Surprising lesson learned from our 3+ months of sickness

Ever since mid-November of 2012, members of our family of six have been suffering from sickness, one after another, with at most a few days of reprieve in between. It’s been a tough few months, especially while taking care of an infant. Reading Wendy’s Facebook timeline from the last few months, it was like our house was a constant war zone — and I’m not sure this thing is over or not. Yet this journey has taught me a somewhat surprising lesson.

At the beginning, it was mostly the three older kids who got sick one by one — common cold during the winter season. After a month, Wendy started getting sick as well. Even the baby had some running nose. The younger kids then had another round of cold and flu symptoms. And when we got better, we let loose and ate some fried food, and then everyone started coughing and sneezing all through January. A couple of them even had eye infections.

“We got sick again!”

“Headaches, chills, coughing… when will it end?!”

 

It was around this time that we started thinking, “There’s no way we could be chronically sick for so long! There must be a reason!” So we started placing blame. “It must be that kid that came to our house that spread the germs to us!” or “We should not have eaten at that restaurant!” We thought about giving up the dog because we didn’t even have time and energy to take care of multiple sick family members. Friends chime in with their kind-hearted advice and help. Some offered us humidifiers. Others gave us aroma therapy. Wendy got some Chinese herbal medicine.

And then I started getting sick as well. After two months of pridefully thinking that I was immune to the “Chan family epidemic,” I got stuck with bad cough for over a week.

This week I got sick again. I knew I spent too many nights working late into the night. I felt a sense of achievement that I was able to resolve a bunch of home finance issues, and I finished filing the tax return in February! I also had to work overtime to meet the deadlines of a couple of projects at work, and I was catching up on an online TV show, so I stayed up quite late. On Thursday morning, I felt a bad headache. I also felt like I couldn’t regulate my body temperature. It was stupid of me to still drive to the office, only to leave early and come home to discover I had a fever. I felt chills and I felt my lack of sleep. I crashed in the bed and still felt pretty sick after hours of sleep.

And then I started getting into the blame game as well: “Perhaps the kids aren’t washing their hands thoroughly!” or “Why do I feel so cold! What’s wrong with our heater!”

It was at that moment that an innocent comment by Wendy woke me up: “Hey, look at what you’re wearing! You should be wearing a jacket!”

She was right. Why did I assign blame on other people when I should’ve been looking at myself? What went wrong? To start off, I trusted the satisfaction of my achievements (home finance, work assignments) more than God. On top of that, I wasted valuable rest time by watching some online show. I was prideful for thinking that I wouldn’t get sick, and now look where I am. And of course I should be wearing a jacket when it’s cold.

I read an article called “Can blaming others make people sick?” in which researchers find that if you harbor blame and bitterness, you’re more likely to get sick. But I think it’s more the other way round: when you get sick, you’re likely to try to blame other people for it.

I discovered Psalm 38, a peculiar psalm that speaks to me. Please read it. The psalmist was apparently suffering from lack of strength in his flesh and bones (v.3), headaches (v.4), wounds (v.5), depression (v.6), burning sensation (v.7), failing eyesight (v.10), lots of pain (v.17), etc. But the psalmist doesn’t think he should blame others (v.14). He thinks he’s sick because of his own sin (vv.3-4,18), his own foolishness (v.5), his restless heart (v.8), and perhaps it’s God’s will to discipline him (vv.1-2). Interestingly, his hope is not in medicine. What he realized he needed to do was to confess his sins (v.18) and to wait for God (v.15), because he is certain that God understands his sorrowful state (v.9), that God will answer (v.15), and that God is his Savior (v.22).

I heard a second-hand story about a pastor who suffered a sudden bout of sickness, such that his entire body was in pain. He tried to sleep, but his sleeping position gave him incredible pain. He tried sitting down, but it was painful as well. Standing up was uncomfortable. After some experimentation of different body positions, he finally found one and only one position which didn’t yield any pain — a kneeling position of prayer. It was like God was teaching him that the only way out was to rely on God.

We tend to blame others for our own problems not just because we’re physically sick, but spiritually sick. In fact, everyone is spiritually sick, because we all need Jesus to be our doctor (Matthew 9:12).

And the great irony is that Jesus, who is not sick, and who heals our hearts, does not blame others, but he takes the blame for all of us by dying for our sins on the cross (2 Corinthians 5:21). And that’s why he’s our most wonderful Savior.

Who You Worship When No One Is Looking

“Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.” (James 4:7-8 ESV)

Double-mindedness is a problem of the heart. And it is a common problem, because we all like to put up a nice facade in front of other people, but when we’re by ourselves, in our own thoughts and our own desires, we seem to be a different person. We let our desires and greed and lustful thoughts run wild, and we harbor and feed our secret sins.

Bill Hybels once wrote a book called “Who You Are When No One Is Looking” which speaks to this issue. Unfortunately, he was mistaken, because he characterized this as a problem of our character, and that if we muster up enough courage and discipline and love, then we’ll be okay. The problem was that he was only looking at the symptoms and not the root of the problem — it is not about fixing who we are, but addressing who we worship. Double-mindedness might look like a character problem at the surface, but deep down, it is a worship problem.

A. W. Tozer said that “It is impossible to keep our moral practices sound and our inward attitudes right while our idea of God is erroneous or inadequate. … What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us. … the most portentous fact about any man is not what he at a given time may say or do, but what he in his deep heart conceives God to be like.” (“The Knowledge of The Holy” by A.W. Tozer)

We might worship a mighty and holy God when we’re with others. But what kind of God do you worship when no one is looking? Would you believe your “private God” to be less powerful and less omniscient? Less holy? Less able to satisfy your every need and desire? That you could rely on yourself to make all your decisions more than you need to consult that God of yours?

Miroslav Volf wrote that we can fall prey to a “new polytheism” in which “we follow the voice of one god at work, another at home, and maybe yet another at church. Each sphere resists the claims of the one God to shape all of life.” (“A Public Faith” by Miroslav Volf)

So when James 4:7-8 speaks to double-minded people, it not only talks about drawing near the true God, but also about resisting the devil, the one who feeds us lies. I myself have fallen prey to many of the devil’s lies in the past and I will need to heed the same advice.

Tim Chester wrote: “Sin happens when we believe lies about God instead of God’s Word and when we worship idols instead of worshiping God.” (“You Can Change” by Tim Chester)

Let’s worship God for who He really is. Instead of turning God into who we want him to be, let’s seek to draw near to Him and worship Him.

See Also:
Thoughts On The “Sinner’s Prayer”

How does Jesus’ incarnation relate to your marriage?

“I feel frustrated about our marriage,” my friend Tomas conceded as he talked about his wife Diane [*]. “It is not easy to communicate with her. I tried to talk to her about my thoughts and my rationales for doing something, and it seems that she couldn’t hear me at all. She’s blind to how I truly feel about things. And Diane just wanted to control everything. So we often end up fighting and arguing. It seems that she’s stuck in her own little world! How can I get her to see beyond it?”

[*] Not their real names.

Tomas had been trying hard to work on their marriage. But he was mostly relying on some techniques and skills that he picked up from marriage seminars and pop psychology publications. While I was struggling for words to respond to Tomas, as soon as the words “own little world” came off of Tomas’ mouth, I sensed one of those “God moments” coming on.

“I can feel your frustration, Tomas,” I said. “And I know you’ve tried very hard, and you’re starting to feel hopeless.” Tomas nodded.

I continued, “But this is just the sort of problem that Jesus came here for. You see, it’s not just that Diane is in her own little world. You, Tomas, is also blind and lost in your own little world. Likewise, I am also trapped in my own little world unable to live a righteous life. When Jesus sees us trapped in our own little world, his solution wasn’t to demand that we figure out a way to come out and know God. Instead of that, Jesus himself became one of us, lived among us, did what we did, felt how we felt. We are unable to see beyond it, but Jesus revealed the fullness of God to us.”

While my general advice to Tomas was to be an understanding husband according to 1 Peter 3:7 (“Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way”), instead of emphasizing communication skills, I said, “Here’s the deal. By your own strength, there’s no way for you to break through your frustration and hopelessness and be motivated to be an understanding husband, unless you also experience Jesus’ incarnation in your life. It depends on your relationship with the Savior. To the extent that you can see Jesus breaking through into your own stubborn little world, can you actually have the strength and necessary motivation to reach into Diane’s world and see things from her perspective and be that change-agent for her.”

In one sense, marriage is indeed an exercise in reflecting Jesus’ incarnation into our world. If marriage is to be “two becoming one flesh,” and if especially for husbands, according to Ephesians 5, the charge is to love your wife as your own body, then we first need to have a deep personal experience with how Jesus also reached beyond our resistance and into our world.

Seasons Of A Marriage

Happy 2012! One of the first blog articles I read this year concern turning a new year resolution into 10,000 “little resolutions” by Paul David Tripp. What he means is that we will have 10,000 little moments throughout the year to make a choice to act in faith or not, to act in obedience or not, etc. It’s a good read, so please read it.

It also reminds me of the book “What Did You Expect?: Redeeming the Realities of Marriage” that Tripp wrote on marriage. In the book he kept emphasizing the concept that marriage is not to be worked out in the big decisions/moments in life, but in every day decisions to love and honor your spouse with God’s love. So I want to dedicate my first blog entry in 2012 to my wife Wendy because I wish to love her with 10,000 little moments in 2012.

It also reminds me of something I’ve been wanting to write about. I call it the the “seasons of a Christian marriage” that we might journey through our lives, from immaturity to maturity. Here are the seasons:

Season 0:
I have a lot of love to give, and I’m looking for Mr./Mrs. Right

Season 1:
I love you because you accept me just the way I am, and I accept you just the way you are

Season 2:
You need help to change into a better person, and I will help you to make those changes

Season 3:
We are not perfect, and we both need to change to become better people in order to improve this marriage

Season 4:
I’ve tried very hard but I found that I cannot change you

Season 5:
I cannot change you, only God can change you

Season 6:
I cannot change you, I can only change myself

Season 7:
I have accepted that on this side of heaven, we will remain sinners however hard we try to change

Season 8:
The biggest sinner in this marriage is me

Season 9:
God loves you more than I can love you, and it’s only by God’s grace and power that He will use me as an instrument of His grace toward you in our life together

The Truth Behind Hide And Seek

“Then the LORD God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?”” (Genesis 3:9)

We came across a new toy at Walmart the other day. It’s the “Hide and Seek Jojo Interactive Bunny.” Supposedly, the bunny can play hide and seek with your kid. To play this game, the child takes the electronic carrot and hides, and Jojo the robot bunny will seek and find the child. My reaction to this toy is one word: disgust. My reasons are:

1. It tells me that kids these days are so lonely that you have to buy a robot to play hide and seek with them.
2. It turns the biblical narrative of hide-and-seek completely upside down.

What do I mean by point #2, you ask? One of the most beautiful scenes in the Genesis narrative happened right after Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit. Adam and Eve hid themselves out of shame, but God sought them out. God declared consequences for their sins, yet He also pointed the way to salvation. Finally God clothed them, and released them from the garden of Eden. What disgusted me about Jojo the bunny is that, in place of an all-knowing, a perfectly righteous and a perfectly gracious God, the seeker was a non-knowing, amoral, robotic bunny.

My “disgust” might sound harsh. However, I think kids who play hide and seek are indirectly exposed to opportunities to learn about truth. Not long after each of my two boys learned to walk their first steps, one of the first new games I introduced to them was hide and seek. When we started out playing hide-and-seek, I would hide, and they would seek me. We had so much fun with it. They laughed so hard when they found me, and I couldn’t help but enjoy the game as well. Not only was it an opportunity for them to try out their new legs, they were also learning about a special joy in life — the joy of being found.

When they grew a little older, I would try to play hide and seek with them with the roles reversed. I would ask them to hide, and then I would count to ten and then go out and find them. Interestingly, whenever I finished counting to ten, my eldest one Chase could not wait for me to find him, and every time he would just come rushing out of his hiding spot. I thought about this over and over, and I realized an important lesson — for kids, hiding is harder than seeking. Because there’s so much joy in being found, in being known, that Chase could not wait for it to happen. His desire to be known and to be found was so great that he had trouble staying hidden from me.

No wonder the kingdom of heaven belongs to kids, because they understand the need of being found, which reflects our spiritual need of being known and being found by our God. Deep down, we each have a need for intimacy with God. Unfortunately, as we grow older, hiding gets easier and easier. Our sinfulness causes us to hide from God. Our tendency to love the worthless things of the world gradually ate away our need for God.

So don’t laugh next time if you see me take the game of hide-and-seek very seriously, because there is a lot of meanings and truths behind this game, and it is worth pondering on.

I Will Not Drink From The Toilet Bowl

photo (c) 2008 Bogart Handsome Devil | more info (via: Wylio)

She did it again today. Not once, not twice, but at least three times.

For some reason, once in a while, my dog Choco would sneak into the bathroom and climb up to the edge of the toilet bowl and drink the toilet water. Lately, since we’re potty training our 2-year-old, Choco even started drinking from the baby potty.

I caught Choco doing it again this morning. I said in frustration, “Choco!!! I put clean, filtered water in your bowl in the kitchen already!!! Why do you have to drink from the toilet bowl, again?”

But it struck me that God might be saying the same thing to us sinners.

What is “sin”? Greg Gilbert (in “What Is The Gospel?“) wrote: “Literally, the word means “missing the mark,” but the biblical meaning of sin is much deeper. It’s not as if Adam and Eve were trying very hard to keep God’s command and just missed the bull’s-eye by a few degrees. No, the fact is that they were shooting in the opposite direction!”

But my dog Choco actually showed me another perspective on sin. Even though I provided a way for her to fulfill her thirst with pristine water, she did not want it. Instead, she wanted to fulfill her thirst in her own way, going for her own filthy water. In the same vein, even though we could draw from the riches of God’s grace, even though we could go to Him for whatever issues we face, many times we choose to satisfy our needs in our own way, going for lesser solutions.

Every time we sin, we are choosing to drink from the toilet bowl instead of drinking from God’s wellspring of blessing.

So, say it after me: “I will not drink from the yucky toilet bowl! I will not drink from the yucky toilet bowl!”

“Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”” (John 4:13-14)

Koinoniarama: Fellowship of the Reconciled

There is more to Christian fellowship than commitment, human closeness or even heterogeneity. You can get a wonderful feeling of being accepted for your naked self from therapy groups ……

What is it, then, that distinguishes Christian fellowship from every other form of closeness, oneness, togetherness or whatever? Why is it so important that its uniqueness be experienced when so many psychological substitutes are available? What makes truly Christian fellowship so difficult, yet so vital to achieve? ……

The capacity to experience fellowship (to share, to be close, to know) was given by God to all men but was mutilated by sin. Sin has damaged our capacity to know God. Therefore any attempt to mend the broken fragments of humanity, however exciting or apparently successful, will be illusory and doomed to ultimate failure unless humanity’s relationship with God is restored.

I cannot have true fellowship with you unless both of us have fellowship with God. …… At the the heart of Christian fellowship is reconciliation, the restoration of your relationship to God. For you can only truly know someone else through God and in God. …… As the miracle of eternal reconciliation is daily renewed in your experience, so too your capacity to have Christian fellowship with another brother or sister will be enhanced.

— from “The Fight” (1976) by John White [emphasis mine]

Questions for reflection:

1. Do you measure the “success” of your Christian communities by your commitment levels, your closeness, or how alike you are? According to this, you might want to think again.

2. When there are problems in your Christian relationships, do you deal with them only through psychological means? Could you be missing the underlying root causes?

3. What does it mean to know someone else in God and through God? It may sound obvious, but consider what your relationship with one another is based on. Is it based on demographics? On your common interests? On your relationship to your pastor? Or on your relationship to God?

4. Do you experience that the more you’re reconciled with God, the more your relationships with one another is enhanced?

Thoughts on the “Sinner’s Prayer”

The Wikipedia entry on “Sinner’s Prayer” says that it is “any prayer designed to make it simple for one wanting to become a Christian to confess sin, acknowledge the need for salvation or redemption through Jesus Christ, and make a commitment to ‘receive Christ as Savior.’ The prayer is typically very basic, short, simple and straight to the point.”

Indeed, an unwritten rule in evangelical tradition tells us that whenever you lead someone to Christ, you should help the person to “seal the deal” by asking the person to prayer a “sinner’s prayer.” For example, this is the “sinner’s prayer” from “The Four Spiritual Laws”:

Lord Jesus, I need You. Thank You for dying on the cross for my sins. I open the door of my life and receive You as my Savior and Lord. Thank You for forgiving my sins and giving me eternal life. Take control of the throne of my life. Make me the kind of person You want me to be.

The longer I’ve been a Christian, the more problems I found with this so-called “sinner’s prayer.” If it’s a prayer of a sinner, why does it lack any hint of feeling sorry for your sins? In fact it reads more like a prayer of thanksgiving, where the focus of the prayer is not God, but the focus is (to put it bluntly) to “use Jesus” as a means for us to achieve eternal life. In addition, the prayer seems to be based on an incorrect understanding of Revelation 3:20, which, taken in context, is really addressed to Christians to open their heart’s door to Christ, and not intended for non-Christians “accepting Jesus into their heart.”

In a Christianity Today article entitled “Jesus and the Sinner’s Prayer,” David Gushee pointed out that the concept of the evangelical “sinner’s prayer” tends to teach “easy believism …… If Jesus is to be believed, inheriting eternal life involves a comprehensive divine assessment at every step along our journey, not just at its inception.”

Evangelicals like to hoist the banner of “saved by grace through faith, not by works,” but omit the part where we are “created in Christ for good works” which came one verse later in Ephesians 2; we tend to focus on “The just shall live by faith” (Romans 1:17) but forgetting that “faith without works is dead” (James 2:17); we tend to get people to make their “decisions” and pray their “sinner’s prayer” and become a church member, forgetting that we should first and foremost be a member of the kingdom of God, and that Jesus’ first instruction concerning the kingdom of God is to “repent” (Matthew 4:17).

To me, the “sinner’s prayer” is not a once-and-done prayer. The first time someone truly accepts Christ should be the time when he/she realizes truly how much of a “sinner” he/she is. From that point on, every prayer is a “sinner’s prayer.”

Contrast the “sinner’s prayer” in “The Four Spiritual Laws” above with the Puritan prayer below entitled “The Convicting Spirit”:

Thou blessed Spirit, Author of all grace and comfort, Come, work repentance in my soul;

   Represent sin to me in its odious colors that I may hate it; Melt my heart by the majesty and mercy of God; Show me my ruined self and the help there is in Him; Teach me to behold my Creator, His ability to save, His arms outstretched, His heart big for me.

   May I confide in His power and love, commit my soul to Him without reserve, bear His image, observe His laws, pursue His service, and be through time and eternity a monument to the efficacy of His grace, a trophy of His victory.

   Make me willing to be saved in His way, perceiving nothing in myself, but all in Jesus. Help me not only to receive Him but to walk in Him, depend upon Him, commune with Him, be conformed to Him, follow Him, imperfect, but still pressing forward, not complaining of labor, but valuing rest, not murmuring under trials, but thankful for my state.

   Give me that faith which is the means of salvation, and the principle and medium of all godliness; May I be saved by grace through faith, live by faith, feel the joy of faith, and do the work of faith. Perceiving nothing in myself, may I find in Christ wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption.

Now that’s a real “sinner’s prayer” that starts with true repentance, that surrenders one’s life to be just a trophy of God’s victory, and that attaches to a faith that produces not only salvation but also godliness. That’s the kind of “sinner’s prayer” that we should be praying every day.