Recovered post ...

Being a NEWBIE in my church

I've just joined my current church(God's Vineyard Church) for a month and they've put me in the New Believers' class. My first lesson was about how we become a new creation when we believe in Jesus Christ and accept Him as our Saviour. When I attended the first class , part of me was filled with pride .. I felt that I wanted to let the pastor know that I had been a Christian for a long time and I've known all the basic stuffs about Christianity but I did not do so , because that would certainly make me look like someone with an ego the size of Jupiter (the largest planet in our solar system!) ..another part of me felt that God wanted me to be humble . Eventhough we may have been Christians for many years , it does not mean that we can no longer learn anything new about God.

Right now i'm attending the New believers' class every week and i found that I've not only learnt more about Jesus and His word but I also have the priviledge of understanding how newcomers feel when they first join a new congregation/church or a new fellowship. They must have felt so overwhelmed! It's quite scary to be among faces that you're not familiar with. Building friendships requires time and effort. I've also realised the importance of making newcomers feel welcome . It's not what we preach that ultimately stays in their hearts.. but with their limited vocab of Christian lingo and knowledge about our God , the easiest way to introduce Jesus to them is to demonstrate our love and warmth , to show them that we really appreciate their presence.

Let me share something i've learnt this morning. It's about meditating on God's word. Psalm 1:2 tells us of a man whose delight is in the law of the Lord , and on His law he(the man) meditates day and night. My BS group members , Xinyi, Crysteen and Belinda were discussing about meditating on God's word last friday. We didn't quite know what it meant to meditate on God's word . The images of someone doing Yoga (legs crossed and hands rested on knees) immediately came to our minds .. meditation , huh? I've yet to discover the full meaning of meditating on God's word but a part of it must involve reading the passage carefully , examining it (with a magnifying glass , ya?) and asking ourselves questions regarding the passage. Some of the common questions that we can ask are , who is the author? to whom was it addressed ? what is the context of the verse in the passage ? (rest of questions covered in bible study handouts) .

We would see the results when we take the effort to meditate on God's word. When we read the bible, we must begin to respond to it . If we read it like a novel, without examining each sentence carefully, then the bible will just be another lifeless book to us. In Hebrews 4:12, it states that the Word of God is living and active , sharper than any double-edged sword ... God's word must bring forth transformation of the mind/attitude change and also our actions.

My beginners' class leader said something that stunned me . I don't know why his words surprised me because what he said was something that i've known all this while .Maybe i had not believe it enough. He said that we would be transformed by what we read if we allow the words to come off the pages of the book and live in our hearts. He used a simple illustration and many would agree that this illustration will strike a chord in the hearts of all students.

Before we all started our course , we thought and acted like A-level students... when we started our courses, we were assigned books in our reading lists. Some of these books seem impossible to understand . I thought my pharmacology book was written for aliens from Mars .. who would understand all those jargons strewn around ? But as i went through my course , as I spent more time with my pharmacology book .. I was (pleasantly) surprised to find that I'm begining to understand what the author is saying . I had gradually acquire the vocab to read all the medical junk in my reading list (Hooray!) . After 2 and a half years , I discovered that I'm begining to think and act like a pharmacist. My housemate (who's also my coursemate) has now developed a paranoid attitude towards overdose of Panadol . hehe...

Now, this is what I call responding to what we read. For those who do law (like Xinyi, Allister, Laura and Kwan Wei).. I'm sure that they can tell you that they are very much affected by what they read in their super-thick law textbooks and what they learnt in their lectures ! Sometimes conversations about law just creep into their conversations ...

If the Word of God is transforming us, we should be able to see ourselves thinking more like Christ, talking more about him and also becoming more concern about God's kingdom ! Have you been transformed by God's word ? Do you talk about our saviour more than ever before ? these are little things that indicates how much we're affected by the Bible . If our minds are still very much influenced by the pattern of the world , then we should evaluate ourselves and check if we're taking God's word seriously enough .

Have a blessed Sunday!

-SL