What Makes A Great family?

Picture taken in Lueven, Belgium last winter.

I suppose this a question worthy of my reflection as my son and I fly a couple of hours ahead to Kota Kinabalu to prepare for my wife’s surprise 50^th birthday today. She and my daughter arrive later tonight.

What makes a family great?

A deep sense of belonging to the family. Then family activities become a priority and everyone wants to be a part of anything that spells family – altars, dinners, holidays. They make time for these things despite their busy schedules.

The ability to manage conflicts healthily so that misunderstandings, grievances and differences are trashed out to make the family unit stronger and not weaker, always aiming for the greater good of the family.

The showing of love and appreciation for each other. No one, no matter how old he is, outgrows the need to feel loved and appreciated.

The ability to be connected even when living apart by not letting distance and time erode their bonds. They find ways to stay connected and enrich their relationships, even if it gets inconvenient.

The cultivation of a strong sense of family identity, rich in traditions. The rituals and traditions they create and pass on help them feel unique as a family and connected to each other. The more unusual the tradition, the better.

The development a family history through keepsakes, stories, and so forth. Holidays, gifts, cards, photos, memoirs, journals and such give the family a sense of heritage; some things to talk about and reminisce at family get-togethers.

Honouring family values. Family decisions are made based on those values. Family priorities are forged out of those values. Everyone is clear and committed to those values.

Celebrate life together — often! They find and create joy in being together and find every excuse to celebrate the blessing of family that God has blessed together.

That is what we will do this weekend. Wewill make the celebration special and memorable, filled with fun, laughter and food and bring back home keepsakes, memories and deep, deep bonding that we belong to each other and together, we belong to our Creator!

Wish us a good time!

From the Cedar Room to Alor Setar

It was only last Saturday that the church pioneers, leaders and staff gathered at the Cedar Room in the Garden Hotel - at the very basement room where it all began for about 30 people who called themselves Agape Baptist Church some 20 years ago.

It was awesome to be connected to the past, to all that God had promised then and see it being fulfilled all these years. It was even more awesome to catch the pulse of destiny in the Cedar Room and realize that the little tributary that began as a stream in the desert then is now growing into a mighty river.

But the awe with the past and its relevance to the future did not just end with last Saturday. It got carried into the entire week. At the Staff Retreat in Penang, I got the staff team to explore the food and people on Cintra Street. Forty years back, my grandma would bring me there for her favourite red bean tong sui boiled with dried orange peel. This past week, I walked right back to the same shop kept the same way it was 40 years ago to eat the same red bean soup tasting just the same as it was so long ago. The taste, the place, the people - I was reconnected once again to the past.

Then my wife and I came to spend the weekend in Alor Setar. I was back at the same kampung I grew up in; met the same neighbours and sat in the same house chatting with my adoptive mother. Nothing much has changed except for the fact that everyone of us has grown older. Again, I got in touch with my past.

I took my wife to eat rojak at the push cart stall that stood in front of my secondary school. It felt I was back eating the same rojak sauce I was accustomed to growing up. We had lunch at the famed Mee Abu - the best mee goreng and passembor ever, still in the same place, still the very same taste.

The past - God was in it. He was there shaping the future.

I came away this week with one huge lesson about the past: when you leave your history, you leave your future for God uses the past to shape your future.

The Cedar Event: Behold....A New Thing!

Last Saturday, returning back to the Cedar Room, Garden Hotel after 20 years to worship at the same place with some of the same people who worshipped there and with the same worship team 20 years ago was more than memorable. As I stood at the same spot I use to stand 20 years ago with my hands lifted up to the Lord, it brought back powerful memories of the past – of a church so small in a place so insignificant with a congregation without vision or direction but with a God who was in those small beginnings.

Twenty years ago God gave me a promise for the small little church that met at that basement room – Isaiah 43:18-19 :

"Forget the former things;

do not dwell on the past.

See, I am doing a new thing!

Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?

I am making a way in the desert

and streams in the wasteland.

Ever since then, God had not stopped doing new things. In fact, one of the characteristics of the church is new things, again and again. It was there in the Cedar Room that the Lord began that little stream called Agape. And over the years, the stream had meandered through mountains and valleys, obstacles and valleys and today, it is gaining the strength of a river and it is on its way to becoming a mighty river!

The sense of destiny at the Cedar Room that evening was indescribable. It was truly something to get in touch with the promise in the place where it was given and to see how true God has been to what He had promised and then to charge the next generation to keep expecting God to do new things even after the founding generation has passed on.

Awesome!

Are You Fully Present?

A challenge that is growing daily amongst us is our ability to be fully present where we are at the moment with others, especially in terms of all the technological distraction that exists today.

Personally, I’m very aware of my own tendencies to attempt to “multi-task” when people are talking or to jump on my iPhone at any given moment, or feel the need to check the many different social networks that are available to me.

What happens is that I fail to be completely present with others, and the fallout is, weakened relationships.

Henry Nouwen in his writings gave several concrete principles on how to care and the most prominent goes back to the idea of being present.

Nouwen believed that caring means, first of all, to be present with each other, ‘offering one’s own vulnerable self to others as a source of healing.’

One does not need to be useful as much as to be present, he said.

To be present is to listen and to identify with each other as mortal, fragile human beings who need to be heard and sustained by one another, not distracted or entertained. Henry Nouwen’s most powerful expression of this idea is found in his book Here and Now. (pp. 129-130)

And Nouwen is correct! I’m committing to making this a reality, not just for myself but for others so I can be a source of healing and be much more “useful” to others. And there are simply too many things and people that I don’t want to “miss,” especially my family.

What about you?

A Day Of Revelation

I spent all of yesterday on Phil 4:4-7. I was preparing for Sunday's message. It was good getting away from the marathon of meetings to carve out an oasis for study and revelation. It was refreshing. It was invigorating. It brought me back to life!

The Holy Spirit is given to us to illuminate us and lead us into all truth. I love it when I sit opening the Word and I find the Lord using His Word to challenge my assumptions; violate my expectations and shift my paradigms. The effect for me is transformational.

That's what happened all day yesterday. And at the end of it the Lord gave me what was needed to take an old familiar passage, which people have read and heard so many times before and make it NEW with fresh insights.

The best speakers have a way of saying old things in new ways. I want to be like that in my preaching.

Usually, when you hear someone preach, you can tell the difference between something that is manufactured and something that is anointed. It is the difference between predictable and prophetic. It is the difference between theoretical and practical.

But anointed, prophetic and practical preaching comes from the unhurried time you give to the Holy Spirit to illuminate the Word into your soul. You allow the Holy Spirit to make you think; make you feel the passage. And I just love it when that happens to me as I open the Word.

One last thought. I love a speaker who makes me think and makes me feel. They have great thoughts, but they speak from the heart. And I believe they do so because they have been in the presence of the Lord.

Remember: Your best innovation flows from revelation. You must prioritize the presence of God to flow in revelaton.