Body of Christ

So tonight was bible study night and we looked at “Hallowed be thy Name” from Matthew 6 (The Lord’s Prayer aka The Disciple’s Prayer).

Last week we studied the first part of that prayer which is, “Our Father who art in heaven”. The reason why we are looking at this Prayer is because it is the model Prayer and Jesus says this is how we should pray. Also, it’s from Matthew 6 and it’s a continuation from Matthew 5.

I just erased a whole bunch of what we’ve been studying but I’ll just focus on tonight’s topic.

So we discussed what “hallowed” means… we threw up things like it means to be set apart, holy, sanctified, different, basically, God is on a completely turf from us. He’s in heaven, we’re on earth. He’s God and we’re not. We should be worshipping Him and not the other way around (I know, I think we people are jaded and confused. It’s the devil I tell you). 

Now that I’ve said that, it’s like… that’s it really. Our focus should be on our Heavenly Father and once it is, everything else falls into place. We were discussing briefly on how we spend our time in private with God. What are the things we “do” to get us in the mood for prayer or to set the atmosphere or to allow us to focus. I know, it doesn’t sound like a normal relationship does it?

“Our Father in heaven” we learned last week stresses on relationship with God. He wants to care for us, He is there for us and some times it is hard for us to understand the love He has for us because we might be blinded by how our earthly fathers are like but that’s the thing. He’s not earthly, He’s Heavenly. It’s like, our Creator, who we think has no time for us, actually does have time for us and it’s really that simple. He wants us to turn to Him, He loves us with such intensity that if only we turned to Him, we would know. Hmmm…

In “Hallowed be Thy Name”, it is our reverence towards God. How do we worship Him? All of this is all about private prayer by the way, if you look at Matthew 6.

Anyway, so some of us said we turned on music when we prayed to set the tone and this doesn’t sound like a normal relationship at all, does it? I mean, can you imagine, before talking to your mom or dad, you turn on music to set the tone? i guess that happens if you want to set the mood for your romantic outing with someone special, but still… hahaha… God’s God and as much as I’d like to make things as human as possible, or to relate to God in a more normal way, God’s different and I have to understand that.

Some of us spoke of our private moments that we have with God, like when we are sitting in our cars, or at night or when we set time apart in our schedule for God. I blog my prayers. I didn’t mention this in the large group but I did when we were discussing in our smaller groups.

The question is, how are we honouring God in our alone prayer time? Are we? Do we do that? We should be and it shouldn’t be a, “Me Me Me and moi” kind of prayer because if we focus on ourselves I think we forget that we have a Heavenly Father … who can do everything and who is the most powerful, the most wise, the mose everything. We aren’t. Plus, it sort of waters God’s awesomeness down a lot.

I have to agree though. There have been many times when I have spent time with God, ranting about how I can’t handle this, how I can’t stand that, how I’m struggling with this, how I’m suffering from that… I always finish feeling so unsatisfied and unfinished.

However, the times when I’ve prayed and although it would start with my troubles, it would dawn upon me by divine wisdom I am sure, that it’s all about God at the end of the day. All the wonderful blessings come from God. I think it makes it even more special when you realise you didn’t work for it but God blessed you with it. A good friend perhaps? A good relationship? A good job? Free time even… after those sessions and coming out in complete awe at God’s work in my life and in the life of others, I would feel so at peace and so happy.

It’s weird when you don’t focus on yourself so much, you actually come out happier. Something I need to learn I think. HAHAH… some times I can be so self-absorbed.

We split up into our little groups and discussed about this topic further. Our little group talked about spending time with God and what it means and I brought up the idea of structure and how easy it is to be disjointed from God and even to be disconnected from Him because of all the religious trappings. I was a bit of an instigator, I’m really terrible ‘cos I always bring up all these negative points. HAHAH…

Then I was talking about how there are people out there who consider themselves to be more “in tune” than others you know, telling others that they should be spending more time with God and they have the “authority” to say such things because they do spend “a lot of time” studying the Bible, etc etc. I was saying how it makes us not want to spend time with God because of what these people say, putting the guilt trip on us when God himself, never put the guilt trip on us and instead, gave us free will to decide whether to accept His gift of life or not. 

Those were my points, other people brought up other points… I think we were just talking about our prayer life in general. I said how … yes, I can only remember the things I said because I’m so self-centred. HAHAH… it’s called bad memory lah, ok? We talked about a lot of things… anyway, then I was saying how some times I treat my relationship with God like my relationship with my friends. I make excuses saying, well I haven’t been hanging out with my friends so it’s ok if I don’t hang out with God too often either… haha.

Anyway, the point is it seemed like we all struggled with it. We talked about church and how structured it is some times that it sucks the life out of the relationship with God. I agree completely to this point. For example, in cell, I’ve tried going against the grain a bit… and was told off for it. Haha… I was a bit offended really. I actually talked about this in the bible study tonight. Like how things are so set that if you did something a bit off, then it won’t be good because that’s not what people expect. They want things to be done a certain way but then it becomes routine and mundane.

So what happened in cell? Well, I was meant to do “Welcome” once. Welcome is at the beginning of cell where we are usually meant to play ice breakers. I personally hate ice breakers. I find them so ridiculous. If you want to break the ice, you just allow idle chatter for the first 10 minutes and then launch into Word or Worship. Why do we need to play games to get to know one another?

What I did was, I brought a CD player and played “Consider Christ” and I asked my cell members to listen to the lyrics. Besides it being a GREAT song, melodically, the lyrics are the bomb and very meaningful. Maybe they weren’t used to it. My cell leader wasn’t around that week but the week after, I was told that Welcome time is a get to know one another time and not a time to listen to music but then they completely missed the point then… ‘cos for me, that was my bit of reverence… that to me, going to cell or to bible study or to church is really not just a time for fellowship but to worship God too. We learn more about Him and also it doesn’t mean that worship time is meant JUST for singing. The whole hour to two hours is worship time you know? How easily we forget… hahah.. I told my bible study mates that after that, it took them a long time to roster me in for Welcome again. 

It’s all about breaking the mould and really not just trying something different but approaching it differently. Then there was the time I led worship and well, it wasn’t too well taken in either because I sang “obscure” songs and since then, I’ve noticed that I haven’t done worship since. HA HA. I think we were talking about this in bible study tonight… how we set the mood a lot in our church… we have to play the music in the background and then the pastor talks or how we need to sing fast songs first then slow songs or how the songs if ended abruptly would be continued on till the ending was more “reverential” (if there’s such a word) but to me, it’s all so put on… it’s all so fake… I mean, sure it’s good a lot of the times but that’s the point, it’s so feel good that we feel good but … It’s not about us, it’s about God. I guess God wants us to feel good too but it’s just so structured. I wonder if you’re getting my point. 

I’m sorry if I’m nitpicking but after last week’s bible study on prayer and babbling, I was noticing it in cell … hahah… I don’t know. I shouldn’t be judging or anything but it just felt so put on…it wasn’t like a conscious observation but it was one of those… hmm moments… when it didn’t feel right… ’cos we studied last week that we shouldn’t babble on mindlessly like the heathens/ pagans or be like the hypocrites or people who stand on street corners who love to show the world that they are praying … it’s like, why are you praying in the first place? Do you know why?

Dragging out prayers for minutes on end and repeating yourself … or putting on a show at worship or even at prayer time doesn’t mean anything in God’s eyes. Sure, I’ve been guilty of it too but the point is, we shouldn’t be allowing that and neither should we be praising someone and going, “Oh yes, this person is good at worship, we’ll allow her to do it more often”… whoever, leads it, even if it’s badly organised, God’s still going to be there… if the heart and intention is right.

Yes, I might be petty but I think it’s a valid point. I’m not asking for more responsibility in cell. I’m happy as it is and I don’t want to do welcome or worship that often but the point is, praise should be to God and really… just a nod and acknowledgement to the worship leader and not a whole kow-tow thing… like, “you’re the best worship leader in the whole wide world… etc etc” ‘cos I don’t believe there is such a thing.

So then we prayed about it and it’s so weird that God calls us to be silent before Him, to shut out all sorts of distractions and stuff but it’s so difficult, isn’t it? I think even in prayer, we had trouble telling God how wonderful He was…and is. HAHAH.. but we did ask Him for help.

We went to the mamak later and only a few of us went. It all started with getting some things going for the young adults such as an outing of some sort to introduce non-Christians or our other friends who are not part of young adults or YF and it became this full blown talk about church leadership and how the church is being run and what it means to be in a brethren church and I had my little two cents about charismatic churches. We brought up John Stott and so many other things and how leadership has to be strong and if the leadership is not working together, then what can be done?

It was interesting ‘cos we talked about, well what if we didn’t agree with leadership, shouldn’t we just come out and wing it on our own? Surely that is God’s plan if the church leadership is not united and shaky. That is the easy way out we figured. Leaving the church and starting our own. It is such a pride thing too… we can do it better on our own. Sure God might bless it and we might have good church growth but ultimately, is there nothing wrong in persevering in the current church structure? Even if it’s so uncertain? So confusing? shouldn’t we wait on God? Not on what we think is the right way?

‘Cos so many churches in Malaysia … due to over-inflated Malaysian egos, break up from each other and they start their own little recruitment drive or they have their small congregation. It’s almost like a business… we’ll take away your clientele… it’s quite ridiculous that we have all these little shophouse churches… hahah.. anyway… the point is, everybody wants to have their own church because they think they can do a better job at leading a church. It has become so fragmented and do we want to fragment it further? The body of Christ is meant to be united, not a place to further your own interests.

Even if we disagreed with the elders of the church now, we have to understand why we are disagreeing and so many issues that come with it. If we left, will that resolve the problem? It might deteriorate the church further and it might become a dead church in terms of growth, both physically and spiritually but so? I think it must be the mentality of Malaysians to leave just because it’s not doing well anymore… jumping ship.

We were discussing how we bring the world into the church and it is such a bad thing. God’s standards and ways are so jarringly different from the world that it’s hard to balance the two and in fact there is no balance… what man has created is only to feed ourselves, our pride, our greed, our hunger, our egos and yet God calls for something different and when He does that, we can’t take it.

It was an interesting night all in all. I’m not sure if I am making much sense. It’s almost 4am and I really need to sleep.

I liked how we ended. We realised that from the start, we ran away from the Roman Catholic Church because they were just so legalistic and religious yet as Protestants, we have become like that too… even in the Brethren churches, their “unstructuredness” has become so rigid and my bible study teacher said that it is not surprising to note that Charismatic churches some times are even more rigid than Brethren churches… the whole idea of cell churches and stuff… ‘cos he went for a course in it before which makes it all seem so… scary… we’re all so structured! We’re all so rigid that it is so easy for us to become so legalistic, so self-righteous. I would still like to think it’s a malaysian disease.

God help us. amen.