim a verse like “I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth” but that verse isn’t a verse about parenting and its not about your children. “It is appointed to men to die once and then comes the judgment” is not a verse about death and judgment, it’s a supporting argument of a larger discourse discussing Christ’s atonement. “I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith” is not a verse about evangelism. Sounds like it in isolation but in the larger picture of the book it’s talking about Philemon’s generosity.

The Bible isn’t a fortune cookie that you can crack open and get out a pithy little message that’s going to help you through the day. Instead it is a collection of books, poems, histories, tragedies and more and if you want to “apply it to your life” you’ve first got to consider how that particular message was meant to apply to someone else’s life. That’s right, the Bible wasn’t written to you. It was written to the people of Israel, and Philemon, and Theophilus and the church at Corinth. But that ain’t you. So you’re reading someone else’s mail. Or listening in on one half of a phone conversation. If you want to apply it to your life, first you’ve got to approach the text carefully, even humbly and ask, “What was the original author saying to the original readers and why?” That’s not an easy question. You won’t be able to answer it in just five minutes of Bible reading a day. You won’t be able to answer that question by jumping from one section of the Bible to the next as you go through your Bible reading plan. Imagine reading the Sunday paper like you read your Bible. Monday you read one paragraph of the front page, then you read one paragraph of the sports section, now jump over to the opinion page and read a paragraph there. That’s all for today. On Tuesday you can continue reading the lead story and find out how the game ended and read some more of the op-ed piece. Is that the way you read the paper? Why not? Because chopping up the Sunday paper like that destroys the message.

…

The Bible wasn’t written to you, but it was written for you. Read it the right way and you’ll hear the voice of God.”

–Written by Lingamish, visit his blog for the full post.

(HT: Better Bibles Blog)

“Over the last few years I’ve been thinking a lot about the wonder, mystery and ‘otherness’ of God. To all of these attributes of God the ultimate response is reverence. And the ultimate physical expression of reverence is to bow as low as you can go. To fall *facedown*.  It wasn’t until recently I’ve realised just how much facedown worship goes on throughout scripture.  When you start looking for it, you soon begin to see that, whether on earth or around the throne room in heaven, there’s a whole lot of worship of the facedown kind.  Before long, a song was born out of these thoughts–when we face up to the glory of God, we soon find ourselves facedown in worship.”
–Matt Redman

Memories of a season of humble reverence and awe.

Welcomed in to the courts of the king
Ive been ushered into your presence
Lord i stand on your merciful ground
Yet with every step tread reverence

And I’ll fall face down
As Your Glory shines around
Yes, I’ll fall face down
As Your Glory shines around

There is none in the heavens like you
And on the earth, who’s your equal
You are far above, Your the highest of heights

So let your glory shine around
Let your glory shine around
King of glory here be found
King of glory

- 

I’ll try to upload my CC’06 photos soon…sorry for the delay.  I’ve been thinking, processing, and reflecting a lot on what has happened, what we have done as a team of lead worshippers, what God has done for a generation that is broken, wounded and hurt.  I’ll get to uploading them very shortly, it just hasn’t been on top of my priority list.

Words and Music by Christy and Nathan Nockels

VERSE:
C  C/B         Am  Gsus
In my heart, in my eyes, in my soul, in my life,
F   Gsus
How I need Your pure glory
C  C/B         Am  Gsus
In my rest, in my work, in my secret, in my worship,
F   Gsus
How I need Your pure glory

CHORUS:
Am   F          C  Gsus
Unveil my heart, let me look upon Your face,
F    Gsus  
Pure glory fall down on me
Am  F
And I’ll spend all my days,
C   Gsus
On the riches of Your grace.
F   Gsus  C
Let my life count as pure glory for Your name

-

Download a Live recording of Pure Glory, performed by Candi-Shelton Pearson. 

This past weekend, I was at Trent University in Peterborough, ON for the 2006 Campus Challenge.  It was my 2nd year in a row being “Worship Coordinator”, but this time, I gave myself the title Coordinator/Advisor because I stayed off the stage for the most part, not really part of the onstage team leading the music.  It was a different experience from what I did last year, and definitely a learning experience.

Yesterday was a pretty unproductive day at work for me, because I was struggling with the aftermath of CC’06 worship.  Below is the email I sent to my worship team, CC’ed to the CC Committee.  In short, I am simply struggling with trying to understand why various on-stage musical blunders have happened, hindering and distracting the delegate’s ability to worship.  A significant number of things were done that should not have been done, things said that no veteran, experienced worship leader would dare say during a Sunday Worship Service, let alone a large student ministry conference… Right now, weighing out the successes and failures of the entire team (myself included), I am struggling with a glorious God who is quite disappointed that we did not make His praise glorious enough.

Just because the Spirit manisfested itself quite visibly on Saturday and Sunday night does not discredit the fact that the lack of musical excellence and joking/laughing about it de-valued the sanctity of being in God’s sanctuary, the Holiest of Holies.  I praise GOD with a prostrate posture in my heart for His grace and mercy, for living in the New Testament era…cos God forbid, if we were in the Old Testament, the manisfestation of our LORD God would not be pretty–and we would really experience for ourselves what “Holy is the LORD God Almighty, the earth is filled with His glory”–it would really be “awesome”, as in the correct meaning of this Biblical word: aweful, terrible, scary.

But thank you LORD for Your begotten Son, Jesus Christ, our Saviour…who is our propitiation.  And I suppose I shouldn’t over-analyze things, and just relax, and listen to God speak His Words over me, 1 Samuel 3:10.

I dunno, I think I need a vacation.  Like really, a vacation.  Last night, I got home from work, watched the season finale of The O.C….and then fell asleep waiting for my mom to finish cooking dinner.  By the time I woke up to go to the washroom, it was almost 10pm, and I just didn’t have it in my hear to go eat.  My stomach didn’t growl or make any noises… I was just soo tired from wrestling in my heart and my mind all day about how the CC’06 worship ministry went.

Thankfully, I had a dream, a very nice and peaceful dream, which involved me and a young lady with pretty, dark eyes and an brownish/green ae shirt… nothing spectacular happened, but it was just a really slow moving scene: we made eye contact with each other from a distance, and walked towards each other.  the dream didnt have us meeting and talking or anything at all, but we just smiled and waved and slowly began advancing towards each other.  And that was it…that was all I can remember, and all I really need.  It made my night very restful and peaceful.

What more, I woke up…check my email–and got an email from her =D  LOL  A good start to a better day than yesterday!  I think my pretty words are coming back to me–I missed them yesterday!

Hi team,

CC 2006 has passed, and the time has come for you all on the Worship Team to reflect on your worship, as a worshipper, as an instrumentalist, as a so-called “worship leader“… on the good and the bad, the successful and unsuccessful.  The general feeling I have in my heart, soul, mind, and strength is… bittersweet.  If you would like to discuss with me how you felt about your / the team’s success in being an

an effective corporate worship leader,
aided and led by the Holy Spirit,
who skillfully combines biblical truth with music
to magnify the worth of God and the redemptive work of Jesus Christ,
thereby motivating the gathered church
to join him in proclaiming and cherishing the truth about God
and seeking to live all of life for the glory of God…

please call me, and we shall meet up to talk.  I love Starbucks and would be very happy to be treated to a grande caramel macchiato ;-P

I’ve been listening to the recordings of the conference worship music, and I am, umm, umm, umm, speechless.  <>   From listening and reflecting in solitude, I’ve been seeking God to examine me, to find reasons why various songs/sets turned out the way they turned out.  In general 2 major reasons I have concluded is: 1st* musical leadership hindered by excessive fun times as friends; 2nd* nothing really except that Paul’s words in Romans 1:20 comes to mind “without excuse”.

To say that some people we’re able to glorify God in our “falling short” and thus worship went well, is insufficient.  To say that most we’re hindered/distracted from worshipping God by our falling short and hence worship didn’t go well, would be more accurate.  To figure out in your own heart whether or not you made His praise glorious through your playing/singing/leading, this is of utmost importance.

Many things to think about before any of us lead musically any type of worship service again, whether it be in a group of 3 friends at home or 200 people at church… It’s been a memorable time serving with you, and pray God will transform you from glory to glory.  I am a true believer that things don’t grow on mountain tops, but in the valley: the majority of our growth and learning experience will not be at the mountain of CC’06 but rather from going back into the valley that is our daily lives.

As always, SDG,

-Alex

See a devotional we did a while back
 

In 1971, the great 20th century preacher, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, brought these remarks to an annual Minister’s conference:

“We must not be content until we have had some manifestation of the activity of God. We must concentrate on this. This is my plea, that we concentrate on this, because it is the great message of the Bible, so substantiated by the lessons of history. That is obviously today the only thing that gives us any hope as we face the future. And God seems to be saying that to us. ‘Prove Me now. Try Me. Risk your everything on Me. Be fools for My sake. Cast yourselves utterly upon this belief.’ Let us put it like this: Do we really believe that God can still act? That is the question; that is the ultimate challenge. Or have we, for theological or some other reasons, excluded the very possibility? Here is the crucial matter. Do we individually and personally really believe that God still acts, can act and will act - in individuals, in groups of individuals, in churches, localities, perhaps even in countries? Do we believe that He is as capable of doing that today as He was in ancient times - the Old Testament, the New Testament times, the book of Acts, Protestant Reformation, Puritans, Methodist Awakening, 1859, 1904-5? Do we really believe that He can still do it? You see, it is ultimately what you believe about God. If He is the great Jehovah - I am that I am, I am that I shall be, unchanged, unchanging, unchangeable, the everlasting and eternal God - well, He can still do it.”

What does a manifestation of the activity of God look like? How do we know God is present to act? The most significant evidence of God’s activity is conversion, when a defiant rebel is miraculously transformed into a forgiven lover of God through the Gospel and the power of the Spirit. Lavish generosity and humble servanthood can also be evidences of God’s activity. People who no longer live for their own glory but for the glory of the Savior display God’s power at work. I’m among those who believe that the gifts of the Spirit described in various New Testament passages (1 Cor. 12, 14, Eph. 4, etc.), such as prophetic impressions and healing, continue to this day. They, too, are a sign that God is active in our midst.

However, I’m sobered and challenged by Lloyd-Jones’ question: “Do we really believe that God can still act?” He is asking if we have faith for God to move among us in clear, distinct, and powerful ways. He is asking us to consider if we are settling for an “appearance of godliness, but denying its power?” (2 Tim. 3:5)  At the end of the day are we placing more trust in God’s activity or ours? I find that I can still approach congregational meetings in a way that expecting God’s active presence is almost an afterthought. Maybe you’ve had the same experience.

Scripture explains God’s presence in different ways. Psalm 139 and other passages teach that He is present everywhere at the same time. Quite a feat. But, there are many Scriptural examples of God making his presence known in a unique way. Some of these are expected, as when we gather to share the Lord’s supper or sing His praise (1 Cor. 11:23-32; Eph. 5:18-20). Other times, God reveals his presence and activity in ways that are startling and affecting. In 1 Cor. 14:23-25 Paul seems to assume that will be a regular occurrence in our meetings if we are responding to the Spirit’s leading. Unbelievers will fall down and proclaim, “God is really among you!”

How do we respond to Lloyd-Jones’ penetrating question - “Do we really believe that God can still act?” – without falling into emotionalism or idolizing experience? How do we maintain a balance between celebrating God’s presence among us and expectantly looking for his active presence?

What about you? Where do you need to grow in faith for God’s activity in your life and your church? How have you maintained a balance between celebrating God’s promised presence through ordinary means and an expectation for his supernatural activity in unexpected ways?

(HT: Bob Kauflin)