Walking and Talking

In 1 Corinthians 10:31 Paul says:

So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God

God’s been showing me that one of the biggest ways be do this is by a simple comparison. Let me explain

Eating: I primarily like asian food, dishes with alot of sauce and rice. On days when for some reason I have skipped breakfast and lunch, there are few things I look forward to more than a hot and fresh box of peace (the local chinese takeout..tomato and eggs anyone?) while sitting in front of my computer, checking email and writing blogs. At this moment the Spirit reminds me: Jesus is SO MUCH BETTER than this.

The Bathroom: The bathroom is a holy ground of common grace. The pleasure we derive from doing our business is very much a gift of God. I am so glad God made my body so that I gladly pass out waste. (I’ve met people who bodies did not have such a mechanism) Otherwise I would be very sick all the time. So after i let out a good one and sigh the sigh of deep relief I say to my self: this aint NOTHING compared to Jesus!

My Car: I have a car this year. It’s a blue Corolla ‘05. Nothing fancy, just a good solid automobile. I love driving it, I love driving other people with it. Sometimes, while I’m driving it, it makes me feel like a man. So when I’ve got the window down, the wind in my very short hair and the christian music blasting, I remind myself: Jesus IS better than this.

Friends: They are a gift. friendship cannot be demanded, forced or manipulated. Friends indeed at those people who know everything about you and still like you. There is grief in parting, joy in reunion, and understanding in day to day life. So as the Summer draws near and it’s so good to see friends for the first time in a long time, I recall that, yes, Jesus is even better than this.

Romance: David was very good friends with Jonathan. David even said that Jonathan’s love was better than that of a woman. That speaks to the depth of the friendship they had because the love of a woman (it’s not about sex) is really good. One day, God willing, when I have a girlfriend or wife I want to say: Jesus’ love is better than that of a woman.

We could do this forever. You get the idea. Jesus expressed this very truth himself. He said that whoever would want to be his disciple must hate his mother and father. He doesn’t mean for us to actually hate our parents. He wants us to love and honor them deeply, but to have our love and delight for Jesus be so much greater that the love for all the world looks like hate and utter disgust. God gave us all of our senses and gifts so that we can make good use of them is doing his work, but also in the end saying of them: Jesus is better than this and this thing is only good because of what I see of Christ in it

But, what if this isn’t true. What if we can’t honestly say that Jesus is better than all these things? We should take heart that he really is better. The only thing that needs to be done is to overcome our own blindness. Fortunately, that exactly what God wants to do in us.

Immediately the father of the child cried out and said, “I believe; help my unbelief!”

Mark 9:24

I’ve found by slow realization that the few people who have most affected and encouraged me in seeking and enjoying a intimate relationship with God have turned out to be the ladies in my life. I hesitate to say this publicly lest it make it seem that I haven’t got good brothers in my life- I certainly have, and I thank God so much for the Brothers at Cornell-or that I hang out with the ladies too much, at least I don’t think I do. I think God has made the woman’s heart more readily geared for a deep, intimate relationship with Christ, at least the ladies would more readily humble themselves to the authority of such a sovereign God. I think this is one of the prime ways in which the sisters can show brothers how to grow in a deeper relationship with God, even the brothers seek to build up their sisters as well.  I’d like to just name three women who have affected me intensely and and pointed me so vividly to the Cross and to Joy in Christ.

1. Jia-Li Ai. She is Christian friend of my mom who first befriended my parents when they first moved to the States in 1994. She was the lady who bought me my first picture Bible and bought me all sorts of video tapes and books that gave me a vague but biblical foundation from early on. I praise God so much for her.  She was only a graduate student at the time and so she spent for all those out of her own pocket. She and her husband cared and prayed for my parents and I even before Christ ever came clearly on the scene for myself or my mom. The one thing that I will always remember Jia-Li Ai for is the way she would talk about the characteristics of God. She would recount them with such a sense of assurance and pleasure, like how He loved me very much and did send his son to die for my sins. It seemed as if when she described God in some way it would encourage her so much that she had to verbally reaffirm her deep pleasure in those truths about God.

2. Faith Chan. More than once I’ve asked God why Faith had to graduate early. She has been the single greatest example of someone having deep satisfaction in Christ I have ever met. We weren’t great friends, she didn’t actively invest in me, but her heedless pursue of Jesus was the greatest ministry anyone at Cornell has ever graced me with. I say that with a great sense of awe towards God because there have certainly been people who have poured into me with their life, namely Dave Smith, but I think it is to God’s glory that a scattered-brained little girl would bring him the greater glory. Two quotes from her (or that I first heard from her) that follow me are: “There is nothing better than following Jesus” and “The heart of every matter is a matter of the heart”

3. Jin Zhang. My mom. What a saint. She has suffered alot. We became Christians near the same time, it was the change in her life that drew me to consider Christ as powerful. For myself and most people I know the process of coming to faith is a seemingly laborsome process fraught with putting our hands to the plough and looking back and wondering why we lack joy if we are truly Christian. When my mom first accepted Christ it was as if the floodgates of her life lflew open and everything made sense in light of the Gospel. She became aware of her sin, all the suffering she had and was still enduring, and all the grace that God had shown her from earliest life till now. After I left for college and later on when she was no longer able to go to church I was concerned that her faith would falter. But God has met her is such intimate and tender ways that when I come back she is eager to recount to me the wonderous deeds of God and say over and over again, how wonderful God has been to her, how life would be so miserable without him, and how she would never ever turn back to her old way of life. Her face beams with assurance and joy. She is not a theologian, she doesn’t know all the terminology but her heart is spring-loaded to understanding and embrace the deep truths of God’s sovereignty, all sufficiency,  atoning sacrifice, and so on. Even though she hasn’t been to church in a long time, when she talks about her devotions she exposits and exegetes as if by nature.  She is one of the prime examples why I believe that an essentially calvinistic understanding of Scripture is right. The Spirit has revealed to her those same truths that the rest of us fight and bicker over. Contend me must, and God does gives grace to the humble and suffering.

Hope that encourage you sisters to be godly women, and you men to cherish the godly women in your lives! Praise be to Jesus!

The Poem i wrote for Valentine’s Day felly dinner 2008. It is about Christ’s love for the Church and how it is the source of all love. Indeed he died for our sins. It came to mind again as I’ve been thinking about relationships in my own life and in the life of people around me.

I once had a cute little crush,
I was too shy so I always stayed hushed.
Another took her, great was my woe
my joy was stillborn within my soul.

I pondered and asked, love why so cold?
wilt thou shun me till I’m old?
“Stillness, peace joy to to you soul!”
“Heartbreak”, the Lord said,” too did I know.”

He said to me:
“There was a woman that I did love,
with great passion and caring of
I made her, gave her all of my joy.
My treasures she played, just like a toy
(Gen. 1-3)

Sin I hate, my wrath was upon her!
I stripped her, naked before her lovers
Silly, brutal a stiff necked nation
hearts set on each new sensation
(Hosea 1-4)

But the love I have could not be contained
nor could her sin still yet remain
I contrived a way hoping against hope
that my lover and I once again may elope
(Psalms, Genesis, 2 Samuel)

I wrestled in the Garden drops of blood in my sweat
sorrow to death, my love had been set.
Her sin I absorbed, Crushed from above
is this not the evidence of love?
(The Gospels, Isaiah 53)

I loved her with my undying love,
I loved her with my dying love.
My Bride! she’s mine, I rejoice!”
This He told me with his own voice
(the Gospels, Ephesians, Revelation)

Brothers, Sisters, can we loved as he did?
We are more fickle than we’d like to admit.
So before you go off on your romantic search,
remember, twas Christ who first loved the Church

Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”
This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.
Let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.
(Ephesians 5)

alright…I said it, no point in trying to humble about it. I have to admit, I think it’s pretty cool.

I’m working at National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) this Summer. It’s the same organization that Ronny worked for last Summer but a different location. I am working at the main NIST campus in Gaithersburg MD. Yes…this is where my home is (for now atleast). Part of the reasoning was that if I didn’t get in anywhere else for the Summer I’d just come home work at NIST. That reasoning played out well. I didn’t get in anywhere else.

To be honest, NIST wasn’t on my list of most prestigious places to work. After all it’s not even a DoD lab, but rather and Department of Commerce lab. They doing stuff to help people measure stuff better…how exciting can that be. Yet…have I not learned anything? When has the worth of any man’s life consisted in the prestige of things?

I’m working the Laser Cooling and Trapping Group, a part of the Atomic Physics Division of NIST. This group is in fact one of the leading labs in Condensed Matter Physics, specifically in Bose Einstein Condensates (BEC). BEC’s are a collection of atoms that have been cooled to such a low temperature that they become entirely wavelike in their behavior, to the extent that you can make matter waves much like you make light waves with lasers. They have these crazy cooling and trapping chambers and lasers coming in from all 6 directions. That is what Bill Philips, the head Principal Investigator got his Nobel prize for in 1997.

I am working directly for one of the other PI’s in the lab who does Bose Einstein Condensates as well a biological applications of Optical Trapping. If you know me then you’ll understand the battle that quickly ensued with in me. I’ve been pursing biophysics for the past two semesters now, but to be in a Nobel Winning group for Condensed Matter Physics…Whoa… What is God teaching me? Steadfastness. A physicists life does not consist in the coolness of his project, but in the steadfastness of his heart and mind. O that God would cause my faith to rise. I chose the Biophysics project.

It will involve studying membrane proteins using optical tweezers. I’ll leave it at that lest I get scooped.

That’s what Oxley called the place where the alien were going to go. I think of the time after the semester and before the formal activities of the Summer as something like that: a time between times. Among the many things I did during this time: I played my first game of Starcraft in years, saw Ronny singlehanded turn my living into a warehouse, and I watched indiana jones. I also went to CBS camping trip and the New Attitude Conference.

I told people I would blog about New Attitude, so I will, and gladly so. It ended up being 7+1 people in all who went from Cornell+Binghamton: Rachael Efthmiou, John Sullivan, Joseph Tierab, Jeanne Lee, Christa Chi, Frank Chen, Myself and Joshua Peterson (Bing). God’s Grace was indelible. Transportation? Rachael’s family has a 15 passenger van. Hotel Money? God provided through Christian Union. Dinner Before the trip? Jeanne and Crystal slaved away all afternoon cooking for the eight of us. That is all to say that God most faithful even when we were faithless, because he cannot disown himself. And we certainly had not prayed as we ought.

We left early Saturday Morning. I was the only one to be late so i got to ask for God’s blessing before heading off. At around 10 am we were already in Ohio (I think). The ride down was full of not-so-awkward conversation about marriage and dating as well as songs from Sunday School. We got to Louisville at around 5:30pm, settled in and heading to the first main session.

The theme of the Conference was God’s Word, the spirit of which is best conveyed by Jeremiah 15:16:

When your words came, I ate them;
they were my joy and my heart’s delight,
for I bear your name,
O LORD God Almighty.

I messages that stands out most in my memory right now are Josh Harris’ message on having a right response to God’s word, Mark Dever’s message about the reliability and authority of God’s word and both of John Piper’s messages, the first on William Tyndale the Bible translator, and the second on fight for faith with the word of God. Here is the link to the messages:

http://www.newattitude.org/liveblog/

I will confess now that the weekend was a rather difficult experience for me. I felt restless and unable to let me guard down. I think there were two main reasons. The first was having my perfect image of the organizers (Sovereign Grace Ministries) shattered. As with any large church group, there will be sins committed by one against one another. This hit a little closer to home on this trip. I think this was for me God humbling me to see that no man or church is blameless and we are all so desperately in need of redemption. Yet God was so graciously using this conference because they were faithful to the word and the Spirit.

That leads to my second source of discomfort: the persistent and insistent preaching of the Gospel. Everything about the conference was Gospel saturated as it should it. On the best of days I would say that is what I love. Yet I felt my flesh fighting the message of the cross and of my sin and need for redemption. It’s true that he never gives us more than we can bear, but God is always in the business of challenging us, bring us to our wits end so that we can do that thing we talk so often about, namely, trusting him.

The other half of the blessing was in the fellowship of our group. God was so gracious to us. God allowed us to encourage as well as rebuke each other in love. It really is amazing when brothers and sisters dwell together in unity, especially when they come from different fellowships and even different campuses. That is to God’s glory.

I ended up leaving the conference early. I had to fly back to Maryland to start my job on Tuesday. It was as painful parting, but gladly nobody there wasn’t graduating.

What is the MORAL OF THE STORY?: O that we would so desperately love God’s written word. We really don’t know it. Do you know it as the sword that cuts to divide flesh and bone? Do you know it like David knew it, like Paul knew it? Do you know it as the words that literally give life. I want to.

That’s why I’m going to start memorizing scripture. I have to, for the sake of my soul I must hide his word in my heart. We are willing to take notes in school, willing to labor in writing things down that we have a hard time remembering. WHY do we put so little effort into knowing God’s word? Shame on us, utter shame. Do we believe that it will bring life? Lord, help out unbelief.

I’ll conclude this with sharing with you a song that we sang alot there, Speak O Lord:

The phrase “Give glory to God” was used by the Jews to compel a person to “Tell the truth”

In John 9 Jesus heals a man born blind. When the Pharisees, the religious elite of the day, come investigating they demanded of the regenerated man, “Give glory to God! We know that this man (referring to Jesus) is a Sinner”. Here they are saying, quite twistedly, “Tell the truth, Jesus is not really legit is he?”

But I think this phrase has a lot of truth.

This past month has been very encouraging ministry wise. Ivy League Congress was a great encourage for me. COAH prayer meetings have been better attended. And this last COAH leaders forum was exactly what we had been praying (as lackluster as our prayers were) to be. Leaders from nearly every fellowship was there, people were sharing, being honest about about their struggles as leadership teams. There was brokenness and a desire for purity and reconciliation. It’s sad that at these times that its easy to become unduly content and self satisfied and even easier to give glory to myself.

This is when the Spirit reminds me that I ought not lie but rather to always tell the truth. The truth is that God is at work.

I so easily miss it. I am so easily lied to. I so easily lie to myself and to other. The truth is that it is God who started a good work in all of us and is faithful to take it to completion. It is God is who died to redeem a people for himself. It is God who is calling and regenerating hearts to see him. It is God who is everyday sanctifying his people.  It is God who is every day building up his Church. It is God who can bring revival and harvest.

If He is willing, he can heal us.

Psalm 127 says:

Unless the LORD builds the house,
those who build it labor in vain.
Unless the LORD watches over the city,
the watchman stays awake in vain.
2It is in vain that you rise up early
and go late to rest,
eating the bread of anxious toil;
for he gives to his beloved sleep.

This week in Bible Study we’re going to be talking about how men grow up and in particular about how sons relate to fathers.

Shawn and I got to talking about our own experiences with our dads and it because very clear, very quickly that our relationships with our Fathers were not ideal. We hadn’t thought about what the ideal was but we knew that we didn’t have it. Shawn’s yet to hear a “good job son, I’m proud of you”. I and my father are in total disagreement when it comes to ultimate reality and what really matters in life. We shouldn’t say that it’s all dad’s fault. I know that in my relationship with my dad, as much as he has wronged me, I have wronged him too.

That brings me to think: what ought a father-son relationship look like? Frankly I don’t know of one example that really jumps out at me. I looked through the Bible. Abraham and Issac? They were pretty tight I guess. Issac and Jacob and Esau? That was a royal circus. Jacob and the twelve brothers? uh-uh. David and his sons? Incest, rape, murder..ugh. It’s a mixed bag.

The father-son relationship really is at the center of who God is. Throughout his ministry, Christ repeatedly says that He was sent by the Father, He and the Father are One, He does only what the Father tells Him. What a deep and abiding relationship. It is truly evidence of our sin and our sinfulness that our father son relationships are so broken. I believe this is a deep offense to God. If we say that we are without sin, we are lying.

I’m finding this to be a defining theme in my life. Perhaps it is in yours too. By God’s grace I hope we can reconcile our relationship with our fathers. Not only will be bring  peace to our hearts, but it will glorify God and see him through that reconciliation, which will be the greater peace.

My Grandpa has his surgery last night at 8pm. From what my Mom told me, he’s out and eating. It was a non-invasive procedure to remove a growth somewhere inside his sinus. The growth has pushed on his blood vessels such that his right eye had gone blind. It seems he’ll recover, but that means something quite different at 72 than at age 21.

This has served for me a reminder that all of my family back home are not saved and I don’t know what I ought to do. Please pray that…as the spirit would lead you…I’m not even sure what to ask. Well…1) That Dad would come to know Christ 2) That God would open up an opportunity to share the Gospel and that many in my family would come to know Christ.

Jo-Jo

I went to the Ophthalmologist on Tuesday to get Jo-Jo checked out. It seems that he (jo-jo) is a piece of vitreous humor that has detached from the retina and has become a inhomogeneity. This in itself is not a serious condition but now the concern is that more of the humor will detach from the retina as as it does it could pull the retina off of the back of the eye. AUGH!!! I don’t want to go blind!!! J/K…well, I really don’t want to go blind….but one day we shall see with fresh eyes.

said the LORD God. Us? Our?

I’ve been pondering the Doctrine (and truth) of the Trinity every so often. I’ve found it to be a very satisfying truth to behold: that One God consisting of three persons are in total and eternal love and harmony with each other. I think the reason we find it such a slippery thought to hold in our minds is that, to us, the idea of even two people being in total unity with each other is utterly impossible. We know that no matter how close, how in love, how flexible two people are there is something that separates. The Bible calls that sin.

To us, separate persons = separate wills.

Not so with God. In Him are three distinct persons with wills and visions so utterly the same and in sync with each other that three persons can be one. Amazing! I think we get a glimpse of this in the dynamics of dancing and orchestras. Beyond simple reading of the notes and moving of feet, individual persons given the same vision towards a creative end can produce breathe taking results. God did make us in his image, with the capability of experiencing the kind of fellowship He has within himself. Eternally existing, eternally good.

What happened then on the Cross? Jesus was right to ask “Why?” In fact, all of creation asks WHY? Why, Father, did you forsake your Son? What could have possibly led you do such a thing? What could have led you to break the fellowship that is the foundation of who you are?

Besides they physical agony of floggings and the crucifixion, God the Son endured the infinite agony of being turned away by the Father. How black our sin must be that it would require God to literally break himself apart.

For our sake he was made to be sin who knew no sin that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.

Here is a really good sermon on the topic of the Trinity by Mark Driscoll from Mars Hill Church. It is the first in a series titled, “Doctrine: What Christians Should Believe”. I encourage to check it out.

I have speck in my eye. Literally.

You know how sometimes after you wake up or when you squint eyes hard there are these patterns in your eye that move along with your eye? There has a been a black dot in my left eye for the past three days. I called Gannett this morning figuring that this could actually be serious. The nurse told me that it was probably something called a “floater“. It’s a speck, literally, floating in the vitreous humor that casts a shadow on the retina causing me to see a black dot about the diameter of a tooth pick.

It looks kinda like this:

but mine is just one dot and it’s opaque.

It’s been with me for three days now…and according to the nurse probably for life…so I decided to name it. It’s name is Jo-Jo, in honor of Jo-Jo from Horton Hears a Who.

I suppose this side of Heaven I’ll always have a speck in my eye.