Stuff That Matters In Life

Our family listened to the audio of The Hunger Games on our road trip to Arizona over Christmas holiday. We were so engrossed with the story that we looked forward to getting back into the car whenever we can!

When we came home, we read, on our own, the two sequels, Catching Fire and Mockingjay. The writing style is not great, but the story is exciting and well told. As is usually the case (maybe with the exception of Harry Potter), the sequels are not as good as the first one. I wish a little more development of new characters and explanations were given in Mockingjay. The wrap up was a little thin. I felt the  author was trying too hard to delve deeper into the emotions of the heroine which sometimes was too drawn out. Ok, I get it that she got crazy and psychologically messed up in a war. But the other characters were able to move on while her emotions kept holding her back. The author just didn’t describe her in a way that stirred me. I had much more sympathy for the other characters.

I recommend the books, but don’t know if I want to see the movie. Movies from books usually disappoint.

“Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make every day are of such infinite importance. The smallest good act today is the capture of a strategic point from which, a few months later, you may be able to go on to victories you never dreamed of.” ~ C. S. Lewis

Think about losing weight. A decision to turn down a brownie does not seem to make much difference on the scale, but that that small victory gives you confidence to continue to say no to all the other foods you need to cut out. Slowly, all the brownies and cookies you didn’t eat will show up as one smaller pant size.

Those small decisions do matter.

When my children first started to be independent and have plans of their own, I felt a sense of  sadness whenever two and especially when all three would be out, leaving no kids at home. It’s not that I have nothing to do, I have lots to do, but there was a sense of loss, the passing of a season of life.

Then when my son left to live in another country, and my older daughter was in college, I got used to having a single child.

This weekend my single child is gone on a 4-day retreat with church. I miss her noise and conversation, but I didn’t feel the same sadness.

I suppose if I live to be 969 as Methuselah did in the Bible, I would still have to go through the emotions of a changing life stage. I am getting used to the “circle of life.”

God has called me to leave a church that I didn’t want to leave, to take on a job that I never imagined I would do, and begin a new phase of my life that I wasn’t expecting.

Two years ago, I started praying about what I would do when my youngest child goes off to college. Intrigued by my son’s way of life of travel while working online, I thought that would be fun too and wanted to explore that possibility. To be honest, I didn’t put much effort to trying to make money online, but the adventurous idea of traveling seemed good. I wanted my life to be free to do whatever I wanted. No ties, no particular responsibilities, I can go anywhere to serve God. I romanticized the idea of living overseas for a time and serve God in a new adventure.

But that is not to be, not now at least.

I can’t explain all the reasons but I (meaning my husband and I and our kids) felt led to leave our church of 20+years. We shed tears of regret, yet we knew it was somehow “right”.

Immediately after that, I was asked to apply for a staff position as Children Director at a nearby church. This church was the last church on my list of churches I wanted to attend, not because it isn’t a good church, but because I thought my personality and philosophy of ministry wouldn’t be a good fit.

The end of that story is on January 1, I began the job of Children Director at this church. It was truly a God calling because it certainly wasn’t something I was seeking. I had so many reasons for not wanting this. I had always said no church can pay me enough to add pressure to do what I would do voluntarily. I don’t need the money, I don’t want the stress, I am too old to start a new job, I want to help plant a church instead of being in a big church, I want to go overseas…many good reasons, yet…here I am.

God is so very gracious to me. When I don’t know what is best, he leads me to what he knows to be the best. Where else would I find a church that would pay me for doing something I love doing? How else would I be offered a position even though at the interview I honestly said I am not sure I want this job? How else would it be possible that at just the right time of the empty nest that I be given the opportunity to do what I went to school for 30 years ago?

My challenge this year, 2012 is to let God lead. I need to look to him for direction for the children ministry, look to him to show me who I can bring alongside as helpers and disciplees, look to him to give me wisdom in tough decisions, strength when I am stressed, peace when I am anxious.

As always, when we are placed to serve others, God grows us first on the inside to enable us to serve others outside. That’s what I am anticipating in 2012.

This book is a touching testimony of a woman who unknowingly married a high ranking member of the Mafia.

Michael Franzese and Camille Garcia met while she was a dancer in a movie he was producing. Raised by a very devoted Christian mother, Cammy’s faith in God was made real to her through the trials she went through as her husband was imprisoned twice. The book, “This Thing of Ours” gives details of how she raised four children while remaining a loving wife to Michael. Her prayers and influence brought her husband to change and quit his life of crime. She is very honest and candid in talking about her own failings, as well as the troubles with their children that resulted from Michael’s past. She gives very good marriage advice and her emphasis on prayer is very inspirational.

It would probably make more sense to read Cammy’s husband’s testimony first, “Blood Covenant”, to know the background. Without an understanding of Michael’s true mafia involvement, you cannot appreciate what Cammy went through because this book does not give much information about the mafia involvement. Her story seems very tame, but of course, this is her story, not his, and she was spared from the any mafia activity.

Disclosure:  Thomas Nelson provided me with a complimentary copy of this book for this review. Opinions are entirely my own.

I read somewhere, I wish I remember where, that asked a poignant question: When we go to heaven and have all the blessings of what we usually think heaven is – all the food we want, reunion with friends and family, streets of gold, no war, no pain, no tears…and Jesus wasn’t there, would we be happy?

If we were honest about it, we would probably say yes.

We want to be happy more than we want Jesus. We only want what he gives us.

Sigh.

Christmas is about Jesus. But we don’t really appreciate Him.

From Sean McDowell:

Many kids leave the church because they never built healthy relationships with their parents or other Christian adults. If we want to teach the biblical worldview effectively, we must first help kids get emotionally healthy.

This is why I deeply believe in mentoring. Jesus was a mentor. My hope is that mentoring will become as normal in the church in the future as small groups are today. Young people simply cannot survive temptations and intellectual challenges without caring, involved adults coming alongside to guide them.

When I was in seminary, small groups was the panacea. That method did indeed helped the growth of the church.

However, a method is just that, a method. It’s a means to an end, but now in churches, small groups are almost seen as an end. If you join a small group, you’re done. Spiritual growth will happen automatically if you are in a small group. This, of course, is not true. There is a right way and wrong way of running small groups.

Mentoring is also a method. You can say Jesus was a mentor. Or you can also say Jesus was a small group leader. Either way, the focus is on the goal of spiritual growth, not on a method.

For the record, I think both mentoring and small groups are necessary for spiritual growth, when done right.

I just finished reading An Amish Wedding by Beth Wiseman, Kathleen Fuller, and Kelly Long.  It was an easy read and an entertaining fiction, good for a heartwarming distraction, especially on a rainy day.

Three short stories set in an Amish community, the book tells the sweet stories of three couples.  Along with the romance and conflict, there were lessons of faith woven throughout.

I like the way how the three stories are different yet the characters all intertwined, giving a common backdrop.  I also liked learning a bit of the Amish culture, and now it makes me want to visit one.

While the stories are a bit simplistic and the endings fairytale-ish, there is nothing wrong with getting away from the high drama, violence and sex themes of what you usually see in media entertainment nowadays. Again the description I would give is sweet: sweet characters, sweet storyline, everything about it is nice and sweet!

Disclosure:  Thomas Nelson provided me with a complimentary copy of this book for this review. Opinions are entirely my own.

There’s a shoe repair shop in our little city of 30,000. How many people would need their shoes repaired?

I went in there to have my $40 pair of shoes repaired. The cost of repairing the sole is $16. It’s hardly worth it for me, and hardly worth it for him. It made me wish my shoes were more expensive to have the repair even make sense. But I decided to have it done any way.

It said on the window of the shop that he can make any shoes you want in leather, custom size, custom style. It’s good to know not everything is made in China, and that this type of artisan is still around.

“Lady, can you spare a quarter?”

I said no and turned away.  Then I felt a pang of guilt -what if she just had some bad luck and need a helping hand?

Not so.  10 min. later the same lady was in line in front of me at the market, paying for a bottle of cheap wine with $2.50 in quarters.

It’s people like her that give honest beggars a bad name.

Changing the carpet today ushers in a new stage of life for us.

Gone are the stains, left by three dogs who were our companions and security system.  No more chewed up carpet corners, reminiscence of our first pet bunny Smokey. Spills and grime of children’s play are no more.

A fresh start, a new era, I vow to keep it clean.  We shall see how long that will last. (Having friends over this weekend to break it in.)

Some people look at their past with fond memories and like to relish in those remembrances. But I am not one of those.

While I am generally not a glass-half-empty type of person nor am I a perfectionist, but for some reason, I tend to think of my past with regret. I wish I had yelled at my kids less; I wish I had homeschooled them; I wish I had taught them to clean their rooms; I wish I had maintained a daily devotional time with them…. I wish I had been nicer to my husband early in our marriage; I wish I had been smart enough to popularize my blog 7 years ago; I wish I traveled more with my husband before we had kids; I wish I was more brave…..

As I pack up the house this week in preparation for new carpet to be put in, I am having to look through all the stuff of the past, and I am feeling sad. Those fun days with my kids when they were little are gone. I am old…

I don’t like to look at the past; I am ready for a new challenge.

From “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism–the New American Religion” By R. Albert Mohler, Jr., Christian Post Columnist

…religious beliefs held by American teenagers, they found that the faith held and described by most adolescents came down to something the researchers identified as “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.”

Moralistic Therapeutic Deism consists of beliefs like these: 1. “A god exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth.” 2. “God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.” 3. “The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.” 4. “God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.” 5. “Good people go to heaven when they die.”

I am guilty of representing the gospel in a simplified moralistic therapeutic deism way.
Let’s go back to the true gospel, not an Americanized feel good version.

(More on moralistic therapeutic deism by John Ortberg, one of my favorite authors.)

I was very disappointed with this book.  The material in this book could be covered in half the number of pages. Not only was it drawn out, the concepts in the book were not “deep”.

Going Deep by Gordon MacDonald is a story of fictional church implementing a supposedly new and innovative idea of Cultivating Deep People (CDP).  A group of people are chosen to be committed to meeting once a week to learn to be deep. But I did not see anything innovative nor deep in its idea or methods. While the premise is good – “Strengthening and enlarging the core congregation by cultivating growable men and women to be rooted, built up, and strengthened in Christ and to become competent and confident in their call to serve others in his name”  – the way to do that is nothing more than a pretty typical discipleship group.  I was hoping to learn something more about “cultivating deep people”, such as challenging people to live out their faith, but the people in the group were not challenged in any way that is radical.  If you really want to be “deep” in your faith, I recommend the book Radical by David Platt.

There were a couple of things I did learn.  One is a quote attributed to hockey star Wayne Gretzky: “A good hockey player plays where the puck is.  A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be.”

I have not read MacDonald’s other book of this fictional church Who Stole My Church? I hope it’s better than this one.

Disclosure:  Thomas Nelson provided me with a complimentary copy of this book for this review. Opinions are entirely my own.

I unexpectedly saw a long time friend at Soupplantation today.  We were both waiting for our lunch partners so it was a perfect opportunity to catch up.

To be honest, she is merely an acquaintance, and we barely recognized each other, but our conversation was so encouraging to me.

I told her I wasn’t sure if it was her because she looked younger than when I saw her several years ago.  “It’s the joy of the Lord!”  She replied.

When I asked her which church she was attending now, she went on to tell me that when she obeyed the Lord by submitting to her husband to attend a small Cantonese church (rather than the large church that she preferred), “blessings have just been pouring in.”  Her family life and her children have all been happier.  “The Bible is true,” she says.  “When you obey God, life is so much better.”

I said that it is often counter-intuitive, against our nature to want to submit to anything or anyone.  But when we by faith do what God says, and act according to what the Bible commands, He will take care of the rest.

“Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, then all these things shall be added unto you.”  Matthew 6:33

Thanks for that reminder, CA, just in that brief conversation.

Every time I’m asked to speak, I get very excited about it.  I often think I have knowledge about the topic, plus I do more reading and research about it, and I feel confident.

Then as soon as I think I’ve got a handle on the topic, I begin to feel like I know nothing. How can I be so arrogant to think that I know something?  Have I lived my life according to the principles I’m teaching? (That’s a rhetorical question.) Am I wasting people’s time, an hour of their life they’ll never get back?

Every time I teach, I am humbled.  It drives me to examine myself, and be convicted of my own shortcomings.  I am no expert, I’ve made many mistakes, I haven’t lived up to what I’m preaching.

I am once again begging for mercy from God, and turn to totally rely on Him.

Lest anyone thinks teaching is easy for me – because to me standing and talking in front of an audience is the easy part – the inner work of exposing my own weaknesses is the hardest of all in teaching.

Every time I teach, I do it with fear and trembling.

(I am preparing to teach 5 times in the next several weeks. Pray for me.)

This book has all the elements of a murder mystery that I love – all the pieces fit, believable characters, likeable detective who solves the case, and the ending is satisfying.

There is one thing that bothers me about murder mysteries, in any medium – TV, movies, print, is that the killer always commits a second or third crime, and that’s when he/she makes a mistake and gets caught. The first murder baffled the detective and the murderer would’ve gotten away with murder (no pun intended) if he/she would only stop there. I wonder if it’s like that in real life.

Although there are some weird sexual themes (fortunately no explicit descriptions) in the book that I could’ve done without, The Killings at Badger’s Drift is good enough that I would like to read another book by Caroline Graham.

I like the term “First World problem”.  Every time I think I have a problem, I say to myself, “Heh, First World problem.”

It helps me to put my problems in perspective. I have [more than] enough to eat, I never hear gunshots outside my house, I don’t fear for my life when I walk out at night, and clean drinkable water comes out of the faucet when I turn it on. I have no complaints.

Here are my First World problems that I am not complaining about, but just sayin’.

*Grieving over our move from our home church of 20 years and adjusting to another church. – Many places do not even have one church, much less having the freedom to choose one church or another.

*Family room remodel has been installed since May, that’s six months of mess. – I won’t bother to go into the obvious fact that many people do not have a roof over their heads much less a family room, and even less be able to remodel it.

*The air conditioning in my van isn’t cool, and it’s a hassle to go to the mechanic, plus, there’s always something to fix in our 10+year-old cars, costing more each time we take it in.  – No, I would not rather walk or ride a donkey.

Here are some quotes I want to remember from the book Revolution in World Missions. Very convicting stuff.

* As I studied the Gospels, it became clear to me that Jesus understood well the principle of reaching the poor. He avoided the major cities, the rich, the famous and the powerful, concentrating His ministry on the poor laboring class. If we reached the poor, we have touched the masses of Asia.

The battle against hunger and poverty is really a spiritual battle, not a physical or social one as secularists would have us believe.

The only weapon that will ever effectively win the war against disease, hunger, injustice and poverty in Asia is the gospel of Jesus Christ. To look into the sad eyes of a hungry child or see the wasted of life of a drug addict is to see only the evidence of Satan’s hold on this world… Fighting this powerful enemy with physical weapons is like fighting an armored tank with stones. (Page 29)

*One of the biggest lies the devil uses to send people to hell is, “How can we preach the Gospel to a man with an empty stomach?” However, the Bible says all – rich and poor – must repent and come to Christ or be lost. (Page 219)

—

*Religion, I discovered, is a multi-billion dollar business in the United States. Entering churches, I was astonished at the carpeting, furnishings, air-conditioning and ornamentation. Many churches have gymnasiums and fellowships that cater to a busy schedule of activities having little or nothing to do with Christ. (page 47)

Coming from India, where I was beaten and stoned for my faith, I know what it is to be a persecuted minority in my own country. When I set foot on Western soil, I could sense a spirit of religious liberty. Americans have never known the fear of persecution. Nothing seems impossible to them.

From India, I always had looked to the United States as a fortress of Christianity. With the abundance of both spiritual and material things, affluence unsurpassed by any nation on earth, and a totally unfettered Church, I expected to see a bold witness. God’s grace obviously had been poured out on this nation and Church in a way no other people ever have experienced

Instead I found the church in spiritual decline. American believers were still the leading givers to missions, but this appeared to more to historical accident than the deep-set conviction I expected to find.(page 51)

In the sermon at church today, I was reminded about the rich young ruler to whom Jesus spoke. Jesus looked at the young man and loved him. He could relate to the challenge that was put forth – to give up his riches and power to follow God. Jesus himself gave up heaven’s riches and the authority he had at the right hand of God.  He temporarily set those aside to fulfill God’s will for him and he was asking the rich young ruler to do the same.

Jesus knows what it is to be a man. He never asks us to do anything that he himself had not done. We have a great high priest who can sympathize with us, empathize with us, because he’s has been tempted, but he never gave in to temptations, no matter how tempting it may be. Our temptations are not even half of what Jesus had been tempted with.

The rich young ruler was not willing to place the will of God above his own. Setting aside wealth and authority was only a temporary life change. In the end if he had followed God he would have gained much more.

We often think of giving up as a bad thing., especially giving up something like wealth and power. After all we spend our life striving for those things and then be asked to give it up? But when Jesus asked us to give it up, it is in order to gain eternal life, to exchange it for treasures that will not rot or rust. Giving up is not really giving up much.

“He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”