Know yourself better

Through serving, I was able to get to know myself more:

• my weaknesses
• my strengths
• how much responsibilities I can handle
• how do I react in midst of difficulties and pressure
• what things I enjoy doing
• etc...

In one of Mark Driscoll's coaching sessions, Prophet, Priest, King (you need to sign up to access it), he mentions that there are 3 main types of leaders: Prophet, Priest, King (related to Jesus' role). Since we are called Christians, the best example to follow is Jesus Himself.

The main characteristics of each type:

• Prophet: good understanding of the truth revealed in Scripture, and gifted with teaching and exhortation.
• King: proficient at planning, executing, implementing, managing initiatives. 
• Priest: focused on caring for people, tending people's needs.

I had to privilege to serve in CCF committee, and it is neat to see the different leadership strengths and styles among fellow members. I notice each member is more leaning towards one type.

This does not mean that one person can only be of one type, but I think that as you get to know yourself better, you will find more identified with one type.

The goal is to help you understand yourself, and have more knowledge to discern how and where you can serve God, so that you can maximize your potential for the glory of God.

Why serve?

Last post, I briefly mentioned the contrast of how being a Christian, we are made alive in Christ, while before knowing Christ we are dead in our transgressions (Ephesians 2). To be alive, we are able to do things, to work for the purpose in which we are made us alive in, that is Christ. Also, I linked another post from a brother from Ephesians 4, that states how serving is key to attaining full maturity in Christ.

I remember hearing from some brother in CCF about the definition of serving: "the outward expression of God's goodness in us".

Something similar to the idea of spiritual breathing, in which we seek God through prayer and Scripture, deepening our relationship with Him (inhaling). This leads to signs of character transformation and action (exhaling). The key is that we work relying on God.

Personally, serving has been impacting in my life:

• Allows me to get to know fellow brothers and sisters in a deeper level
• Challenges me to know the Bible more
• Molds my character through experiences, mistakes, difficulties
• "Forces" me to truly rely on God
• Provides knowledge of my gifts, strengths, and weaknesses
• Generates abundant pure joy

It comes down in privilege. God doesn't need us to do His work. But He chose to let us co-partner with Him in His Kingdom work. He called us to be set apart for His work.

I believe I have the gift of service, and I am all for serving God and His people. But in my journey, I have found weaknesses and I learned my lessons:

• I should not serve only out of duty or out of need
• Serving more ministries does not make me superior or more righteous than others
• My identity is not based on the ministry I serve in, but on what Christ did on the cross
• Merciful heart is better than sacrifice
• I need to keep in check my pride when serving
• I should not worship my ministry

dead vs alive

"As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do."

 - Ephesians 2:1-10

This passage has impacted me greatly by pointing me to many realizations:

• salvation is by grace so that no one can boast
• salvation through faith will produce good works
• marvelous grace that saves a dead man 
• the contrast of who I was (before knowing God) vs who I am now 

I will focus on the last point. Realizing that I was dead and an object of wrath, that there is nothing in me that should attract God, really makes God's grace so much greater and glorious.

And out of his grace, we are made alive in Christ. This is something that I have heart for, to see fellow brothers and sisters to be grasp that we are fully alive in Christ, and therefore our faith should grow, generating fruits and good work.

When we were dead, it's like a dead plant that can't move, can't do anything, decomposes, etc. But now that we are alive in Christ, we can move, we can do things, we can grow, and produce the fruits and results for what we have been made for.

Perhaps, there are many of us who are "passive", believing that doing things for God is only reserved for those qualified, and that attending fellowship and church is enough. I want to challenge that.

I will start a series of posts about serving and leadership, and why this is important for every one who profess that Jesus Christ is Lord.

To start, I want to share a great post by a dear brother (who has encouraged me intensively) about how serving (works of service) is the key to unity of faith, knowledge of the Son of God, and attaining the fullness of Christ.

And also, this article about serving reminds that serving is for everyone.

Danger of exclusivity

One weakness that I always saw in CCF is the cliquey-ness. Since it is a large fellowship, it is very hard for newcomers to integrate into the group. I was once a newcomer, and I am naturally shy and I had cultural shock to overcome (since I am a Chinese born in Guatemala) so my first term in Waterloo was quite awful and I didn't attend CCF consistently. Therefore, in second term I purposely wanted to take more effort to get into the fellowship so I served in the welcome team, which is the team in charge of welcoming newcomers in CCF. Most of the time, when you see a need in a Christian community, you might be in the best position to do something about it. For the next 2 years, one of my biggest emphasis while serving in CCF was to address to the issue of cliquey-ness.

I understand how easy it is to want to be comfortable and talk to the people who we already know (or who we are close to) in CCF, and it usually takes extra effort and time to talk to newcomers of people we don't know well. Many times I grew frustrated at this, and I vividly remembered one particular CCF Friday night, after the program was done I was looking at the entire room (from the stage) and saw many people segregate into groups while there was clearly one person and another group of 2 people who were isolated from everyone else, and no one noticed that. It is challenging in a large fellowship, as naturally people tend to bond to a smaller group within the fellowship.

Obviously, smaller groups are necessarily to build community. Cell groups (grad cell, frosh cell, 2nd year cell, woman cell, man cell, worship cell) and discipleship groups are available in CCF as smaller groups to build community and exercise discipleship. These are very important. The danger I usually see is when people spend too much time with these smaller groups. I understand that spending time with some smaller group members (outside of the smaller groups time) is beneficial to further get to know them better and do mentorship. But when spending time with the same smaller group members all the time (like during Friday night, and post-fellowship time) is avoiding the possibility for people to get to know other members of the fellowship. This can deter people from learning from people of other smaller groups or to help integrate a newcomer into the fellowship. Since CCF has a variety of members from different ages, majors, background, theological views, it is really beneficial to learn from this "variety". This "variety" helps us to learn from the older, more experienced, more seasoned followers, and also to invest and mentor the younger followers.

I do think that the level of intimacy and the amount of time spent should be given priority to the smaller group, but one should not forget that there are other members in the fellowship who we share in the love of Christ and that we we should also fellowship with them.

After all, we are the body of Christ, and we are all together under the same purpose to serve God and further His Kingdom. I can see each member of CCF as a single cell (with nucleus, mitochondria, etc), and that DGs (discipleship groups) are strong cells working together becoming a tissue, and that all DGs together are an organ that can perform a valuable function for the body. If there are many tissues, but they don't communicate with each other, it is not possible to work together to perform that important function. Unfortunately, this is the my limit in biology knowledge.

In general, this issue can be extrapolated to situations when Christians only spend time with believers. It is true that spending time with fellow believers is always nice and encouraging, but we need to also develop relationship with non-believers hoping that the message we bear will be proclaimed to them.

Overall, it is a good thing to be part of a smaller group as the level of intimacy is stronger, and this propels more opened-sharing and stronger bonds. But the danger is to be too comfortable with this group, that members don't want to develop relationships with others, and we might miss the beauty of fellowshipping together with the entire fellowship.

A brief update

It has been a while since I last blogged. It has been busy, work is demanding but not as bad as I expected because somehow the workload got lighter due to various reasons. Co-leading Breaking-down Brick Walls (BBW) has been also very time-consuming, but it is a joy and privilege to serve the fellowship in teaching members about studying the bible. We have covered the following topics:

• importance of the Bible
• Old Testament context (very high level)
• New Testament context (early church, also very hight level)
• various observation skills (repetition, connecting words, keywords... there are like more than 10 distinctive items to look for)
• sentence structure analysis
• translations (will cover it more extensively)

Honestly, I don't personally utilize many of these techniques to study the Bible myself. Perhaps some of these come naturally to me, but most of the time I get lazy and when I find a hard passage to decipher I usually go directly to trusted commentaries. I guess as I teach these techniques in BBW, I am also learning a lot, and it's really cool to dig into my set of old notes from my years in university to find some Sunday school handouts from PT about sentence structure analysis (which I don't do in a bible study) and I was so happy to find such hidden treasure :)

Looking back, many of these bible study techniques I acquired them through exposure to leading bible studies in CCF. During pre-studies, I don't only learn about the passage but also about how the DLs approached to get to a conclusion regarding the passage. It is through serving God that many of these skills are acquired, and  it took me much practice to be comfortable handling a bible passage. 

It was a dear brother of mine who encouraged me to lead bible studies during my 1B work term. I seriously never considered it, but since he was intentional in asking me, I decided to try it out. And my first bible study experience wasn't easy at all. I remembered there was a very intimidating-looking upper year in my group, so I was scared all the time, and doubting whether I was doing something wrong. But as I continue leading bible studies in CCF, I started to learn, grow in confidence in leading, and appreciate the Word of God more. 

Many times we question ourselves if we are adequate to serve in an area. Many times we want to say no, because we don't feel confident nor feel that we have the skills. I think all that is very secondary if we look at great leaders from the Bible like Moses (who struggled with confidence and public speaking) and Peter (who was impulsive, and just a fisherman), I see that God doesn't necessary call the most equipped people to serve, but that He chooses the untrained so that they can be trained to bring Him honor. After all, it is not by my strength, but by the power of the Holy Spirit that I serve. Everyone has to start from somewhere to learn, so grow close to God everyday, and discern in what area you can serve Him to bring Him glory, honor, and praise.

Limiting Reagent

There is a very familiar Christian concept about "surrendering", and there is a song called "Surrender" written by Marc James:

I'm giving you my heart, and all that is within
I lay it all down for the sake of you my King
I'm giving you my dreams, I'm laying down my rights
I'm giving up my pride for the promise of new life


And I surrender all to you, all to you
And I surrender all to you, all to you


I'm singing You this song, I'm waiting at the cross
And all the world holds dear, I count it all as loss
For the sake of knowing You for the glory of Your name
To know the lasting joy, even sharing in Your pain

So what's the point of surrendering? Why do we need to do that? A verse that come into my mind is the Vine and the Branches (John 15) that tells us to abide in Christ. It we called ourselves Christians, then we acknowledge the lordship of Christ in our lives, therefore we submit to Him. There are instances that we are called to submit, like to authorities (Rom 13:1, 1 Peter 2:3), to one another (Ephesians 5:21), the wife submitting to her husband (Ephesians 5:22).

The idea is more clear to me when I look at passages about Christ living in me since He died for me (Gal 2:19-20, 2 Cor 5:15).That I should not live this life for my own ambitions or to please myself, but Christ out of infinite mercy died for my sins, so that I can be rescued and reconciled to God. Therefore, I should live for Christ, to follow Him, to do His work, to give glory to God.

I see many instances of my life reflects Romans 7, that I desire to do something good, but I end up doing something bad, and I don't do the good I intend to do. It's actually quite annoying, but the reality is that there is war inside me every moment. The Spirit desires good, but my flesh desires the bad things. And no matter how much effort I invest in correcting my sinful behavior, it cannot be done all by myself. I need the Holy Spirit to help me, and that's when I learn to surrender to God, so that the Spirit can work in me and transform me. It's not that the Spirit is unable to change me if I don't surrender (God is all-powerful) but God offers grace and waits for our response.

I kind of explained a similar thing about lowering our resistance so that the power of the Spirit can flow in us.

Here is another illustration, I am not too familiar with chemistry (that's part of the reason why I am Electrical Eng), but I did learn a bit in high school, and I know about the concept of limiting reagent. From my limited knowledge about limiting reagent, I think it means that in a chemical reaction, the yield (output) is limited by the amount of a reagent (input).

Similarly, I think we are the limiting reagents for God to work powerfully in our lives. It could be my lack of faith, the times I don't focus on God, or don't read His word, or don't pray enough, or follow after my flesh desires... all these hinder the ongoing transformation in my life and the good works that can be done through me by God's power.

Therefore, I must always surrender to my Lord, Jesus Christ.

"Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen." - Ephesians 3:20-21

Trial by fire

For many people in my year who had stepped up for leadership in CCF, we weren't always properly trained or prepared. Even though I had many encouraging upper years who I constantly learned from, I wasn't mentored to lead things like bible studies, prayer meetings, committee, etc. I suppose formal mentorship is not a strength in the fellowship. Though I can see more improvements now, it is still an issue.

Therefore, many of us had a considerable rough time in our first serving experiences in CCF. I remembered that the first bible study I lead was very intimidating, especially since there was a particular upper year who was always quiet and had that serious look =P. I was asking myself if this upper year was upset at my poor bible study leading skills. My first time in committee was rough and tough like an overdone steak. I was appointed on a summer term, and it was my 2B term in Engineering (and I took an extra course haha). Most of the committee was inexperienced, and somehow pretty much all our fellowship leaders were struggling with something that term which cause most of us to burned out. Definitely, there was some spiritual influence. Furthermore, I was in the elected committee for next year, and it was a very inexperienced committee (only one person had previous experience as appointed). To add more to the fire, an issue came out which caused hurt and division among us. That issue escalated when finals came, so I had to bus to Toronto for a meeting in between exams.

Those times were frustrating and discouraging, and some of us were losing sleep because of our concern for the fellowship. It would have been so nice if I was more prepared to handle the situation, or that we had experienced leaders who could intervened and lead us in unity to solve this issue. But, it was pretty much this group of blind inexperienced committee going through the a tough trial. By the grace of God, things eventually were resolved, and CCF hasn't seen an issue of similar magnitude ever since.

Even though those times were really difficult, I rejoice (Philippians 4:4). I experienced quite a bit of growth in Christ during those times as I felt very pressed and it really pushed me to rely on God alone. Reading the bible seemed so refreshing especially during those times. Many of my leadership skills were developed. And I will not change anything to make things easier because of so many valuable lessons learned.

I am not writing to say that leadership is always this difficult :P, as this was a very unique situation. But that in all circumstances, God is in control, and it is only by His grace and power that leading is possible.

Currently, CCF still struggle with the lack of leadership. And I just want to encourage for those who haven't serve in the fellowship to step up in obedience to the Lord. Each of us who called ourselves disciples of Christ, is blessed with a new life in Christ, and we live for His glory (1 Cor. 10:31). Let's devote ourselves fully to the work He has entrusted to each of us, and God is faithful and He will always supplied more than enough for us.

Not everyone has to be in committee or leading bible studies in CCF, but there must be something that God is calling each of us to do. The more we read His word, and  the more we spend time knowing Him, the more likely we are able to discern what we should be doing.

In the end, God does not need us to do His work, as He is all powerful and He can make anything happen within less than a second. But God chooses to use us as carriers of the message of the gospel, so that through us, the power of the Holy Spirit flows to change people's lives. So serving is not a duty nor something that raise our status, but it is a privilege to be co-partners serving God for His Kingdom and Glory! We were dead in our transgressions, and objects of wrath, but by God's grace we are made alive with Christ (Eph 2:1-5) so that we are reconciled to Him and we can partake in God's work here on earth.

As Christians, we are in the process of being conformed into the image of our Lord and Saviour, Christ Jesus. This process often faces obstacles, and can be painful and slow. Part of this process is that we are used as instruments by God to do His work so that we exercise the gifts that He has given to us, so that our character can be molded, and that in our weaknesses His strength will be displayed in us.

I learned mainly with trial by fire, just jumping to the water, taking a leap of faith trusting that God will work. I don't think this should be the case for everything. The truth is that, when we put ourselves in challenging situations (outside of our comfort zone) is when we learn the most. But always seek guidance from experienced people (if they are available), take advantage of the resources you have, and do the best you can for the Lord. Trust Him, and He will not give you more than you can handle. Remember, it is not by our power, but by His, so it is ok.

The point is, what are you doing with what God has entrusted you with?