Tag: christianity

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God Is Good! Target Met…

That’s right – our target was met – prayers answered!

What prayers? What target?

11 year old Heath, is a cutie who needs his family asap.
10 year old Heather, is a sweetie who needs a family asap.

Well, our church (International Church of Luzern) Youth’s fundraising project called Angels for Orphans had a target of CHF700. And it was met!

i proposed this project to our church Youth Leaders a couple of months back, when i felt led to do something more than pray for my little Heath and my lovely Heather. i had initially decided to do the fundraising by myself, but God prompted me to ask if this would be a project for the Youths. They said yes! So planning started; ideas and materials were gathered and tested. i settled on making a few simple crafts and baking cookies.

i had also wanted the Youths to come to know the power of prayer, the joy and the blessings of praying for others (even for people we didn’t know personally) and that our Lord God is mighty in answering prayers. This was something i wished i had as a youth and i wish for them to have it in their lives now – knowing this, truly, deeply knowing this would just make their uncharted journey through life a little easier.

So with that in mind, the Youth Coordinator and myself planned for the Angels for Orphans project to be introduced during a session where the Youths were studying about prayer. i was really nervous but survived (Thank God!) the rather time-constrained presentation (i could only present the project after they finished their session, which took most of the time). After which, i followed it up with 3 weeks of handouts, about Heath and Heather, about Reece’s Rainbow, about why God would want us to help the orphans, including also prayer pointers and websites of other teens who are doing their bit for these precious ones.

Then we had a Sunday morning of making the crafts. It went slower than expected but the teachers were supportive and the youths were happy to do the work. Some took home materials to work on as we didn’t get enough done that day. The following Sunday morning was focused on putting finishing touches and baking cookies. A couple of hours after that, it was Sale Time!

The cookies went the fastest! In the picture you only see one type of cookie, the other chocolate one was gone before i could even pull out the camera. The Angel Cards were also very popular. The Finger Puppet Angels were mainly bought by mothers or grandmothers for the kids. The Bell Angels (the little cardboard angels with bells in them) were harder to sell as people didn’t think them too practical (something to consider for the next project).

We are not a huge church, we are but a small family church; still, we managed to raise CHF415 🙂 Then we had a very generous offer – a couple said they would buy up all the remaining items and give a little above that, which allowed us to hit our target of CHF700! Praise the Lord!

Below are pictures of the table display and close-ups of all the items made and sold:

Table laden with goodies to sell…
All the items we sold…

We (myself and the Youths) would like to thank everyone who contributed to the success of this fundraising project, whether in buying something or in helping to make the crafts/cookies. We will carry on praying for little Heath and lovely Heather, praying that this small amount we raised will help the family who finds them to reach them faster.

syc

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Book Recommendation: I Choose to Forgive…

i’m going to do an unusual thing today… i’m going to recommend a book which i have not yet read. You must be wondering how can i recommend a book which i have not even broken its spine to read.

Well, it is because i have heard the author of the book speak, twice. i spent last Saturday morning and this morning at Day Away Association for Women events, listening to this amazing lady speak of forgiveness and her story is all at once heart-piercing and uplifting.

She speaks of how God led her on a journey to forgive the murderer of her son. It is one of the most amazing stories i have heard and it leaves me no doubt that our God is living; alive and truly working in this world today. Her name is Dianne B. Collard and her book is called “I Choose to Forgive”.

My take-away from her talk is this:

There are many layers to forgiveness. What does this mean?
Remember the story of Peter coming to Jesus and asking, “Lord, how many times should i forgive the man who wronged me? Seven times?” And Jesus answered, “Seventy times seven”?

Did  Jesus mean that we count the number of times we forgive someone and then take revenge once the 490th “crime” has been committed? No. i have learnt that when Jesus said 70×7, He means 70 to the power of 7, which means you take 70 and multiple by 70 and do that for 7 times. Does it make sense? If you are like me and have no head for numbers, then simply take my word for it that it is a number greater than you can count. And what that really means is every time, all of the time we need to forgive, which should be a normal way to respond for someone who has experienced God’s marvelous forgiveness.

Then she brought it to another level. We can forgive the person who wronged us (but that doesn’t mean the other person is right or that the person is getting away with the “crime”). But if some time down the road, we start to feel the emotions of this “crime” again and start to resent/hate this person or the consequences of his/her action, we need to forgive again. It doesn’t mean that we didn’t forgive that first time around. It simply means that there is another layer of forgiveness we need to take it to, a deeper level. A friend reminded me: it is just like peeling an onion, every layer we peel back makes us cry but brings us closer to the core.

My eyes have been opened and there are issues i have to deal with. But it has also explained to me why i sometimes feel the way i do in certain situations. i have to take it another step further. It’s going to be hard but another important point she made was – the choice to forgive lies with ourselves, but the power to obey (follow God’s commandments to forgive) is in God.

If we are obedient to forgive, just as God commanded, then powerful blessings can flow from the throne of God into our lives and into the lives of others around us. Read to the book to find out more about these fantastic blessings which Dianne experience in her journey of forgiveness.

If you have the desire to hear the talk i heard, then leave a comment with your email and i will try to see if i can get you a copy of her talk on CD. Or visit her blog or her ministry website to find out if she is going to be speaking somewhere near you.

syc

NOTE: All profits from the sale of her book goes to getting translations and getting the book published in countries which cannot afford to publish it. And the profits for those sales (if there are any) are given to a ministry in that country which helps people in great need. It’s a gift which keeps giving. Her statement is that she could never make money from the death of her son.

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The Gift Of Self-Forgetfulness…

god lives in yu - treo_062809_002_web
God lives in yu (Photo credit: kevindean)

Yesterday i met a searcher; someone who is searching, seeking to understand God. She asked an interesting question, “i find it hard to understand why is it that every good thing we do needs to be attributed to God. Isn’t that putting down humanity? i mean, there is good in us, you know. WE  can do good.”

How i wished i could answer her… but we were at a Bible study (studying 2 Corinthians) and running short of time. Our discussion leader promised to pick this up again at another time.

The truth is i used to think like her. i used to think that everyone started with good intentions, yes even the murders and horrible criminals. i believed they all were good or at least wanted to be good or strived to be good for the sake of their loved ones, that it was just their bad luck that the path they chose led them to terrible things.

That was before i found out that people could be cruel just because they wanted to be. That was before i accepted the fact that Man has fallen short of the Glory of God. That Man really is so flawed and selfish and self-seeking. That was before i saw how much Man needed God in him.

Our modern society often tells us that we need to constantly look at ourselves; how we can better ourselves, how we should be finding ways to improve ourselves; and we need, should and can do these things on our own. This thought pattern has filtered into our Christian lives too. We are constantly looking at how to be a good Christian, what to do to become a better Christian, which behaviour we need to change to get into God’s good books.

i wrote a post a few weeks ago about the dangers of trying to please God and my opening line was “Being a Christian is not an issue of doing…”. This is further expanded here to include our obsession with how well or how bad we are doing in our Christian walk, our fixation on the good things and the bad things we are doing, our need to talk about how much or how little we have grown in Christian knowledge.

Once again, our focus is in the wrong place. The Bible is not about us and our lives. The Bible is about God and how He purposed and sent His Only Son to die for us upon the Cross. My favourite line from the article (see link below):

…the more I focus on my need to get better the worse I actually get-I become neurotic and self-absorbed…

i have noticed how when i try on my own strength to do better, such as trying to control my explosive expressions of anger and frustration. The more i try to hold it in or keep it under wraps, the more it boils over. Then i become more frustrated with myself and it becomes a vicious circle. But when i submit my problem to God in prayer, the control is there… not my control but God’s.

How does that happen? Well, we need to see that

…the focus of the Bible is not the work of the redeemed but the work of the Redeemer. The gospel frees us from ourselves. It announces that this whole thing is about Jesus and dependent on Jesus. The good news is the announcement of his victory for us, not our “victorious Christian life.”…

Once we get that point, relying on Jesus for everything in our lives is much easier and is what will get us to live the Christian lives God wants us to live. When and where we are weak, God will be strong for us because where we should have died for our sins, Jesus came and died and was victorious for us.

The author of the article expresses it so much better than me. Have a read.

The Gift Of Self-Forgetfulness – Tullian Tchividjian.

So in answer to the searcher, “We, humans, are messed up. Even when we try to do good, especially on our own strength, we focus on the wrong things, we mess up, we get too fixated and we, inadvertently, will ask ourselves, “What’s in it for me?”. The self in us is… well… selfish! There is no way around that one. We are selfish creatures who would always look out for ourselves first and not our fellow humans. Yes, maybe you know a few people whom you feel are saints but do you truly know their hearts? Do you know for sure why they do what they do? Only God knows their hearts. And God looks FIRST at our hearts, our actions come down the line. Our hearts are just not where it should be … yet… and we need God to help us. We are not yet self-less as Jesus is, we do not put the needs of others before our own in every single situation as Jesus does. If we want to be good, do good, then let’s aim for 100% living for others and not do a half-hearted job of it. We attribute good to God, because the good stuff comes from Him, our Creator; and He is the only one who can help us to get to 100%.”

Dependance on God is not denying that humans can do good. Dependance on God and praise to God for every good thing is acknowledging that we are in need of help; we can not, on our own, put our self aside. It says, “i recognise God as the only one who can get us to where we should be.”.

syc