I have the privilege to lead several seekers group in my journey in Brisbane. It is always exciting to share with the pre-believers about God. There are several things I always share and try to analyse with them. It’s very simple. It’s all about taking that little step of faith to make a decision, yet a decision that can turn a life upside down, too significant and important it is.
A friend recently asked me “How can I know God? As in, how to accept God into my life?” Hmm… quite often we will use the Christian jargon to share with them about Sinner’s Prayer, and explaining to them the step by step progress etc… A thought came so I shared. To me, it’s all about making a decision “loh”. Just like today you meet a gal and you are interested in her, so you sing out, “Hey I just met you and this is crazy! Arghh soo crazy!” And from there on some love-at-first-sight people will be like “Can we be gal and boyfriend?” You see, it involves an approach, an offer, and an acceptance. See, when you decided to date someone, most likely at that point of time you don’t know everything about the person, perhaps just a little, just a side of him or her, and it takes a life long journey to know your spouse and you gotta put in effort. That’s how interesting a marriage is, that’s why it is exciting. Likewise, knowing God to me, is more likely the same. Just the difference is that an offer has already been made since the moment Jesus went onto the Cross and died for the whole world, that salvation and acceptance has been made available since then. An offer already exists. What we need to do is to take up the offer. And our life with God is the same. A life long journey, and we get to know God more and more as day goes by. And Christianity is a relationship. Our bond and relationship with God gets stronger the more we interact and communicate. We communicate, we talk to God. And God speaks to us through the Scripture, through His creation such as the nature, through Holy Spirit when we spend time with Him, when we worship him and perhaps through someone around us where God drops a word in them to speak into our life, or through books and resources that we read etc. You see God travels beyond space and time, He is limitless, and He is a God of creativity, so many ways He can interact with us.
Taking the step to experience is so crucial. Let me throw you an analogy. Person A says Restaurant Fulham offers the best Char Kuey Tiao (a Malaysian cuisine) with Ham in Brisbane. Person B argues and defends that Restaurant West Ham offers the best Char Kuey Tiao with Ham. But Person A has never tried Restaurant West Ham, likewise, Person B has never tried Restaurant Fulham. While Person C actually tried both Restaurant Fulham and Restaurant West Ham before. If you are asking for a recommendation, who will you believe? You see, experience matters. But if you never choose to taste the goodness of God, you will surely never know how good He is. All you need is a decision saying I want to know, I want to experience! The remaining story, ensues on. Another example will be, you tell your friend that you are better looking than Sing Hoe. I say that is not true because your friend never gets to meet me in person. And when your friend finally gets to meet me, he or she will say, hold on a minute - you are wrong, Sing Hoe is actually better looking. You see, experience matters. But it requires a decision to lead to that (your friend’s decision saying I want to meet Sing Hoe and see who is better looking). :P
You see, everything about me and us are fleeting, they will all pass away one day, my handsomeness, your prettiness, my height, your plumpness … but everything about God will not, because He just can’t! That’s why in our temporariness, we need everlastingness, and that can only be found in God. We are just finite, feeble, so powerless beings yet often being so proud about ourselves, bragging about how capable we are. You see, to humble ourselves means to acknowledge that we are powerless. That we don’t control lives. To humble ourselves means we surrender fully our lives and wills unto God. Yet so often, we attempt to be God, trying to take everything in our hands, and when life is not going the way we want it to be, we blame and curse God, we get angry, we talk about how God doesn’t love us, that He doesn’t care, that He is absent, that He is not real.
People talk about things and attempts in life they must do so that they will have no regret when they die, ie, bungee jumping, skydiving etc… and they will actually go all the way for it… Why not going for something which is free and eternally rewarding – knowing God?
Most people are so frenzied seeing a shooting star that only last for seconds. If that can give them the excitement, why not capture a God that is everlasting and bring so much good to one’s life?
You use your life to tell me about your unbelief, I use mine to tell you about God.
Do you think your heart can live again? Do you think it's time to cast out the unbelief in your heart? Do you think you can give God a chance (He has given you so many chances to know Him)?
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