peace . love . joy

Last Sunday's sermon made me sit up. But that was not because I haven't heard this topic being preached before, or that the manner in which the subject was approached was new and interesting; rather it was because of what the teacher said at the beginning of it all.

He opened with a recounting of a personal experience. You see, he had a friend, a female friend, whom he looked up to. In his younger days, she was someone he wanted to become in terms of her relationship with God. Her closeness and passion for God was something he so terribly desired for himself with God too. She was his encouragement. But then, somehow, when they were in the university, she lost it. The past passion, the past intimacy she had was gone. She did attend talks on the Bible and such, but they simply left her intellectually satisfied but did nothing for her relationship with God.

Know why that made me sit up?
Because that sounded just like me.
I don't know about the encouraging part, but I know the rest sounds exactly like what I am going through right now. The fact that he spent a lot of his time staring in my direction, I can't tell for sure if he was looking straight at me, but it sure felt so, served only to emphasize one thing - God was talking to me through this sermon.

The preacher taught about a character in the Bible I don't quite like and I don't quite follow (ie. I don't do extensively study him or find out more about him):
King Saul.

The title for the lesson last Sunday was "The Call of Saul: The Lack of a Better Heart".

Saul was reportedly a very impressive young man. He may have been a shy guy at the beginning, but his physical stature certainly was capable of commanding everyone's attention at once, being super duper tall!

Saul was doing all right until somewhere along the line, he lost it. He lost his call.
I don't quite understand that, the "losing of a call(ing)". It could mean he lost sight of his calling from God, it could mean his calling was stripped from him, or it could mean both. In this case, I think it might have meant both.

I liked how the preacher, Philip Huan, structured his message. Okay, fine, I just like things in threes. Somehow, I can remember them very well when they come in threes. Strange, that..

He outlined three ways in which we can avoid the pitfalls and traps that lead to a lost call:
one. Do not confuse God's goals with your own goals
two. Deal with the deep fears in your heart
three. be tender to God's voice

The first, I think, we know. We know to always check whether what we're being driven by, thoughts amongst others, is in sync with the teachings of the Bible. We know to be wary of things that bring about great and attractive personal benefit.

The second seems somewhat out of place here. How does dealing with the deep fears in our hearts keep us from losing our call(s)? Simple. If we don't deal with them, dealing with them here may not mean you whip them fears and they vapourise in a poof, more often than not, dealing with them entails a life-long battle raged against being enslaved in your fear(s)' clutches, they might hinder us from obeying God. And personally, this has a high tendency of driving me away from God.

The third one alludes to that which is of utmost importance for us, that which ties up all the three points, and perhaps even more, that beseech us not to fall away from our call(s).

A close relationship with God.
The cultivation of a beautiful heart.

To be tender to God's voice, to be receptive to His soft whispers and loud commands tells of a closeness with God, fortells a growing intimacy between you and God.

To know God is to know Scripture, in particular daily experiencing and understanding what it means when it is written that "perfect love casts out fear" (1 John 4:18) and that "greater he that is in you, than he that is in the world" (1 John 4:4). To know this is to realise that with God, all our fears are nullified. The fear of insecurity, the fear of losing, the fear of man.. All are annulled.

I believe that many things, many Truths in the Bible, may be known to us, but may not be comprehended by every one of us because I believe these Truths must be experienced, claimed, witnessed personally in order for its power to come into a complete-er circle. We learn things in church and we say we know them. Do we really? Can we preach what we've learnt with conviction and urgency when all we have is head knowledge? I am not denying the importance of head knowledge here, but I am saying head knowledge is useless without heart knowledge, without the feeling, or the conviction, or the thorough understanding. We need both head knowledge and that of the heart.

And we learn heart knowledge through being close with God.