Me? Making waves?

When I teach, I like to keep a little piece of paper on my semi-desk. I wrote the words that a friend sent me at the beginning of my semi-teaching job. Here are the words:

I do pray that the Lord will use you in that setting and that these ladies will be faced with a choice.

“Faced with a choice”? Am I not supposed to teach English? These people pay to learn English, not to be preached at, not to be shown love. For sure they’d take the love and the care the teacher will give, but that comes naturally and lots of people give love and care easily. But sharing Jesus? Preparing these students, these ladies to be faced with a choice about trusting Jesus or not? It sounds a bit odd. I’m called a “teacher” not a “missionary”. I’m not in a jungle somewhere, this is Montréal!

Aren’t we all called to make Christ and His Gospel the priority of our lives? No matter the title we’re given by our superiors on earth, our God, our Father has given us a title, we’re His ambasadors, called to make Him known for who He truly is, called to show in Jesus the way to the Father, we’re peacemakers.

It’s not in our job-description as students, cashiers, lawyers, secretaries and so on, to share the Gospel, but that should still be our number one priority. I’m realizing this can cause some of us to lose face, reputation, money, time and more. But really, tell me, what is more important than the cause of Christ and the Kingdom of God. We lose contact with this reality so easily, so quickly. So yeah, somehow, we’re called to make waves. Sometimes there’s no lake or water to make waves, it really seems out-of-place. But still, it is our joy and privilege.

Makin’ waves?

Reminder

Posts posts posts. Maybe I go to fast.

You remember the “Bank for Native Missionaries” I created? You remember reading about it at least. You remember that every month we were putting together some little money to send to Gospel For Asia so they could help our brothers and sisters in Asia who struggle to bring the gospel of Jesus to their countrymen? I haven’t wrote about the bank for a long while now simply because there was no money to send. To be honest, I had lost hope that people would give money.

Just a few days ago, I got an email from a friend. She told me she had some money for the Bank for Native Missionaries, she was going to send me 108. I was really surprised. I had no idea my friend kept putting change in her little bank to help the native missionaries of Asia. She counted all her change to find 108$. I thought she had forgotten a comma somewhere, she she didn’t.

I was greatly encouraged and impressed to see that simply putting change in a little container for a few months can be a treasure for native missionaries. So this is what my friend’s money purchased:

For a Dalit family (Dalits are the lowest caste of India’s society): a PAIR OF PIGS (60$)

For native missonaries : THIRTY SIX NEW TESTAMENTS (45$)

For native missionaries: 300 GOSPEL TRACKS (3$)

The Dalit family will be able to use the pigs for food and for producing more pigs. The native missionaries will use the NT and gospel tracks to distribute to people.

It’s amazing how much we can bring to those in need, just by simply putting aside some change, putting coffee money in a pot instead of in the coffee machine and etc. Thank you friend for not forgetting your brothers and sisters “out there”.

If you want to help you can send your money right to Gospel For Asia or to me so we put it all together and make bigger gifts out of our little change.

Stike’s Over!

I know most of you either were not aware of this or don’t care, BUT I am filled with such a joy that I need to share it!

Since Tuesday, the STM (Montreal “Society” of Transport)’s employees were on stike. This means that nobody could use buses or the métro for transportation, the service was only maintained at rush hours. It was a frustration for lots of people and it created more trafic on the highways during the week. The ESL class I teach was cancelled today because we all come by métro and bus. The employees and the STM was given 48 hours on Wednesday to agree on something and provide the service again. I was wondering if I could use the métro tomorrow, so I just checked and found out that the service was going to be given from tonight on!

You might wonder why it bring me so much joy. You might think that since the service was still given at rush hours it should suffice. Well, not really, because rush hours are always pretty busy and everybody is sort of stuck in the buses and métro, now imagine the rush hour plus everybody else that usually come earlier or later in the morning wanting to get in the bus or the métro. This is not a nice picture. Serious, Montréal without buses and the métro is crazy. I would say that a great majority of people depend on this servic for daily obligations so it’s good news that we’ll be able to depend on it again…

As you must guess, the strike was about money (surprising eh). It reminds me that in life, the choices we make do not only affect ourselves. They affect people around us. We may care, we may not care. I’ve seen that problem everywhere. When we fight for our happiness we can easily hurt people and it can cost other people’s hapiness. That’s probably called self-centeredness. It’s important not to just look at ourselves, our needs, our desires. We must think about the people around and what they need, what’s most important. I know, these are new values we must add to our system, crazy eh? I am not being sarcastic here…

Wardrobe

Did you celebrate the Queen’s day on Monday? Well, if you live in Canada, you were probably off that day “Victoria Day” is a vacation for us. Some people celebrate “La fête de Dollar” (some guy’s birthday or celebration…) or “Patriotes” I don’t really know what this one is about… Anyways. I didn’t celebrate the Queen or anybody, but it just happened that my friend invited me for a BBQ that night. Nothing tastes like BBQ, we all know that. But anyways, as I was sipping (is that a word?) my Iced Cappuccino waiting for the bus with my friend, we talked about a book I read when I was in bible school. It was a book I had to read for a class called “La femme chrétienne” (The Christian Woman) obviously guys didn’t take this one, they had “L’homme chrétien” (The Christian Man) instead. Anyways, I’m making this story WAY too long for NO reason. I remember writing at the end of my exam for that course that I did not recommend the book I’d read and that I seriously encouraged them to think about NOT putting it in their bibliography for next year. This book was really legalistic… in a way that you probably never thought of before. The author was telling the reader how important it was for a “good” Christian woman to have lists of pretty much everything she owned, especially clothes. Women should count how many pieces of clothes they have, write down the colour and what fits with what. Everything should be well organized and the list ready to be used at anytime. Why? In case you quickly need to go somewhere, so you don’t waste your time figuring out what to wear and what fits together. There was much more to this, but I remember thinking that the author was going too far, way too far, she was even describing everything she had in her wardrobe and etc. I guess it’s okay for anybody to make such lists (and I’d be the type to actually do that), but one should not put this burden on anybody else’s shoulders (my opinion). So I was talking to my friend about the book and we thought that I should do the same type of thing on my blog. Show you how important it is to be organized. Anyways, you can take a look at my drawers and … well, I was doing laundry when I took the pictures. The purpose of sharing these with you? … I don’t know. That was an idea we had on Monday night. That’s it.

Oh, by the way, take a look at the “Brain Breaks” page up there, theire’s some new stuff.

wretched people

Good night.

It’s getting late but if you’re looking for entertainment for your mind, well here are some safe stories to read about.

I was in church this morning and there happen to be, sitting among brothers and sisters, a man who was drunk. This is Montreal, downtown. That sort of things does not happen very often for sure, but people from the streets do drop in. The man was disrupting the meeting by being loud, so he was asked to leave, but obviously, he did not see why he should so he stayed. There is this rule in the church that drunk people are not allowed to attend church meetings. Some elders and people tried to persuade him to leave, but it was a waste of time. Finally, a white-haired man from a couple rows in front of the little commotion, got up and sat down, right besides the drunken man. The older man put his arm around the man’s shoulders and talked to him gently. The service continued and 10 minutes later, as the pastor was preaching, two police officers came in and took the drunk man away. The pastor obviously stopped preaching and told the congregation why this man had to leave and how we’d like to see him be freed from alcohol. He then prayed for him (the police officers waited for the prayer to be over) and then they left.

What I like about this little story is the love the church showed to this drunk man. Especially the love than the older man showed him. The drunk man was not dressed in his “Sunday’s clothes” as we say in French and he probably did not smell good. But the old man did not seem to care, he treated him like a child who was too young to understand he had to be quiet in church, with so much love. Just the fact that the pastor prayed for him, showed how much he cared, even though the man probably did not understand much, at least the police officers were witnesses of this love.

Now another story from my today.

I was at Berri-Uqam, waiting for the next métro to come by and bring me home. I looked at the time and realized I would have to wait for another 7 minutes. It was late. A man came by and asked me if I knew what time it was. Looking at my watch and I told him, “11:12″ or something like that. He thanked me and shook my hand. Right there I knew he was not the “average” type of person taking the métro, he was probably “not all there” or drunk or I don’t know. People don’t shake your hand for telling the time. So I knew I was in for some fun (I’m being sarcastic here). The man then told me he was a little sad today. Being such a prolific speaker I did not know what to say. I told him how it happens to everybody, once in a while and how we often feel better after a night of rest. But he told me he had been feeling that way for a while. I asked him what he was going to do about it. He didn’t know. “Do you know Jesus” was my next question. He didn’t really answer, he simply said he didn’t believe in him, he had asked and asked from him, but nothing ever worked. The métro came by and we got in. He continued, saying that he was fed up with all the religion and he didn’t believe in any of the “prophets” (I’m not sure what he meant). I didn’t know what to say. So I said, “What are you going to do then?” He didn’t know. I asked him “Then how can I help you?” He said he didn’t know. My station was next and I was about to step out so I simply told him I had found hope in Jesus.

These two little stories tell about broken people. A man, slave to alcohol and a sad man without hope, ready to ask help from a little stranger like me. I’m not really sure how to act and what to say but I know for certain that when Christians display love, even when it is not appreciated, it glorifies God and brings the Kingdom of God in our midst somehow. Why the Kingdom? I don’t know, that’s the way it feels - “The Kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet… He sent his servants to those who had been invited … but they refused to come. … Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding banquet is ready .. Go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find.’ ” (Matthew 22:1-10)

There are so many wretched people - they too are invited to join us at the banquet. That’s how the Kingdom of God looks like.

Avoidance Ethic

I’ll be quoting John Piper here.

“People who are content with the avoidance ethic generally ask the wrong question about behaviour. They ast, What’s wrong with it? What’s wrong with this movie? Or music? Or this game? Or these companions? Or this way of relaxing? Or this investment? Or this restaurant? Or shopping at this store? What’s wrong with going to the cabin every weekend? Or having a cabin? This kind of question will rarely yield a lifestyle that commends Christ as all-satisfying and makes people glad in God. It simply results in a list of don’ts. It feeds the avoidance ethic. The better questions to ask about possible behaviours is: How will this help me treasure Christ more? How will it help me show that I do treasure Christ? How will it help me know Christ or display Christ?”

“Oh, how many lives are wasted by people who believe that the Christian life means simply avoiding badness and providing for the family. So there is no adultery, no stealing, no killing, no embezzlement, no fraud - just lots of hard work during the day, and lots of TV and PG-13 videos in the evening (during quality family time), and lots of fun stuff on the weekend - woven around church (mostly). This is life for millions of people. Wasted life. We were created for more, far more.”

“No one will ever want to say to the Lord of the universe five minutes after death, I spent every night playing games and watching TV with my family because I love them so much. I think the Lord will say, “That did not make me look like a treasure in your town. You should have done something besides provide for yourself and your family. And TV, as you should have known, was not a good way to nurture your family or your own soul.”

It’s kinda easy to just “slip” in the routine and enjoy our little ways and the leisure and being entertained by TV or the Internet or phone or good times with people we love. That’s the easy way. But Jesus says that loving those who love us is easy, even bad people do that. We don’t deserve any reward for loving those we naturally love. There is more to life than ourselves. It’s not just about me getting food for myself and my family or money for my studies. It’s not just about me relaxing from the hard work I’ve done and enjoying friends and family. This for sure has its proper place in our lives. But I don’t think that the life of a Christian should be characterized by the simple avoidance of what’s bad. Plenty of unbelievers do a better job than Christians at avoiding evil and leading peaceful lives. Jesus talks about a narrow road, a cross to bear, a self to deny. Paul speaks of beating his body and making it his slave, of working to provide for those in need. I don’t know, it seems that my life is consumed with entertainment. It’s costly to pray or read or write or call or help or go instead of doing little things for myself.

Pursued

I feel like I haven’t have any real rest since a week. I started a cold and worked lots no matter the little energy I had. I’ve been busy going from Montreal to the South Shore to Montreal to my dad’s to Montreal and teaching. Ah and on Sunday we helped my grandparents move out and then in their new home. I was really tired by the end of the day and just wanted to leave, but eh they needed us. I’ve never felt low on energy like that since the day I was born. I have enough energy to do all I need to, but it is so tiring, all of the sudden just to be in the métro, my energy goes down and I feel dizzy. It’ll go away… someday.

So I’m living by myself now, still at my grandparents’ place (well, their old place) and it’s neat. For little things like, doing laundry after supper, playing the guitar without a care about how loud it is, leaving the house without saying goodbye to anybody or when I should be back, taking a shower at 12:30pm… all kinds of little things that make me feel more at peace, more free. I can rest, at last from the routine and the “oh not too loud” or “man, I have no other time than in the evenings to do laundry these days, when am I going to get to do it?” or just planning my time according to the fact that I know that my grandma will talk to me for a little bit before I leave. It’s a good feeling to be here by myself.

Since I think of it, I don’t know what he studied in, but my brother-in-law just graduated from seminary. Clap clap clap. I thought I should highlight this event since I seem to highlight everything going on around me.

Ah, before I leave. I just noticed the title of this post. Pursued. Well my grandparents are not living here anymore and I’m enjoying it, especially the fact that I am no longer caught up in my grandma’s long conversations. So the phone rang. And yes, it was my grandma. No, she had nothing in particular to tell me, but she did talk to me for a little while about all kinds of things. I felt as if I was pursued… hopefully she won’t call me every night! Oh well, I wonder about what love is though.

Cold & Sunburn

Again this week I went to my mom’s place to work for them. I worked outside for a good three days and the weather was just beautiful. On the first day I worked with a long sleeve shirt with the sleeves actually rolled almost up to my elbows. When I took my shirt off in the evening I noticed something kinda funny. I had this big sunburn, but only on 3/4s of my forearms (you can admire the drawing of my new arms… the colour wouldn’t scan though…. the black is supposed to be red) On top of that burning sunburn (oh I found one on the back of my neck and my face is no longer so white too), I found myself with a cold. I don’t know why, I started having a sore throat the day I left Montréal. Oh well.

As I walked from my metro to my grandparents’ I started thinking about something pretty fun. I really CANNOT taste anything because of my cold. It’s never been that bad, I can’t taste or smell anything. I enjoy eating, but today I just didn’t feel like eating (first because I’m not feeling so good), my food didn’t taste like anything, it was just… blah. So what’s the point of eating when it does not taste good… or even bad, it’s just blah?

I think that it would be interesting if it would work the same way with sin. That sin would have no flavour to me anymore. I’m guessing that as the years go by and as I grow, sin will become tasteless to me. But could you just imagine, if sin would have no taste, no smell anymore, we’d just feel like, oh whatever, I don’t feel like sinning anymore.

I need to get a spiritual cold so I have no taste for sin.

I should leave now, just the lamp over the keyboard here warms my arms and it’s…. burning them.

Biodôme

Hi there.

I’ve been reading Don’t Waste Your Life by John Piper. The book was given me a few years ago only because it had the name PIPER on it. The person who gave it to me wanted to give me something and knew I liked this author. I had read the book already, but I was really happy to actually own a copy. Now when I think of it, this person should have kept it and read it, actually, all Christians should read this book.

If you know the writings of Piper, you probably know what I am about to write about. The glory of God. So I’ve been reading and thinking about the glory of God and how I, as God’s creature, was created for God’s glory. That the purpose of God’s salvation found in Christ is not to save me from hell first of all, but to purchase for Himself a people that will glorify Him and make Him look great, for He is great.

It’s easy for me to want God to notice me as a worshiper, as someone who reflects His glory. But it’s harder for me to desire God’s glory. I want God to see ME as godly, but if I start telling people about Jesus and encourage them to live lives that will glorify God, then, God gets “more” glory and I get less. I’m more like a grain of sand on a beach, praising God and glorifying Him than anything else. It makes me look small and God look so glorious. I know it is shameful, but it’s the truth; I like the idea that God sees me as better then other Christians or someone who brings Him “more” glory than most people around me. But at the same time, I feel that I like the idea of being a nobody, in the midst of a crowd, praising God, I like the idea that it’s all about Him and not about me at all.

So when I actually talk to people about Jesus, when I encourage Christians to live to glorify God… why am I doing that? I think that my purpose should be to bring “more” glory to God, to have as many people as possible acknowledging Him as Lord over all and surrender to His rule, bring Him glory. That should be my purpose, simply because that’s the purpose of God in all His dealings with human beings. He created us for His glory and we can find total fulfilment and joy as we seek His glory before everything else. It’s pretty burdensome to trust in oneself and to always be strong and to boast in oneself. We were created to depend on God and be loved by Him, to be strong through Him. When we turn to Him and desire His glory alone, we’re free from ourselves, and the love of self.

Today we went to the Biodôme it’s a … an animal place that I find sort of boring if I’m not with kids. We had Christians from different Cégeps (college, you know what I mean) and a few people from universities and the goal was to have the Cegep people get to know eachother and realize that there is more than their own Cegep, that they would make “links” among themselves. Another goal was obviously to encourage them in their Christian walk. We had a neat little afternoon, looking at the animals, watching a little video, chatting and getting to know the people. But I wondered. What’s the point, the real point. And since I’m reading Piper, the answer came quite quickly. We want to encourage people to live lives that glorify God. I’m not saying that this was what Jess had in mind (she was the one who had the vision and who organized the activity), I’m just saying that this should be our goal as Christian leaders. I’m not a Christian leader, no worries, well, just in very simple and little ways sometimes.

So anyways. I hope I become someone who will care about God being glorified above everything else and that it’ll be my purpose when I speak about Christ, when I encourage Christians. That yes, I will care about the people, their salvation and their growth (because Jesus does care about these things!) but that God’s reputation, God’s fame, God’s glory will be what I really “work” for.

Oh the picture? Well, this some water from my baptism. When I was baptized in April 2001, I kept a little bottle with some water from the bathtub thing or whatever you want to call it. I still have it and it’s still crystal clear. Neat eh?

Self Conversations

I totally enjoyed my three days at my mom’s because I worked with my hands a lot and I was by myself most of the time I worked. I did listen to some good music, but I spent a lot of time just having conversations with myself, out loud. Asking questions about things I saw or noticed, thinking about the past and trying to solve “relationship equations” or why people act the way they do or why I act and think the way I do. I’m a big talker when I’m by myself.

I know a lot of people who give so much of themselves in the name of Christianity. They put everybody’s needs before their own and they always want to be served last or not helped at all because Jesus says that … I have little time and I can’t remember the verse, but we often see Jesus, Paul and others probably, in the Bible, that followers of Christ do to others as they would have them to to them, that Christians put other people’s needs before their own. So many Christians do their best to forget about themselves and always put everybody in front of them in the line and often say stuff like “No, I’m fine”, “Please, go a head, I can wait”, “Here’s some more…”. I don’t want to say that it’s wrong to be that way, Christ calls us to be like that. But as I cleaned around my mom’s house, talking to myself, I realized that there are two ways of living out Christ’s command about service and etc. there might be more than two ways actually, I’m just giving my opinion.

There’s the self-centered motivation. I think that sometimes, the dialog that goes on in our heads sounds like that: “I am strong, I can do without”, “I can be tough”, “I obey Christ, I am really on the right path” and so on. If I know that sort of dialog it’s obviously because I’ve been using it myself. What I notice in that thinking is that it sounds great, but it’s so self-centered. It’s all about me being strong, obedient and righteous. It’s a lot about self-righteousness to a certain point.

And there’s the people-centered motivation. The dialog that goes on in our minds goes like something like this: “He is in need, he just can’t do without”, “She is so weak, how can I help?”. It’s no more about ME being a superhero able to go through everything for other people’s sake, but it’s only about others and realizing they’re in need. I don’t think about myself and my capacities very much. It’s about trusting God, that He uses His people to bless and encourage and help His children. It’s about being humble.

I know that the line can seem to be pretty thin in between these two motivations or maybe it is very clear to you. This is just something I realized Wednesday. Well, it’s something that I knew, but never as clearly as this. Sometimes, Christians try to obey Christ because it’s written, because they are stronger then the rest or I don’t know. To a certain extent, these reasons are alright, but really, I think that Jesus wants us to be servants not because He’s asking us or because we look humble when we serve and put other people’s needs before ours. I think that Jesus is looking for a true attitude of humility and for eyes that see the people’s needs and not our own capacity of filling in for them, of being strong for them. People who have the wrong motivation are likely to one day blow up, well, that’s what I think and what I’ve seen. Why? Because God did not create us to be strong or to bear loads on our shoulders. God is the one who carries the heavy stuff, He’s the strong One.

So I hope my motivation will be more people-centered than slef-centered. There is a lot to had to these thoughts indeed, but I must run.