rich young ruler...

I was listening to this year's Club 5 tapes while walking towards my bank. I was up to the part where Phillip Jensen was talking about how when we read of the rich young ruler we always think of someone else but we dont realise that we are rich young rulers ourselves. Then he talked about how money is power, and when you have power the world treats you better.

So I went into the bank and I asked the woman at the counter whether I could apply for a credit card, and how much income per year I needed etc. She probably saw me and thought, this young guy cant even afford a razor blade to shave, he probably doesnt have that much annual income to get a credit card.. she wasnt very polite with me, and kept doing the paper work that she was doing while talking to me. When I was filling in the application form, I asked her if I had to fill in the employers address (which i didnt know) she told me to come back when I got the address. But later, after I filled out the form, she looked at it and saw my income and investments and my home address and she was suddenly really nice to me and said I didnt have to worry about employer address because it doesnt really matter.

I feel like such a rich young ruler.. wealth makes it so much harder to give away all you have to the poor.


I hope this sunday our church will give generously to the relief effort for people in South Asia. I knew several people including my parents who were in the affect areas at the time. We have been given so much by God I hope we will be willing to give much back.

NTE/ work/ Comquip

I came back from NTE last sunday night. I've been dying to blog about it but I've been really really busy. NTE was really great!

The first part of NTE is like KYLC, so we had strand groups and talks. The talks from David Cook were on 2 Tim. It was pretty good and David's illustrations and stories are always interesting and useful. Phillip Jensen was also there and he spoke on the doctrine of evangelism. He talked about stuff like God's sovereignty, what is the gospel, the godliness of the evangelist, the gospel and the response, full time ministry, etc. The thing I remembered most was hearing that God doesnt need us to do evangelism; he can achieve his purposes without us. It was also funny that Phillip said "gospel" might not mean "good news", but "news, told well".

Phillip also briefly mentioned some guy in the US who wrote how God, in the cross, took 999 steps to save us, and we have to take 1 step. However, this would mean that we have something to boost of, because we were smart enough to take that one step. Does anyone know who wrote that about the steps?

Another memorable part of Phillips talks was when he asked 4 questions after talking about the cross -
1. Have you been saved?
2. Have you done with sin?
3. Do you count yourself as nothing?
4. Are you going to follow Jesus by laying down your life for others.

If anyone wants to borrow the talks; I will have them soon.

After that, we went to Central Coast for mission.

Mission..

Conditions were much tougher than I imagined, but God made it easier than I expected. Yes the accomodation was shocking (for me); there are never ants in my apartment since they cant survive that high, and I havent seen spiders in years. At mission we were living with them all around us. How can there be ants on the ground?! What's a mosquito?!

But mission was so great - we visited nursing homes and sang carols to old people and read the bible to them and prayed with them (mostly non christians), we did some walk up and door knocking, and helped lead the local evangelical church's youth group and sunday schools. It was also a really good experience living with Christian people for 10 days; I've never been around Christian people for that long, and it made me really sad to come home where I dont really have anyone. I was so encouraged by so many people there, especially those who were raised in much tougher conditions than me.

I also had the opportunity to give lots of talks at NTE.. actually 4 talks in 5 days.. I gave 2 talks on Luke 2:25-35, and 2 talks on Romans 12:1-2. I was really nervous at first but I think I improved. I dont know why I did so many talks.. but it was fun, and I'm sure I was a lot less bored than the people who had to listen to my talk!

A few memorable lines from NTE:
"me and simon will look like illegal immigrants if we walk around handing out flyers" - because we were the only Asians in the central coast
"you're not doing my talk, you're doing God's talk!!" - simon reminding me who I'm doing it for (simon asked me to do the talk he was suppose to do at 11pm the night before)
"dont worry, God uses evil for good" - pete comforting me after I said that my talk was going to be really crap and probably heretical. cant believe my mts worker called me evil!!
"do not comform to this world.. do not comform to this world.. do not comform to this world.. do not comform to this world.. do not comform to this world.. " - pete using romans 12:2, the verse i preached on, to rebuke me constantly after I bought a whole lot of stuff I dont need.

Oh, and also one night during mission, we watched an episode of Hillsong's worship service that someone taped. It was quite an unusual sermon that Brian Houston preached, I thought. John 16:8 "And when He has come, He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment.." Even though the verse is about the Spirit convicting us, Brian starts talking about how we need to be people of conviction, which means that we shouldnt try to live up to people's expectations and we need to be people of consequence.. I dont know how he got that in the passage ; he didnt explain what conviction meant, what the spirit was convicting us of, where jesus comes into it, what the passage has to do with people's expectations of us, and being people of consequence. Oh well, its ok to not preach expositionally, and I'm sure Hillsong regulars know what those words mean in their own way.

After I came back from mission, the very next day I was starting work at an accounting firm. After working a day there, I thought, do I have to come back tomorrow? And, how am I going to get through the next few weeks?? Accounting is the most boring work in the world, and its so pointless!

These few days I've also been really confused about my subject choices for the next 2 years, because I am not sure how certain I am that I want to do ministry full time for the rest of my life, and if I dont, what job I am going to do in the future. I've thought all my life that I'd go into finance, but I think now that I'd like to be a maths teacher, because its a much more ministry friendly job. I am just worried at what my Dad's response will be like.

On Thursday we had Comquip, which is a training day for Christians in Commerce. We had some short talks from the Psalms, and a seminar on how to read the psalms, a seminar critqueing some songs (Blessed), and a seminar on how to write talks.
The most interesting thing was comparing the song Blessed to the Psalm on which it was based - Psalm 84. Even though Blessed quotes from the Psalm, they have very different meanings and even suggests (without any basis from the Psalm) that God will bless the land of those who dwell in God's house. And where do you get "Come bless our land" from?? How do you get that from Psalm 84? How do you sing that without thinking about the prosperity gospel?

Obituary

Iris Chang, author of "The Rape of Nanking" passed away on Nov 9 aged 36.

I only found out about this through the Economist's obituary section this week.

The Nanking Massacre has been something close to my heart ever since I heard about roughly what happened from my Dad in year 8. For those who don't know, in 1937, Japanese troops seized the city of Nanking, and within a few weeks, they massacred the civilians of the city, killing around 200 000 civilians, and raping 80 000 women and girls. To summarise, this happened:





This is considered the Holocaust of Asia. While it is historically accepted fact - although the exact numbers slaughtered are unclear - the Japanese government to this day refuses to admit the massacre ever occurred. It has also suppressed this truth in the Japanese education system. Today, the majority of Japanese citizenships believe this massacre never happened.

When I see this happen, I think back to the sovereignty and perfection of God, and the judgement day to come. We should continue to pray for the government of Japan to apologise for this atrocity, to ask for forgiveness from the victims and from God, but also to pray that we will be willing to forgive such men, and to continue to love them.

Iris Chang, began suffering depressing and losing weight while working on her book, as she uncovered more and more horrific stories. Once, face to face with the Japanese ambassador to America, she asked for an apology, but he simply said that there had been "perhaps some unfortunate incidents". She died last month after shooting herself in the head.

Cross Training and stuff

Last Sunday I went to Cross Training, and we talked about going into full time ministry and about systematic theology. Andrew Lim preached on 2Cor 5:13-15, imploring us to have Paul's conviction and to live for Christ. Later, we did some introductory lessons on how to write a topical study, and we used spiritual gifts as an example. I reckon if I was giving a study about spiritual gifts, the main point to get across is LOVE. Don't focus on what gifts you have or want, but just love people as much as possible. Lastly, Tom Tokura gave a talk from Phil 1:12-30 about full time ministry as well. It really made me think when he talked about how we have to remind why we do what we do as Christians. Its not just for people who go into full time ministry either; all Christians will have to make decisions in their lives that are not for Christ, and seem weird to the world. And in 5, 10, 20 years time we will look at our non-Christian friends who has the sports car and the penthouse and we will have to look back to the cross and remember why we do it.

On Tuesday morning I had an O week meeting to talk about the organisation of O week this year. Turns out a lot of the people quit so there was just 2 students and 3 MTSers - and we are in charge of the overall O week mission planning! Hmmm.. Lots of prayer required..

By the way, please invite any 2005 first years to O Day on 16/2/05 at UNSW. And any UNSW students free during 14-25 of Feb should register for Kick-On/O-Day/O-Week as soon as possible. If you are planning to come but haven't registered, you have to this year because I am in the executive team and I am particularly slow.

On Wednesday morning I went to an NTE meeting with the Commerce group. During the meeting I found out during the mission, the guys would be sleeping outdoors on tents! Very worried now. I've never slept in a tent before..

I also found out that I would be giving a short bible talk on Romans 12:1-2. I'm glad my MTS workers thought I could do it, but now I'm so nervous! How can I speak on just 2 verses?! Only really hardcore experienced preachers can do that! Would it be cheating to listen to other people's Romans 12:1-2 sermons for help??