disciples

What occasions do we pray?

/ Henry Jiang / 2 Comments

Now my brothers and sisters, since we have gone over how we should pray and what we should pray about, let’s talk about  what occasions do we pray more deeply. As stated in previous posts, self-reliance is a sin and we must bring everything to God, through prayer. A very good place to look for prayers to God is the Psalms, since God has commanded us to speak in Psalms (Ephesians 5:19). Psalm has a variety of prayers, anything ranging from lament (eg. Psalm 22), praise (eg. Psalm 30), confession (eg. Psalm 51), help and protection (eg. Psalm 60), etc. If you are all drained out and don’t know what to pray about, I would highly suggest meditating over one of these Psalms to see what God wants us to pray about.

However, let’s go back to the topic of what occasions do we pray. I would like to bring out a parable Dolas, my very good friend from Nigeria, who has trusted in the Lord for all her life and bore many fruits, told me. At the end of the parable, I would like to add a portion of the parable in which my brother in Christ, Jeremy Yeung came up with which in some way completes the picture. Let’s imagine that we are a car. If we want to know more about how to operate this car, we refer to its user manual, in which case we are pointing to the Holy Bible. But the car needs to be constantly maintained, before it breaks down, gets rusty, overheats, etc. This is when we take it back to its maker for maintenance (take it to the Lord in Prayer). It is vital that we constantly take our car back to maintenance as there are so many problems that occur, and we are 100% sure that the maker is omnipotent and that He can fix anything. This is how important prayer is.

Last but not least, what happens when we feel worn out and drained out. For example, in some cases when we have read the manual over and over again (for very mature Christians, I’d say more mature than me in Scripture), and feel dried out, what do we do? We take the car out for a drive! This means going out, making disciples of all nations and baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:19).

This is how Christian life should be in a nutshell. It’s that simple. No complications, no strings attached. What are we waiting for?

#yolo

/ Henry Jiang / 3 Comments

My beloved brothers and sisters, as you may have seen, most of my posts during the week surround the same theme. Though this site is only 1 week old, we have started with the theme of Spiritual Blindness and have moved on to the theme of prayer. I thought that it would be nice to spend a day each week (which would be Sunday) to share interesting things that come up in our lives that makes me ponder.

A member of our Yumcha Fellowship introduced the term yolo to me. To those who do not understand, it means “You Only Live Once”. Sometimes the term is combined with swag, forming the term yoloswag. One of the ways he would use this phrase would be:

Yolo! I gamed the entire night and did not study for the exam. GG

For your information, GG means Good Game, in which gamers say when they loose a game. I never really came to understand the concept of You Only Live Once here. Is it because you only live once that you should game? A few weeks after hearing this term, I rebuked him with the following verse:

The sluggard craves and gets nothing, but the desires of the diligent are fully satisfied. — Proverbs 13:4 (NIV 1984)

Honestly, gaming to an extent where it takes over your priorities in life is a form of idolatry, as you are worshipping games. Are you bringing any Glory to God? The Holy Bible commands us to do everything for the Glory of God. If you are a non-believer, do you feel emptiness after gaming for extended hours? If so, why? What do you feel when you log out or turn off your game? Imagine everything being taken away from you tomorrow including your laptop, what would you think of gaming now?

My perception of the concept Yolo. I personally believe that it should not be seen as a term with negative connotations. You Only Live Once? So what? We only live once, so we need to treasure this time of only living once in this world. What do we do? First we must obey the Ten Commandments. Next, we must execute the Great Commission which is “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” (Matthew 28:19) We only live once and during this short time of living in this world, we have to bring as much Glory to God as possible and obey His commandments in order to be saved (which also means we have to declare our faith and prove our faith).

What are you waiting for my brothers and sisters? You’ve all heard the Great Commission, go out and do it! #yolo

Have a very, very blessed week! Love ya ❤