Milestones and Looking Back...

It's a great feeling!

As I shared in my previous post, my laptop crashed and I spent lots of time offline. They were fun, refreshing and enlightening. I got to read books that gave me ideas to pursue for my website and as I charted out those ideas, I realized how far out of my comfort zone they would take me.

I also suddenly realized that my site has become what I originally wanted it to be.

For those of you who have been around long enough and saw the original layout of my site (what I had in May 2008), well, that was the best I could come up with at that time. My understanding of HTML and all that was really limited (actually, non-existent). Sad, right?

But things just magically clicked together (no pun intended) after I grit my teeth and got that site out. New info came my way, and I found that I could just add in more and more of what I wanted my site to have. Then I accidentally crashed my own site sometime in August and had to rebuild everything exactly the way I wanted it.

And that feels REALLY good. Get what I mean?

As I said before, I wanted my site to:

1) explain my Invisible Worship Musician e-book - Well, that was obvious, right? I created training materials I felt I could be proud of, information that has been battle-tested in the worship ministry and blessed many people. Now it's time to up the ante and share it with the rest of the world.

2) offer Worship Ministry e-course to give people a taste of what i teach - Why do that? Because I know that there are people around who actually GET worship ministry, people who subconsciously understand what really works. I DON'T want those people buying my e-book, so I provide the e-course for them to check out my materials and see that they don't need it.

Bad business move? Not really. From May up till now I have not had to give a single refund. Which suggests that I have effectively screened the prospective buyers effectively, so that those who don't need what I offer don't buy it.

3) show Worship Ministry articles as a quick and easy reference guide for anyone involved with the worship ministry - they are short pieces of teaching that can be easily read and used. They don't replace what I teach in my book, but they are helpful and I want everyone to benefit from them.

What's next? Stuff that makes me really uncomfortable, things that have me praying that God will bring me resources, link me up with the right people, and give me LOTS of courage.

And stuff that will further increase the teaching value of my site, to make it an effective and useful resource for worship leaders and musicians for all over the world.

So for now, I am holding a special promotion for my Invisible Worship Musician materials. It's called the Milestones Sale and it allows you to purchase my materials at US$37 ($20 off the usual price). Do grab this special offer, it's only available from now until 8th November. And it will probably be the very last special promotion for this in 2008.

Stay tuned for further developments! And do contact me with your ideas and feedback for what else I can add to my website, I'd love to hear from you!

Be blessed!

A Very Strange Weekend

Three whole days offline...

I only have a laptop and it crashed on me. It was something with the motherboard, so I had an entire 3 days:

1) without Internet - no emails, no checking out the worship ministry forums I'm involved with...

2) no e-books; AND

3) no typing - I was scribbling email and blog ideas on post-it notes. Talk about pathetic!

So what did I do over the weekend? It was spent:

1) playing the piano - for me, not for ministry, but just for me. I've forgetten what that was like...

2) reading REAL books, not PDFs and e-books - got loads of ideas, as usual!

3) playing with my two boys!

As you might have guessed, I got many emergent curriculum opportunities with my kids. Those opportunities were always there, but it's too easy to miss them (many adults do).

When you see how alive and in the moment young children are, you can understand why there are parents who willingly forgo additional income to stay home and home-school their kids. If you impose a decent curriculum on them they're happy. And if you can flow with them on what catches their attention at the moment, they're happy too.

Yeah, my sons have been teaching me by example how to be happy even without a computer. :) We had a great time creating and singing silly songs around the piano. The teacher-JJ side of me was satisfied at how the song rhythm was helping them get a better sense of syllable placement, crucial to their language growth. The Daddy side of me was thinking "why didn't I do this ages ago?!??!?"

But anyway, it's time to get back to work. For all of you who tried to email me about ministry and business matters over the past few days, I'll be giving you proper replies soon, give me a while to catch up.

How about the whackers, JJ? Any updates?

Err... no. I've decided to pursue the secular philosophy of "living well is the best revenge". I just had a fantastic weekend feeding on the faithfulness and love of God, shown in the joy and fun I had with my two sons. If the whackers had seen how little their threats bothered me, how easily they get forgotten and how happy I am with my two sons, they would have gnashed their teeth in frustration.

I can live with that.

I don't know if things are different in other countries, but my whackers grew up in the 50s and 60s. Those were years of huge political turmoil and upheavel around the world. Many nations were fighting for their political independence from their colonial masters. Communism was still seen as a viable political system, and many did consider it as a tool for gaining national independence.

I've noticed that many people growing up in that era have a fascination with making bold political statements and having over-the-top, larger-than-life displays. The CAUSE (whatever they were fighting for) was the ends that justified all means, and those people felt the need to announce their cause to all and sundry.

When it comes to hostilities, it translates to large threat displays. They want you to be intimidated, or to go over-the-top in fighting back. (Think Taiwanese politics). Ignoring such people, or (God forbid) joking about them was the worst possible thing you could ever do to them.

For me, I see threat displays as being VERY foolish. The Japanese have a saying "A cornered mouse can bite a cat", in other words, if you drive people to desperation, they may escalate the conflict far more than you are mentally and emotionally prepared for. Your CAUSE, whatever it may be, won't help you very much then. Bringing about your downfall has become THEIR cause.

"As far as it is up to you, leave in peace with everyone" (Romans 12:18, paraphrased)

Of course, I don't believe that means being a doormat and putting up with abuse. I have many people tell me to just endure the nonsense and try to give a gentle reply, after all a gentle answer turns away wrath (Pro 15:1). I point out to them that Proverbs also tells us what kind of people to avoid, and those admonitions are as valid as giving a gentle reply.

Drive out the mocker, and out goes strife; quarrels and insults are ended. (Proverbs 22:10, NIV)

Anyway, this post is just a quick update, not a full teaching or sharing thing. Those will come soon. In the meantime, I'm trying to find my feet and catch up with all the online backlog. So be patient, I'll be in contact with you soon with some new things to share!

Be blessed!

teaching and prayer request

I got whacked last night.

It was ugly, involving shouting at 2am in the morning, being threatened with legal action and me eventually calling the police to intervene. Even right now I am still feeling the shame, what will the neighbors think? The police being called to salvage a situation at the house from which the neighbors continually hear the praises of God?

The reason my wife allowed one of the whackers in my home at that unearthly hour in the first place is because the whackers are a couple who have helped my wife and I before a lot in the past. Over time I have been actively discouraging my wife from accepting help from them, because they are people whose help comes with strings attached.

In other words, if you accept their help, you OWE them.

Big time.

The Bible has described such people before in Proverbs 23:6-8 (NKJV)

Do not eat the bread of a miser, nor desire his delicacies;
For as he thinks in his heart, so is he.
"Eat and drink!" he says to you,
But his heart is not with you.
The morsel you have eaten, you will vomit up,
And waste your pleasant words.

The last line is especially appropriate, about vomiting the morsel you have eaten. It seems that this couple has kept the receipts of the 'help' they've given us, and because I refused to sit down and accept being blasted by them for no good reason, they intend to sue for the return of all those sums.

Meet such people regularly? I hope you don't.

Though you do occasionally meet people who have so effectively deadened their consciences so that they can do such things easily and with impunity (they are criminals, the only question is whether they have been caught yet), many people still feel some internal restraint against attacking others to such an extent.

So what do you do if you want to victimize someone but don't have the guts to do it yet? You look for reasons to pull the trigger, to plunge in the knife, to justify your own crime. And the most common way to do that is to find excuses to call that other guy a bigger criminal than you are, that you are the Robin Hood, the noble vigilante who gets your hands dirty only for the sake of protecting the innocent.

And as one of the whackers stood in my own living room, shouting away at me, threatening to whack me both in the court of law and by her friends in high places (?) I discovered why this whacker has so totally de-humanized me and taken me as the ultimate epitome of evil and irresponsibility, fit for nothing else other than disgrace and destruction.

My wife's been complaining to her about me for the past four years.

In techie terms the whacker was kept on an RSS feed of my mistakes, blunders and bad points (yeah, I DO have them). And that emboldened her to whack me at my own home with vulgarities too crass to mention, as well as threats and what not.

Now before anyone places all the blame on my wife, you've got to remember that people will hear what they want to hear, and this whacker was already primed to look for my inadequacies and failures.

So when you put together the continual feed of my mistakes and all that, already slanted to present me in a bad light, with a receptive audience who WANTS to see me in a bad light, it was only a matter of time before the blow up happened.

And when I was struck with the unfairness of the whole thing, I started becoming like my whackers. How does someone become like one of those people mentioned in Proverbs 23?

It is revealed for us in the NIV translation of this passage:

Do not eat the food of a stingy man, do not crave his delicacies; for he is the kind of man who is always thinking about the cost. (Proverbs 23:6, NIV)

I started thinking about the things I did right for my family and wife, and started thinking about how much they cost me in terms of time, effort and money. All the stuff that got conveniently left out of her RSS feed about life with JJ. I started thinking about how ungrateful my wife was (wouldn't my whackers be thinking exactly the same thing about me?) and began entertaining thoughts of ending all my extra efforts and seeing how the family would cope without me.

I think it's obvious that if God didn't suddenly stop me and reveal to me what was happening, I would have become exactly like those who whacked me. *Shudder*

And THAT's what I'd like to share with you in this post.

You see, when it comes to serving God's people (whether they are in our immediate family or otherwise) Jesus doesn't want us to be thinking about the cost. It cost us nothing.

And as you go, preach, saying, 'The kingdom of heaven is at hand.' Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out demons. Freely you have received, freely give. (Matthew 10:7-8, NKJV)

And when you can truly see that you have received all things freely from God, you free yourself from the need to guard and protect yourself from being taken advantage of as you give of your abilities and giftings to the Body of Christ.

As for me, I've just recently decided to up the ante for my work. I've added on Weekly Worship Ministry Devotional emails, you can sign up for them here. These are of a different writing style compared to my private lessons, my usual blogposts and other teaching articles. And I am excited at adding this new free feature to my teaching materials and making them available to you.

But in the midst of all that I am painfully aware of my personal weakness and need for prayer support from the rest of the Body of Christ. So this is both teaching (sharing on the Book of Proverbs) and an appeal to you to pray for me. Pray especially that I:

1) Walk in forgiveness, as our Lord would have us do;

2) Walk in wisdom, that I may know what to do

3) Walk in protection, that I may leave no room for the ungodly to take advantage of me.

Thanks! Be blessed!