The good fight

Wayne, I don't know how to address him, was our group leader for that week at the Living Waters conference at Collaroy; one week long, I got to know him a bit better, and he was a patient, firm and  enthusiastic leader. He had such a smile that was telling everyone he was approachable. During the regular Living Waters course, we did not have much time together which would make it convenient for us to get to know each other. That one week at Collaroy was mainly the only time he made an impression in my eyes.
Nearly 2 months after his death, I learned this tragedy while reading the Summer newsletter of Living Waters. To me, it was a complete shock; and it did not only surprise me, it actually made me sad.
One week of getting to know each other better, generally should not make us friends, and after the conference, I hardly talked to him again; after 2006 Living Waters, I've never seen him ever since. Yet when I was moving home, doing the pack-up, I did again notice this particular greeting card with his nearly-doctor's-handwriting; telling me something like this "I sense God is doing a work in you" that he gave me during the conference. It always brought my memory back to that sunny week at Collaroy, an unforgettable week.
Ron summarises it well, definitely much better than my knowledge of Wayne; yet I still remember what I heard during 2006 Living Waters, when Ron was sharing with us Wayne's testimony, how God transformed his life. A former sex addict, he learned to surrender to God, and redirected his passion to the Father, pressing his brokenness into Christ, and found his true self in the Father's heart.
Instead of going to Canada with his fiancee, he chose to remain in Sydney to serve God in this special way at Living Waters.
And just 4 months after he got married, a car accident took away his life. He no longer feels any pain, resting in peace; his widow, however, was left with a sorrowful heart. I feel deeply sorry for her.
As for Living Waters, it is also indeed a great loss that such a leader of integrity has left us.
Yet, I feel such a relief to know that he fought the good fight. For Christian men especially, sexual temptation is such an intense and ongoing struggle; (I say for Christian men especially, because Christian men still have a conviction while facing the enormous temptation); and Wayne, having found his true identity in God the Father, he found victory and peace; in the fight for purity, he was a victor, and left us a precious legacy. He was an inspiration.
And I can't help but to think about myself. I still have unresolved issues that I still need to work on; I've got heaps of wounds that I desperately still need to find healing in Yahshua-yet I have delayed it; I've not yet learned to fully throw myself in the hands of God the Father and to let Him define who I am, my true identity; to rest in His love, and to surrender myself fully to Him without reservation or compromise. I have in fact experienced substantial losses in my own battle by refusing to trust in the good will and wisdom of Yahweh.
I sense, he was a true man of strength by acknowledging his weaknesses and trading it for Yahshua's strength; he became a victorious warrior because he allowed himself to become weak first; he became
who he was meant to be in the first place by hiding himself in Yahshua.
We don't know how many days lay ahead of us. It is of no use to threaten ourselves into good behaviours because of the uncertainty in our lives; I still believe God's love compels us; will I fix my eyes on His glory, give HIs truth my ears, pay Him my "sh'ma", and allow Him to be the One I always talk to? I do not wish to see regrets in my life near the end of it, whenever it will be.
Wayne was an example of what it means to deny ourselves, trade our failures, our lies, our brokenness in order to find out our true selves.
Wayne died in victory, while countless of Christian men died in failures and struggles.
I am afraid I will not find myself in the stage Wayne stepped in anywhere in the foreseeable future, I am afraid I will fail. What Wayne went through seems so unreachable. However, shouldn't I know it is God who is behind, working in us.
Wayne allowed God to take over in each of his decisions. God's strength was made great in his weaknesses; I shall admit my own weaknesses to God and let Him take over.
It is a tragedy to still be unable to find out who I am; and Wayne's death reminded me it is time to catch up.
No one can tell if it was God who wished to take the life of Wayne. I am not in a position to make comments; but it is possible that it was simply an accident that killed him; or maybe Satan hated him so much because he was reflecting God's character more and more day by day; and he was doing a service so pleasing to God.
I feel sorry for the loss of Wayne-my group leader for a week.

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For with Thee there is forgiveness, that Thou mayest be feared.

Psalm 130:4 For with Thee there is forgiveness, that Thou mayest be feared.

In the past, when I read this verse, I felt a sense of awkwardness, because forgiveness doesn't seem to match fear, when we are forgiven, we are relieved instead of afraid. People say, Fear God, because He knows everything that you do, and He will bring judgment for all you have done, and be afraid of His punishment.
In fact, immediately precedes this verse, in verse 3, it says, "If Thou, LORD, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?"
The writer did not write "if Thou, LORD, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? That Thou mayest be feared."
Instead, he put in between these 2 ideas, "For with Thee there is forgiveness".
Knowing that God knows everything we do, and that none of us can stand when He marks our iniquities, may indeed make us tremble, and it may indeed make us be afraid, but it is not the fear in verse 4 here. We would be afraid of the punishment, for the consequence of our sins; but God doesn't ultimately want that kind of fear, what He wants, is that we fear God Himself.
This fear translates to our acknowledgment of His greatness, a surrender of our hearts; and it is the result of our realisation of just how different God is to us; how differently He thinks, feels and acts; and yet we so easily fall in the trap of thinking what would God think about me based on our own pattern of thinking and feeling; we try to interpret God's character and what He wants to tell us with our finite mind.
Isaiah 55:8For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, saith the LORD.  9For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.

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Saddened

In the past, I have mainly put my focus on the human rights violations in China, today, however, as my sight was widened, I am getting saddened day by day.
There are several kinds of human rights abuses: the institutional abuse that is either enforced or sanctioned by the governments; by civilians; terrorism; and there is the kind of abuse we tend to overlook, domestic abuse.
Sometimes when I am reflecting upon the news I have read, the tragedies around the world, people's overt abuses; and people's indifference to what's happening in the rest of the world, and many of them are ignorant, and wish to remain that way.
And as a person, an individual, 1 among 6 billion people, I feel so powerless. I cannot change the legislations; and I cannot change people's opinions; and as for terrorism, I am frightened. My personal concern over the tragedies seems a waste of time.
Seeing so much injustice, sometimes I even kind of wish there really would be a hell that burns the human rights abusers on and on; but there isn't such a thing; then I am also reminded, I am not perfect, and I am a sinner myself.
Yet my saddened heart just tells me how difficult for God. The people who impose abuses are not my relatives, I do not see any connection between them and me. God created the whole world, and how sad must He be feeling to see His own creation doing harm to each other. I am only seeing the tip of an iceberg, whereas God is omnipresent, and He sees the tragedies around the world every second, and I believe He sees more bad than good.
Which just marvels me even more when the Bible tells us that the wicked will not be burned on and on and on without an end; but instead, they will be consumed away.
He is not interested in keep torturing the wicked (as much as they deserve it, some of us may feel), He simply desires to put an end to the whole tragedy of the human race.
God is great, because His heart is great, and we cannot comprehend it.
And we see it especially in the so called Christian nations.
Yes, secular countries like Japan and Islamic countries show even less compassion; but it is a disgrace to Christianity when people from the so called Christian nations show indifference to so many people suffering under tyrannies in other parts of the world. Particularly when their "brothers and sisters in the Lord" cannot worship God freely, the Christians in the western Christian nations do not really care about what's going on elsewhere. As if Yahweh was God of only them.
It is always easy to say God loves the world, but it is always difficult for us to love the world God wants us to.

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Who Am I

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Womb Lottery

This is one world, one planet earth under one sky. Yet, it is divided, it feels like, we all live in different worlds.
While we are complaining we are having financial hardship, most of us who are complaining, are really richer than most people in the world. Think of those poor kids in Africa who have nothing to eat, no clean water to drink, and medication is a luxury.
What do we have to complain about?
The term "womb lottery" describes that the destiny of a person is pretty much secured the moment this fetus is conceived. On a wide scale, which continent, which country, which region of that country; on a smaller scale, the family background, whether the parents are both really caring, whether they can afford to bring up the kid, whether the kid would be born with any genetic mutation or any sickness.
I highly regard the words in the US Declaration of Independence:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
I still hold this claim as truth, I still firmly believe this principle.
Yet, I feel a sense of weakness when I proclaim it; because the world that we live in does not reflect it; If we could find someone with no pre-conception, and let him take a good look at the world, and he will not get to the conclusion that we are in practice all created equal, that we are all actually excercising our rights, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Some won the Womb Lottery, they were born in Western Europe, Japan, the Four Tigers of Asia, USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand--what we call as the developed countries; born with no birth defects; and the majority of the world's population were born into the other division of the world.
Just because of the place they were born in, kids are trained to commit terrorist attacks, girls never get access to education, or they never survive to their 10th birthday because they have all starved to death...
Tragedies, I can make a long list, to the point it will make the listerner either numb and insensitive to anything he is going to hear; or make a sane person depressed.
Apart from these objective uncomfortable truths, we hold bias against those from the lower half of the world, we see them as filthy, unlovable, or that, they should just remain in their status quo, they do not deserve anything better.
While we get in our cars or get on the train and commute to work or university.
We may not actually owe most of those living in a state not half as good as our pets; and the indifference is indeed deafening.
Then I am reminded that this was not what  was in God's mind when He created the world, in His world, there was no discrimination, no classes, there wasn't the privileged and the disadvantaged. There was no pain and suffering.
We forfeited the happiness.
In the Garden of Eden, there was no
"Rule, Britannia! rule the waves:
"Britons never will be slaves."
There was no slavery at all, no one would ever be a slave.
Here we live in a world where some people have never known the pursuit of happiness.

It's been six thousand years, it has been a long time. This morning in the news, I heard the astromoners found another solar system similar to ours, 5000 light years away. Light would have to travel 5000 years to reach there, suppose we could travel as fast as light, by the time we reach there, it's another 5000 years. From the beginning of human history to now, we have already made the earth a miserable place, would God allow us to ruin another planet?

It is nearly the time the Messiah should come back and receive up back home, nearly, only if we let the whole world hear the good news of the soon coming Kingdom; when the sufferings of this world will be put to an end, and no more "womb lottery" to determine if one will have a happier life than the rest.
Heaven, a place we human being were meant to live in.

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Untitled

This man has a magnetic voice.

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National Anthems

Quite a few years ago, I started to appreciate the national anthems of different countries; take the anthem of UK for example, I was totally moved by its tunes, it sounded really solemn; and well, it did not really matter that I could not understand the words.
Then, the anthem of Israel, it sounds historic; as a condensed version of the dream of Zion of the Israel nation. One day sitting on the train, a phone rang, and the ring-tone was Israel's national anthem; I thought there was a Jew; but no, when she picked up the phone, she started talking Cantonese! How interesting!
And I love the US anthem for the history it embodies; the Civil War, the national flag, and it fully reveals the patriotism of the Americans.
I also love O Canada; just like its broad land; the song sounds so broad, I mean, the melody actually does make me see a scene of its endless plains and mountains.
Australian anthem, "we are young and free"; lovely song; the tune isn't all that unique, but the words are meaningful.
National anthem of PRC, well, if it was not for the reason the song was chosen to be the anthem of Communist China; I'd rather like this song; in fact, what other song would better suit the current situation in China? Government exploiting the people to the extreme; and the people need to "stand up".
Of course, I won't, and most of us won't have an opportunity to sing all the meaningful national anthems as our own right; it does make me think, hundreds of countries in the world, some are really priveledged, the others aren't; but one day these are all going to pass, what's left for us to think about is, will we have a pass to enter the Kingdom Eternal?
Or are we so shortsighted that, all we see and think about is what's in this life and in this world?

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