on WDJL~

Nope, it does not stand for Why Did Jesus Laugh. Rather, it stands for What Did Jack Learn. Had to facilitate morning devotions in office the other day, and though of sharing the lessons I learnt over the last 2 weeks. Here's what I shared:

1. Christology of David

Last Sunday wasn't feeling too well in the morning, so didn't attend service at Covenant. So in the evening, went to get my spiritual feeding at Rev. Stephen Tong's evening service at Newton Life Church. One of the things that he said pretty stuck to my mind. It's something along the effect that David was a man after God's own heart. And because of David's depth of walk with God, he knew about the coming Christ in a way which Abraham couldn't even began to imagine of. In fact, the Christology of David is among the greatest, if not the greatest understanding that man. Hmm, food for thought~

2. Judgement seat of Christ

A few of my colleagues have been sharing upon this topic. It's a topic rarely covered in churches these days*. There are two kind of judgment that will happen in the last days, the great white throne judgment (in Revelations) where God judges the lost before they are thrown into the fire; and the judgment seat (bema seat) of Christ (in Romans and 2 Corinthians), where Christ "judges" the followers and disciples. The word "judges" is in apostrophes, because it's more of an accounting of the disciples on their lives and time on this earth. If they have been found good and faithful servants, the disciples would be rewarded by Christ; if not, they would have made it as those just escaping from the fire. (cf. 1 Cor. 3:10-14)

I used to think that the whole idea of getting big mansions and treasures in heaven as very the materialistic of sorts. I mean, it sounds like God is compensating us for the losses we have on this earth. To me, it was akin to God saying" oh you poor thing, you didn't get what you want on this earth? Never mind, I'll reward you richly later."

Well, after hearing my friends' vies, now my perspective is slightly changed. First of all, it's not up to me to decide on God's methodology~ He certainly wants to reward His saints, not as compensation but as what they do really deserves. Who am I to judge God on His ways? And I suspect I'm having a bit of the Judas complex in thinking about this. Also the lines from 1 Cor. 3 is more of an exhortation to disciples to press on for the end goal. The treasures are just a bonus, and not the ends itself.

For me, personally, if I can get into heaven, and have my Heavenly Father call me good and faithful, that is enough. Honestly, if I can't have use for gems and gold on this earth, I certainly do not think I will have use of them in Heaven. :D

3. On building a healthy self-esteem

3 days back, my organisation engaged 2 counsellors to come and give us a talk on building a healthy self-esteem. It was an enlightening talk, and I took away a couple of learning points:

a. Being humble does not mean you have to have a low-self esteem.

I think a lot of Christians would have difficulty with this. Because of the teachings on the denial of self, most of us think that we must always think lowly of ourselves, to abase ourselves and have no ego at all. To not think so, is to be proud and prideful.

I used to have a big issue with this, especially in the area of receiving compliments from others. When people praise me, I would say," No la, give thanks to God" and squirm a bit on the inside of being in the limelight. Also, I would be secretly wondering if the person offering the praises was really genuine, or just patronising me. Nowadays, I have slightly lesser issue with that. Not that I have grown wiser or more prideful with age :p But rather I take them as praises from the invisible God made visible in His creation to me.   

b. To think positively about things is not to be unrealistically optimistic about things.

One of the tools which the counsellors encourage us towards building a healthy self-esteem is that to think about things in a positive light. They qualify that such optimism must be realistic and grounded upon reality. For example, if there's a personal death amongst our loved ones, we should not just put on positive thinking per se and say "Oh, it's great that the person has moved on!" To do that is either great insanity, or great insensitivity, or great loss of touch with reality, or all of the above. Rather, the positive thing to do is to grief and mourn the loss for an appropriate period, and then move on from there.  

c. Learning to accept the negativity is a positive and assertive thing

We did a Rosenberg self-esteem scale in one of the exercises. A few of the options in the scale is very negative, like "I certainly feel useless at times." and "All in all, I am inclined to feel that I am a failure." When I saw such options, I immediately put down as "Strongly Agree". I thought I would have a low self esteem score. On the contrary, when my final score came up, it turns out I have a pretty strong self-esteem score. The counsellors explained it as because of my assertiveness in these negative areas, it actually points to the fact I pretty confident about these. Sounds weird, but it is so. So I learnt another new thing - to know that you are scum means it's a positive thang! :D

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ok, writing too much here, as my friend says, "WALL OF TEXT!" May these gives you food for thought~

 

*Or could be because I didn't go, or dozed off when these portions were mentioned. :p