Hobble, limp, grumble, whine...

(Personal blog post)

It's the end of Feb 2011, and the thoughts most pressing on my mind: my toes hurt!

I kicked them against something hard (and that's all I'm saying, I don't want to look totally lame). They didn't hurt at first, but later there was pain even as I played piano pedals during church. And after playing for service I ran to the washrooms, looked at my by-then-swollen toes and realized I was going to suffer for the next few days...

So I went about limping around today. I did SOME teaching even though the doctor recommended that I rest completely for two days. But I drew the line at carrying the guitar around for teaching guitar. That would be going too far, so I postponed my guitar teaching to another day.

It sounds lame (no pun intended) that with all the horrible things that could have happened to me but didn't, my mind is fixated on my poor hurting toes. I'm limping around as I walk, and as I hobble I am feeling really sorry for myself.

Yes, I reserve the right to be silly once in a while! :D


Another thing on my mind this month was how I managed to clear a lot of my old clothes, as mentioned in my blog posts. It was a good experience, letting go of whatever I knew I had to let go of. I guess that's one of the beneficial aspects of Chinese New Year, the custom of cleaning out the house, which leads naturally to clearing out whatever we ought to really get rid of.

So now I face a more spacious wardrobe and a more organized working room. Hopefully I can keep myself disciplined in this area for the rest of the year. Keeping my personal space organized, though it sounds very trivial, is one of those little things that affect how well I deal with big things.

What's the next step? To make my first 2 hours in the morning even more productive. Tell you more about it next time. Got to get on with some other matters, so I'll continue some other time. Stay tuned! :)

How to Change Your Spiritual Wardrobe

For those of us who like everything listed out neatly, here are the two lists in Colossians 3.

What To Take Off

• sexual immorality
• impurity
• lust
• evil desires
• greed (= idolatry)
• anger
• rage
• malice
• slander
• filthy language
• lying

What To Put On

• compassion
• kindness
• humility
• gentleness
• patience
• forgiveness
• love

The driven, task-oriented amongst us will probably print out the lists, put them up somewhere they would see every day and make them their New Year Resolutions. From experience, only the very disciplined amongst us can make it work. And for the rest of us, we will find it very frustrating, because we are not doing things the way God wants us to do them.

How ARE We Supposed to Change?

1) Think About Godly Things

Colossians 3:1-3 – Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. (NIV)

I remember the days I so wanted to live a God-pleasing life. I had been a believer for years before that, but because I was not in fellowship with other brethren and didn't have a proper devotional life, I was convinced that it was unrealistic and unattainable. But I still wanted to try anyway.

I wasn't too sure I could follow the instructions in the Bible, but I decided that the least I could was KNOW what the instructions were. So I just made it a point to read the Bible daily. At that time I didn't know the power of reading the Bible aloud, but even then the 15-20 minutes each time, done 2-3 times a day, was enough to start changing my mind into thinking that obeying God wasn't that unrealistic and unattainable after all.

And let's face it, that was a very necessary first step!

2) Know God

Colossians 3:10 - … and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator (NIV)

In verses 9-10, Paul tells us since you have take off our old self (and its habits) and put on the new self by being renewed in knowledge in the image of our Creator. This tells me that I ought to put less attention less on changing my lifestyle and more on knowing the God who created the new me.

Consider the following:

Lev 20:26 - You are to be holy to me because I, the LORD, am holy, and I have set you apart from the nations to be my own. (NIV)

Knowing the holiness of God will spur us into holy living. Notice how God uses himself as an example for us to follow?

Deut 10:18-19 - He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing. And you are to love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt. (NIV)

And in the New Testament, we are told to imitate God:

Eph 5:1-2 - Therefore be imitators of God as dear children. And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma. (NKJV)

But how can we imitate God unless we deeply and intimately know him? We need to meditate on his wonders and his deeds (Psa 77:12). When we do, and realize that we are his children and thus carry his DNA in our spirit, we then begin to find ourselves living as his children would.

3) Recognize that we are the chosen, holy and dearly loved

Colossians 3:12-14 - Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. (NIV)

This is the earlier step, Knowing God, and carries it a step further. When we know God and how much he loves us, it becomes easy to clothe ourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and so on. Why? Because we know God is like that, and he has treated us thus. And that makes it reasonable for us to do likewise.

Conclusion:

All these steps may seem simple. They are. But don't let the simplicity deceive you. They require us to put in consistent and regular effort to renew our minds. We used to live in the ways of the world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air (Eph 2:2) and so it will take time and deliberate effort to change our thought patterns and emotional habits.

It's not an easy journey. But I can assure you that you will find joy and delight in it as you know you please God in your thoughts, words and deeds. Shall we continue this journey together?

Be blessed!

My Old Clothes

I gave away a large stack of my old clothes recently.

It took a number of trips, lugging heavy bags, taking Singapore public transport and then doing a 'heave'-offering into the Salvation Army collection centre. And from the looks of things I'll still have to make a couple more trips over the next few weeks.

We Chinese usually do loads of spring-cleaning and housekeeping before the Chinese New Year. That makes it an appropriate time to look through the wardrobe and decide if you REALLY want to wear that crazy shirt you bought the last holiday…

After totally forgetting to do this for years, I finally buckled myself down and forced myself to start on seriously evaluating my wardrobe and the clothes therein. And it started me thinking about my spiritual dress sense also. To make it very simple, our spiritual dressing is made up of:

1) What We Take Off

Colossians 3:5, 8-9 – Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry… But now you must also rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. (NIV)

Why were there so many of my old clothes left in my wardrobe? Because I didn't grow physically over the past 12 or so years. Many people I know wear forced to give away their old clothes because those clothes didn't fit them anymore. But for me, my height, my arm-length and even my waistline has remained the same, so I could get away with wearing the old clothes that I used to wear 12 years back.

It's just like how some believers, when they first turn to Christ from an extremely bad background, such as drug and alcohol abuse, crime and all that, change spiritual dressing very drastically. Because what they had to get rid of was very obvious and easy to see, you could see the changes in their lives very quickly. They knew their old ways just didn’t fit their new identity in Christ (2 Cor 5:17).

It was like people whose waistlines grew a few inches. It's obvious that their old jeans don't fit anymore!

Some believers don't have horrible backgrounds when they come to Christ. Maybe they were by nature nice people already, or their parents had brought them up well, or they had really good self-discipline. Because the things they had to get rid of were not so obvious, they could actually get away with staying the same, not totally surrendering their behavior and emotions to the Lord, and people around them wouldn't notice.

It's like me keeping old clothes from 12 years back because they still fit OK!

So why I get rid of the old clothes then? Because no matter how much I washed them, they still stink. There was a moldy, stale smell that wouldn't go away no matter how many times I put those clothes in the washing machine.

Likewise for our attitudes and habits. Even though they may still fit in our lives (they don't cause us or the people around us major inconvenience or problems), after a while, as we mature in Christ we realize that they stink, we don't like them and we really ought to get rid of them.

2) What We Put On

Colossians 3:12 – Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. (NIV)

Why did I get down to evaluating my wardrobe after all these years? Because I was given lots of new clothes and I needed to make space for them in my room.

That is my primary motivation for getting rid of anger, malice, slander and other inappropriate habits from my life. Even though they were not really obvious and not causing that much problems, I needed to get rid of them to make even more room for compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.

One thing I appreciate about how Paul expresses himself here – he compares those virtues to clothes. One thing that sets humans apart from animals – our clothes are NOT a part of us, and we therefore have a choice in what we choose to wear.

Jeremiah 13:23 - Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard its spots? (NKJV)

We can't change the color of our skin, but we can choose what we wear above it. Likewise, despite our basic nature, we can choose to wear compassion, kindness and the other virtues over it. At the very beginning, when we struggle with our old emotional habits and thought-life, putting on compassion can make us feel like we are faking it, that we are pretending to be kind and humble people when we aren't. The accuser can jump in to heap condemnation upon us and discourage us from the Christian walk, or we sometimes totally discourage ourselves without his help.

As long as we know that it feels uncomfortable and unnatural at the beginning, we are not expecting it to be a miraculous change and we are not very disappointed if we slip up and make mistakes. This allows us to keep on at it for the long haul, and after time what we wear becomes an integral part of our personal identity. Gentleness, kindness and patience are not longer just clothes that we may or may not wear that day; they become vital and irreplaceable aspects of our spiritual dress code.

And by that time we cannot imagine or accept replacing them with anything less!

It's just like my current dress sense. There are colours and types of clothes I know I will NEVER wear. I don't care what other people say. I am NEVER going to wear Bermuda-pants (I think I look ridiculous in them) or the brighter, fiery colours (such as yellow, orange or red). I'm sticking to my favourite colours no matter how boring they make me look. My clothes and the colours I choose are now a vital part of my personal identity and I am sticking with them!

Of course, it helps that I am already married and am no longer spouse-hunting…

So when was the last time YOU waited before the LORD and asked him what he wanted you to change in your spiritual wardrobe?

Be blessed!

When You Have to Change A Whole Church...

One of the greatest challenges a worship leader could ever face is changing the worship culture of an entire church. Whether it is a performance-based culture (they sit back and watch you make a fool of yourself on the stage) changing to a participation-based one (the people actually sing out their praises to God), or a liturgical service being changed to a contemporary service, it is a huge and daunting challenge. So if your pastor comes to you and gives you the task of creating more dynamic praise and worship in your church, here are some suggestions to help.

1) Take it slow

As I mentioned in the last chapter of my Invisible Worship Musician, God gives his people time to adapt to changes. In Exodus 16, after the people of God were delivered out of bondage in Egypt, they began clamouring Moses for meat. They said:

"There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted..." (Exodus16:3, NIV)

This suggests to me that they saw meat as being the only viable food for them. God, however, had different plans. He wanted to feed the people with manna. However, he had the kindness and gentleness to meet the people where they were, giving them what they were used to first, before giving them what he decided was his perfect plan for their food.

"At twilight you will eat meat, and in the morning you will be filled with bread. Then you will know that I am the LORD your God.'" (Exodus 16:11, NIV)

This same principle also applies to establishing a worship ministry paradigm that genuinely serves the people of God, or converting your church's liturgical service to a contemporary one without alienating all the faithful members of your church. Whatever you do, please remember that it takes time for people to get used to changes in general. So do be patient with them!

2) Use the Fallback Worship Songs

What are the Fallback Worship Songs of your church? The ones the people love to death and will sing no matter what? The ones that convey the timeless truths you want people to remember when crisis strikes and their faith is tested? If you do not know what they are, go find out, and start using these songs. They will be the backbone of your church's worship culture.

It's interesting, the Fallback Worship Songs of a church can be very different, depending on its background. If the church is performance based and the members are hungering spiritually to exercise their spirits by really participating in the worship, the Fallback Songs can be very simple, musically and lyrically. But if you come from a liturgical church, the Fallback Songs can be a hymn that has 3-6 stanzas of lyrics that the faithful members of the church can sing from heart. So make use of that!

Quick tip: for a liturgical church, Chris Tomlin's How Great is our God (CCLI #4348399) is a fantastic song to teach them, because its structure and lyrics is easy for them to take to.

3) Work with a small group first

What's easier, changing the worship culture of 200 people or 10 people? If your goal is participation for the sake of unity (as shown in 2 Chr 5:13), you'll probably find 10 people easier to manage than 200. So if you need to change the worship paradigm of your church, find a small group of people you can work with and start there.

I would prefer that you plug yourself into a group that is already running and start to work from there, instead of starting your own group. If the group is already running, you can get to see the worship dynamics of the church upfront and personal, and you can better figure out what is feasible for you and what isn't. If you intend to start another group, you will have to first seek the approval of your church pastor, and then expect that you will have to shepherd the group instead of just focusing on the worship and leaving the overall leading of the group to someone else.

Joining and working with your church's prayer meeting (if it has one) is a great way to start. The people tend to be more expressive, and there is a greater link between prayer and praise that you can tap on to create a more dynamic worship culture. Also, if you do a good job at this meeting and people encounter God's presence strongly there, word will spread and more people from your church will join that meeting. And from there the fire will spread to the rest of your congregation, just give it some time.

Conclusion:

It can be difficult to change the worship culture of an entire church. But it can be done. Other people have done it before and you can do it too. If this is the vision your church pastor has for your church, and you believe in your heart that this is what God wants you to do, go for it! It will take time and serious, dedicated effort. But what worthwhile endeavour in life doesn't?