Reprogramming Our Minds To Change The World

”Don’t copy the behaviour and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think.” (Romans 12:2)

"The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven" wrote John Milton. This echoes the truth of Romans 12:2 which highlights the importance of letting God transform our lives by reprogramming our minds. There is a tremendous power of Love that is in each one of us. All of us have the potential to change the world. We don't need unusual training or ability to change the world.  All that is required, according to Matthew Barnett, is "a heart that cares, a mind that’s determined, a spirit that’s willing, a cause that matters, and a person to help."

What we need is a radical change in mindset to recognise and understand the critical difference between happiness and joy. Happiness is a transient feeling of pleasure that depends on our external circumstances. Happiness has been described as the “unseen dollar” and is increasingly seen as an important factor for the health, well being and progress of the people.

Bhutan is seen as the “poster child for happiness” but many Western journalists fail to recognize and understand the underlying spiritual foundation of happiness in that country. Joy is an inner state of being that we can experience even in pain, suffering and sorrow. We can try to find happiness in hedonistic pursuits but we can only receive joy for it is a gift. In fact, it is through pain, suffering and sorrow that we often receive the gift of joy.  In a world that is increasingly becoming hungry for money, the people are experiencing a famine of joy,

Happiness is when our desires and wants are met but joy comes through what we have given of ourselves to others. When we pursue happiness, our energies are spent on earning external and materialistic rewards for ourselves. When we seek joy we embark on a journey to discover the potential for love that is within each of us. As we become channels of God's love, we receive the inner rewards of joy, hope and peace. The gurus of the world promises us many ways to find happiness but Jesus Christ came to bring joy to the world. Hence we sing the Christmas carol:

“Joy to the world! the Lord is come.

  Let earth receive her King.

  Let every heart prepare Him room,

  And heaven and nature sing”

We may experience happiness in this world but we can only find joy in the Kingdom of God. Our struggle is to live in both the world and in God’s Kingdom. But the good news is that when we confess Jesus as the Son of God, we have God living in us and we live in God (1 John 4:15). How then are we living out this good news?

Unfortunately, many of us Christians often end up becoming Pharisees who “crush people with unbearable religious demands and never lift a finger to ease the burden." (Matthew 23:4) We read the bible and focus on the rules on how to please God instead of reading God’s love messages to us so that we will be witnesses of the reality of having Christ in us and sharing the love of Christ with others.

In her devotional, Jesus Calling, Sarah Young makes the very important observation that when we feel driven to serve God we may see Him as a harsh taskmaster instead of a loving Heavenly Father. 

We often forget that God is sovereign and that His ways are higher than ours.  Our love for God becomes lukewarm and we lose our desire for His loving Presence. 

The worldly attitude of seeking happiness will lead us to lose our love for God. It is only when God is our first love that we will filled with His goodness and find the blessed assurance of the inexpressible joy of being lost in the wonder of God’s love. Before we can change our feelings, we need to change our behaviours. To change our behaviours, we need to change our thought patterns. And to change our thought patterns we need to change our beliefs. Psalm 13:5-6 gives us the secret recipe to cope with the times when God seems far away:

“But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation.

  I will sing the Lord’s praise, for He has been good to me.”

When we are born of the Spirit and truly believe that we are the children of God, we will learn to trust God when we face the storms of life. As we put our trust in God, we will change our responses to negative circumstances in our lives from complaining to thanksgiving. And when we are filled with thanksgiving, we will be filled with joy.

The hymn, We’ve A Story To Tell To The Nations, spells out our calling to change the world by sharing the message of God’s love through the story of our lives. Our lives are to be the songs of God’s love that will conquer evil and to lift up the cross of Christ. When we do so, all the world’s great people will come to know the wonderful truth of God’s Kingdom of peace and light. We have the potential to change our world but it all begins with the inner journey into our own hearts. May our Lord reprogram our hearts so that we can sing:

“For the darkness shall turn to dawning and the dawning to noon day bright

  And Christ’s great Kingdom shall come on earth, the Kingdom of love and light.

The Adventure of Discipleship

Discipleship is not the boring and joyless burden of bible study, prayer and attending church services until we are called home to heaven and fighting the temptation to find happiness and pleasure in the ways of the world.  It is the exciting journey of being in communication with our Heavenly Father - it is the abundant life filled with unspeakable joy and the peace that is beyond human understanding.

The good news of salvation is not only that we will go to heaven when we die but that we can live in heaven here on earth even when it feels like it is hell at times. Jesus died a horrible death on the cross to give us the power to overcome our fear of death and suffering. This is graphically described to us in Hebrews 11:34-40

“But others were tortured, refusing to turn from God in order to be set free. They placed their hope in a better life after the resurrection. Some were jeered at, and their backs were cut open with whips. Others were chained in prisons. Some died by stoning, some were sawed in half, and others were killed with the sword. Some went about wearing skins of sheep and goats, destitute and oppressed and mistreated. They were too good for this world, wandering over deserts and mountains, hiding in caves and holes in the ground.

All these people earned a good reputation because of their faith, yet none of them received all that God had promised. For God had something better in mind for us, so that they would not reach perfection without us.”

We owe a huge debt to these heroes of faith for showing us that the gospel is not about having a good life of happiness health and wealth here on earth but about bringing God’s Kingdom of Love, Joy and Peace from heaven to earth. To follow Jesus is to learn to live fully in God’s presence trusting that the God who gives us life is in the midst of all that life throws at us. We are called to be living witnesses of God’s power and love by putting all our trust in Christ.¹

But all of us are imperfect creatures who are being made perfect in love. Each of us is empowered to live in the presence of God by the power of the Holy Spirit through our faith in Jesus Christ. And through our example of faith we are to lead others to be similarly empowered.

Each of us is the greatest miracle for we are the children of God with the power of love to heal the world. The problem is that we tend to be the mirrors of one another’s fears, anger, greed, lust and doubts instead of being the windows of God’s love, mercy and grace. We are comfortable to remain children of God instead of growing up to become soldiers of Christ in the spiritual warfare raging around us.

Let us encourage one another to develop the full potential of God’s love in each of us and to refrain from criticizing, comparing or competing with one another. There cannot be any sibling rivalry in God’s family. Each one of us has a special and unique relationship with our Heavenly Father. We will all experience God’s love differently and in different ways. Let us cultivate the joy of sharing stories of our adventure of faith as we follow Jesus Christ our Shepherd of Love.

References:

1. Matthew Charlton, Upper Room Reflections, 22^nd May 2012

i-Problems & i-Prayer

Life is often punctuated with intrusions by death, interruptions by ill health, and irritation by difficult people. Such i-Problems are stressful but we have the choice to turn them into ideal opportunities to develop new insights and to see them as invitations to pray and draw closer to God.

Over the past two weeks I attended five funeral wakes - a patient, two old friends, the mother of a close friend, and my uncle. It was a time for deep reflection on the meaning of life as well as a time in which I experienced the truth that in praying for everything we do not need to worry about anything.

In our grief we can mourn and rejoice in the Lord at the same time. We cannot rejoice at the death of our loved ones but we can rejoice because of Christ's promise that He is with us always - especially in times like these. As we do so, we can find joy in the midst of sorrow.

My late uncle had shown me over the past few months, that "no life is so hard that one can't make easier by the way one accepts it."  He was not religious but his life was filled with contentment and a quiet joy even in the midst of his suffering. Through his life and death, God showed me the truth that His steadfast love never ceases and His mercies never come to an end.

It has been said that suffering is inevitable but misery is optional. Many see the Christian life as a burden rather than a joy. We try to please God by own human efforts instead of living the life of peace with God by the power of the Holy Spirit.

We struggle to enjoy life instead of finding the joy of discovering the love that God has filled our lives with. We want to know the answers to the problems of life instead of learning to live out the questions that life presents to us.

The psalmist expresses in Psalm 89:47-48, the feeling that many of us share:

“Remember how fleeting is my life. For what futility you have created all humanity!

Who can live and not see death, or who can escape the power of the grave?”

Og Mandino when he was stricken with prostate cancer, found that one must learn how to die in order to teach others how to live. He drew attention to the importance of our attitude as the deciding factor between suffering hell or enjoying heaven here on earth. We can choose to let our i-Problems conquer us or we can overcome these i-Problems with i-Prayer by rejoicing in the Lord and giving thanks in all circumstances.

G.O.A.T. OR S.H.E.E.P.

“For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”   Ephesians 2:10

It is encouraging that our Prime Minister has called for a National Conversation to chart the future of our tiny nation, Singapore. Indeed, we stand at a very critical time of history. The winds of change are blowing and our choices will determine whether Singapore becomes a cancerous red dot that is doomed for destruction or a bright shining red dot which is a beacon of light in a dark world of greed, lust and pride.

But what is critically needed in Singapore is not a National Conversation but a nation that is in conversation with our Creator. Towards this end, Christians have the awesome responsibility to become citizens of prayer. For our calling is to be faithful witnesses of the truth that we are the children of God. Not only are we fearfully and wonderfully made but we are God’s masterpieces, new creations in Jesus Christ, created for good works. We are called to be ambassadors of God's Kingdom. We are the imperfect instruments of God's perfect will through the power of the Holy Spirit so that peace will come on earth.

We need a spiritual revival so that we will not seek to become G.O.A.T. – the Greatest Of All Time, but we will become people who are S.H.E.E.P. – Seeing Heaven Everyday in Every Person. When we die, what will count is the love we have sown in the hearts of others rather than the achievements we have attained.  Recently I attended the funeral wake of a 96 year old lady and was touched by the testimonies of her grandchildren and great grandchildren of the love she had given them. It was a love that flowed from her faith in Jesus Christ. She left them with a wonderful testimony of God’s providential care for her and the family.

Og Mandino, who has been described as a most widely read and inspirational and self help author in the world, made the following observation in one of his books:

“If all our lives are truly plans of God, someone had better call a meeting soon to remind us, once more, what great miracles we really are.”

Indeed, the most wonderful secret is that there is a miracle in all of us – Christ in us, our hope of glory (Colossians 1:27). The problem is that we tend to focus on our pain, suffering, failures and defeats rather than the opportunities to grow in our knowledge of God and His perfect plans for our lives in such times. 

We are all looking for answers outside of ourselves instead of cultivating the spiritual disciplines to help us increase our awareness of the presence of the Living Christ in our hearts. It is through the disciplines of devotional reading of the bible, prayer and meditation that we can learn to die to self so that we can be filled with the love of God. We need to cultivate these good habits to overcome the bad habits of consumerism, materialism and elitism.

The greatest miracle is not what we can achieve in our lives but what God is doing in our lives each day.  The writer in the Upper Room devotional on 2^nd September 2012 reminds us that “living for God’s purposes makes us holy, and we are all special in our own ways. God created each of us different, for a unique purpose.”

So let us encourage one another to be S.H.E.E.P. – Seeing Heaven Everyday in Every Person.

The Apple and the Cross

We live in a world that is obsessed and addicted to knowledge. We are feeding from the Tree of Knowledge and becoming spiritually malnourished. In her book, The Four Levels of Healing, Shakti Gawan described spiritual emptiness as the root cause of most of our social, political and environmental crises. When we lose contact with our Creator, we become alienated from one another and from the beautiful world that God has created. We pollute, overconsume and destroy the natural resources God has given us. The story of Adam and Eve is a picture of our human condition – like Adam we are alienated and afraid of God. We hide from God and need to hear God calling out to us, “Where are you?”

We are in need of spiritual healing for we are spiritually dead. In Christ, God has invited us to return to the Tree of Life and to feed our souls with the Living Bread so that we can begin a new life through a loving relationship with Him. We have been reborn again in Christ and we are to grow into the likeness of Christ. Unfortunately, many of us may have begun a new life only to remain in spiritual infancy as we seek only spiritual milk instead of solid spiritual food (Hebrews 5:11-14).

We need to grow up in order to live as citizens of heaven and shine like bright lights in a world full of crooked and perverse people. But we cannot live in God’s Kingdom in the here and now if we see heaven only as a place that we will go to when we die. Solid spiritual food is feeding on God’s Word that has been revealed through Jesus Christ.

But there is a big difference between seeking biblical knowledge and feeding on the Bread of Life. The bible is but a map to guide us in our quest to live in God’s Kingdom – it is not our destination. We are to apply the spiritual truths from the bible in our lives so that we will not conform to the world but be transformed by the renewing of our minds in order to know God’s will for our lives.

We need to make the choice between the apple and the cross – to feed on the Tree of Knowledge or the Tree of Life to find the answers to spiritual questions such as “What am I here for? How can I make this world a better place? How can I turn the ordinary events in my life into great opportunities to use the gifts that God has given me?”

Let us hold fast to the truth that we are new creations in Christ and that we can do all things through Him who strengthens us. Og Mandino made the following observation:

"We expect mastery without apprenticeship, knowledge without study, and riches by credit. Born in an age and country in which knowledge and opportunity abound as never before, how can you sit with folded hands, asking God's help in work for which He has already given you the necessary faculties and strength?”

The good news is that we are not to work FOR our salvation but to work OUT our salvation with the excitement of having God’s power working in us.  We need to cultivate new habits of paying attention to God in the world around us, to practice the awareness of the Holy Spirit working in us and to be a better “Mary” by abiding in Christ so that we can become more effective “Marthas.”

As we do so, let us share how God is working in the mundane events of our lives for His glory to encourage each other and to be accountable to one another.

Living A Life Of Significance

Many of us are struggling to live a life of significance. It is part of our human nature to seek meaning for our lives. Unfortunately, in a materialistic society, significance is often equated with money, status and power. Success is measured in terms of what we possessed rather than in the love and care we have given to others. Even in the church, success is seen in terms of how big the church is and the size of the congregation rather than the difference the church is making in caring for the poor and marginalized in society.

Many Christians try too hard in their own strength to be a blessing to others. Time and again we fail and we are discouraged. Some are successful but unfortunately human based success invariably leads to the sin of pride. Yet others feel guilty of not having done enough to be a blessing to others.

It is therefore critical to understand what it means to live a life of significance. A life of significance is not a life of success but a life of service to those whom God has brought into our lives. It is not what we have done but how we have lived in this world as the children of God and as ambassadors of God’s Kingdom.

Jesus came to show us how we are to live a life totally emptied of self so that the fullness of God’s love can be seen in us. It is a life that is totally submitted to God’s will – a life that is humble and obedient.

But our human nature is to seek control over our lives and those of others. Our addiction to control drives us to seek knowledge rather than God’s wisdom. As a result, we fail to create “miracle spaces” for God to work in our lives. A miracle space has been described by Matthew Barnet as the gap between what we can accomplish on our own and what can be accomplished when we allow God to work through us.

Unlike the Olympic Games, we do not have to compete with one another to be significant in God’s sight. Each and every one of us is unique in God’s sight. He has created each one of us for a  special purpose in life which only we can fill. A life of significance is simply becoming the person God has created us to be – to be fully human and fully alive for the glory of God.

A life of significance is a simple life that is rooted in the Lord’s Prayer. It is a life lived as a child of God seeking to honour God. It is life with a mission to bring God’s Kingdom to earth. It is a life that is totally surrendered to the will of God. It is a life living on God’s promises of providence, purification and protection.

It is a life that is prepared for suffering. It has been said that suffering is inevitable but misery is a choice. When we embrace suffering as an opportunity to experience God’s love and grace we can choose to rejoice instead of being miserable.

Life can be exciting when we are freed from living up to the expectations of others and filled with the expectation of God’s power in our lives. And such a life will be a life of significance to God even in the face of suffering and death.

The Truth Shall Set Us Free

Earlier this week, I attended the memorial service of Dr. Lim Hock Siew. In the prime of his life, he was imprisoned for 20 years. Dr. Lim was rightly acknowledged as a freedom fighter of Singapore. He sacrificed his personal freedom to uphold his moral conscience in his fight for freedom and democracy for Singapore.

Though he was physically in prison, his spirit was free. In contrast, many of us may be physically free but we are emotionally, psychologically or spiritually, in the prisons of pride, anger, greed, lust, addiction to power and the desire for control.

We try to live in a world in freedom from our Creator but only to find ourselves enslaved by our primitive emotions. It is thus not surprising to read Chris Hedges’ most perceptive analysis of the current state of our world:

“We now live in a nation where

      doctors destroy health,

           lawyers destroy justice,

               universities destroy knowledge,

                   governments destroy freedom,

                        the press destroys information,

                            religion destroys morals,

                                and our banks destroy the economy.”

All the bad news of political, religious, financial and sexual scandals reported in our mass media are but symptoms of our increasingly spiritually impoverished world. When we lose our faith in our Creator as our Heavenly Father, we live in a Fatherless world. We forget that we are creatures of a Creator of Love. Everyone seek to do what is right in their own sight and worship their own idol.

We have no answers to the devastating illnesses such as cancer, natural disasters like tsunanmis, horrific tragedies of war and the suffering of the innocents. But we can choose to respond to all the difficult situations we face in life as an invitation to draw us back to the embrace of our Heavenly Father or to use them as an excuse to draw away from God and to live our lives in our way.

We need to seek the Truth for it is the Truth that will set us free. Jesus told His disciples that He is the Way, the Truth and the Life. But what does it mean to see Jesus as the Truth?  During his trial before Pilate, Jesus responded to Pilate’s question, “so you are a king?”  with the following answer:

“You say I am a king. Actually, I was born and came into the world to testify to the truth. All who love the truth recognize that what I say is true.”

Unfortunately, Pilate was unable to understand what Jesus was trying to tell him and asked, “What is truth?” Henry and Tom Blackaby made the point that in the presence of Christ, the truth of every situation differs from the purely human perspective. They noted that the world’s perspective on any situation is suspect because the world does not understand the truth. Furthermore, the world cannot understand our faith in Christ who is the Truth.

The cross of Christ echoes the lament of the prophet Jeremiah and shows us the heartbreaks of our Heavenly Father:

“I hurt with the hurt of my people.

I mourn and am overcome with grief.

Is there no medicine in Gilead?

Why is there no healing for the wounds of my people?”

At the same time the cross of Christ brings us the good news that we can be freed from the prisons of our egos. When we crucify our egos on the cross and enthrone Christ in our hearts we will live as new creations with Him as our King. We will then understand that to live is to love and to love is to lose but to lose is to live. Only then will we will be able to get our priorities and values right.  Only then will we be able to get our priorities and values right. Only then will we be able to see God’s ways in the events of life that seem so unjust or does not make sense. Only then will we rise up to the challenge to be the light and the salt in a messy and decaying world.