This is a sermon by my dad’s friend (who is now a pastor in Taiwan) this Sunday, and it does echo with what I got from the Lord recently, so I would like to share it here.
Ever since we go to Church, we all heard sermons that says something like we should give all our burdens to the Lord, we should not do things our way but we should follow God’s will. Eventually, when we encounter decisions in life we learned to say phrases like “I need to pray more about this,” “Let’s go pray and discuss later,” etc. Naturally, whenever we’re indecisive we tend to go pray.
Most of the times, we do need to pray and ask for God’s wisdom, because a lot of questions in life Bible didn’t give us a definitive answer. Classic examples are: Can you eat food that has been offered to idols? When your parents pass away should you use a secular burial or a Christian burial, if your family is not saved but your parents are (classic question in Taiwan)? These questions has no simple answers (and they depend on the exact situation), so it is best that we spend time praying and thinking about it. Bible does teach us to “be all things to all people” for the sake of the Gospel, but the exact details to being “all things” do require divine wisdom.
But there are also something that you shouldn’t pray about, because there’s only one answer, and it is already given in the Bible. Some examples are the commandments of God, such as: Thou shall not kill, thou shall not perform adultery, thou shall not steal, obey your parents, etc. (Yes, in some extreme and rare circumstances these might not have absolute answers too, but most of the time my point holds).
Imagine you told your kid to finish his homework before he can go out and play. But then everyday he still come and asks you “Dad I haven’t finish my homework but I want to play basketball, can I play?” How will you feel? I’m guessing annoyed and angry.
And there’s one such kid in the Bible, his name is Balaam. For those of you unfamiliar with the story, it is in Numbers 22. Basically, as the Israelites was about to enter the promised land, one local king feared them and ask Balaam to place a curse on the Israelites. Balaam prayed to God and God said “do not curse those people, for they are blessed,” so Balaam refused. But then the king offered more money to Balaam and asked again, so Balaam prayed to God again, as if God will now say: “Wow it’s 3 million now??!! you should take it!”, so yeah, obviously God got angry, and you can go read about what happens next.
So what’s the point of this message? The point is that although we need to be flexible for the sake of the Gospel, there are some core values that never change and we should hold on to them. When we “be all things to all people,” what changes is the presentation, not our essence itself. We can be flexible to some extent, but there’s some boundary that if we cross it we will be offending God. So how do we know these core values? How do we know these boundaries? Easy! Go read your Bible (and yes, reading the Bible everyday is one of the core values).
One last thing I want to talk about is that sometimes this “pray about every decision” mentality comes from the fear of doing things against God’s will. to these people, it’s as if God is always playing a guessing game with them, and every time they guess wrong God heavily punishes them under the excuse “you did not follow my will!! Now go burn in eternal regret!! Wahaha!!”. No, our God is full of mercy and grace, and His Son has already died for our sins. If you feel that something is right, go ahead and do it, and if you got it wrong God will always be there for you to help you fix it. God is love, and there is no fear in love.
May we all read our Bible everyday, and pray for God’s wisdom in our lives (and pray for those around us, too).
Yay!!! I graduated! After all these years I finally finished school, and I’ll start working beginning of July (although I plan to go back to grad school after couple years). Looking back, I’ve grown up a lot and learned a lot of things in college, of which several things I’ve shared here. God really guided me by the hand for these four years and I am forever grateful (and sadly I still need to improve a lot).
Although I’m excited about the next stage in my life, I would like to share one more thing I learned in college, and also thank a person who completely changed my college life. Without him I might not be as successful as I am now (though it is God who did all the great work; we are just his servants).
Who is this person I’m talking about? Joseph Tsang.
If Joe is reading this article he is probably utterly confused now, as we barely have any contact for the past 4-5 years (well, in fact I rarely contacted anyone from HOC for the past 4-5 years, for various reasons). But here’s how the (very long) story goes:
When I got into Berkeley I’m actually very depressed, because in high school I met a lot of smart people from school or the various math/science competitions I participated in, and they all got into “better” universities like MIT, cal tech, Princeton, STANFORD (of course now I think Stanford sucks, but not back then) and it seems like I’m one of the few stuck with a public school. I feel sad that all the work I put into math in high school is not recognized. Of course, now I think Berkeley better (if not equal) to all them (in terms of electrical engineering), but I’ll get into this later. In summary, when I get into Berkeley I’m a depressed and angry person. However, when school started, I remembered something Joe said:
It was back when I was a freshman/sophomore (?) in high school, where during one winter break somehow Joe decided to invite some people to sleep over at his apartment/dorm at Riverside for 3 days. So me, Jordan, Bryan, and Oswald (I’m not sure if John is there too..) went over. For three days we exercise, do Bible study, and play big-2 (with push-ups/sit-ups gambling). It is a very fun time. During those 3 days, I remember somehow we get into a conversation about UC Riverside. Joe commented that he seen a lot of people complain about Riverside, how that it is a bad school, and a lot of people wish to transfer out. “However,” Joe said, “those people complain about UC Riverside being bad, but I look at their grades and they’re not getting straight A’s. If you can’t even get straight A’s at a ‘bad’ school, why are you complaining? Complaints are only valid if you’re getting straight A’s”
Being an angry man, I want to prove those private universities “wrong”. I don’t want people to think that I’m just some “spoiled kid who can’t get what he wants”, I want my complaints to be valid. Thus, I max out on my units for the whole freshman year, and basically studied endlessly. As the result, I performed really well (I did get my straight A’s, almost at least) and God presented me a lot of opportunities. But that’s the story for another day (otherwise this will be insanely long).
At the end of first year in college, my dad urges me to apply for transfer to MIT (since that seems like what I wanted all these years). I refused, because I finally understood the wisdom in Joe’s words (Or God’s words through Joe). A lot of times, people complain about their environment, they complain about bad teachers, bad education systems, not enough money for resources, etc. However, they rarely stop to ask them whether they are making the best of their situation.
Yes, they may be right, the teachers may not be as caring as they should, the education system probably has some flaws, and they are definitely not rich. However, these are not valid excuses for not working hard. It would be good to have good teachers, it would be good to have a perfect education system, and it would be good to be rich, but these are PRIVILEGES, not RIGHTS. You can never control your environment, but you can always decide how hard you work. God decides your environment, and it is your job to make the best out of it. You can only complain if you have done the best that you can (get straight A’s, in Joe’s words), but still haven’t reach your full potential.
So, why should I go to MIT? Yes, it may have a better name, and it may be better overall than Berkeley. But, at least in Electrical Engineering, MIT offers the same resources that Berkeley can, and I have already reached my full potential here. For me, Berkeley is the best school to be in. God will never put you in the perfect environment, but he will always put you in a place where you can reach your full potential.
As a final note, I think nowadays the difference between universities are becoming smaller and smaller, with the power of internet. Seriously, now there are so many resources on the internet, you just need to be willing to go look for them and use them. With bunch of webcasts and online lecture notes, you can take MIT/berkely courses yourself even if you’re in some community college. Of course, there’s still differences in like equipments, staffs, and students (after all it is harder to learn without good study groups or office hours), but at least it is available.
In conclusion, thank you, Joe, and may we all work hard to get the best out of our situation, be it studying, preaching Gospel, or helping other people. May God bless us.
So once Andrew Tai (Hope that’s how to spell his last name) passed by Berkeley, and because of his strange “never eat alone when you can grab a friend” policy, he drag me out to eat dinner with him and talk about stuffs. And he mentioned how in school he just can’t do math right.
So that got me thinking, a lot of times people just say “Wow Eric you’re so smart you can do math,” and that seems to end the conversation. I don’t like that, because it’s like un-scientific. It’s like someone asking you “Why is the sky blue?” and you just answer “Oh because the sky is blue.” You simply give the phenomenon a work rather than figure out the reason.
I don’t know about other people, but this is how I look at math or any other subject. When I was young, my mom has lots of story books, and I like reading story books, to the point where if I see paper with words on it I’ll grab it and read every single word (so if I buy a can of drink I’ll stare at all the health info and stuffs and try to read it). So when I started going to school, I read those textbooks like story books too.
Well, but you said, text books consists of boring facts and formulas that you could care less about, how can it be as interesting as story books? Well, so I kind of subconsciously make up stories about subjects when I study them. See, in a way, the sentence “Oh no! The wolf ate all the little sheep! How is mama sheep going to save them?” incite the same amount of curiosity as the sentence “Oh no! Bob needs to multiply two numbers but he only knows how to add! How can he do it?”, as long as you believe the answer to both will make you satisfied.
So as I grow older and older, the story becomes more and more complete, and as the result you want to learn more and more. It’s not when you started reading the Lord of the Rings you will not want to stop. In fact, I basically see subjects as RPG games. See, multiplication might looks cool, but not until you know about long division, just like when you find new equipments in a RPG you’re like “YES!! I don’t have to walk all the way back to town to heal anymore.” And basically doing problem sets is just the same as fighting monsters and leveling up, except more exciting if you are working on problems you never seen before.
So this perspective gives me two advantages. One, it gives me incentive to learn new things, and two, it makes me remember things better. Because somehow, if you’re just remember equations like random strings of text it’s hard, but in context of something you like it’ll be easier. So if you ask me some question like “What does compactness mean?”, instead of trying to recall the official definition cited in textbooks, in my mind I’m thinking “Once upon a time there’s a math professor…”. In fact, this is why I manage to memorized the whole moonlight sonata (For those of you who didn’t know, because when I get nervous I have very narrow vision, so I can never play piano and reading the thing at the same time, so I always memorize it all), I somehow imagine the different notes as being friends and depending on the sounds sometimes they’re happy or other times they’re fighting with each other, etc.
Anyways, so that’s kind of how I think of things. Hope it’s interesting.
When me and Justin first got serious about Christianity, we got very interested in spritual phenomenon, such as being filled with the holy spirit, having spiritual dream, speaking in tongue, hearing the voice of God, etc. (which is typical of all new born Christians). So, we asked our dad what is it like hearing the voice of God, and he told us the time when he most clearly heard the voice of God.
So at that time my dad is in Seattle with my mom, trying to get his green card. He is very nervous about getting it (I’m sure for all immigrants that’s a very big thing), and he’s thinking about it day and night, praying that God will give him the green card. One day, when he’s on his way to work, he saw a white beggar on the street, and at that moment he heard the voice of God clearly speaking to him: “Jerry, what are you so concerned about the green card? Look at this beggar, he’s even a natural born U.S. Citizen!” Upon hearing that, my dad laughed, and all his nervousness went away.
However, recently my dad shared to me this story once again, because God has shown him something deeper in this story. For my father, at that time the green card is the most important thing for him; you can say his future (and even our future) rests on him getting the permanent residence, and eventually U.S. citizenship. If anyone helped him obtain it he’ll probably be thankful for the rest of his life. But how about for the beggar? To him, his citizenship probably worth less than a simple dinner (or if he’s addicted, drugs). What’s the reason that makes U.S. citizenship have such a different meaning and value to different persons?
The answer is plan. For my dad, the citizenship is important only in context of his plan for his life. He needs the citizenship to keep a job in U.S., to live in U.S. with my mom, and ultimately make me and Justin have national born citizenship so it’s easier for us to get a better education. Whereas for the beggar, he probably never capitalize on his right, and therefore the citizenship does nothing for him. So when God speaks to my father, He’s not just trying to tell a joke to ease up his nervousness, but rather, he’s trying to convey a message: One should focus on making a good plan and following through it, rather than focusing on the things that by itself is meaningless, such as money, fame, success, education, etc.
So how do you make a good plan? Before you make your plans, you should find the ultimate goal you try to achieve, because without a goal there is no plan. As Christians, our goal is to follow God’s will and spread His love according to the way He calls us to be, but how do we know what’s God’s purpose for our life?
I would like to share turning point of my life. It is sophomore year in high school, and I was taking a computer science class (which is one of the strong subjects of Troy). I found out there’s a national computer science competition, ACSL, where each school sends a team of 5 (with 2 alternates) and basically compete in programming. In order to qualify you need to pass 4 rounds of elimination, and the top 7 will get on the team. Before I was too lazy to do this, but my friend talked me into it.
So after 3 rounds, due to careless mistake I was right below the cutoff point, so I was very nervous. I talked with dad and he tells me to go and pray. And this is how I prayed:
Lord, you know how much I wanted to get on the team and go to this competition. But you’re the God and I have no right to ask You to make me be on the team, because it is Your Will that should be done, not mine. Jesus, may you look into my heart, if I wanted to be on the team for prestige, fame, and my own glory, then please don’t let me qualify because I don’t want my life to be about myself. Jesus, I pray that you let me be on the team only if it is for YOUR glory, if you want me to serve and preach your gospel to the highly education people.
As the result, I got on the team as an alternate, but because I was very serious and hard working during the practices the teacher liked me a lot, and when one of the memeber is sick I got immediately placed on the team, and for your interest, we’re the first place “national” team in intermediate division (because although we placed 5th, the top 4 teams are all from Europe). And to fulfill my promise, I preached the gospel in the van for 2 hours when we drove to the site, and got the teacher driving the car EXTREMELY annoyed (because everyone is debating and no one helps him find the direction).
Looking back, all of my achievements started wit that prayer, It’s the best prayer I ever made in my life, and it is also my “first love” experience with God. In that prayer, I made a promise to God and offer my life for Him, and I believe my ultimate goal is to testify God to the educated people, and all else should center on this goal.
Sadly, after junior year in high school, my focus slowly shifted, and a lot of times I was chasing after prestige instead of living according to God’s promise. My dad recently warned me, that like the Church of Ephesus,l I have forgotten and left my true love, and I need to repent. This is the lesson I want to share today: When you’re in the middle of the plan, do not forget the goal. If the intermediate items in your plan became more important to you than the goal, then the plan is worthless and your life loses meaning. What benefits a man if he earns the whole world, but loses his life? I hope that we can all constantly assess ourselves and never depart from the goal which God has given us.
There’s an incident that happened right before Justin passed away that I would like to share (and remember for the rest of my life).
So while I was in Taiwan, actually we spent most of the time in hotel. My dad even jokingly said that happiness is a whole family being together in a room, each with their own laptops and working on their own business. Which, I think, is true on a philosophical level. So what was I working on?? Because the last summer I interned at Google, my passion for programming somehow got re-ignited, so I decide to work on programming problems that I gave up on solving before (There’s a website with various programming challenges which I work on back in high school).
Seeing that I worked so hard even during vacation, my dad got reminded and started forcing Justin to also work on Calculus problems (on a theoretical, i.e. math major, level) in order to improve his logical skills, because Justin was never too solid in math. Obviously, Justin kind of unwillingly did it (because after all he expects to be on vacation), but he obeyed and I was also pushing him along the way.
Anyways, so throughout the vacation me and my dad was pushing Justin to do math, because we’re never satisfied with his work level (being work-a-holics, it is hard to impress us). When we’re in the airport, waiting for our airplane to take us back to US, we forced Justin to work again. But since I always like to say something extra (in Chinese we call this 馬後砲), I said that I want to push Justin this hard because this is probably the last time he seriously worked on this (which ironically comes out to be true). Of course my dad strongly agrees and we went on this argument that consists basically of Justin trying to defend his willingness to study and mad at why we wouldn’t trust him. The argument ended with Justin leaving my dad in anger (because he thought for the moment my dad is unreasonable to be with), and went to a massage chair waiting place with me and the math book.
At that point I felt bad, because I basically started the argument between Justin and me/dad. I really feel like apologizing but feel like this makes me look bad (because as pointed out by my roommates, I really hate to be wrong about a certain thing) and don’t want to. Fortunately, the Holy Spirit asks me: “What’s more important to you? Your relationship with your brother or pretend you’re right about everything?”, Obviously this is a rhetorical question, and I apologized.
To my surprise, instead of bashing me about saying that Justin just replied “It’s alright, you did nothing wrong. Dad is just being unreasonable as he always is.”
He continued working on the math and did pretty well. Well, saying that he did pretty well would be lying, but at least he got the point and started doing things correctly (instead of guessing the solution like he did most of the time, which is a big reason we’re unsatisfied with him).
Recalling this incident, I really feel fortunate, because that became the last chance that I can be true to myself and reconcil with him, and if I haven’t done that it’ll be the biggest regret of my life. But I’m trying to say something more than this.
Really, I think Calvin is very right, at least in his point of total deprevity. Many times we all know what’s the right thing to do, but for some silly reason (be it laziness, personal philosophy that doesn’t even matter, etc.) we just don’t do it. Like today I played like 2-3 hours straight of minesweeper although I should work on my homework which is due tomorrow (oh shoot it is tomorrow not the day after). We are really all hopeless and helpless. Without the grace of the Holy Spirit I can’t even apoligize to Justin, and there are numerous times before this one that I did the same thing but choose not to apologize. Really, we need to know that we’re weak and we need constant help from the Holy Spirit, accepting one’s weakness is the first step to correct it, and this is even more true in a Christian perspective.
Also, I think that personally I should try to show my love and care for other people more. Is pushing Justin to study over vacation right? I think it is, because it’s one of the now-rare times that I’ll be with my brothe. But could I have done it better? I think so. It is right to push people to study, but how we do it I think we need help from the Holy Spirit. Yes, we still have to be strict, but at the same time we should find ways to show our love and care for the person, after all we’re doing these things all for them. It’s a difficult balance, and I think this can only be achieved in constant prayer and guidance from the Holy Spirit. And we should never forget about our starting point: we’re doing this because we love him.
Also, a lot of times we focus on the bad things of people, like I have to admit I kind of despise Justin because although he’s EE he does not have a strong logic and reasoning skills like I see in most Berkeley EE students. I have to admit that during the vacation I have the thought that it’s embrassing having a brother like this and I need to fix that. However, it’s not until he passed away that I realized he’s the one who have the right to be embrassed at me. He had grown so much spiritually during college and possess so many good qualities, and what have I done since high school?? Spiritually, not very much. But did he? No, he always loved me and is always proud of me.
Today I found out I got into MIT grad school and also got an offer from Oracle for $92,000 a year (yes, I’m here to brag, actually I’m not). While I feel happy first, but really, compare to what Justin had, I have nothing. What Justin had will last until eternity, and all these are but worldly achievements. If I do not follow the Lord closely and listen to him, all of these (and maybe even me) will vanish one day. I have offers from the best places in the world, but Justin had an offer (and accepted) from the Greatest One.
Life is about the things that last, is about characters that you can take with you to heaven and also impact those around you, and that should be my focus and my pride, not money and success in the world. That’s why I should go exercise now. And by the power of Holy Spirit I will keep this up.
It’s been one year since my brother passed away. Both my dad and my mom gave their sharings, I feel that I should write something too.
Looking back at justin’s life, I’ve learned a lot of things, but one of the things that touched me the most is how God completely changed my brother’s life.
When we’re young, we moved to many different places. Every time we moved, we ended up in a completely new environment, and we always have to start making new friends and get used to the new environment. In order to fit in and attract attention, Justin learned to use his imagination to tell exaggerated stories that are sometimes far from being true. Of course, after people discovered that those stories aren’t completely true they started calling him a liar.
As the result, my brother’s relationship with his friends doesn’t turn out so well, and Justin slowly turned into an insecure person who’s desperately trying to gain recognition from his peers, and he will do everything, good or bad, just to please the people around him. Heck, he even gave his online game account’s password to his friends and they stole it (changed the password) and laugh at him, and he didn’t even break up with them. I remember once my dad pointed this out and told him that he doesn’t really have any real friend, Justin basically broke down and cried the whole night until like 3 am.
So that’s the Justin I know before we come to U.S. Then when Justin got saved , everything slowly changed. Or rather, Justin did not change, but got restored by God to be who he was created to be. He still exaggerates a lot when he talks, but most of the time, when he talks about a person, he will talk about his strengths like they are the most important things of the world. Like one of his friend is very good at playing starcraft, and then he’ll introduce him to me by saying “look Eric this is the CAPTAIN of the UCSB starcraft team!” As if that’s as important as winning Novel Prize. And really, I thnk this is a very good attitude. We are all imperfect, we all have things that we can improve on, so why pick on everything that you don’t like in a person? I think it is much better for us to learn to appreciate each others’ strength and respect them, even if it’s something as little as playing starcraft good.
Also, another thing I see in my brother is that he had really become a person with an identity, a person with his own principles. To be honest, when he first got saved I thought it’s another friend-pleasing thing, just something he does to please his friends at church. But I was wrong. When he got into argument about the prom thing in his senior year, regardless of whether he’s right or wrong (I don’t think it is a matter of right and wrong anyways), Justin showed me that he is a man of principle. Yes, he still want to please everyone, and he still cares a lot about what his friends tinker of him, but He has found in Jesus an identity, a set of principle that he will do nothing to compromise or betray. He no longer needs recognition from his peers to feel secure, he cares the most about whether he is doing what is right before God.
To me, a person who had lived with Justin for 20 years, his life is a living testament of God and how much He can do to change your life. Justinis a great brother and a great blessing to everyone around him, and I truly wish that, with God’s help, I can also become a blessing like how Justin was (and is, for our God is the God of the living), instead of being a social reject like I am now :P. May God help us and work in our lives.
Since Justin kept on nagging me I’ll post the solution now. The puzzle is reproduced below:
There are three magicians performing a fantastic trick. The trick is as follows: They stand in a circle with their eyes closed. Then 3 audience will put the number 1, 2, or 3 on each of their forehead. Each magician then open their eyes, and see the number on the forehead of the other two magicians, but not their own number. Without any communication, they each write simultaneously on separate sheets of papers what they think their numbers are, and then reveal the 3 papers at the same time to the audience.
Then BAM!! AT LEAST ONE of them will be right about his number. How can this be??? How can it possibly be that you look at 2 random numbers and make some conclusion about another random number???
Short, concise, rigorous, mathematically sound answer: Consider the number formed by the digits. For example, if the audience put the numbers 1, 2, and 2, consider the number 122. The sum of the digits of this number modulo 3 can only have 3 possible outcome, so each magician simply writes down one possibility of the digit sum.
Ok, chances are you don’t understand the solution above, so here’s a more elaborate answer:
So let’s say the audience puts down the digits 1, 2, and 2 on magicians A, B, and C, respectively. so in order for C to answer correctly, he’ll open his eye, sees 1 and 2, and then writes down 2 as his answer.
SO let’s say before the performance, A, B, and C get together, and they agree that whenever C sees the number 1 and 2, he’ll always write down a 2. That way, if the audience happens to write down 1, 2, 2, the performance will be a success.
Note that because of the symmetry, if the audience write down 2, 1, and 2, the performance will still be a success!! Because C sees the numbers 2 and 1 (although on different persons now), so he’ll still write down the 2 and guess correctly.
But you say, if we do it like this, it’ll only work if the audience write down 2,1,2 or 1,2,2!! How about other numbers?
Well, how many other numbers are there? There are 111, 222, 333, 112, 113, 122, 223, 133, 233, and 123 (ignoring permutations). That’s not too many, certainly we can find a rule that makes A, B, and C always guesses correctly.
For example, let’s say A follows the rule: Whenever I see 11, 22, 33, I write 1, 2, and 3. Otherwise, whenever I see 12, 23, 13, I write down 3, 1, 2, respectively. Then A will always guess correctly when the audience write down any one of the numbers 111, 222, 333, 123, or their permutations. So we know for sure that A will get the answer right for 4 of the 10 cases. Doing the same thing for B and C we conclude the following as the golden rules, where 11-1 means if you see 2 1s, write down a 1:
A: 11-1, 22-2, 33-3, 12-3, 13-2, 23-1 (covers 111, 222, 333, 123)
B: 11-2, 22-3, 33-1, 12-1, 13-3, 23-2 (covers 112, 133, 223)
C: 11-3, 22-1, 33-2, 12-2, 13-1, 23-3 (covers 122, 113, 233)
Following these rules will guarantee that at least one of A, B, or C guess his own digit right. Try it out!!
Now if you want to understand the short solution, note that A always answer the number that makes the digits sum to a multiple of 3, B always answer the number that makes the digits sum to 1 + a multiple of 3, and C always answer the number that makes the digits sum to 2 + a multiple of 3.
So let’s finish that ancient discussion on faith. (Then hopefully I’ll go onto predestination as planned).
So in the Book of James, it says “Faith without works is dead.” But doesn’t Paul kept on emphasizing that we are saved by Grace, through Faith, not of Works, lest any man should boast?? How can we reconcil this?
The key comes in understanding that James and Paul are both talking about the same faith, but each is focusing on a different aspect of it. Paul emphasizes faith as the reason for salvation. That it is because of faith that we are saved, not of anything that we can do by ourselves. However, James is emphasizing on the CHARACTERISTIC of faith. That is: TRUE FAITH WILL BE FOLLOWED BY GOOD WORKS.
So jumping slightly forward to predestination, this is the “salvation timeline” (I forgot some tiny details so this is only a rough sketch):
1) You are predestinated by God the Father to be his elect before the world begins.
2) God sent his servant to preach hs Word.
3) You hear the Word of God.
4) The Holy Spirit moves in you and gives you the faith to believe.
5) You realize your sin and offense to God, then obey the Holy Spirit by crying out to God for salvation and forgiveness.
6) Jesus cleanses you of your sin and saves you.
7) Your life is transformed and you make up your mind to live a life that pleases God (by doing good works).
Therefore, step number 7 (where you started doing good works) is the DIRECT CONSEQUENCE of the faith that God gives you; You are saved by faith, and then that faith proceeds to impel you to perform good works. TRUE FAITH ALWAYS LEAD TO REPENTANCE AND DESIRE TO LIVE A GOD-CENTERED LIFESTYLE.
In the above paragraph it sounds like I’m hinting at the possibility of false faith. Well, not quite, but as shown in the Bible there are people who goes to church, claims themselves as Christians, but who are not really chosen by God. These are the people described in Hebrews 6.
So how can we distinguish between them?? How do we know if we’re really saved by God, or our emotion is just playing with us?
This is the most depressing part about the majority of Calvinists; they do not know how to answer this question, and as the result they are convinced that there is no way to find out if a person is truly saved or not. As the result, they live through their lives with fear and trembling, and can only say things that “I’m am MOSTLY sure that I’m saved.”
However, I do not think it cannot be done. I believe that with the Book of James, we can examine our faith and find out if we’re truly saved or not (However, note that it’s impossible to know if someone other than you is saved or not, as you are not him).
So how? Fortunately, Bible gives us a perfect example of a person who seems 100% to be saved by others, but is actually condemned by God in the beginning. He’ll be our case study. His name is Judas Iscariot. Let’s look at him in conjunction with Hebrews 6:
4 For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly gift, and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit, 5 and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, 6 if they fall away,[b] to renew them again to repentance, since they crucify again for themselves the Son of God, and put Him to an open shame.
7 For the earth which drinks in the rain that often comes upon it, and bears herbs useful for those by whom it is cultivated, receives blessing from God; 8 but if it bears thorns and briers, it is rejected and near to being cursed, whose end is to be burned.
Is Judas enlightened? Yes, he hear and saw the preachings and miracles of Jesus. Has he tasted the heavenly gift? Yes, he is there when Jesus feed thousands of people. Is he a partaker of the Holy Spirit? Yes, he saw the works of the Holy Spirit through Jesus (here partaking is interpreted as seeing the event, but not necessarily the recepient). And definitely he has tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come; he saw Jesus casting out demons, freeing those in bondage, etc.
But why does Judas not be saved, BECAUSE HE DOES NOT THINK THESE EVENTS HAVE ANY PERSONAL IMPLICATIONS TO HIM. All he cares about is money, whenever he sees or saw something, he only thinks about how it might benefit him and please his flesh. When he saw Mary anointing Jesus, he does not think about the glory of Jesus and how Mary rightly demonstrated what the Son of God deserves, HE ONLY THINKS ABOUT HOW HE LOSES MORE MONEY TO STEAL FROM. To Judas, Jesus being the Son of God does not imply any actions from his part, it’s simply a chance, an oppotunity, a stepping stone to further benefit his own lust and desires.
So how do we know that we’re truly saved? We should examine ourselves; are we doing what we’re doing only to please ourselve, or are we trying to please our God? Is our faith constantly transforming ourselves to be more like Jesus, or are we just taking advantage of the blessings from God to satisfy our flesh and earthly desires?
May we all look deep into our hearts and repent sincerely before God.
There are three magicians performing a fantastic trick. The trick is as follows: They stand in a circle with their eyes closed. Then 3 audience will put the number 1, 2, or 3 on each of their forehead. Each magician then open their eyes, and see the number on the forehead of the other two magicians, but not their own number. Without any communication, they each write simultaneously on separate sheets of papers what they think their numbers are, and then reveal the 3 papers at the same time to the audience.
Then BAM!! AT LEAST ONE of them will be right about his number. How can this be??? How can it possibly be that you look at 2 random numbers and make some conclusion about another random number???
Solutions will be posted…. Hmm…. Given the irregularity of my postings, at least a week after…??
Actually the title of this article should be “Cool Stuffs Part 3”, as the topic started in my family vacation, but afterwards there’s some further development, so I changed the title.
So the Book of Jonah is perhaps one of the most interesting and awkward ending book in the Old Testament. It is also of great significance because Jesus mentioned Jonah TWICE during his ministry. So this book definitely deserves a better treatment than it is getting right now (just look at Veggie Tales’ movie version shows how shallow people are viewing this book to be). After all, if he’s one of the favorite prophets of BOTH my dad and Pastor Tong, the book’s gotta have some value.
So let’s go over this in more detail.
Perhaps the most interesting part about Jonah is its abrupt ending. It gives us no clue about how Jonah ends up being, and what he learned from this experience. However, it can be inferred by the existence of this book. As Pastor Tong put it, “I like Jonah because he’s is the only prophet in the Old Testament who will do everything (including making himself look bad) to make people focus more on God’s Word and His Will”.
Indeed, if Jonah never repented, how will this book be written in the first place? Even if he wrote it without repenting, he’ll obviously try to make himself look better if he believes that God is wrong in this incident. But instead, we have the book as it is now. So we can be sure that Jonah repented afterwards.
Also, Jonah is perhaps the prophet that understands God the most. Why? Look at this passage:
1 Now the word of the LORD came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, 2 “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before Me.” 3 But Jonah arose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the LORD. He went down to Joppa, and found a ship going to Tarshish; so he paid the fare, and went down into it, to go with them to Tarshish from the presence of the LORD.
You should be like “WHAT??!! God just want you to deliver a message; it’s so simple, why do you run away?” Could it be that Jonah’s afraid that he’ll get killed at Nineveh?? Impossible!! If he is that cowardly, he would not have act so calm went his ship encounter the storm, and wouldn’t even suggest that they throw him into the ocean.
So there can only be one valid explanation: JONAH KNOWS THAT GOD WANTS TO SAVE THE NINEVITES. Just by the 2nd verse (which barely tells you anything), Jonah is able to tell the heart of God and realize that He wants to have mercy on the Ninevites. But being a partriot, he refuses to offer the enemy of his people salvation, and decide to flee. There, Jonah truly knows his God.
Then when you get to chapter 3, if you read carefully, you’ll find out that although the city of Nineveh is so big that it takes 3 days walking, JONAH ONLY PREACHED FOR ONE DAY, and the whole city repented!!! How OWNAGE of a prophet are you going to get more than that??!! My dad jokingly said that Jonah is the only prophet who lost his job, because all other prophet died before people listen to their messages, but Jonah preached once and all his audience repented.
Then we get to chapter 4:
1 But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he became angry. 2 So he prayed to the LORD, and said, “Ah, LORD, was not this what I said when I was still in my country? Therefore I fled previously to Tarshish; for I know that You are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, One who relents from doing harm.
Many people think that the second part of verse 2 is spoken in a sarcastic tone, but I disagree. From the previous passages, we know that Jonah really knows the heart of God, and therefore when he said this prayer HE MEANT IT. But if that’s the case, this is something extraordinary: these characteristics of God are rarely depicted in the Old Testament; my father can only recall Moses as the only other Old Testament prophet who described God in this way. Combine this with the fact that Jonah is the one of the two men (the other being Moses) in the Old Testament who God is willing to have an argument with, instead of just smiting him to death or mute him for like ten months at the first sign of disobedience. (Abraham’s story is different in a slight detail, which I shall cover sometime later), We can safely say Jonah is one of the man in the Bible who’s closest to God.
Com’on, even Peter, who walked with Jesus and is appointed as the first apostle (and Pope if you will), needs God to give him a hint for 3 times before he realize that there’s a chance that God wants to save the gentles too, JONAH CAN GRASP GOD’S PLAN JUST BY ONE VERSE!!! This is simply amazing.
So when you read Jonah next time, keep in mind that this is not the story of an ignorant man who go against God, but the story of a faithful servant who struggles between the order from God and his love for his people. Also compare it with the understanding of God in the time period, you’ll find how revolutionary the Book of Jonah is.