A New Year

Happy new year, everyone! :) Wishing everyone a blessed and joyful year ahead!

Just wanted to share about three prayer encouragements that left a deep impression on me at CYSC:

Daily Tests of Faith
During one prayer encouragement, a counselor conducted a brief survey that turned into a brilliant analogy for our walk with God - which class do you prefer? A class with only reading assignments? Or a class with a test every day? Research shows that with only reading assignments, you learn a lot in five minutes, but a week later, you learn very little. If you took a test every day, after one week, you learn a lot. The conclusion was - the more tests you have, the more you learn.

In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials, that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ. (1 Pet 1:6-7)

As the best teacher we will ever have, He employs this method that is best for our learning, for our good, and for His glory, for knowledge is not enough - we want a faith that is acceptable to God that can take hold of salvation. And so, God tests us all the time, in every single moment of our lives. When we are late for school, do we choose to pray even for five minutes before we leave? Do we choose to listen to the radio or pray in our heart along our commute? When someone is annoying us, do we choose to be angry or patient?

Just like in school, there are times we pass and times we fail. God looks at the final outcome. What He desires know is that when we fail, we go back, find out what went wrong. When a similar test comes again, He hopes that we can pass. God doesn't emphasize the result but cares about the progress. Our spiritual progress is not based on one test alone because through both failing and passing, we accumulate the knowledge of God, the experience of God, and trust in God. God does not count the number of times we failed but rather how close are we to the likeness of Him.

In school, we might drop a class, fazed by the difficulty that lies before us. Yet, in this spiritual walk, we must not drop the "class" so easily. May we always remember that God has sacrificed so much for us to be a part of this class, by His own blood and sweat and it is through failure that we have hope of improvement.

So when we fail, what should we do? Ask for help. In school, we might not feel worthy or motivated to go to our professors after failing an exam or a paper, especially when there are hundreds of other students the professor has to manage [especially at a UC school :P] and he/she could really care less. But God is different - He knows our pain and is waiting eagerly for us to go to His office hours. And what's even better? God's office hours are 24/7. We also have TAs (pastors) who might not know us that well, but they are aware of the common issues students like us face and are equipped to help us through it. We also have tutors (counselors, spiritual mentors) and classmates (our peers) to share these problems and overcome them together.

The Hard Questions
As a recap of our morning sharings, a counselor used Malachi to encourage us on the last day. In Malachi, the Israelites asked God several questions out of apathy, ignorance, and pride, out of severe spiritual blindness, desensitization and numbness. They were oblivious to how far they strayed, and we very well be the same - clueless to how we have been failing to honor God:

1. In what way have I despised Your name? In what way have I defiled You?
2. In what way have I wearied You?
3. In what way shall I return?
4. In what have I robbed You?

 For us, we can use these questions out of humility to ask God to reveal the answers for He knows us better than we could ever know ourselves and we can receive His answers with gladness of heart. While such chastening is painful, God will provide the strength to change and reject sin.

In a society that glorifies busyness, we are able to understand the indispensable value of quiet time for God. If our eyes are fixed on our computer screens all day, we won't be able to see God even when He is standing right in front of us. If our ears are flooded with secular music, we won't be able to hear His whisper. If our hands are glued to our phones all day, we won't be able to touch Jesus.

Constant Thoughts
A friend of mine shared about what he learned from a dream during his prayer encouragement. In that dream, a phrase was very clear: do not forget the teachings of God. He also shared the following two verses:

My son, do not forget my law, But let your heart keep my commands. (Proverbs 3:1)
My soul breaks with longing For Your judgments at all times. (Psalm 119:20) 

After thinking about the dream the morning after, he realized that he couldn't even remember what he read for Bible reading the day before. Even though, he took notes in Google Docs, barely anything was kept in his mind. Similarly, at CYSC, we had the homework assignment to write about a reflection on all the classes every night and all of us had to flip to our notes in order to write these reflections on what we heard in the past 24 hours.

This prayer encouragement highlighted the need to be proactive in remembering the teachings. We can't expect God to automatically write His words on our heart without us lifting a finger, just because we took notes. It made me realize that just taking notes is not enough - I know that very well because the notebooks I have accumulated after over a decade of church seminars are collecting lots of dust at this very moment. Very rarely have I taken one of these notebooks to reread the spiritual food that God has given.

If we think about when we long and crave for something (for me, it would be KBBQ and dessert at Blackball), do we have that same longing for God's word? If the words of God are something we long for so much, we will tend to forget less. At the same time, God does not expect us to remember every single thing we have ever heard - it's not this result God is after. Rather, it is when we have the right attitude and a heart that yearns for the word through this process of learning that God will see and know that we put in our best effort to remember what He has taught us.

May all the glory and praise be unto His holy name. :)