I’ve Decided Not To Pray…

“Let me pray about that.”

How often do you find yourself saying that? Or hearing others say that? This line usually follows a request that you do something, or comes with regards to a decision you have to make.

Prayer is important. I’ve always been told to pray about everything. And rightly so. The Bible says to “pray unceasingly” (1 Thess 5:17). But something I read in a book recently made me think about the kind of prayers I pray.

The author talks about King Saul and his battles against the Philistines as chronicled in the book of 1 Samuel. In Chapter 7, the house of Israel was given a promise that if they return to the LORD with all their hearts, rid themselves of foreign gods and commit themselves to the Lord and serve Him only, God would deliver them out of the hand of the Philistines (7:3). Fast-forward a bit, and we see that King Saul has under his command a army of men who are willing to put their trust in God and go to war against the Philistines. One day, the Philistine assembled for battle, and Saul’s army was terrified. Saul was to wait for Samuel to offer the burnt offerings to the Lord, so that He would grant them His favour, but the appointed time for Samuel to arrive came and went, and some of Saul’s troops left out of fear. As Saul watched his numbers dwindle, his confidence also weakened. He decided that he would offer the burnt offerings himself, and just as he had finished, Samuel appeared and reprimanded him for doing so. Saul had disobeyed clear instructions to wait for Samuel to arrive and had taken things into his own hands. As a result, his kingdom was taken from him – the kingship would be passed onto David, who was not part of his lineage. God had spoken clearly, but Saul had not obeyed.

Sometimes, God speaks clearly, and there is a time to wait for Him to show up. We pray and wait on the Lord, and that is our obedience.

But sometimes, the way we are to obey is to act. Later on, Saul’s son, Jonathan, decides to confront the Philistines on his own, with his armour-bearer. They sneak away from the camp, most likely because his father, King Saul, would not have approved of the move. Now, Jonathan was fully confident in God’s character – that He is a God who keeps His promises, that He is a God who is mighty to save, and that He is a God who can be trusted. God didn’t speak to him and give him a specific time to go and meet the Philistines. In fact, when Jonathan goes up, he tells his armour-bearer, whom he has brought with him, “Let’s go. Perhaps the Lord will act in our behalf.” PERHAPS. He was either completely foolish or completely trusting of who God is. God shows up and grants them favour, and back at camp, Saul and his troops awaken to the sound of battle. When they realise what is going on, Saul calls the priest to bring the ark of God to pray. But as they do, they hear things getting crazier in the battle, and Saul realises that it’s time to fight and, in essence, it was not a time to sit and pray.

That’s a strange thing to hear, isn’t it? That it wasn’t time to pray? I’ve grown up with tag lines like, “There’s always time for prayer.” And that isn’t wrong – we have to be careful with the linguistic nuances here. Yes, we are to be praying unceasingly, but there are times of prayer that are set aside specifically for prayer – times when you bring the ark of God out and seek Him fervently in prayer, and there are also times when you’ve got to be doing something but you keep talking to God as you do it. If we confuse those two times, we can miss out on what God is doing.

The author, Erwin McManus, puts it like this: “To live a prayerless life is to miss the life that God created you to experience. Yet there are times when prayer can become a religious veil for an empty life.”

So back to the title of this post. I was trying to think of times when I have used or tend to use prayer as a “religious veil” – times when it is clear what God wants me to do, and yet I am still simply praying about it. I definitely have not decided to stop praying, but I have decided not to pray certain kinds of prayers – in particular, I’ve decided not to pray prayers that go like this: “Dear God, please help me to be more disciplined / avoid temptation / be more loving / etc.”

Why? Well, I don’t think there’s anything wrong in praying those prayers, but I have noticed that when I pray them, I have this subconscious expectation that God is somehow going to show up and turn me into some sort of superwoman who will suddenly be super disciplined or not tempted by anything at all or full of ooeygooey love for everyone. I believe God can do that, but more often than not, that’s not how He works. The thing is, when I pray those prayers, I’m waiting – I’m waiting for something to show up to help me do the things I’m asking. But the directives are clear: discipline yourself, flee from temptation, show love to others. There really is nothing to wait for, and nothing magical about it – you just do it.

“But, but, but… I can’t! I’m too weak! I need God’s strength!” Yeah, you betcha. But here’s what I’m learning: God’s strength comes as we obey. More often than not, I expect to pray and then suddenly feel a rush of superhuman, divine strength, confident that I’ll be able to face the challenge. Nope. But as I obey, I am made stronger. The strength I pray for comes through obedience.

So when God speaks, keep praying, yes, but also act. Be more disciplined? Force yourself to do what you need to do, when you need to do it. The more you do it, the easier it gets. Habits start to form, and your prayers have been answered. Facing temptation? Don’t stop in the place of temptation and pray for the strength to resist! Just run! As you keep running, you will be strengthened as you realise that you have the power to flee from it. Struggling to love? Start doing small acts of kindness. Find concrete ways to practice love. It may feel mechanical and even kind of fake at first, but it will change you.

See, the thing is, these sorts of prayers require some effort on our part, too. I tend to think that God just zaps me with His mighty finger and everything changes, but again, while He can certainly do that if He chooses to, most of the time He works through human effort. It’s much less glamorous to my fairytale-inclined mind, but it ensures that we are being transformed, not just given some special power ups that can run out after a period of time.

Faith in action. That’s essentially what obedience is. And it brings about greater faith. So pray – pray for strength, pray for greater resolve, pray for love and patience; but beware of hiding behind those prayers in wait for a magic bolt of lightning. If you know what you are to do, don’t stop and say, “Hold on, let me pray about that.” Just do it.

wounds of love

“Come, let us return to the Lord.

He has torn us to pieces,

But He will heal us;

He has injured us,

But He will bind up our wounds.”

– Hosea 6:1

In The Horse and His Boy, Aslan wounds the girl in order to save Narnia and to help her learn. We like to talk about God allowing things to happen, like Him allowing Satan to do stuff to Job and etc, but we seldom talk about God being the one who wounds us. But the Bible says it, right there in Hosea – God wounds us. I love the way Mike Donehey writes about this, here and here.

I guess maybe a distinction we can make is that God’s wounds are intended for our good, right from the beginning, whereas temptations or wounds that He allows others to inflict upon us were intended for evil, but God works them out for good, like with Joseph’s brothers selling him – “You intended this for evil, but God intended it for good” (Genesis 50:20). And maybe that isn’t something we can always discern – who sent it – but we can know that God’s hand is always, always over it, working things out for good.

what are we really afraid of?

*/edit: The author of that article has since made some edits and added notes at the end. Now I feel comfortable recommending it. Hurray! :)

I follow John Piper on twitter, and came across this post:

JohnPiper John Piper
Farewell Rob Bell. http://dsr.gd/fZqmd8

I thought Rob Bell had died or something, which would have been upsetting, but I followed to the link to something that upset me even more. It was an article on thegospelcoalition calling Rob Bell out as a Universalist and a servant of Satan. It isn’t a very long article, and you can read it for yourself, but the author was basically reviewing Bell’s new book, Love Wins: Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived, which isn’t even out yet.

To be fair, he acknowledges that fact, saying “I haven’t seen the book yet and was hesitant to say something based on the publisher’s description (which usually isn’t written by the author)”. But then he continues, “But this video from Bell himself shows that he is moving farther and farther away from anything resembling biblical Christianity”.

As of this moment, the article has been recommended on facebook by 2,619 people. I don’t plan on being one of them.

You’ll have to watch the video for yourself to see if you agree with me or not, but from what I saw and heard, Rob Bell made no definitive statements about what he believes. In his typical fashion, he asked provocative questions meant to inspire controversy and debate. Call it a marketing strategy, call it his style, whatever; the point is that he made no statements about his faith. I don’t understand how so many people, including the author of this article, can so confidently decide that he is not a “true Christian” (as though we could determine that).

Why so quick to judge?

“My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry” – James 1:19

No one’s even read the book yet. I think the bigger question here – certainly, the one that deeply concerns me – is: Why do so many Christians feel such an overwhelming need to ‘protect’ ourselves from things that are deemed dangerous only through speculation? I say ‘protect’ because the form that that ‘protection’ takes is avoidance and, too often, condemnation.

We must guard our hearts and minds from wrong teaching and things that might lead us astray from God, yes, but we are called to be IN the world and not OF it, and what that means is that instead of shunning ‘worldly’ things and beliefs, we should engage them in debate and bring God into that discussion, not just stand at a distance and point and judge.

I’m not saying that Rob Bell is a great Christian. I’m not saying that he isn’t. I don’t think I can make that judgment. If the only way we know how to protect ourselves is by sorting everyone and everything into two categories, “good” and “bad”, I honestly think that we’ve got serious issues. We should know by now that things aren’t all black and white. That isn’t an excuse to dabble in the blacker side of things, but it is the reason why we should not be so quick to judge! Humans are the most complex beings in the universe, and I think I can safely say that all of us are, in some way, living double (or triple or quadruple or…) lives. It’s not as simple as saying “I am good” or “I am bad”, or “I am a Christian” or “I am not a Christian”. Christians often act like non-Christians, yet we do not (I hope) strike them off the list (which really shouldn’t exist) of who we can talk to and trust. We don’t, because we recognize that we ourselves continue to sin, yet at the same time, we are continually being saved, if we ask that of God (and confess and repent and etc).

So why do we continually try to sort the world into two categories?

I do believe that there are some things that are black and white, like the facts that God is real, God sent Jesus to die for us, Jesus rose again to life, we belong to God, He calls us His children, He loves us, He is good and faithful and merciful and gracious and eternal, etc. But people are never black and white, and if we believe them to be, we believe that they can never change, and that means that we don’t really believe in the fullness of God’s power and sovereignty, because God can do all things, including changing people.

Let’s stop being so afraid of things that might challenge our own beliefs and worldviews. If we are so afraid of them, perhaps we should check ourselves and see if we are really trusting God with our lives, because if we are, what is there to fear?

“If God is for us, who can be against us?” – Romans 8:31

“For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline.” – 2 Timothy 1:7

“There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.” – 1 John 4:18

If we are continually renewing our minds in Christ, why do we fear others’ minds. If we have given ourselves and our minds completely over to Christ, why do we feel as though we need to take control and decide what we can be exposed to? Why do we feel as though we need to hide in our little Christian circles to protect ourselves?

I am not saying that we should dwell on these other, perhaps questionable opinions and beliefs. I am well aware that the Bible says:

“…whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” – Philippians 4:8

To “think” here implies a “dwelling”. The New Living Translation reads, “Fix your thoughts on what is true,…”. The Message says “filling your minds and meditating on…”. Meditating. That’s a good one. I’m not saying we should meditate on others’ beliefs – we most certainly should not. But it isn’t a binary here: it’s not between acknowledging it and ignoring it. It’s a spectrum that ranges from ignoring and not acknowledging it to meditating and fixing our thoughts on it. In between, we have things like acknowledging it, considering it, testing it against God’s truth, and I think that those are things we should be doing. Most things aren’t entirely good or entirely bad, save for God and His truth. Because we have God and His truth, we have a perfect standard to hold to. We can see what matches up to His perfect truth, and what doesn’t. We can engage with other beliefs because we just might find some good in it, even though other parts might be bad.

We are to be God’s hands and feet. How can we be of any use if we aren’t willing to get into the thick of things, and get ourselves dirty a little? Why are we so afraid of dirt when we have a God who cleanses us white as snow?

crazy love

A couple of ideas have been repeatedly popping up – usually a sign that it’s from God.

The first, is the idea, notion, truth that God is better.

He is better than anything this world could ever give me. Anything I could ever get for myself. Anything and everything. God is better.

The second, is this:

“It’s almost as if the God of the universe is proposing to you… It’s like He’s on a knee handing you this ring and saying, “Will you take Me? Will you enter into a relationship with Me, Almighty God?” And you’re gonna have to say, “I do.””

If I were to be honest with you, myself, God, and everybody, the truth is that Carleton hasn’t been the time of my life, so far. In fact, it’s been one of the most difficult, trying times, in large part due to my own folly, but that’s always how the story goes. I wouldn’t be surprised if I’ve shed more tears since I’ve been here than I have been in all my 20 years of existence. I have seen the worst parts of me, the sinful nature, the rebelliousness in my heart. And wow, is that scary. Before, I always threw that phrase, “sinful nature”, around, knowing that it existed, and it existed in me, but I never saw it’s ugly face until now. And it never looked so enticing until now.

Seeing it and following it are two different things. You can be tempted, but not give in to the temptation. You can see the evil face and turn away, or you can see it and walk towards it. I may have seen it, but I never wanted to walk towards it. But here, it’s undergone a makeover or something, and it’s all I can do to not be drawn in.

That scares me. At the same time, I rejoice, because it enables me to know more of God’s grace. If I did not have these struggles, I would have no need for grace. Always the paradox.

It gives me the opportunity to understand God’s love in a greater, deeper way. It’s so easy to forget that God is God and God is beyond our comprehension. It’s so much easier to just shrink God to something we can grasp. But in doing that, we shortchange ourselves, and deny the fullness of who God really is. Francis Chan talked about thinking he knew what God’s love was until one day he was led to try to imagine one of his beloved daughters being nailed to a cross. Think of the person you love the most, nailed to a cross. Being crucified. For doing nothing wrong. Would you allow it? God did. For you. For me. For all of us.

And God proposing to me? Wow. In a society where everyone’s looking for his/her prince/ss charming, that’s a really good picture. God begging you to take Him. Isn’t it absurd that God be begging us to take Him? He who loves perfectly, gives unselfishly, is perfect in every way? Yet He is begging us, because we keep saying no. I know I keep saying no. Why? Because I’ve got my eye on someone, my heart stuck on someone I want to love me and care for me, but that someone isn’t God. I like that God’s there, of course, and of course I’ll accept His love. But He’s giving it to me voluntarily, anyway, so I don’t pay much attention. Instead, I long for the acceptance and love of this one person, making everyone else second priority. I look at this person’s seeming apathy towards me and conclude that no one cares about me, when in fact, God’s blessed me with so many people who most definitely do. I am such a jerk. And what about God? God’s loving me, in His perfect way, unconditionally, unrelentingly, and here I am just giving Him an acknowledging nod and turning my head away, towards this other very imperfect, very broken person. Why? Why do we do that?!

So, I’m saying yes. Yes, I will take You, God, though, really, I should be the one screaming “thank You”, in disbelief. You want me? Why do you want me? But You want me. And that’s that. I want You too. I do.

a new beginning for the twenty-third time

Yeah, 23 was a randomly chosen number. It just seemed to fit the meter. Haha. Don’t you ever wonder whether the names and numbers in song lyrics actually mean anything? The answer is probably….sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t. Not that this is a song, but this time, it doesn’t. Haha.

Anyway. I think I’m over jetlag! Yes! Touched down at 5.15am on Thursday. Came home, bummed around, then went out with some friends from 11am to 1030pm. I took some naps towards the end, but I was mostly forced to stay awake since we were moving around, so that was good! Came home and slept at 1230am, woke up at 9. Last night I slept at 12 and was up today just after 8! I even went for a swim. Feeling gooood.

But it’s not so much because I’m actually physically awake as much as it is because I’m spiritually awake, I think. Relatively speaking, anyway. I feel as though I’m emerging from the desert. Or maybe not the desert. Hmm. From a tiny room fitted with a smoke machine. That’s it. It feels like the smoke is clearing and I can see again. Slowly, little by little, but definitely more than before. How? Cos I’m finally choosing to open my eyes again.

Funny how reluctant I am to do so. Guess it’s easier to have your eyes closed sometimes. Like how you lie in bed awake, refusing to open your eyes cos that would mean you really are awake and you’ve got to leave the warm comfort of your bed. I tried that for the past few months. It’s no good. Yeah, it might seem as though there’s less to think about, less to contemplate. But where’s the fun in that? Really, it just makes you feel like you might as well be dead. Cos lying in bed with your dreams and fantasies is all very nice and good, but unless you get out of that bed and start turning them into reality, you’ve still got nothing.

I watched Narnia yesterday. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. In terms of entertainment value, I didn’t think it was that great. It felt extremely choppy, like a few short movies cut-and-pasted into one. They just kind of went from place to place and at the end it all makes sense, but I feel like it could’ve been much better tied together. It all felt kind of…random. Nevertheless, the message was great, of course. There were two big things that stood out to me.

The first was this scene when Lucy cast a spell she’d found in a spellbook to make herself more beautiful. Her standard of “beautiful” is her sister, Susan. Casting the spell turns her into Susan. She finds herself with her brothers, looking as she’s always dreamed of looking, but to her horror, she finds that Lucy no longer exists and her siblings don’t know about Narnia (Lucy had been the first to discover Narnia). After being sufficiently shaken, Aslan comes along and explains it all. She wasn’t happy with who she was, but in wishing to be like someone else, she was basically denying her own creation.

I guess at some level, we all know that not being happy with who we are is like challenging God’s decisions about how He created us, but portraying the consequence of that as ceasing to exist just made it even clearer. It’s something I know I struggle with, so it was a really good reminder that we all just need to be…exactly who we are. Lucy tells a little girl who said she wanted to grow up to be like Lucy,

“When you grow up, you should be just like you”.

So true.

I read the first chapter of my dad’s new book, “The Power of Love“, today. ‘Twas good. This is what I took away from it:

We are ordinary people with ordinary problems that, to us, seem overwhelming. Sometimes it seems like the church, and by extension God, doesn’t care about our personal problems, but only about the ‘bigger’, idealistic we’ve-got-to-evangelize-and-eradicate-poverty-and-have-justice-for-all type issues. And that stuff’s definitely important. But if we think that they’re more important than the struggles we face every day, we’re wrong, and we don’t know God. ‘Cos God does care about our ‘tiny’ problems. In fact, as was said in Narnia (this is my 2nd point about Narnia! ha! bet you thought i forgot!),

We can’t defeat the darkness outside of us until we have defeated the darkness inside of us.

There’s nothing to be ashamed about. Everyone has problems. There’s no need to hide them. They don’t make you weak. They just make you normal.

Sometimes we get so bitter and depressed that we can’t show gratitude or appreciation for the love others show us. That’s okay. It’s normal. It’s part of being human and having these problems. Not ideal, no, but normal. God loves us all the same – not grudgingly or obligingly, but with equal amounts of zeal and intensity and warmth. One way He shows that love to us is through other people. For Naomi, Ruth was one of these people. Naomi couldn’t appreciate what Ruth was doing for her, not acknowledging Ruth’s care or thanking her for it. It must’ve been tough for Ruth who must’ve felt unappreciated and maybe even a little bitter, wondering why she was doing all she was doing for someone who didn’t even seem to notice. I pray I will be like Ruth and show love even when it is not reciprocated, or even acknowledged. I pray that when I am in Naomi’s position, I will be able to show gratitude and appreciation. If you are my Ruth, and I do not, I sincerely apologize.

One practical application. Make friends with bitter, depressed, lonely, broken people. People who may not be able to appreciate your love, care and concern. Why? Because to them, you are the concrete presence of God. There’s evangelism for you. Help me to do that, Lord Jesus.

My arms are aching from swimming for the first time in a long, long time. Oh boy. Yet, I give thanks that I am able to swim (:

“…give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” – 1 Thess 5:18

cell: the race

(click to enlarge)

cell notes from tonight. more on them later, perhaps.

tonight’s lesson was on disciplines needed to run the race of life. (ch5)

book: “The Race”, written by Bishop Robert Solomon

decisions, convictions, faith, and etc

I just finished reading “Simplicity” by Mark Salomon, a rock singer, who also happens to be a Christian. I’m glad I bought the book, because I think it provided just the kind of in-your-face honesty that I needed, and that is sadly missing from so much of the ‘Christian’ world we live in.

I’ve been very encouraged by it, and it’s reinforced the lesson that I think God’s been teaching me throughout the past year that I need to stand firm on my convictions and let no one but Him shake them, because a solid wrong conviction is less messy (and in that sense, better) than a weak and wavering one, under the guise of “trying to do right”. I think this is one of the biggest lessons of the year for me: Whatever decisions you make, just make firm ones. Right or wrong, you just have to make a decision. Always be humble and real enough to admit that you could be wrong, or that you were wrong when proven so, but never mistake indecisiveness under the guise of wanting to “be sure you’re making the right decision that God wants you to make” for humility. The Bible tells us to be single-minded, and yes, ideally, we’ll be single-minded with our mind set on the right thing, but even if not, I think it’s always better to be single-minded anyway. Hot or cold, but never lukewarm. Nothing can be done with lukewarm water. Nothing can be achieved if you stay sitting on the fence. If you go the wrong way, you can be turned around, but if you go nowhere at all, you’re, well, going nowhere – neither the right way nor the wrong. And perhaps the only thing worse and more dangerous and damaging than going the wrong way and going astray is not going anywhere at all.

Be honest with yourself and honest with God. Work things out with Him and then just go with that. Faith involves taking risks. That’s why it’s called faith. Clichéd, perhaps, but true by definition. Not blind, dumb, reckless risks, even though they might appear so to others who don’t know the full story (i.e. anyone but you and God), but careful, considered ones.

I think many of us, especially living in Singapore where failure is often made to seem akin to hell, are too afraid of making decisions, and hence are horribly indecisive. I’m guilty ten thousand times over. We are repeatedly told that it’s of the utmost importance that we make “the right decision”, and so we stress out about it like nobody’s business, because really, how do we know what “the right decision” is? How does anyone? When it’s as clear as black and white, we’re safe. We might have to wrestle with ourselves a bit and make ourselves do what we know we should do even when we don’t want to do it, but that’s an ‘easy’ struggle in the sense that we know what’s “right”. But when we’re choosing not between something good and something bad, nor even something good and something better, but simply something good and something else that is equally good, what do we do? Who but God can tell us what to choose? And what about times when God remains silent?

Without getting into an argument about whether or not God really has one very narrow path which He has mapped out for us and intends for us to follow, including answers to things like “which shirt should I wear today?”, I’ll just say that I believe God is good, and I believe He provides as much as we need. He leads us just enough for us to follow. Just enough for that next step.

I think we need to stop being afraid to make the wrong decisions. Only then will we be able to make the “right” ones. How do we do that? First, by realising what it is that we are so afraid of. I think most commonly, it’s people. People’s opinions on whether we made the right decision or the wrong. People’s judgements that come after we’ve made our decisions, saying that “they told us we were choosing the wrong thing” and “see, look what happened”, implying that we chose wrongly.

Embedded in that is the (I believe, wrong) belief that trials and hardships and ‘failures’ of plans or the lack of appearance of what we expect to happen following a “right” decision mean that we made a wrong one. I don’t buy that. So many ‘bad’ things happened to good men of God who made the “right” decisions. Joseph chose to stick with Mary, on direct orders from an angel of the Lord (Matthew 1). Had he sought advice from others (and perhaps he did), it is likely that they would have told him to do as he had originally planned and “divorce her quietly”, not wanting to expose her to public disgrace as would have happened in that time. I’m sure there would have been those who doubted the appearance of an angel of God in his dream telling him to keep the child and stay with Mary – “Are you sure you heard correctly? How do you know the dream had any significance? How do you know it really was an angel of God and not your own voice?”. Yet amidst those voices of doubt, Joseph made his decision, according to what He believed God said. I’m sure it must have been a difficult thing to do, and even after that, there was no relief, no immediate proof that he had chosen the right thing. What do you think those people who doubted his decision said when Joseph took Mary and Jesus and fled to Egypt, again according to God’s instruction (Matthew 2)? That isn’t exactly the evidence we look for in a “right decision”, is it? But we who believe hold no doubt that Joseph had, in fact, heard correctly and made the “right” decision. It’s really not that different today.

I’m sure we’ve all met people like the ones I mentioned above. We’ve probably even been one ourselves. And it’s every easy to look at them and say they were leading us astray. But that wouldn’t be fair. I fully believe that almost everyone, if not everyone, who doubts our decisions in that way and gives us counsel and advice about them has good intentions and is trying to help us do what’s best for us. I do. We can’t blame them for not knowing what God knows, for not having His mind. But I think that as friends to others, ourselves, we have to learn what it means to trust God for our friends who are making decisions. We use our God-given wisdom to evaluate the situation, yes, but it’s even more important to seek God directly on it, because our wisdom is superceded by far by His. Ideally, God would tell us the same thing He’s told our friend making the decision, and it’ll all add up, but sometimes that doesn’t happen. I think that -and yeah, we have to be really careful about this- sometimes we just have to trust our friend’s own faith in God and just be behind them in whatever decision they choose to make, whether we personally agree with it or not. And for us making the decision, ask God, hear what He says, and stick to your convictions.

If you look for sinful motivations behind every decision and every action, you will find them, simply because we are humans who are sinful by nature. But that doesn’t mean that we are automatically making the wrong decision. There will always be someone who finds fault with you and your decisions – it might be a stranger, an acquaintance, a trusted friend. What do they have in common? They’re all human. They have imperfect knowledge, and they’re just like you, trying to find their way around as best as they know how. Do I believe they have good intentions when they doubt you? Yes, I do, like I said before. Do I think good intentions make things right? No, I don’t. I believe that Jesus makes things right, because Jesus is righteous. Righteousness is found through Him.

So stranger, acquaintance, friend…in an important way, they’re no different from each other (though in many other very important ways, they are). Take everything with a pinch of salt – everything except that spoken by God. Why should we fear man, who is powerless to determine our destiny? If  things that others say shake you up and make you doubt and second-guess yourself all the time, you’re fearing man. I’m not saying that we should view everything said and done to us by fellow humans with distrust, but simply with godly caution and discernment. I believe God speaks to us through others, and it would be a waste to miss hearing what He has to say because we refuse to trust that God’s words can come through an imperfect human vessel. I completely believe that they can.

But that distinction, between the vessel and God, is an important one to make. We must not mistake the vessel for God, nor must we think that the righteousness or holiness of the vessel determines whether or not we can trust words that come from their mouths as supposedly God’s words. We cannot evaluate words God speaks through humans by our own assessment of who they are or where they are spiritually. It isn’t about that. When God speaks, you’ve gotta know it’s Him. He can speak through any vessel. But if our eyes are on the vessel, rather than Him, I can promise you you’re only gonna get confused. Personal biases, judgement, and all that comes into play when we look at the vessel or instrument being used instead of God, and that’s sad, cos it really is irrelevant.

Look at God. Know Him. Listen to Him.

“His sheep follow Him because they know His voice.” – John 10:4

“I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me.” – John 10:14

If we know God, we will know His voice and be able to recognise it anywhere, whether it comes forth from a stranger, an acquaintance, a trusted friend, or maybe even an enemy. It could be spoken through a drunk on the street, a guy shoulder-deep in drugs and alcohol, someone who speaks more swear words than other words, a serial killer, a teacher, a pastor… Fundamentally, we’re all the same. That God chooses to speak through us says nothing about us except that we are privileged to be loved by Him and to be recipients of His grace – just like everyone else.

We are all the same.