Hey friends,
Work is fast becoming a much more rigorous exercise in writing and thinking that is leaving me less time to update, so hereon the updates would be minimally quarterly rather than monthly, and less intense of a format.
The past 6 months have shown me that I enjoy this work a lot, and handling the Bible as a full time job was not the slog I thought it could be at times. I think that is a testament to the literary genius of the Bible and the joy that comes with coming to know God more as I study His words to us. I'm also grateful for a growing comfort in the midst of weakness and imperfections in ministry. There's been quite a slowing down of my pace of work as the gospel's certain assurance that my salvation is in the finished work of Christ has begun to sink into my heart, such that I can embrace more the fact that busyness is not holiness and neither am I given better standing before God if I manage to do more. I do still stand at a crossroad where I'm not quite putting in effort motivated by the glory of God and the desire for the world to worship Him. Reading Growth and Change by Andrew Heard has been giving me much food for thought about how gospel shapes and motivates ministry. He says this in calling out the extremes in ministries that disregard numbers and disregard faithfulness:
the apostolic ministry was shaped by a burning ambition for the truth of the saving work of Christ to be not just known by the world, but embraced by the world. The apostles were prepared to pay whatever price was necessary to see that same world saved by the death and resurrection of Jesus. In this, they were following the example of Christ.
In this is the reminder that Christians are in the work of saving people from a world of drowning, dead people, but that we do so by the only means that will save them: the proclamation of Christ crucified. It has been easy to take my eyes of the fact that this urgency exists, and to see ministry as nothing more than the maintenance of the engines of faith in the people I serve. Please pray for me that I would meditate more on the gospel's saving message for me and for others, and that the gospel would be the driving core of my ministry. Pray that I would be guarded from motivation of self-glorifying results or underhanded means of winning people to Christ.
At the same time, I'm starting to see how much I struggle to concentrate and reflect deeply as I work through passages in study, or as I write my talks and workshop. For now I've taken to doing lots of my drafting, note taking and thinking work on legal pad and fountain pen without digital devices open. I'm glad that it is helping, but I still find it a challenge to spend more than 30 minutes without feeling an itch to check the email, or chat or some other feeds of information. Particularly for insights or writing that come through turning over multiple connected ideas in my mind for a longer period of time, this mental stimulation itch is very debilitating. I've started to notice that to deeply reflect on something I almost need to actively call to mind something, and then pause and wait for my mind to reflect, but almost within a minute I will lose focus and stop at the initial idea. There's definitely the effect of my phone playing into this, but also perhaps the lack of conducive spaces in Singapore for long walks play into it too. I'm hoping that I'll find something that works while also accepting that I will ultimately be a human with God-imposed limits on concentration.
[what it takes to focus (barely) ]
I'll be giving the 1 Thess 2.17-3.10 talk sometime in February. This semester for SUPer Tuesday we are preaching through 1 Thessalonians and as I study the book I do feel more and more excited about it. It's a book I used to have a low view of because of how scattered the ideas seem to be, but I'm seeing that the thread of Christ's return as part of believing the good news is such a brilliant unifying idea. I look forward to seeing how this book forms the CFers towards much more gospel-centered living. I started writing the sermon in December but after multiple drafts I've realized that my first draft was a hasty one before I had properly understood the text, and how following the text is now giving my drafts a better structure and punch even though it seems like I'm doing nothing more than saying what the text says. I still don't understand why sermons become better the more you follow the text but I do marvel at the brilliance of God's word.
The porn workshop will be the following week after the 1 Thess talk, and I'm still thinking about how to sharpen and clarify what I want to say. But writing it has been a joy as I come face to face with the incredible work of the cross on sin, and I do pray that this would show the students that the gospel is the central way to deal with their addiction.
I'm also grateful that three of the guys in my previous Growth Group have said yes to a 121. Two of them are keen year 1s and one of them looks like a potential gospel partner down the road.
There's quite a lot to look forward to in training this semester, from studying Exodus to a series on ecclesiology, but my thoughts will come in at the next update!
General things to pray for:
- Please pray for consistency and joy in quiet times, it's becoming a challenge to do so when I can easily lean on my work to read about God but it's not so great when work replaces something I do intentionally for myself (and I also end up being limited to just the scriptures I touch for work).
- Pray for CF's upcoming mission week talks in the first week of February to be effective in winning people to Christ.
- Pray for our GGs that have smaller teams and a higher percentage of people new to leading the GGs. Pray particularly for wisdom on the staff's part to guide and encourage them. Pray that they would be encouraged by seeing the word work and be more eager for the gospel.
As always, I do hope to pray for you too, and would love to hear how!
