Something out of Nothing

Jon was down with flu since last week. Finally succumbed to a western clinic on yesterday after many days of drinking chinese herbal tea.

Life had been miserable since last week for Jon. Maybe it was becoz of the chinese flu tea that attributed to Jon's disrupted sleep from Wed to Fri. Always woke up at 2am and ended up staring blindly at the ceiling and listening to the silence. In fact, silence was deafening especially when life is having it against you.

As Jon is typing this, the silent tone can still be heard... Jon can relate to some pyschiatric patients when they always complained to doctors that they hear things. Yes, the sound of the silent is always ringing in your ears, just that most of the time we would miss it. However when things started to be out of control, you tend to hear the deapening sound loud and clear, especially at night.

Jon is slowly recovering. He has been taking the medicine prescibed by the doctor who discouraged taking chinese herbs. We all know that farmers sprayed all sorts of chemicals onto their crops to protect against insect or preserving their freshness, now imagine "dried herbs" which normally do not go through washing up like the daily vegetables that we eat.

Other than above, Jon has nothing much to write already. He is feeling drained over the problems that cropped up in life. He is not thinking anymore. He is not praying too. He is not preparing for breakthrough now. All he wants now is to recover from the damn flu bugs. To have good sleep tonight. To see all the problems go away. To let the storm subside. Just like the tsunamic victims, slowly wait for the flood to drained away and then see how HELP can come in... Let's see how things go...

What do You want from me now?

This week started off as a terrible week for Jon.

Something cropped up so badly that affects Jon's vision in life. It resulted so badly that he does not know what to do next... Let Jon ask you a question, "What is the thing that can happen to make you want to die immediately?" If you have this answer now, then you will know how Jon feels now. If not, Jon suggests you to go watch "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" rather than continue to read this post.

Anyway, this morning received an email from someone that gives Jon some consolation. See below:



The bible says that God will not put us to the test until we could not take it... Jon is asking Him, "What do You want from me now?"

Honey Bee Story

Jon recently went into a few blogs and noticed an increasing trend of "soul-searching" posts. The questions asked are "What am I doing here", "What is my purpose in life", "Wassup with my life", "Boring boring boring life" etc etc...

Jon feels that this is absolutely very normal for people, especially teenagers to start questioning life. Life is so routine isn't it? What ever we do, achieve or own will eventually be left behind at the end of life. So we might ask, "Why am I doing what I am doing now?"

Dear friends out there. Jon would like to share with you The Honey Bee story today. In fact, you may reckon your life just like the honey bees. They are the most workerholic among all insects and are ruled by the queen bee. Just like us, working everyday for a boss... or slogging our lifes to pay off our housing loans, car loans & all the other bills you can relate to now...

Like us, honey bees have to go through a long process to make honey. The house bee and the field bee are involved in the process. First the field bee goes out and collects nectar, which it stores in an internal honey sac. They bring it back to the hive and transfer it to the house bee tongue to tongue. Then the house bee spreads a drop of nectar on the roof of a cell in a comb. During the next couple of days other house bees fan their wings over the nectar so that the moisture evaporates (nectar is 80% water and honey is 19% water). Finally, more house bees cover every cell filled with modified nectar with a thin layer of wax... blar blar blar...

So looking at the above, honey bees will be also asking the same questions that we have discussed earlier until the day they die. However, never would the honey bees realise that all their hardwork has actually paid off to something bigger than they can ever imagine or understand. They do not realise that they are the prime pollinators of the planet. For all we know, honey bees make and do things that are helpful to us. They provide us with honey, royal jelly, beeswax,and propolis.

Having said that, Jon would like to encourage all of you. Do not feel lost any more. Like honey bees, we might not understand or imagine why are we going through what we are going through now... BUT trust the Creator of heaven and earth that whatever we do now has an impact somewhere somehow. Knowing this fact, life can never be better ever! May you all look at life in a NEW PERSPECTIVE from now on.

Embrace!

Solidarity Is Needed

Recently there are so much ra-ra about the the London bombs, NFK saga, Bloggers conference and even Xiaxue's blogs been hacked... etc which had kept Jon busy flipping through papers and reading various blogs for updates. However Jon received an email from a friend today and it opened up his eyes a bit.

The email came with a powerpoint attachment. It was actually a powerpoint clip of a short MTV which were aired once in the US and was banned.

The music is very nice and refreshing. The background picture surrounds the picture of the twin towers burning in flames. There are some words next to the flaming towers which reads, "2,863 people died during the terror attack and the world united against TERRORISM". This statement repeats 3 times in 3 different pictures during the clips.

The first picture shows a disheartened man sitting at the foreground and the words beside him reads, "40 million people died of HIV. The world united against terrorism. It should also be united against AIDS."

The second picture shows a lonely boy sitting at the foreground and the words beside him reads "824 million people starving in the world. The world united against terrorism. It should also be united against HUNGER."

The third picture shows a backview of a man standing at the foreground and the words beside him reads "630 million people homless. The world united against terrorism.It should also be united against POVERTY."

Jon can understand why a government would banned such MTV clips for the concerns of public dissent. But Jon feels that it is something that we have overlooked in our daily life which are filled with the all-too-boring-stuffs.

Looking at how the world united against terrorism over the last few years. One can calculate how much have been spent on wars, military, upgrading of security equipments, internal securities and even publicities on terrorism. But little has been done on the above mentioned... WHY?

Let Jon tells you why. To come together dealing with AIDS, POVERTY & HUNGER means total giving. Nothing can be taken from it for those who give. So it takes an extra effort or motivation to form a solidarity.

Jon feels this brings comparison to Christ followers who preach to people surrounding them without expecting in return. Some of them have been sowing in vain. Some got lost sowing. Some even got tired.

However, please rest assure that God's eyes are always on us as Paul has said in 2 Corinthians 4:16-18, "We do not lose hearts. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal."

May all of you, and Jon too, be refreshed daily.

Amen

Anticipation...

Pastor Ben rockz! First time see how our pastor rockz to the tune "Nothing Gonna Stop Us"! Haha... In fact prior to the song, Jon was still praying for the mental breakthrough to embrace God's plans for us and the church! However as the church begins to rockz, confidence slowly crept into his heart and Jon began to feel the Spirit piled up as Faith replaced Doubt. Frankly, the song beat the testimony that Pastor Dinah dished out (With due respect to Mark! Sorry... Jon a rocker too... hee!)

Anyway, just as how the heat wave affected various parts of the world, Jon body simply heated up as well. You can imagine kindda like Touch from the movie F4! heh... =)

Well, Jon sensed that God has bestowed its Spirit upon the church and Jon himself. He began to pray. Pastor Ben mentioned about asking God to prepare our hearts for the next 2 weeks until 1 August when the church embarked onto our new JOURNEY for BREAKTHROUGHS. And Jon knew exactly what God is gonna do now. He is gonna strengthen Jon's FAITH everyday... Read on...

Jon feels that God is going to grant him all his wishes this week by closing the pending jobs that he desired:

1. Great Eastern Life (GEL) to buy a visual which we created.
2. Mandate to select the talents that Jon proposed today.
3. Mandate to use our photographer for one of the commercial shoot for SPC.
4. Tuesday shoot to execute smoothly in order to impress AMA Group for bigger projects in the future
5. Graphic Masters to use our photography services for their clients website.

Today, Jon saw the first wish fulfilled. Below was what Jon created with his photographer (Simon, also a Christ follower) based on client's needs as we were unable to find anything close in our library. Today client indicated their interest to buy this visual. Amen!

Next, Mandate expressed interest in the talents (6 of them)whom Jon proposed. And they are trying to propose if SPC could use our photographer as well.

Tomorrow will be our shoot for AMA Group, faith is strong... Amen!

Graphic Masters still pending, spoke to them in the afternoon and they seemed sincere.

Mind you, that's not all God has in mind. Jon received a call from L'oreal this evening for talents in a perfume launch. Jon sent in a quote, tomorrow will be the answer. God help us!

So anticipation growing intense now... In your arms, amen.

Breakthrough Begins Today

Today service begins with an anticipation. Its the last sermon on Values Driven Life and we were told that the church would be embarking on a 20-something months campaign called "Breakthrough" until April 2007!

When Jon first knew about this (few weeks back), "Oh man!" Jon simply was caught in awe. This campaign is indeed a breakthrough itself as Jon has never heard something like that before?! Questions started to flood into Jon's mind as follows:

1. Will there be enough relevant scriptures for the pastors to use for their Sunday sermons until 2007?

2. Will this restrict the church from been "flexible" if they fix on one topic for the next 20-somthing months?

3. Will there be enough "breakthrough" testimonies to share from the members? As Jon feels that "breakthrough" testimonies shouldn't be normal testimonies that we hear week in week out... you know what Jon means?

4. What must Jon do to make sure he is on track to witness and tag along with the "breakthroughs" that God has installed for us?

FIRST BREAKTHROUGH from Hope

Today Jon witnessed the first breakthrough from God: Pastor Ben created a personal blog as a means to "communicate" with the cyber world!!! This is something Jon has never imagined! A lot of people would definitely be thrilled to hear this. "Internet Fellowship" would be interesting as none of us have ever experience it before... What Jon means is this, "Which pastor did that before?!" So thumps up to Pastor Ben from Hope Singapore!

Now that the bloggersphere is heating up over the NKF-SPH saga, this piece of news would certainly caused some ripples among the "already" bloggers from Hope Singapore! Mind you, there are more than 2000 members in church, so there will certainly be quite a number out there, especially the tertiary lads, who will be eager to find out from Pastor Ben's blog @ benkclee.blogspot.com. Imagine this, Pastor Ben's blog became the top 10 blogs in Singapore? SEA? Asia? World? Would we caused a trend across all Christian communities to follow suit? Start to imagine that... ;p

Next, Jon begins to worry too for some "Hope" bloggers. Would bloggers want to get involve in Pastor Ben's blog? If we do, most church people would be able to asses each other's blog as well... So what does that mean to bloggers who want to keep things personal? Jon knew some bloggers who use blogging as a means to "voice out" or "vent" their "earthly" comments and frustrations into the cyber "space" so that we do not "corrupt" or "influence" the people around, especially spiritually not stable ones... Like Jon, its a way he could leave his deep honest comments he feel would otherwise not be accepted by people in this all too common world. In short, its a way some of us balance our lives as we continue to practise the Fruit of Spirit in real life and surpress our deep devilish self in the cyber world...

Anyway whatever the issue next, we can only anticipate. Why not just embrace this opportunity to see how this breakthrough leads us to. FYI, Jon has just commented in Pastor Ben's blog, so he is expecting some "peepers" real soon. Hi there mates! May God blesses us all. And stay cool, God has His ways.

Amen.

What's next Singapore?

Kudos to SPH, without them a lot of dark secrets could not come to light. Thats what the press should do. To publicise what the public do not know, or do not have the means to find out.

Ok ok, looking at this "SPH Vs NKF"... 2 national brands against one another, no one can show favourism right now. In the end Truth prevails, and the loser made to pay for the actions. In fact this time round, there isn't just 1 scapegoat who pays as the whole NKF board resigned!

In fact, this saga gives us an insight of how wonderful life can be in Singapore if everything is playing at a fair ground with no favourism or manipulation. Everyone just keen to find out the truth and transparency speaks for itself. However do we have this fair game all the time?

Looking at the way how NKF operate brings me to think about how our country is ruled over the last 40 years as well. This time round, we are talking about HUGE PUBLIC FUND and mind you, we are not talking about volunter donors here, but everyone who called themseves citizens contributing to the fund through all sorts of taxes!

Have we seen transparency from our "board of directors" running the country? Are they earning too much? How about their bonuses and spending? How's their toilet status? etc etc... this time round who will be playing the "SPH" role to bring every dark issues to light. Or can anyone do anything as almost everything that has power in this country seems to be under control by the country itself... even the way our juricial system works...

So how can we get a fair game now, Singapore?

NKF???

NKF, NKF, NKF... These words just keep ringing in my mind...

Perhaps most of you have read enough articles related to NKF to be really convinced that enough is enough, the system is wrong somewhere... So what can we do next?

Some people might argue that $600,000 is peanut for a CEO, but to many of us who are earning real "peanuts", $600,000 is just too big a nut for a (NPO) Non-Profit Organization who claims to HELP the poor for kidney dialysis... So which is more important? To hire a multi-million dollar CEO to manage that already "cash-savvy" fund which can sustain the institution for the next 30 years in how to spend more "extravagantly" or a kind hearted leader who just foucs on the next suffering victim and careful on every cent he and everyone in the institution spend?

Bonus of 12 month a peanut too? To a NPO, how did they manage to work out such a good bonus? Is managing few thousands patient every year with 996 staff (as of 2003 from Financial Statement published in NKFS website) a very impressive achievement? For this, the CEO can command the the kind of salary and bonus we mentioned above with corporate CEOs in the private sectors? I hope the other CEOs can swallow this well...

Come to think of it, poor TT Durai should be sympathised... He has even claimed it, whatever he takes and whatever entitlements provided is approved by the board. So why should we make things difficult for him? If what he said is true, then as the public providing the funding to the institution, isn't we right to be asking for TRANSPARENCY of the way the institute spend so that we are able to analysis if this institution uphold its vision: "To be a world-class, not for profit healthcare institution committed to saving and transforming lives." which is the primary reason why we donate in the first place.

Things to note during consideration:

1. Must the board or the CEO of such institution have the same vision of the company? If so, are they prepared to humble themselves to accept the kind of benefits/salary thats sufficient and not trying to match the world's view?
(As of the Financial Statement published in their website, the 2003 Total Employee Cost is $27,125,000 for 996 employees = $2,269.49 per average employee. So Mr TT Durai is earning more than 10 times of the average employee, what about the rest of the board? How dare he claim that his salary to be compared with the private sectors...)

2. Does been a world-class institute means everyone in the institute should enjoy "world-class" salary, benefits and treatment?

3. Should the publicity focus on how much lifes are saves and how much poor people have benefitted rather than on how much $$$ been raised each year, been a leading social entrepreneurship for many years, how much celebrities participating in charity shows and how many cars or condos to give away each year...

4. So already having enough reserves for the next 30 years, what's next? Making it 50 years or 100 years? Or consider fully subsidising those patients who really have problem affording the dialysis?

Be Like A Child

Tell you frankly, Jon's mind is running wild again...

The fact that Jon is dealing with so many sweet little kids during the past few weeks makes him wants to be a Father too. To make matter worse, seems like most people in church is also getting pregnant too! Love is really in the air!

Ok, here are the solutions:
1. Get marry and bore a child
2. Go to an orphanage
3. Get a Godson
4. Adobt a child in Africa
5. Get a pet instead
6. Be like a child

Guess looking at my situation now, number 6 seems a better option... =)

Big Storm Ahead

Finally, Jon is back to continue on where he left off: Further insights of the topic "The Compromising of the Christian Worldview"

Though, it's an intellectual CG lesson on a "Heavy" topic, Jon is terribly disappointed on how the session went. Its not because the chairperson's inability to teach (In fact he managed to inteprete all the "Bombastic" words) but the fact that the session is almost an one-way teaching rather than two-way discussion due to lack of time (only 45 mins allocated) actually killed the essence of this topic.

Jon felt this session a big "turn-off" because as most of the people are unable to voice out their thoughts... Looking at the conclusion: "Is the Word Of God Supplemental or Central to our lives?" Here we are trying to finish off a lesson in 45 mins without in-depth discussions... So Jon would like to ask, "Is this a supplemental lesson for CG or are we more keen to find out how are we going to face this crisis as a church and how do we overcome this problem?"

Next, Jon was also very surprise by a comment made during one "cross-fire" enquiry from a German visitor who brought up an interesting finding that our church's teaching is not too focus on the teaching of the Word Of God as compared to the church back in Germany, but rather touch on how the preaching here is catered to our daily lifes.

One reply arised was that our church is tuned to the "frequency of the mass" in the teaching so that we are able to reach a wider range of audience for faster church growth... In short someone mentioned that some churches basically preach things that most people in this "new age" society want to hear in order to become "Mega Churches" in the shortest possible time?!!! To bring it to an extreme, someone also mentioned that there is a "cost-time factor" which affects how some churches preach...

Well well, this is something NEW that Jon ever heard!!! Its very disturbing for Jon to find out that churches adobt its own style of preaching in terms of how the style "attracts" audiences. Without mentioning names of any churches, Jon really felt worried if this has any impact on our individual's spiritual growth...

Questions to ponder:

1. Is our spiritual growth been manipulated?
2. Are we at a church that preaches the "truth" about the Word Of God or preaches the things that we want to hear only?
3. What will happen to the Christians who belong to the kind of churches who preaches "superficially".
4. Is there any differences to God for Christians who studied the Word of God well and those who briefly know the Word by its meaning only?
5. What exactly are the standards for church practises?

It looks like its going to be a long journey for Jon again, as he recovers from the last spiritual storm and now heading to another challenging one. Well, just like Paul in Acts when he was sailing through the storms, Jon would like to ask God to be with him so that his life will be safe in His hands no matter what happens.

May all souls be saved! Amen.

The Compromising of the Christian Worldview

Today is a very interesting day as the CG goes into a very intellectual teaching session by our CL.

Before Jon starts to journal what he has learnt today, let him find out the meaning of some bombastic words that we used earlier:
(Meaning found from www.dictionary.com)

Modernism – modern thought, conformity to modern ideas, practices, or standards

Modernity – a state or quality of being modern

Post Modern – Of or relating to art, architecture, or literature that reacts against earlier modernist principles, as by reintroducing traditional or classical elements of styles or practices to extremes

Rootless – having no roots

Illiteracy – the condition of being unable to read or write

Exaltations – a state of being carried away by overwhelming emotion

Exposition – a systematic interpretation or explanation of a specific topic

Piecemeal – In pieces apart

Doctrinisation – no such word

Doctrine – a teaching

Marginalisation – the social process of becoming or being made marginal

Marginal – Barely within a lower standard or limit of quality

Presumptuous – Going beyond what is right or proper; excessively forward

Supplemental – something provided to complete a thing, make up for a deficiency, or extend or strengthen the whole


WOW! After seeing the list of bombastic words above, Jon must have left thinking that he must have undergone some SUPER CHARGED Bible Study Session! Read on…


TITLE: The Compromising of the Christian Worldview

“ Now a new tidal wave, called by the scholars postmodernity, is sweeping across Western thought, undermining the very idea of absolute truth. What should be the response of the Christian church in the face of these waves of philosophical attack?”
- James R. White

The emergent crisis that we face in our churches and in contemporary discipleship is the crisis of Theological Rootlessness. There are 4 features of this crisis:

a) The Rise of Bible Illiteracy

i. Living in an instant society
ii. Biblical Exaltations Vs biblical Exposition
iii. An inherent weakness in Bible Study/ Cell Groups
iv. A piecemeal approach to scriptures.

b) The De-Doctrinisation of Christianity

i. An Intellectual orientation
ii. Losing our ability to think

c) The Marginalisation of Theological Education

i. Theological Compromise
ii. Theological Credentials Vs Theological Competence

d) The Presumptuous of Faith

i. An Experimental faith Vs a Presumptuous faith
ii. A Shallow spirituality

Conclusion

Is the Word of God Supplemental or Central to our lives?

So, here’s what we learnt today, digest... BUT come back soon as Jon's next post will touch on how the discussion went earlier on.

Meanwhile Jon wants to say good night to everyone! May God be with you all!