Introvertness the enemy of evangelism?

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.

Stress

Well, it was (and still is) quite stressful during the past few weeks.

Some of the causes are due to my own making, while some of them are externals:

  • Matt’s hospitalized for few days, and then the week after Lina was also taken to the hospital – made us very stressful
  • Ever since Matt comes back from the hospital – he’s become more difficult. His sleeping pattern has changed for the worse and his cry becomes louder and more frequent. Lina was quite affected by this change – which in turns also affects me as well.
  • Studying for SCJP was also a very stressful for me, this is probably a stupid decision that I made. I was thinking to recession-proof myself but boy the amount of preparation needed to pass this exam is unbelievable. I can’t turn back, now that I have paid and booked the exam. Good thing is, I now be able to put this more in perspective, I’ll do my best, if I pass I pass, if I have time to study I will, if not I don’t want to be overly stressed about it.
  • Bible study, I am supposed to be co-leader of this group, but I can’t even make it to the bible study consistently. And if even I was present, I couldn’t help the leader whenever we had heated discussions, personality clash, difficult questions etc2. I am just so frustrated, I just wrote an email basically suggesting that I should remove myself from this position.

I know it will get better. I am looking forward for the end of May, when I finished my exam.

Crouching sin

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.

Blogging on spiritual things is hard

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.

De-cluterring and getting more organized

I love my current unit, however it does feel a little bit cramped with stuffs. Few things on why this on why this is the case:

  • I don’t have time to organize
  • I am not a good organizer
  • We simply own too much stuffs

However I really love tidiness and the current untidiness does actually cause some stress to me (and Lina as well). So one of my goals this year is to make our nest more organized and less cluttered.

Few things that will help achieving that goal:

  • Throw away junks – things that hold sentimental value but not really useful anymore
  • Give away things that might be of some use to others but not to us (example: old clothings, some piece of furnitures)
  • I am thinking of getting some shelves.
  • Need to stop accumulating junks, buying stuffs that I don’t really need.

The kids corner

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This is the corner where we put the kids’ toys (well mostly Jet’s at the moment). We put the toys in several boxes. We also have an aquarium that function as a storage box now.

I did some tidy up on this corner, since we have a few visitors coming, it looks a little better but there’s still a lot more room for improvement.

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The book shelf

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I think I need another one or two book shelves. And then re-organize the things again.

The shoes rack

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The bottom tier is actually broken as sometimes we put heavy stuffs on top of this rack. Also this 2 tiers rack is no longer enough to hold our footwear. Not to mention Matthew would also have his own footwear too later on.

Others

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My study room (soon to be Matthew’s room as well) is also quite messy, but I have no pictures to show it.