Why Ministry is a Better Investment than Blue Chip Stocks

Investment gurus always advise whoever wants to listen to invest in blue chip stocks because they are reliable stocks in a volatile market and will deliver solid returns year after year to investors. But there is an investment that has a far greater probability of higher return: Ministry.

Fulfilling our ministry in obedient gratitude to the Lord is a better investment than blue chip stocks because:

1. The return of ministry is eternal; it goes beyond this life.
Meanwhile, the return of blue chips is limited to this life. “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal" (Matt 6:19-20)

2. The return of ministry in the afterlife knows no limit
Ministry does help us to enlarge our capacity to receive a never-ending joy that flows from God in heaven. The more we serve God, the bigger the joy we experience in heaven. Each drop of sweat, tear, and (even) blood counts. “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you" (Matt 5:11)

3. Ministry has eternal consequences: heaven and hell.
Blue-chips only have temporal consequences while enslave us. "I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word.. fulfill your ministry" (2 Tim 4:1-4). Those we serve will either end up in heaven or hell. If we preach anything but Christ (and that includes philosophy, psychology, and everything that satisfies our itching ears), the hearers will end up in hell. For non-preachers, your ministry also has hellish consequences. Mahatma Gandhi remained a Hindu because he was denied entry by ushers at a church in London. To which he replied "If you have a caste system in Christianity, I might as well remain a Hindu"

4. Ministry is 'the good fight'
Christ Jesus who will judge the living and the dead will also give the crown of righteousness to those who, like Paul, have fought a good fight, finished the race, and kept the faith (2 Tim 4). Paul did not refer to the way he fought, but that he has chosen a good fight. The good fight. And that is serving Christ Jesus. Others like Demas chose a different fight, building up the kingdom of the world.

FI Time: Soap for the Heart

Our family group in the church recently started a new bible discussion series on parenting Instructing a Child's Heart written by Margy and Tedd Tripp. We discussed the first sub-topic on Saturday entitled "Life is a Classroom" in which the Tripps talked about the importance of giving formative instruction consistently in every single opportunity that we have with our children, not only in formal settings (Sunday School, family worship). The Tripps also highlighted the need to differentiate between "formative instruction" and "corrective discipline", something which I found immensely helpful. Here is the most relevant quote from their book (p. 20)

Don't confuse formation instruction with corrective discipline. Formative instruction should be happening all the time. Discipline should be applied only when behavior needs to be corrected. If the only time we instruct is when our children need discipline, our children will not listen to our instruction for fear of the discipline. They will also interpret discipline through the culture's view of discipline - as abusive, dictatorial, a violation of personal rights, archaic, and fanatic.

In the ensuing discussion among ten sets of parents, we found that indeed the instructions we give to our kids are often given when there is a need to correct a behavior. "Hey, stop doing that. Taking someone's toy is wrong. You'd better return it to him now or else you will be punished later at home." In that statement, the instruction is buried behind the warning, and can be easily ignored because the child's attention is focused on the avoidance or fear of punishment.

Hence, the main lesson we learned from the first session was the importance of finding or, better yet, creating teachable moments through daily life occurrences. That implies two things: (1) parents need to spend quality time with our kids during which those formative instructions can be imparted, and (2) parents need to be rooted in the word of God so they are capable of imparting those shaping instructions.

I went away from that meeting with a keener sense of such teachable moment. The next day (ie., today) I found myself washing our car with my seven-year old daughter at a nearby petrol station. I cleaned the outside and she helped me with the car interior. She proudly showed me that the parts she cleaned were sparkling afterwards. On the way home, I had a hunch that this could be an "FI time" (Formative Instruction) time. What happened next is the following exchange:

Me: You know, Tif, we clean our dirty car with soap and water.

Tif: Yeah, dad, and our car is shiny now, especially the inside.

Me: But if our hearts are dirty, we cannot clean it with soap and water.

Tif: Dirty hearts?

Me: You know when you envy, when you are greedy, when you do things that sadden God's hearts. We can't clean that dirty heart with soap, right?

TIf: (giggling...) Of course not, dad.

Me: We need a special soap to clean our dirty hearts. That special soap is God. When we come to God, he will forgive our sins and give us a new heart. That's why David prayed to God "Create in me a clean heart, O God"

Tif: So we can come to God to get our hearts cleaned?

Me: Yeah, anytime.

... then we arrived home (in my heart, I thanked the Lord for the opportunity He gave me and looked forward to the next FI time)

Beauty Lost

We thank you, O God, for revealing Your Son through the life of Leah
The ugly duckling who went through her life of endless disappointments
Thrown in by her deceitful dad to be a substitute-bride for a man
Whose heart is always attached not to her but her beautiful sister

Unlovely and unloved, she tried with all her might to be loved
Bearing children for her husband, hoping he would love her
Praying daily 'If only my husband would love me as he would my sister'
Only to be ignored over and over again by her husband

Until one day her self-hated soul is touched with the Gospel of grace
When she understands that what matters is God's love for her
When she is chosen to be the Messianic seed despite her performance
So she can stop chasing after others' love, approval, and attention

It no longer matters how other people see her, her weak eyes and all
Because You, O Lord, love her as a Bridegroom loves His beautiful bride
The God of heavens chose the despised, the ugly, the rejected
What a story, what a mystery!

Until we realize that we were Leahs.
Unlovely because of our sin-ridden souls
Unloved by the world no matter how hard we try
But Lord, You love us and You make us lovely

Because Christ Jesus, Your Son, who is beautiful beyond description
Came to us in human form with "no beauty that we should desire him"
So that we who who are unlovely are made beautiful in Your eyes.
Christ lost His majestic beauty so that our ugliness is covered by His beauty

As Your heavenly bride, remind us each day O Lord
You didn't die for us because we are worthy
But because you died for us, we are made worthy
Our worth and lives rest secured in You

As Your heavenly bride, teach us each day O Lord
To never seek our happiness from this world nor praises from people
For not only will we be chasing disappointment after disappointment
But because we now know You alone are our happiness and praise

The Crucible: Sunday 2 Aug 2009 @ ICC

The key to contentment is worship

Paul Tripp blogged these paragraphs on contentment that is worth reading and re-reading:

Why do we all seem to want more?
Why is it so hard for us to accept less?
Why do we get haunted by bigger and better?
Why is it so difficult to be satisfied?
Why it is so hard to be content?

Maybe it's a better job, maybe it's a more succulent steak, maybe it's a nicer boss, maybe it's a prettier girlfriend, maybe it's a nicer car, maybe it's a more luxurious condo, maybe it's a better vacation than last year, or maybe it is as little as a better cup of coffee than yesterday's, but the spiritual energies of your life can be consumed by working your way up. What do I mean by working your way up? I mean that, in reality, you are living in a state of constant discontent. Yes, you are thankful for the joy of the moment, but you do not have your head down in prayerful thanks. No, your head is up and you eyes are scanning for the next bigger, better, more satisfying thing. When you are discontent, you are always in someway working your way up the ladder of personally satisfiying delights. You're not really thankful for or committed to what you have because in your heart you think that there must be something better out there and so you are on the hunt.

What is the solution to the "working your way up the ladder" hunt all about? It is about IDENTITY and WORSHIP. When I begin to humbly accept who I am as a sinner, when I honestly face the fact the my deepest problem in life exists inside of me and not outside of me, and when I begin to grasp the reality that God sent his Son to free me from my biggest problem - me, then I will quit working my way up. Why? Because I will be so filled with gratitude that the one thing I desperately needed, God freely gave me in his Son, Christ Jesus. What is this one thing? It is the thing in life that I could not do for myself, yet I cannot live without. By an act of his grace, God has freed me from my bondage to me. He has freed me from my addiction to having me at the center of my universe. He has freed me from the ravenous and unsatisfiable appetite of sin, so that I may begin to experience true personal satifaction where it can only be found - in worship of him. He has broken the power of this addiction over me so that I can be increasingly free where I live everyday.

The key to getting off the ladder and experiencing true contentment is not having more or learning to live with less. The key to contentment is worship. It is only when my heart is satified because of what I have been given in Christ and so much more delighted with God's glory than in the possibilty of possessing the next glorious physical thing, that I will leave the hunt.

Why Submission to Christ is Hard

The following Christian folk story from South India about a boy who loved to play marble aptly captures the inclination of our hearts, which make it difficult to completely make it captive under Christ:

The boy regularly walked through his neighborhood with a pocketful of his best marbles, hoping to find opponents to play against. One marble in particular, his special blue marble, had won him many matches.

During one walk he encountered a young girl who was eating a bag of chocolate candy. Though the boy's first love was marbles, he had a weakness for chocolates. As he stood there interacting with the young girl, his salivary glands and the rumbling in his stomach became uncontrollable, and he thought to himself, I have got to get my hands on those chocolates.

Concocting a plan, he asked the girl, "How about I give you all these marbles for those chocolates?" She replied, "Sounds fair to me."

He put his hand in his pocket, searching for the distinguishing cracks on the surface of the blue marble. Once he identified the blue marble with his finger tip, he carefully pushed it to the bottom of his pocket and pulled out all the other marbles.

As he handed the marbles to the girl in exchange for the chocolate, the boy thought his plan was a success and turned to walk away. As he began to eat the candy, he suddenly turned to the girl and asked, "Hey, did you give me all the chocolates?"

Our fallen nature persuades us to posture ourselves in the same deceptive and defiant attitude as the boy in this story. We want everything the kingdom of God has to offer. We want to have a secure sense of God's presence, we want all our prayers to be answered, we want to "feel close" to Jesus, we want to flourish in the riches of God's glory—we want it all. But we are unwilling to give up everything for it. Many times there is a "blue marble" in our lives that we seem unwilling to offer to the control of Christ. Until we can fully subjugate ourselves to God's will, our participation in God's kingdom will be limited.

Source: Christopher L. Heuertz, Simple Spirituality (IVP, 2008), pp. 116-117; Samuel T. Kamaleson, "Mangoes and Marbles," Decision magazine (January 1978)

The girl nobody wanted

My upcoming sermon this Sunday. Title credit goes to 'Jesus Storybook Bible'

Why Tweeter is Uncool

I read the stats some time ago that adoption of Tweeter in the world is very slow in comparison to Facebook. And those 90% of those who tweet very rarely do so, at a rate of just once a month. But I didn't know the reason why until I read an article (or a research note, as stated) written by a 15-yr old intern at Morgan Stanley on teenagers' media habits (television, internet, gaming, music, etc.).

The note got traction from many clients of Morgan Stanley who obviously are hungry with any fresh insight into the market so they can achieve a breakthrough with their products or services. Here is a snapshot of the research note:

Facebook is popular as one can interact with friends on a wide scale. On the other hand, teenagers do not use twitter. Most have signed up to the service, but then just leave it as they release that they are not going to update it (mostly because texting twitter uses up credit, and they would rather text friends with that credit). In addition, they realise that no one is viewing their profile, so their ‘tweets’ are pointless.

You can read the whole report here.

The works of thy hands

A beautiful prayer by Augustine, cited by Calvin in Institutes (3.17.14)

I do not say to the Lord,
Despise not the works of my hands;
I have sought the Lord with my hands, and have not been deceived.
But I commend not the works of my hands,
for I fear that when thou examinest them thou wilt find more faults than merits.

This only I say, this asks this desire,
Despise not the works of thy hands.
See in me thy work, not mine.
If thou sees mine, thou condemnest;
if thou sees thine own, thou crownest.
Whatever good works I have are of thee.

HT: Justin Taylor