Thursday, March 27, 2014
yay to being able to see Don Carson speak in real life! :D hahaha
it did make it better the fact that: what he spoke, i really agreed with! And what is great about conferences is that it really gives you lots of knowledge on various topics which you happen to come across in the book, regardless of whether it was the main point or not.
it was the book of Nehemiah (:
i cannot help but realise how Nehemiah had such love for his people. When the city of Jerusalem was in ruins and the remnant was being oppressed, Nehemiah could not help but weep for them, and he could not help but continually pray for them for a period of 4 months! its the persistence in his prayer that shows that he really identified with his people.
he also prayed with a deep knowledge of God. his model of prayer in Nehemiah 1 was something really interesting to understand. He knew that: God is sovereign. God keeps covenant. God expects repentence where there is sin. God punishes & restores his people. God knows his people and watches over them. God guards His own name. So he prayed with all these things in mind. He was indeed a very rational and logical kind of person.
he quoted from a psalm of David which said "Against You (God) only have I sinned.", which was a strange thing to say because it was against almost everyone that David had sinned. But what he meant was that it was primarily an offense against God. We shouldn't only be embarrassed of our sin because it affects our horizontal relationships (with other people) but we should not take the sins which offend our vertical relationship (with God) lightly! Embarrassment cannot come from losing face, but must come from a deep repentance from our sins.
Also, he brought up a question which has been raised very often by this generation. "Is God being egoistic when He wants to protect His own name/ wants people to give glory to Him?" Firstly, God IS God. It is not as if He is a man (on equal standing with us) and wants to act in a way that is not fitting by puffing himself up. He DOES deserve all praise and glory! Secondly, it is FOR OUR GOOD that we glorify him, because if not, we will be damned. Glorifying God isnt like scratching His back so that He can scratch ours. God doesnt need us to feel good! He was perfectly happy on His own before He created the world. He also knows that we can only have joy when He is in the centre of the Universe.
Its funny how i was thinking about MBTI personality types today, and how this stangely related to what i was thinking about! I am an ISFJ (one of the 16 types) and we were finding out each others personality types on saturday. its quite fascinating really, how 2 people can have the same personality type, and yet be so different. or how personality types explain somethings that you can explain/pin-point in your relationships with other people. I was called the Nurturer, because of my awareness to people's feelings and wanting to help other people (not bragging here, it really says that in the report! hahaha) But one of my pitfalls is that i tend to need positive feedback or else i would get discouraged, and tendency to need order and structure in life.
Then i inevitably came to "ISFJ Relationships". they said by ideal partner would be The Doer or The Performer. this was probably because of some complementing qualities of these other 2 personality types that make it compatible. Then i suddenly wondered, what personality type would God be if He took this test! I was quite tempted to do the test, thinking about: "What Would God Do?" but i soon realised that it is not possible! God is both fully loving and fully righteous in judgement. He is always described by what may seem to be contradicting qualities, and to add on to that, He also acts in ways that I sometimes cannot understand.
ok this is getting a bit long. but what i am getting at is that God is not like humans! He cannot be classified into these human personalities. He is unlike humans in the sense also that he is completely self-sufficient. He does not need us. Yet we humans need each other, to complement each other in our weaknesses and strenghths. God does not need us, but we fully need God!
ok one last thing.. He talked about opposition/ persecution (Neh 3-6). he talked how sometimes moral outrage is right, but only if it does not end up in self-righteousness. but a lack of moral outrage is not good, because it shows a lack of moral fibre and no courage to stand up for what is right. It can be noticed how Nehemiah avoided being self-righteous when he prayed before acting on moral outrage. Genuine Christian maturity does not act immediately on moral outrage but does so while seeking God's will, and does not behave pridefully.
Opposition does not only come from the outside, but it also comes from within! From people who refuse to cooperate, and from Christians who lose sight of the big picture by clamoring for position, leadership positions and admiration within the church. But Nehemiah still identifies himself with them, and does not puff himself up! He is definitely someone who thinks things thoroughly through before doing things, rather than acting on impulse. I have lots to learn...
wow i still have things to say, but i think i shall stop for today! its amazing how when the Bible is faithfully taught in conferences, it brings up so many questions/topics which can be related to real life, and how when you ask people about what they learnt, they will say things which are vastly different from the person next to her. i love it! it makes the Bible seem all the more real and relate-able (: so thankful!
avoid the aliens;
12:12 AM
