Discover You (an original song)

Which well do you draw water from?

This post is meant as a follow up to this one.

I've come to an age where statistically, 80% of my peers will lose their excitement in attending church services & serving God, resulting in a few eventually walking out of the church & even the faith. Those that remain will spend a lot of their time in church with 2 things - talking about those who left; and wondering why they stayed.

Did the church change? Or did we?

I believe one of the key contributing factors of this sad situation is misplaced expectations. Perhaps for far too long we have placed our expectations of Jesus upon the church. How did that happen? How did we replace Jesus, our covenant keeping God, with the earthly, imperfect church? Unconsciously & unintentionally, we, with 2nd-hand faiths, allowed ourselves to rely & depend upon the church to feed our spirituality. And due to that dependency, our personal relationship with Jesus Christ became an exact duplication of the spiritual atmosphere of the church.

The corporation worship affects our personal worship lives;

Prayer meeting affects our prayer lives;

Church events generates our spiritual highs & lows;

The pastors' sermons become our only source of food & water;

Church members' responses & actions determine how joyful it was to serve God that Sunday;

Church cliques are our great basis for sense of belonging & self-esteem, self worth;

I've been there - for a very long time, I might add. Nowadays I still have such struggles. Should it be that way? Hell no!!

You want to experience Jesus? Get your sources right. Which well do you draw water from? Don't you know He has given you a fountain?

"Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again,
but whoever drinks of the water I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life."
- John 4:13 - 14.

None But Jesus

This post is specially for those who don't feel happy being in church anymore. I see you, & I feel you. You're not alone in this. There are people saying healing & joy has come, but you're not feeling it; you're not believing it. I'm with you. I hope this post will encourage you & bless you.

It took us a while to decide if we're going to church camp or not. It wasn't a small decision for us - my wife & I had nights where we would just be crying on our bed as we talked about it. The past year had been a wild journey for us. The only reason we survived through it was because we hung on to the knowledge that in all of the storm, God is with us. And indeed He was.

You see, I used to be associated as the pastors' son. I hated every generalization that came with it, but at the same time I was proud to be the pastors' son. When my mom preached about Sons vs Servants, I immediately (wrongly) took on the identity as a son in the house - I became the son of the church. And when my father resigned from the church, I thought I had nothing left but to be a rebel.

But God has pulled me out of that now. He's taken me on a journey, teaching me about our adoption as children of God. I'm not a son of the church. I am a child of God. You see (again), if we base our identity in anything other than our position in God, we will crumble. If our source of life, joy, strength & hope is anything other than Jesus Himself, we will run dry.

If you let me, I could think of so many reasons to walk out of the church & just plant myself somewhere else. No church is perfect, but at least it'll be a new start - I'll be appreciated, I might get paid for my service, and it'll be years before anyone realizes what an idiot I am!! So why are we still in FCC, serving in the youth ministry & music team? Well, there's only 1 reason really - God hasn't said anything yet. And until He does, I must be faithful with the gifts & the responsibilities entrusted to me. As long as I'm still here, I will love the local church & the people in it. It's not because there's a new pastor or a new church board, or that the youth ministry is growing - it's simply listening & obeying to voice of the One whom I belong to.

I guess what I'm trying to say is this - FIX YOUR EYES ON JESUS. Do not depend on anyone or anything else. Desire to know His love for you & respond accordingly, & everything else will be an overflow out of that relationship.

Good Friends

Pictures above were taken on August 31, 2009. Just 2 days after our youth camp, we headed back up there for a time to just be. Took me a while, but now I realise that the group that went were basically the TOUCH Core with Rachael & Rabeeka. More importantly, they are my closest friends. I am pretty much a pain in the butt, but they accept me as I am. And I don't know how they do it - whether they cast some magic spell or just be a really good friend to me - somehow they make me want to be a better person. I have grown & changed (perhaps at too slow a pace, but still... ) and they played no small part.

So, thank you.