What a timely reminder today, when Charles explained Mark 4 at GKP – in that passage Jesus was giving his Parable of the Sower (or perhaps more accurately Parable of the Seeds) and its interpretation.

For me personally, at this moment of time I do feel like I am a seed that grows and then gets chocked by the worries of life. And I know I need to repent from that. It just seems that the older you get – there just more and more temptations that will push Jesus to the fringe of your life and one day you wake up and suddenly you realize why do you believe him in the first place? Temptations can come in the form of money, career, security, bad relationship ( marrying unbeliever, lust, unfaithfulness ), the list goes on.

For me personally, I do find that my passion for Jesus is slowly being pushed away by passions in life. For instance, I am really passionate about programming and development and it can be so consuming at times – I’ve spent so many hours reading programming blogs, trying new programming languages, coding etc2. I am also passionate about physical fitness and hence I am committed to go to the gym at 6am on alternate days. I know in themselves none of these is wrong or sinful – but I need to examine my motive in doing them – do I try to achieve “balance” in life? Regardless of whether or not I have the right motivation – I know the result – Jesus got squeezed out bit by bit.

What do I need to do? I am tempted to answer, well I need to start my praying and personal bible reading again, I’ve got a feeling that’s a wrong answer – because that will still me trying to balance things out (as if giving Jesus few hours in a day is enough). I think the answer is making Jesus the Lord of all that I do and all that I am – I need to think more how does it look like concretely.

All of these, sounds so good and easy in a blog post – but I know it’s going to be tough.

I went to the bi-weekly evangelistic prayer meeting group last week. I must admit while I am very excited to see how God has been working in people’s life from the stories told by the group members, I feel quite bad because I don’t have any news regarding any evangelism effort on my part.

As part of this prayer group, we are meant to pray for our workmates as well as get to know them better in the hope that there will be opportunities for gospel talk down the track. I am a failure in praying for my workmates, to care for them or even trying to get to know them better.

While there’s no excuse for the lack of prayer, but on the “getting to know them better” part I felt my personality might be a hindrance on this (and obviously my sins as well).

Firstly, being an introvert, I love to be by myself. So I don’t socialize during lunch, usually because I do my SCJP study and bible study prep during lunch hour (for someone with kids, trust me 1 solid uninterrupted hour by yourself is PRECIOUS). But even before I decided to SCJP, I usually spend lunch reading books by myself.

Secondly, being an introvert, if I do want to go out with people, I prefer to go out with people that I already know well, for instance every Friday I go out to lunch with Pelita people (FL and HT). While there’s nothing wrong going out for lunch with them, I feel that I’m taking the easy way out.

The question is : is introvertness the enemy of evangelism / pre-evangelism? If it is should an introvert seek to be more out there? Can introvertness becomes a sin – the sin of omitting and avoidance?

I don’t know that answer, but at least I want to have lunch with my workmate on Fridays now. It might lead to gospel conversation, it might not (a bit skeptical as the workmates who do want to go out for lunch with me are usually the Aussies – oh who am I to judge, my God is the God of all nations and all races) but yeah hopefully God allows me to plant something, doesn’t matter if it’s harvested by other people.

I was reminded this morning from the sermon on Genesis 4 – 5 about sin. So far in the narrative, people have the choice not to sin but still they yield to it (Adam, Eve, Cain, Lamech). In the case of Cain, God even reminded him personally in Genesis 4:6

⁶ Then the LORD said to Cain, "Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? ⁷ If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it.

Genesis 4:6 – New International Version (NIV)

This still rings true even for Christians, sins still surround us just like a tiger waiting to attack at every opportunity, things like: pride, lust, pornography, envy, slander, lies. And yet, God through hIs word still call us Christians to stand firm and not fall into sin. 

Thank God for Jesus, the seed of Adam that have been tempted yet is without sin, He had crushed the serpent that whoever believe in Him can share in His victory.

I often wonder and often feeling guilty in thinking how I can be very productive in my tech blog and yet I write very little on my journey as christian.

I am not sure whether my guilt is justified, I know my standing before God will not be judged on how many blog articles I wrote. Yet on the other hand surely I should devote some time and effort on this.

It is not that I don’t have things to write, but blogging on spiritual things is hard, really hard. There are some reasons on why I found it hard:

1. Fear – afraid of writing something wrong. I am really2 afraid of writing something that is wrong theologically – if I am not 100% absolutely sure of what I write, I won’t blog it – perhaps I am asking too much of myself, perhaps I am thinking too much of myself.

2. Pride – wanting to write something brilliant articles that might win people over to Christ – am I seeking Christ’s interest or my own? How self serving I am.

I know it’s hard, but one of my 2009 resolutions is to blog more about my relationship with God. Perhaps some of them will contain some errors, I am only human, I pray that God will let me to write carefully though. And if I fail in my resolution, I know that God will not fail me.

1 John 4:10

10In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

This is the message that was preached during Dan and Fayette’s wedding last month. A very appropriate passage around Christmas.

Why would anyone want to die for me or for you? Humans are such a wreck, totally crippled by sins, I hope you have received or will receive His love. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!