Dying embers, a past promise & memories of the past
I just came back from meeting a friend from breakfast. Even as he gave me much to think about, there are so many thoughts clouding my mind now (including some rather urgent ones...).
When I first started going to church, I never expected what was to come. I guess I did expect a tough journey, and everyone's journey is unique, but what I got was something I never expected or asked for, both positively and negatively.
Just 2 years back, I made a promise. A promise that I hoped would be permanent, but things have faded now... I've been through a lot, before AND after baptism. By the time I reached baptism, I thought I had already gone through a lot, but the truth was that there was a lot more to come. What eventually happens to that promise, may just be answered in the coming months.
I also remember a time when my spiritual walk was so much better, a time when my faith was so much stronger. The experience was wonderful and valuable! Incredibly, I gained a new "ability", which was so accurate that sometimes I argued against it only to find myself proven wrong later on. What happened was that I would feel a "prompting" as to someone who was feeling alone in the church. In most cases, I would respond to the prompting. There were a few occasions, however, when I was convincing myself that this person cannot be feeling this way, such as "This person is close to this group" or "This person seems to be mixing around so well" or "This person has been around in church for so long". I was later to discover by some way or other that ALL the promptings that I "rejected" were true and I was wrong, which convinced me that these promptings were not just my feelings but promptings from God. By now, though, my faith has weakened a lot and I no longer feel these promptings, but it was one of the things that reminds me of how much better my walk used to be. When I leave Singapore, it will be with dying embers in my heart, but I do hope I will return with these embers set aflame once again and burning strong.
There have been so many past experiences I had in church, most of which remain as memories which I know will never occur or have a very low chance of ever occuring again, and these are memories that I still cherish deeply. There are people who have come and people who have left, but overall, I feel that my church is not as strong as it was once was.
A teacher in the church once said during one of the lessons, "Look at the people around you. 50 years down the road, how many of them will still be here?" Even as I'm not sure which church I'll be in after I return, whether I'll stay or whether I'll go, I'm also wondering about the others I see in church now. I'll be going away for 6 months, but I've seen before how within a short period of a few months (I think it was about 3 months the other time) so many people left church.
I was just thinking through some of my earlier blog entries, and I realised that many of the well-known godly people we hear of are people who didn't conform to their church environment and habits, but they stepped out beyond the influence of their own church to do what was right in God's sight. At that time, they were naturally rejected by their own church, but now people remember them for what they did. Sometimes, working to gain the acceptance of others isn't the right way, and for me, it probably isn't. But for now, it's time I seriously considered the basis of my life and make a personal choice again, because everything else will stem from this.
No one can change the environment that one is away from, but one can only change one's self. Whatever changes there are in church when I return, I cannot do anything about it, but what happens to me is what I can change. And I want to return, changed.
Right now, I better attend to some other urgent matters first...
When I first started going to church, I never expected what was to come. I guess I did expect a tough journey, and everyone's journey is unique, but what I got was something I never expected or asked for, both positively and negatively.
Just 2 years back, I made a promise. A promise that I hoped would be permanent, but things have faded now... I've been through a lot, before AND after baptism. By the time I reached baptism, I thought I had already gone through a lot, but the truth was that there was a lot more to come. What eventually happens to that promise, may just be answered in the coming months.
I also remember a time when my spiritual walk was so much better, a time when my faith was so much stronger. The experience was wonderful and valuable! Incredibly, I gained a new "ability", which was so accurate that sometimes I argued against it only to find myself proven wrong later on. What happened was that I would feel a "prompting" as to someone who was feeling alone in the church. In most cases, I would respond to the prompting. There were a few occasions, however, when I was convincing myself that this person cannot be feeling this way, such as "This person is close to this group" or "This person seems to be mixing around so well" or "This person has been around in church for so long". I was later to discover by some way or other that ALL the promptings that I "rejected" were true and I was wrong, which convinced me that these promptings were not just my feelings but promptings from God. By now, though, my faith has weakened a lot and I no longer feel these promptings, but it was one of the things that reminds me of how much better my walk used to be. When I leave Singapore, it will be with dying embers in my heart, but I do hope I will return with these embers set aflame once again and burning strong.
There have been so many past experiences I had in church, most of which remain as memories which I know will never occur or have a very low chance of ever occuring again, and these are memories that I still cherish deeply. There are people who have come and people who have left, but overall, I feel that my church is not as strong as it was once was.
A teacher in the church once said during one of the lessons, "Look at the people around you. 50 years down the road, how many of them will still be here?" Even as I'm not sure which church I'll be in after I return, whether I'll stay or whether I'll go, I'm also wondering about the others I see in church now. I'll be going away for 6 months, but I've seen before how within a short period of a few months (I think it was about 3 months the other time) so many people left church.
I was just thinking through some of my earlier blog entries, and I realised that many of the well-known godly people we hear of are people who didn't conform to their church environment and habits, but they stepped out beyond the influence of their own church to do what was right in God's sight. At that time, they were naturally rejected by their own church, but now people remember them for what they did. Sometimes, working to gain the acceptance of others isn't the right way, and for me, it probably isn't. But for now, it's time I seriously considered the basis of my life and make a personal choice again, because everything else will stem from this.
No one can change the environment that one is away from, but one can only change one's self. Whatever changes there are in church when I return, I cannot do anything about it, but what happens to me is what I can change. And I want to return, changed.
Right now, I better attend to some other urgent matters first...
posted by Guangrong at
12:34 pm
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