Summer Struggles, A Special Way to Partner with Adam, and More Girly Music

a)

IT HAS BEEN SO DONCING HOT THIS WEEK. It was really hot.

I’ve had a rough week kinda – fewest appointments so far, pitiful times in the Word, was way behind in support stuff, sweated like Michael Moore, headaches, felt out of shape, felt guilty for far exceeding my weekly budget, and my back hurts.

BUT today was a good day – caught up with work, took better care of my back, had less headaches, was a little more active, the air conditioning was on (and now its not even hot outside!), AND I had a good time in Lamentations (3, the one with the least lamenting)

Cool thing recently – I got some of my non-Christian friends to play board games with peeps from Church. THEY HAD A LOT OF FUN. My non-Christian friends are SO hard to please (without alcohol or.. worse)… and to imagine it would be games that won them over. So, hopefully I can arrange more games in the future.

b)
Want to partner with me for my trip to Asia but can’t do so financially? You can do so through LENDING ME BOOKS FOR THE YEAR. So, check your library, and if you have the following Christian books, gimme a shout:

Bill Hybels - Too Busy not to Pray
John Macarthur - Charismatic Chaos
John Piper - Let the Nations be Glad
Randy Newman - Questioning Evangelism
Horton Davies - Worship of the American Puritans
Michael Horton - In the Face of God
Leonard Payton - Reforming Our Worship Music
Gordon Fee - How to Read the Bible for All It's Worth
Adoniram Judson (biography)

You could potentially help change the way I do ministry or live or think or love God by lending me these books!

Sorry, but if you have other books you want to lend me, the reality is that I probably will not read them, and you probably don’t want to see me reject your favourite books. So, I’m really glad Come Thirsty by Max Lucado helped you out a lot…. But you’re only going to be offended if you try to lend it to me :P.

c)

Still all about the Lillix – but ACTUALLY check out their latest CD – Inside the Hollow. They are legitimately good.

Summer Ministry, Fathers, and Girly Music

a)
Please pray for me – I’m finally hitting the "presentation fatigue" phase in my Support Raising – in other words, I’m getting less and less interested in having to repeat the same 30 minutes presentation 3 times a day. On top of that, Church ministry isn’t always interesting – I think I’m more just letting our young adults group coast right now. Numbers have been pretty consistent and no new people, specifically no non-Christians. Even right now, I’m battling my own laziness: I don’t want to prepare the study for tomorrow and I’m posting on my blog instead.

b)
Father’s Day is coming up. Some short thoughts on this. God’s ordained role for fathers is that of being an authority figure and an enforcer of justice (not a complete definition). Dads are to make good decisions for their kids and spank them hardcore if they misbehave. We have so watered-down the concept of a father that when God doesn’t treat us like Mr. Dressup would, we get upset. "How dare God tell us what to do!" or "How dare God let this happen to me?"
I am very far from viewing Confucian, Asian cultural thought as being reconcilable with a Christian worldview. However, it’s a lot easier to explain God as father to them than to a North American with an effeminate, soft, "Butterfly Kisses" view of fatherhood. Fathers don’t just tuck their kids into bed – they yell at them if they misbehave during Church service. They refuse to buy stupid things for them, no matter how much they cry and whine. They force them to do things that they’ll later thank their fathers for.

A friend of mine used to teach gymnastics to young kids. In order for these kids to get good, they have to be flexible. That means pushing hard. So, my friend would take a kid doing the splits, and physically push the kid a little further. The kids would cry, the parents would complain. The result is that the kids miss out. This is the North American mentality – we are raising up a generation of incompetent and comfortable human beings who, despite spitting in His face everyday, feel entitled to the Love and Grace of God. This is not only logically ridiculous, but also a result of pure arrogance due in part to poor parenting.

So, this Father’s Day, Thank God that He’s a good father. He has good rules that He demands you obey and pushes you down to the ground till you cry to help you be able to follow them.

c)
I got a new Cyndi Wang CD! Real too. Plus, I am now on this pursuit of more girly music. The latest addition to my playlist is Lillix. They are Canadian. They play their own instruments. There are two sisters in the band named Lacey-Lee and Sasha-Ray. And they play bright pop-rock with fun harmonies. What more could you ask for?

The Cross and a Book Recommendation

a)
So, I’ve taken some religions courses at University. They’re EASY! And they’ve never given me a reason to not trust Jesus or the Bible.

One thing that "academic types", and anti-Christian atheists, love to say is how the Christian "myth" developed from other mythologies, like the Persians. They love to mention Mithraism, cause there’s a bunch of commonalities in our practices and our imagery. Let’s check it out:

Mithra - An old-Iranian god of light, contracts and friendship. He also maintains the cosmic order. Sometimes mentioned as the son of Ahura Mazda, he assists him in his struggle against the forces of evil, represented by Angra Mainyu. Mithra was born from a rock (or a cave). He fought with the sun and managed to capture the divine bull and slayed it before he ascended to heaven. From the blood of the bull came forth all the plants and animals beneficial to humanity. (http://www.pantheon.org/articles/m/mithra.html)

There’s a lot that could be said, but I brought it up for one reason: to point out the manmade mithras of the world don’t stand a chance against our Jesus. The more you know about the Cross, the more you realize that it is emphatically unlike the simple tales of human civilizations. I’m graduating from English. No writer has the kind of attention to detail that God has in the story of Christ. No group of writers could have pulled of the brilliance of the redemption narrative, especially having written the way the New Testament writers did. Saying that Christianity developed from other religions is like saying that Shakespeare stole from Dr. Suess or that Beethoven’s works are just mother goose knock-offs.

YOU could write mithra, but you could not have developed a story in which the requirements of the Old Testament, the prophecies of the Old Testament, the imagery of the Old Testament, the penalty of the Old Testament, the covenants of the Old Testament, and God’s desires in the Old Testament ALL come to fulfillment in ONE single act by a historical figure whose name would continue to be praised and spit on 2000 years later. And that is just a taste of the Cross’s brilliance.

Don’t be fooled! Superman died and came back to life. But no man-made story will ever compare to the sheer brilliance of the Cross!

b)
Hmm, don’t quite see it the way I’ve described it? I didn’t either, until I read books where the Cross was considered CAREFULLY.

If you have read my blog for a while, you will have noticed that I have never recommended a book by John Piper (a pastor I look up to and who has been a great help in my life). That is because I know not everyone will be able to enjoy his books. But The Passion of Jesus Christ (now called Fifty Reasons why Jesus had to Die) can act as an introduction, and as a necessary weapon against the simplistic understanding of the Cross that a lot of evangelicals have today.

This is maybe my favourite Piper book so far (I’ve read five). The Cross is the focal point of the Bible and the Christian faith. The Cross displays the beauty of God most vividly. Therefore, this book explores the highest heights of beauty. Therefore, this book perhaps has more beauty than any other book I’ve read. This is a short read, but it goes deep. If you say Jesus died to forgive us, or say that Jesus died to show us love, or EVEN that Jesus died to pay the penalty for our sins, you have JUST BARELY scratched the surface of the Cross. This book can act as a starting point to a deeper understanding of the Cross.

However, here are some criticisms of the book:
Piper tried to make this a seeker book that would capitalize on the Passion movie. It is not a seeker book. It goes miles beyond what most believers have contemplated. I can’t imagine too many seekers finding this an easy, compelling, or interesting read. Also, although people accuse Piper of being repetitive, this book is not. This means that the text it dense. I think more illustrations would have been helpful.

But in conclusion, read this book or READ SOMETHING ABOUT THE CROSS! Paul decided to know nothing but Christ and Him Crucified (1 Cor. 2:2), and yet in Thessalonica, he reasoned with the people for three days! What would you say if someone wanted to take a three days and discuss the Cross? Would you have more to say than four points? We must be committed to knowing the Cross!

God, Cyndi, and More Gender Roles

a)
A while back I heard this Does God Exist debate on ABC between evangelist Ray Comfort and the "Rational Response Squad". Wasn’t the greatest debate, but at one point something heartbreaking was said. The girl on the RRS was asked what would happen if she was wrong, and God really did exist. She said "I would rather spend eternity in Hell than in Heaven with a megalomaniac and a tyrant (referring to God)". It took my breathe away….

Later that day I was reading a book (The Pleasures of God). In it, it just described God – a God of sacrificial love, a God who Glorifies Himself, and a God who takes great joy in displaying both aspects. I felt something in my heart say "That girl is so blind. This God is Awesome." A couple years ago, a friend of mine was just shocked to hear that I actually believed God is better than sex or drinking (input your non-Christian friends’ idols here: security, success, career, a stable relationship). Nothing compares to Jesus! There is no one like our God.

b)
I do not watch television. However… A very nice person has started uploading episodes of Cyndi Wang’s 2004 tv series "Le Robe De Mariage Des Cieux" or "Heaven’s Wedding Gown" with english subtitles! SO GOOD!!!! As usual, Cyndi gets her yelling-at-boys thing on, and one of the main guys is incredibly creepy. His straightforward and unabashed creepiness is refreshing.

How many tv shows would tolerate such high amounts of creepiness? For example, when Cyndi catches him staring at her, the conversation goes as follows:

Cyndi – What are you staring at?
Dude – I’m looking at your eyes. If you want to win, you must be determined.

What an amazing line!!!!! Taiwanese tv is great.

c)
A friend of mine responded to my thoughts on gender roles. Her feelings are probably shared by most, so here’s my response:

I don’t hate women. I don’t think giving priority to men’s ministry privileges men. My belief is that a focus on men is a valuing of all people equally. But since men are to be the heads of their families and the leaders of the Church, their role is of a special importance. Are you less important? No - in the sense of value or potential kingdom impact or in that God has lovingly put you here on earth and has prepared great things for you to do that He deems necessary

Your first argument is essentially that women were less strategic to reach because they a) had less education, b) had less influence, and c) this would have broken many taboos in Middle Eastern culture.

If anything, this just proves my point more. Jesus LOVED to pick the less likely people to display HIS greatness. Your examples (the Samaritan woman, the Syrophoenician woman, the women of Luke 8, Mary, Mary Magdelene, the woman who washed His feet with her tears) all show that Christ loves to show His greatness through those who society viewed as foolish.

But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. – 1 Cor 1:27

God loves to pick the things that the world hates in order to shame the world. This is demonstrated in His selection of the twelve:

Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished. And they recognized that they had been with Jesus. – Acts 4:13

No one could have cared less about picking people with education and influence or breaking social conventions than Jesus. If anything, it should have delighted Him to display His power through women leadership. And yet He still purposefully assembled a team of male disciples to be the leaders of His Church. This can only point to what is clear in every book of the Bible – men are to be the leaders and the primary focus of ministry.

Your second argument was that Jesus actively ministered to women and children. Again, that just adds strength to my point. That fact eliminates the possibility that Jesus avoided ministry to women and children out of calling or for issues regarding boundaries. Christ was very comfortable ministering to women. And yet He still chose men to build into. Christ drew children to Himself (Luke 18). But He did not make them His focus.

The last argument is the practical side of things. To paraphrase you: a Church that makes men its primary target but is unsuccessful in producing men of great quality would be committing suicide. Perhaps this is true. But I would rather obey God’s Word and, in His Sovereignty, fail, then disobey God and have an impotent, male-less Church like the ones that dominate and plague the Evangelical World today.