Resisting Anomie

The youth service we had on November 8 was once again a major success - with the sacntuary filled with young people.  What was interesting this time was that majority of those in attendance were first-timers, invited and brought over by those who joined us in the previous service two weeks ago.  The youth ministry is star-bursting and I thank God for the influx of a new breed.  But more than the numbers, what I am most thankful about is the opportunity that God is giving to the young people to have a fresh start with their lives.  After singing two worship songs, I felt an urge to invite those in need of prayer to step down to the stage where I thought we could collectively pray for all.  But when about 3/4 of the audience came down, I was overwhelmed.  Then came another urge to pray for them one by one and I thought, God, we’re talking about almost a hundred here and it’s running late (9 pm already).  But God, with all his goodwill, persisted and so I asked fellow leaders to pray for the young people individually.  Then I saw God minister to the specific needs of the youth.  I have already received some tetimonies and still waiting for more.  To God be the glory for His massive works in the young people today.  It is obvious that He loves the new generation so dearly. 

Let me now share with you the things that I shared with the youth on that day, taken from John 6:1-15, the story of the feeding of the 5,000 (actually that doesn’t include children and women).  This is the first in a series of three preachings drawn from the narratives of John 6 in which people were encountering Jesus differently. 

The question that lifts itself up from the story of the feeding of the 5,000 is straightforward: who gets to experience the extraordinary works of God?  Of course, everybody managed to eat bread and fish with 12 baskets of left-overs to boot.  But before that extraordinary miracles happens, we meet three people who came up to Jesus to solve the dilemma of how to feed the crowd. 

1.  Meet the spectators (verses 1-3).

Jesus was planning to take a rest after the whole encounter with the Pharisess who questioned him right after seeing him heal the crippled man (the narrative of my previous preaching, just see blog before this).  Now the lame man’s healing must have been a major headline and so people, posibly those who were also waiting together with that crippled man for the water in the pool to bubble and hence get a supernatural healing from the holy water (again, see previous blog), packed up and started looking for Jesus.  After all, many of them have been waiting years for the pool to bubble.  ”Why wait for the bubble when this guy has already healed our crippled dude?  Time to look for him!” 

These are what I call the spectators, those who follow Christ for the sheer entertainment, spectacle, or exciting things He offers.  There’s no difference from the ones who enjoy watching those entertainment shows - with all the dancing, singing, crying game participants who will smile after the show host gives them 5,000 pesos.  Jesus to many of those in the crowd of more than 5,000 was mere entertainment.      

The world hasn’t changed that much.  To many of us, God is mere spectacle.  We join church because it’s fun.  Or we come to church because it has become a habit.  We are happy hearing positive testimonies of other brethren.  We sometimes have our own stories to share.  But when it’s time to get our hands dirty by helping other people, participating in the ministry, offering time, resources, and talents, we sneak out. 

That’s fine, sure, maybe because we are sometimes busy with other things.  But herein lies the problem: when problems come, it’s the spectators who sneak out first and quickly so.  Exams?  Binasted?  Hindi binigyan ng juice at bread paglabas ng service?  Nastumble kay ganito?  Nacriticize ng iba? 

There’s a tendency for the spectators to have the most superficial relationship with Christ.  Click if you want to know if you a spectator.

2.  Then you have the worriers (verses 5-8).

Jesus tested Philip, one of his disciples, by asking him what they can do to feed everyone.  Philip would most probably have a few ideas since he lived somewhere near the area (Bethsaida).  But instead of suggesting some concrete and encouraging ideas, he blurted, “well, even one year’s wage is not enough to cover for all, sorry”.  Of course, Christ knew that it was impossible to feed everyone - by human hands, that is.  Apart from testing Philip, he was preparing the way for people to see that an extraodrinary work can only come from God. 

Let’s analyze Philip’s statement further.  This guy had been with Christ all along - seeing him do miracles, declare himself to be God, speak to the Samaritan woman, heal the crippled man.  “Maybe He’s really awesome and powerful.  But feed everyone here?  Now that’s asking too much, isn’t it?” 

Thoughts like this happen when we don’t know God comprehensively.  We speculate on His power and character.  “Maybe God is good to everyone but me.”  “Maybe God created me this way - with all the failures and stupidity that define who I am.”  “Maybe it’s okay to sin, after all, God made me like this.” 

God realizes that it is impossible for the human brain to comprehend him fully.  But in spite of that, He wills to reveal Himself to you and me.  See God’s declaration in Jeremiah 24:7:

“I will give them a desire to know me and to be my people. They will want me to be their God, and they will turn back to me with all their heart. “

This is why we have the Bible today so that we will have the basic familliary of who God is and how much He loves us.  So much so that Christ, God who became man, had to die on the cross in lieu of you and me. 

3.  Then there’s the selfless boy (verses 8-13).

While the commotion as to how to feed everyone was going on, somebody raised his hand, stood up, and offered everything he had - a little boy with 5 pieces of bread and two fish.  If the boy was selfish like many adults tend to be, he could have gone out briefly and satisfied himself instead.  But no, he thought that maybe he could offer something.  Now that something, interestingly, was all he had for the moment.  5 pieces of bread and 2 fish. 

Out of the selflessness of an ordinary boy whose name was not even mentioned came out an extraordinary miracle whose impact was grand-scale. 

Out of these three sets of people who met Christ on that day, it was only the selfless boy who truly experience God’s extraordinary work.  When they opened their eyes afrer thanking God for the little that they had, the little was turned to  massive. 

Imagine what God can do in our lives if we offer everything that we have ti God (even if to other people, it’s only “something”).  Let’s get something out of the bread and fish as symbolic of something even more important.  These are food and food giv nourishment to life.  When the boy gave up all he had, it was, to a great extent, trying to say, that “Lord, I’m kinda hungry right now and can actually die being so but I’m giving up what I have for you to use”.  In other words, when the boy offered his food, he was in fact offering his life.  Look at what God did.

It’s the selfless who will get to experience the extraordinary works of God.  Let me end by quoting from Prov. 3:5-7:

“Trust in the L

ord with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding.  Seek his will in all you do, and he will show you which path to take.  Don’t be impressed with your own wisdom.  Instead, fear the Lord and turn away from evil.”
By allowing God to take over and lead every aspect and minute of our lives (which is what biblical selflessness is all about), we can expect Him to turn what seems to be our weaknesses and limitations into something great.  Yes, God can do extraordinary works in your life, family, relationships, studies, and work.  

For correspondence, email me at ctm_youthonfire@yahoo.com.

The youth concert we held on October 25 was meant to launch the youth service of our local church in Las Piñas City, Cross Tower Ministries.  Although the turnout out was massive, as God has confirmed to us long before it occurred, many of us in the youth ministry and music team were somehow nervous that the next youth service might not be as jam-packed and exciting as the concert was.  We became all the more nervous when at 6 pm on November 8, attendees were merely trickling in.  Thankfully though, by 7 pm, at which time we started (late again, obviously) the place was filled with so many young people – with new faces to boot.  We are thankful to God that He has caused the youth ministry to take off now.  The next step of course is effective and strategic discipleship.  But even more importantly, the Lord reminded us of one clear thing which we lost sight of leading up to the youth service: that we ought to be prepared spiritually all the time.  Pastor Jerome confided to me that our spiritual adrenaline level went down this time and it was not a good sign. 

Anyway, let me share with you the message I delivered on that day – which I believe still had impact on the youth judging from the response to the call for prayer.  Taken from John 5:1-13, the passage proceeds from the story of the Samaritan woman.  It’s about Christ healing this crippled man who had been waiting for his miracle at the pool for 38 years already. 

Without sounding judgmental, I have observed that there are many of us Christians in the world today – or at least in the groups that I have become part of - who walk about professing our faith in Jesus without necessarily being conscious of the sincerity that ought to go with such profession.  In other words, we find it rather easy to write “Christian” in the space provided for the “Religion” category in our CV, for instance, without pondering the implications on lifestyle.  This, I think, is very well indicative of what can be called as Christian lip service, or the idea that one can say he believes in the Lord Jesus even if he does things that are contrary to what Christ exemplifies or deep inside him, he feels otherwise.  Among the young people, this is rampant.  Somebody can argue that hey, it is completely impossible to be perfect anyway, so what’s the point in comparing ourselves to Christ, Jayeel?  In response, that is not really the point of this message.  Although perfection is impossible for us mortal beings at this point in time, each of us has the ability to choose to which direction we shall orient our lives.  In other words, Christ-like or otherwise?  Or put differently, does Jesus really really have anything to do with my life such that when I say that I am a Christian, Jesus is concerned about how I live?  The brief (and at times boring, as I initially observed) passage from John 5:1-13, without being pushy about it, says yes.  There are three key points we can learn from this passage:

 

• Jesus is personally concerned about you – yes, you (verses 1-8).

 

The introductory sentences reveal that in that pool were so many ill people waiting for the water to bubble.  What were they doing there?  They believed that water bubbling means an angel has touched the water and so the very first person to get into it shall be healed.  Talk about endless queues that you normally encounter when buying at McDonald’s and that doesn’t even compare.  Of all the people in the large crowd, Christ goes to this man and asks him, “What do you want to happen, dude?” 

 

Of all the people, why him?  There are at least two speculations, with one more convincing.  The first possible reason can be merely Jesus felt like doing it just to get it over with.  After all, He was extremely tired from previous encounters with other people.  Maybe deep inside Him, He wanted to exhibit one miracle and after that, sneak out and rest.  A day’s worth of work is over.

 

But I think a more compelling reason, knowing Christ’s character, is that He saw through the man’s struggles which He felt needed one personal attention.  The crippled man who is the subject of this story has been waiting for his own miracle for 38 years.  But that doesn’t reveal much about the man.  When Christ asks him what he wants to happen, he immediately responds, “Hey you, I’ve been waiting here for 38 years and even if the water bubbles, there’s no way that I can get myself into it as by the time that I pick myself up, thousand others have jumped into the pool”.  What does this quick reply say about this man?  There is a tension going on in this man’s heart.  On one hand, he says he believes that a miracle can happen to him one day.  But on the other hand, by virtue of his own admission to Christ, he seems unconvinced that it will ever happen anyway.  Talk about Christian lip service.

 

And more importantly, this reflects the condition of many young people today – hopelessness.  Yes, there is no doubt that we believe in God but many of us have learned to accept certain struggles in our lives as “normal” thereby becoming part of our daily living.  These can be problems with our relationships in the family, with money, with emotions, even with illnesses, and the list can go on.  On one hand, we believe in God who can help us through, but on the hand, we feel that maybe all these are normal so we better accept them. 

 

Jesus sees through your own struggles and He is concerned about you personally.

 

Without batting an eyelash, Christ says, “Stand up and pick up your mat”.

 

• Jesus wants you to stand up and face the world (verses 8-13).

 

Then came the power of the Almighty upon this man.  Why did Christ have to ask the man to pick up his mat?        

 

It was meant to show the world that he was no longer under the curse of the mat of sickness, that it was time for him to pick up himself and walk away from his own struggles. 

 

In Psalm 139:17-18, we are reminded that the Lord has so many beautiful thoughts and plans for us.  The reason why Christ had to ask the man to stand up was because the man would not be able to fulfill God’s plans for his life under the stronghold of personal struggles.  In other words, people trapped in their own issues in life are unable to see the greater things ahead of them. 

 

When Christ died on the cross and rose back to life, that simply meant even death no longer has power over anyone.  This was the conviction that Christ had in John 16:33: “Fear not for I have overcome the world”. 

 

• Jesus wants to complete you (verses 14-15).

 

The man moves on and Jesus is out of the picture.  But sometime later, Jesus finds him again in the thick of the crowd with a clear and better message: “Stop sinning”.  As if the first miracle was not enough, Jesus had to look for this man again in order to tell him that “Hey, now that you’re healed, don’t ever think of going back to the things that trapped you.  You no longer belong to sin.  You belong to me”. 

 

The man needed a better miracle – the miracle of a brand new life. 

 

The man, if we remember, was waiting for his miracle at the pool, thinking that he would be made complete by a divine intervention that looked like it came from God but God was not really there.  You see, the attention of the man was on the possible miracle and not the miracle-giver. 

 

That was the reason why Christ had to see him personally again and make sure to him that what he needed was God and not just the miracle. 

 

In other words, we can have all the miracles – or “blessings” as we call them – in the world and yet have our hearts be so far from the Lord.  When that happens, we continue living looking for things that will complete us – perhaps another miracle, another blessing, another achievement can make me complete.  Just one more.

 

When you have Christ, you are complete.  Yes, Christ is concerned about your welfare, which is why He healed the man.  But He is more concerned about the wholeness of your life that only He can give, which is why He came to see the man again. 

 

In Psalm 138:7-8, we are told that the Lord is willing to fulfill His plans for our lives.  I believe we can choose to orient our lives to have Christ as the center of everything we do and the source of everything that we need. 

 

The life that we live as Christians can be more beautiful and effective than the mere lip service that we pay to Christ when we write in the space next to “Religion” in the CV. 

 

 

- Continued from Part 1 -

From 2 Corinthians 5:17-18 (The Message Translation):

“…Anyone united with the Messiah gets a fresh start, is created new. The old life is gone; a new life burgeons! Look at it! All this comes from the God who settled the relationship between us and him, and then called us to settle our relationships with each other. God put the world square with himself through the Messiah, giving the world a fresh start by offering forgiveness of sins.”

Get this right, this does not mean that life is going to be perfect like you wake up everyday with all your problems solved or drive a Ferrari complete with escorts, Ipod, laptop, and a Christian shirt – nope, you will still have to study hard, work for your food, face family problems, .  What this means is that you have inside you a force that can make life so meaningful and beautiful even if everything outside you is so bad.  It also means you can face this world with assurance that the Lord loves you.  God is so real. 

 

3.  Jesus sees the potential in you. (verses 23-24. 39-42)

 

Towards the end of the narrative, Jesus talks about the right worship.  Many of us think that true worship can only take place inside the right ceremonial hall.  You’re not alone.  Even the Samaritan woman argued that the mountain where the Samaritan community was living was the rightful place of worship and not Jerusalem where the Temple was located.  Jesus counters this profoundly: true worship is not about being in the right place.  Look at Christ’s response from verses 23-24:

“It’s who you are and the way you live that count before God. Your worship must engage your spirit in the pursuit of truth. That’s the kind of people the Father is out looking for: those who are simply and honestly themselves before him in their worship. God is sheer being itself—Spirit. Those who worship him must do it out of their very being, their spirits, their true selves, in adoration.”

This reply must shock all of us who still think that God is pleased by the number of times we pray or kneel down or not eat something or the like.  True worship is being true inside and outside.  So even if you feel hurt, you can tell that to God.  If you feel jubilant, you can tell that to God, too.  But even better, when you have Christ inside you, the outward actions and internal motivations are guided by God and hence the whole life becomes in itself the act of worship.  God changes you inside and out.

 

That’s exactly what happened to the Samaritan woman.  In the latter verses (39-42), we see that she starts telling people about her encounter with Christ.  Take note, it’s the same woman who everyday of her life avoids the public eye.  Now she’s the first person to tell the world that Jesus lives. 

 

Christ simply brought out the best in her.  She had the talent of convincing people (which I’m sure she used to allure her men) but now God transformed it into something noble and eternal.  Minus, of course, the shame, guilt, and bitterness. 

 

Christ wants to bring out the best in you and me.  He can make use of everything that you and I have for something that is more noble, beautiful, and worthwhile.  When we are able to commit our lives to Christ, our whole life can be changed for the better and everything we do can be worthwhile.  What that means is that the whole life becomes in itself the act of worship.

 

To answer the question “Who am I?”, you and I need to go back to the One who says He is the great “I am”.  He is, after all, our Creator, and therefore, He knows the best in us.  Sometimes, we are blinded by our own definitions of ourselves - maybe based on how others see us, talk about us, what we own and do not own, what we have done, or what we feel inside.  It’s time to look at ourselves from the perspetive of the eternal Creator - God Himself and Christ definitely showed that to us. 

 

You and I can be that Samaritan woman who just needs to have that special encounter with Christ Himself. 

 

Email me: leeyaj@atenista.net