WHAT MAKES OUR RELATIONSHIPS STRONG? Do we nurture our connections with empathy and interest, or do we assume that friendships always pick up from where they were left off? Do we only have friends who accept friendship on our terms? If so, we need to examine how equitably we have treated others.

Aristotle once said, ‘Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow-ripening fruit.’ This is a truism that also applies to our relationship with God, our Father. He loves it when His children talk to Him spontaneously with the confidence that He is with us all the time! So we cannot expect to enjoy an intimate relationship with Him if we only want Him to respond on demand and on our terms.

You don’t need to read many stories about Jesus to get the impression that, whether in private or in public, the Lord never cared about handing out instant responses or easy answers to anyone.

Jesus was only 33 when He was crucified, yet He lived a fuller life than most of us who are way past that age. He wasn’t contented to just settle for believable alternatives but instead made several hard choices. Because He had the emotional fortitude to handle difficult emotions without the need for forced smiles and platitudes, He never cared about reacting in ways that made Him more relatable and preferred instead to engage people in ways that had lasting effects. In short, He did not live a life of performative existence but one that truly fulfilled God’s call, in unexpected ways.

Christians are all too familiar with the famous passages describing Jesus’s disciple Peter walking on water. We are impressed with Peter’s bold statement to Jesus in Matthew 14:28, ‘‘Lord, if it’s You, tell me to come to You on the water.’’

Consider how this statement translates into clickbait titles today: ‘First Man To Walk On Water’, ‘Witnesses Reported Man Walking On Water’, ‘The Stunt That Made Peter Stand Out’, ‘Jesus’ Disciple Tanked After Few Steps On Water’, or  ‘Did Peter WoW (Walk On Water) For A Promotion?’.

Imagine being jolted, tossed around, turned upside down as you are carried at high speed and then dropped from a dizzying height. It is a full-body experience of extremities but you are told to remain seated and keep still at all times without twisting or shifting your body in a way that may compromise your safety.

To be sure, roller coaster rides are not for the faint-hearted. In many ways, so is life. While most of us are not thrill-seekers who go after extreme experiences, life has its way of throwing us into turmoil, turning our lives upside down, and jolting every shred of faith we have in a loving God.

So what do we do when our normalcy no longer looks familiar and everything going on in our lives looks hell-bent to crush us mentally and emotionally?

ON MOST DAYS, MOST OF US pretty much navigate life on our own. But as soon as we experience something that shakes us up and shatters our normalcy, we instantly become more aware of who we can call upon for support and comfort.

Think back to the last time you went through a personal ordeal. Did you consider how God would help or if He was even available? Did you think He might be busy with more important things of a grander scale than your mini crises? Or maybe you thought you were being tested by God, so you decided to wing it quietly on your own. But over time, an insuppressible cry for relief, resolution and results began to surface in your consciousness and form itself into four words: GOD, WHERE ARE YOU?

If there is one role that people perennially feel underqualified for, being a parent would surely make the list. Indeed, nothing can adequately prepare parents to raise up their children without making mistakes along the way.

So, what does being ‘unqualified’ mean? It refers to not having official recognition as a practitioner of a particular profession or activity through having satisfied the relevant conditions or requirements. If we consider the parental role, how it involves multiple skill sets and yet is never considered paid labor and never shows up in the gross domestic product (GDP) of any economy, we can say that it pretty much fits the bill.

As the world re-opens for travel, many naturally imagine how things can finally go back to the way they were. There is something ‘good’ about ‘the good old days’ even though this itself is a precarious premise. For believers, however, this is also a time for an important self-assessment: how have I lived differently for God in the past two years?

If COVID-19 had been a test for how you have been living out your life purpose as a Christian, how would you score yourself? To be sure, we all want to know that since the time COVID-19 disrupted all normalcy as we knew it before, we have become better connected with other humans, and at the same time, discovered ways to live and relate that no longer depend on what comes to us conveniently.

Imagine telling someone, “Let God be God.” You’re likely to get a response describing how things would imaginably be better if God had intervened to change outcomes. Most of us are familiar with Christian comebacks and one-liners from well-meaning people. Most of the time, we want to believe that these are not airy axioms and the people who say it do so from personal experience of God's goodness. After all, we are taught to encourage and strengthen each other so we don't lose hope when the going gets tough. So invariably, we find ourselves saying things like, “This too shall pass”, “God won’t give you more than you can handle”, or "In all things, God works for the good of those who love Him".

Bishop T.D Jakes once said, “Salvation is the root and the resurrection is the fruit.” In saying that, he referred to the root as a source or an origin of something, and in terms of salvation, it is where we begin our faith journey with Jesus. The fruit, on the other hand, points to Christ’s resurrection from the grave. The word ‘fruit’ also points to a life that has undergone transformation, attained growth over time, and developed some degree of maturity.

Looking at the root and the fruit as symbols of Easter significantly changes how we could live as believers every day. When we see that resurrection is not a standalone historical event on the church calendar but an unquenchable and irrepressible power that we have access to, it means everyone can have a purposeful and vibrant life. We can also say that our faith journey does not begin or end at our salvation but it is a life that displays the power of Christ’s resurrection. This is why the resurrection of Jesus matters and why our lives matter - right here, right now.

As long as we’re alive, we have the potential to improve our health and well-being. In our last post, we quoted Leonard Ravenhill who opined that Jesus came into the world to revive spiritually dead people and not to reform them. Ravenhill doesn’t mince his words when it comes to three areas of spiritual life - sin, prayer and revival. It is true that when one is dead in the spirit, one is ‘dead’ to a lot of things. Therefore, until God restores our spiritual life, He can’t turn our lives around.

At the same time, let’s get this straight: just because God saves all kinds of people does not mean He has no expectations of change in anyone. In His day, Jesus hung out with all kinds of people. Wherever He went, He was often inundated by crowds. Yet, big crowds and large followings had never been His goal or the mark of achievement He sought.

In fact, we see that Jesus routinely turned people away with piercing questions and hard truths – practices that are the very antipode of expanding your fan base. Today, there are YouTube personalities with large followings for their carefully curated content intended to entertain, please and appease their followers. Often, these personalities are careful not to make a stand for anything that may result in a fallout with their fans whom they need to stay popular.

When we think of directions, what often comes to mind are roadmaps, global positioning system (GPS) and directional signages. Just as common are directions and instructions - both explicit and embedded - found in the Bible and in our conversations with some people God puts in our life that point us in the right direction.

We see one such instance when Nicodemus, an influential Jewish religious leader, covertly sought out Jesus and received more than what he was ready to hear. For him to be seen talking with Jesus was nothing short of scandalous and would create deep controversies within the Jewish elites. But while he hid his meeting with Jesus by going to Him after nightfall, the Lord responded by bringing to light, for the first time, the most confounding truth about being born again (John 3:3).

Indeed, the direction, depth and determination of God’s love for mankind is encapsulated in the widely-known verse from John 3:16. To truly understand its intent, we have to apply three separate filters to analyze this verse.

Is sharing a natural behaviour for believers? Do we only share big news like a wedding, a much-anticipated pregnancy, a welcomed re-opening of global travel or a long-awaited promotion? What about small personal wins, or recent movies, stories and food we have enjoyed? What about our personal stories of Jesus and God’s love? Does it feel unnatural and uncomfortable to introduce God into our private conversations? Have we lost the spark for Jesus?

Today, we risk losing the art of preserving oral traditions when we prefer to text rather than talk, and use emojis rather than show real emotions, empathy and compassion in person. If only we realize the power of God’s salvation which we have received, the significance of sharing the ordinary moments of life with God, and the deeper human connection they make possible, we would think differently about conversations.

SOME SAY it is synonymous with thankfulness, some describe it a feeling you get when you have experienced kindness, some say it feels like the grace of unwarranted favour. Others say it brings joy and a feeling of being loved. Beyond feelings, some assert that it is an attitude that shows through actions and words. According to Dutch author, Fred De Witt Van Amburgh 1866-1944, gratitude is a currency that we can mint for ourselves and spend without fear of bankruptcy. Amburgh was convinced that no one is more impoverished than one who had no gratitude.

Yes, we are talking about gratitude - often expressed as a cursory ‘thank you’ in a very transactional way. You get something from someone that you did not expect and a ‘thank you’ balances the score. From young, we were taught to mind our Ps and Qs, but as believers, our gratitude ought to go deeper into our schema or mental model for how we connect with God and people. Gratitude ought to be a consciousness that permeates every aspect of our lives.

If we are honest, most of our conversations don’t go beyond expecting or giving binary responses (true/false, I will/I won’t). We unconsciously put up artificial barriers to signal to others our discomfort with prying personal questions to keep people in the shallow end of relationships. When something happens to us in the deep end, we find that we don’t have a community to support and strengthen us.

Right before Jesus told His disciples that He would have to go to Jerusalem and “suffer many terrible things at the hands of the elders, the leading priests, and the teachers of religious law” and also die, He asked them pointedly, in plain language, “Who do you say I am?” (Matthew 16:13-19).

On that particular day, He had deliberately taken His disciples to Caesarea Philippi, a Gentile territory steeped in pagan worship and idolatry. It was an unusual venue for the talk He would have with them, but He had to remove them not only from familiar religious and ministry settings, but also from communities that knew who they were so that they could be left alone.

The Bible recounted a time when the Jewish community was under the threat of being wiped out, and a privileged queen of Jewish descent was hesitant to plead for mercy with the King because of the risks involved (Esther 4). In her defense, she argued that it was not time (v11). Very quickly, Mordecai, her uncle, issued her this fiery reprimand: “For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?”

Adults often nudge children to embrace new experiences because they want their little ones to learn to embrace life as an adventure and grow in the confidence that they are surrounded by people who love them. Strangely, as adults, we tend to depend more on ourselves, telling ourselves that our past experience is our best teacher. But because humans tend to remember unpleasant experiences, we avoid all kinds of new situations even when there is a real chance that we may experience something good. We take pride in doing things the same way we have always done even when deep inside, we are yearning for a change in our lives.

 HEALTH is not a one-dimensional attribute. Although our body and physical health are more visible than other aspects of our lives, our mental health, emotional health, relational health and spiritual health are equally important.  

In John 5:1-5, we saw an unusual conversation Jesus had with one out of several disabled persons who often went to a ‘healing pool’ in Bethesda to just lie out. Jesus was visiting Jerusalem for a Jewish festival, and He felt it important to stop by the Bethesda pool. According to folklore, anyone who got into the pool when it was stirred got healed. In fact, it was a popular hangout for persons with disability; ‘the blind, the lame, the paralyzed’ often made their way there, just to get closer to a place that offered hope. Although Bethesda was architecturally beautiful with impressive colonnades, it was not a place that smelled nice because most of the disabled lacked the help they needed to maintain proper hygiene.

People today are obsessed with finding the best fit for everything in life. Whether they are considering jobs, friends, church, sports, volunteering activities, or anything that requires commitment, something fits well when it allows them to enjoy existing pleasures with minimal change and inconveniences. We want options where all outcomes between the x-axis and y-axis are predictable with as little surprise as possible. Even our spiritual journey resembles spurts of occasional events like a short sprint of discipleship, a shot put to reach a given prayer goal, a single marathon of mission fieldwork before we stop and return to activities that best fit our own goals.

This week, Lunar New Year is celebrated by many communities all over the world. Common Lunar New Year rituals that are de rigeur and observed by all adherents include the family reunion dinner, donning new clothes, serving tea to parents and elders, and exchanging of auspicious wishes that make conversations atypical! Indeed, it’s not every day that you hear greetings like, “May your life be smooth with energy and vigor, and may you have a life that is full. Happy New Year!” It highlights the strong oral traditions of the communities, emphasizing teaching and traditions passed on from generation to generation. Indeed, Lunar New Year practices are almost sacred! Sociologists assert that recurrent annual celebrations like the Lunar New Year strengthen the solidarity and the collective conscience of all adherents. In the same way, the Bible also emphasizes the importance of passing on biblical teachings and a godly way of life from generation to generation, from our families to people God has placed in our lives. It is the substance of legacy-making in our own lives, the essence of fellowship with other believers, and the impact we make in society. On an everyday basis, many things that we do so naturally are in fact value-laden family traditions passed down to us. Even simple acts like saying thank you to the postman or delivery personnel, the way we dress at home, celebrating birthdays, having family meals, greeting elders who are present and good work ethics are normative practices that we have been taught since young.

In many ways, memories help us connect effortlessly with the past, but no matter how grateful we are for them, or how much comfort they bring us, they live only in the past. We all know that it takes more than remembering something to keep it going. This is true not only for human relationships but also for our relationship with God: we certainly need to go beyond the memories of our past experiences of His goodness and His miracles. In all seasons of life, we need to continually experience God not so we could build an impressive spiritual archive but so that we could be strengthened in our core as believers. Commonly, we turn to God only when we face setbacks. But as soon as normalcy returns, we let the hustle of everyday life take over and set the relationship on a ‘cruise mode’ till the next mishap. As a result, our connection with God looks more like a seasonal curve with peaks of miracles and dips of complacency and very little else in between.