As we continue our reflection on Psalm 23, the impression that the writer did not seem to have a shred of ambivalence towards God is hard to ignore.

In fact, the certitude he had about God is admirable, especially when he talked about going through the ups and downs of life. In verses 2-3, he resolutely tells readers, “He lets me…He leads me…He restores my soul…He guides me…”. And in verses 4-5, he addresses God directly with confidence, “for You are with me…Your rod and Your staff…You prepare a table…You have anointed….”

Sure, it’s always easy to talk about God’s goodness when we’re living trouble-free lives, but as soon as a calamity and personal crisis appears, we often start wondering if God has somehow changed His mind towards us. Instead of confidence in Him, we send Him a long list of why don’t You do this or that, and why hasn’t this or that happened for me.   

There’s a time of the year when teams scramble to put together their budget numbers and business goals for the next fiscal year. Workers are rewarded by how well they deliver on their goals. Unless one is living under a rock, we all know that the trajectory to success is one that rewards the ability to embrace change, speed and agility. The pace is intense – everyday.

Our experience of God’s love can be likened to an unending trip and depending on our ability to follow God as our Guide, some can find it unpredictable or beyond our capacity to comprehend. Others, however, see God’s love as steadfast, calming, very present, unconditional, or a love that never fails or changes. Yet, others find that God’s love helps them stay secure in different seasons. Others have encountered God as a loving Father who is forgiving and whose love is unconditional. Picture these keywords as memorials and tokens of hope from our individual journey with God that we leave for others, especially those who feel lonely on a very long and difficult trek.

Indeed, no words can adequately describe the love of God. As echoed in an old hymn, ‘the Love of God is greater far than tongue or pen can ever tell; it goes beyond the highest star, and reaches to the lowest hell.’ To be sure, God’s love is not fragmented or available to us only if we get our act together. It’s not something we get more or less of according to our behavior, and although we may hurt God’s feelings when we accuse Him of not caring, nothing we do can ever disappoint God.

If Jesus is a magician, He would work miracles and stunts to ensure that we have a problem-free life. If He is a powerful financier, He would ensure we always have the security of wealth and assets to weather any crisis. If He is the ultimate service provider to all humanity, we would have nothing to complain about because life would be nothing but easy.

We all know these are unbiblical misperceptions of Jesus that lead only to disappointment and disheartenment. However, we can be confident that Jesus is always someone we can talk to in any situation or hardship. Yet most days, especially when we are emotionally and mentally worn out, we would rather have fast solutions from Him than hard conversations with Him. We want to get out of challenges, not get better through them. We know exactly what we need to improve our situations if only God has the same mind about it. We know how to get things done, and if only He listened to us, life would be so much better for us.

Do you find that people these days seem constantly preoccupied with making life as satisfactory as possible rather than learning to live fruitfully with Kingdom-mindedness? The quality of human well-being seems centred around finances, job demands, children’s health and education, and even the next vacation plan. When we assume that living well means quickly resolving anything that brings unease and pain, we fail to become better at unpacking what we can learn through them.

This could explain why Jesus occasionally felt disconnected from His disciples. He often said one thing and they thought another thing. After they had experienced the miracle of feeding over 5000 people with the meagre resource of five loaves and two fish (Matthew 14:13-21), you’d think they would have a different conversation with Him when they faced the prospect of feeding another four thousand people. But no, they asked the same question, ‘“Where could we get enough bread in this remote place to feed such a crowd?”’ (Matthew 15:29-38). It was as though they never learnt anything from Jesus.

You're in a crisis. A deadline is looming closer. The cost of inaction is increasingly painful and hard to ignore. There are different voices around you. Cynics say do everything you can to save yourself. Pessimists say nothing you do is going to make a difference. Christians say turn to Jesus – He is the Rock to lean on. The voice of pragmatism says take everything with a pinch of salt. Who will you listen to?

The Oxford dictionary defines trust as a "firm belief in the reliability, truth, or ability of someone or something". Conventional wisdom says that people need to prove that they are reliable and true to what they say they are before they can be trusted. We want proof of loyalty because no one likes to be taken in and get disappointed. But how much proof is enough before we allow ourselves to trust anyone? 

MONEY MATTERS are neither secular nor spiritual but our financial decisions reveal how alive and active the Word of God is in us. Therefore, it is important to talk about the role of money, wealth and possessions in our lives because it helps us to become better and more effective followers of Jesus Christ. Not surprisingly, there are in fact over 2000 Bible verses that mention money, wealth and possessions. This goes to show that they are indeed matters of the heart and the heart of all matters relating to the quality of our lives.

Whether we are rich, poor or in-between, whenever we let money, wealth and possessions become our identity, our self-worth becomes distorted when we have much, and when we lose it, we find ourselves facing an existential crisis.

It’s not unusual for us to play down our needs when someone asks the question, What do you want me to do for you? Maybe we want to avoid embarrassment. Or the relationship lacks the vulnerability that makes disclosure safe. Or perhaps we haven’t really figured out what we need because we have settled into whatever circumstances life has thrown at us. Our internal dialogue says Suck it up, roll with the punches, don't have expectations and you'll not be disappointed. In reality, such thinking not only does not facilitate our faith growth, it also demonstrates a lack of maturity.

Some of us say He is love, some say He’s faithful and awesome. To others, God is a Father and their Saviour. Who God is to us informs how we have personally experienced Him in our lives. He personifies love to the lonely and brokenhearted. He is the faithful God who stays when those we thought would stand by us bailed out. He is a Father who heals our broken relationships with our earthly fathers, and restores us to His fatherhood. Who God is to us becomes the testimonies embedded in the biography of our lives that others see.

International travellers know that their passports, though important proof of identity and residency, do not give them passenger boarding rights. They need travel tickets to show that they have reserved seats for their passage and they need to stay in their seats for their journey. In the same way, we must not make the mistake of thinking that our identity as children of God assures us that we will surely arrive in heaven when our earthly lives come to an end.

Most of us have a pretty good idea of what our skills and strengths are because we know what it takes to get a job done, and even exceed expectations in the daily grind. But are we as confident when asked what our real passion is?

ARE YOU ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE who analyze things to death? Or do you over-intellectualize every experience to avoid facing your own vulnerability? Both are defense mechanisms that will get you stuck, especially when you face setbacks. Instead of taking refuge in Jesus as your resurrected Saviour, you retreat to the voice of human reasoning and response.

We say that man and machines are inseparable but even machines can lose their efficacy over time. We are often updating the operating systems on our devices, sending our cars for scheduled preventive maintenance, and needing to repair or replace household appliances when they fail to operate at their optimum level.

Just like machines, Christians, too, can fail to thrive in their spirit after a while. We may find ourselves constantly striving in survival mode – having all the appearances of a busy life but spiritually languishing inside. Instead of flourishing in the discovery of new strengths and hope through different seasons and leaning on Jesus, the Vine, who sustained us, we pride ourselves in terms of what we had survived – personal or professional setbacks and hardships.

We’ve all had sorbet, smoothie, pudding or cakes made with our favourite fruits from lychee, fresh coconut, mango, kiwi or high-grade durian. Although they look nothing like the real fruit, they are skillfully created to deliver the smell and taste like the real thing, and sometimes even similar nutritional value. The only difference is once you finish it, you won’t find any seeds that produce the real fruit.

This throws a question for us individually as believers: am I a fruity or fruitful Christian? Have I picked up all the superficial mannerisms of Christian-likeness and less of the demanding characteristics of Christ-likeness? Do I go to great lengths to be a member of the ‘right Christian crowds’ but hardly ever step out to make meaningful and enduring connections with anyone?

To be sure, this has nothing to do with how long one has been a Christian, if one is first- or second-generation Christian, or which church one attends. In fact, there is no membership in the world that guarantees automatic fruitfulness in the life of a believer. Rather, John 15:1-8 tells us that God is the Gardener, Jesus is the Vine, and we are the branches. Knowing that we only become branches when we are attached to Jesus (the Vine) removes all ambiguity about how to live a fruitful life.

 “I am the true vine, and My Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in Me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit He prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.” (v1-2).

WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME you quietly told God about a desire and then miraculously experienced what you desired? Did you think it was a random act of kindness from God because He thought you needed a little pick-me-up that day? Or is it because God cares and He responds when we bare our hearts to Him?

To be honest, most of us think of our desire as a topic to avoid with God. We tell ourselves, “Not my will but His be done!”, convinced that we do not need to tell an all-knowing God what we really want, what really matters to us, what we dislike or struggle with. We confuse self-awareness with self-centredness and allow ourselves to become frigid and transactional with God. We may ask Him for a job, to heal us of a long-term disorder, or to restore a broken relationship but we hold back telling Him the feelings, anxieties and hurts behind the ask. We’re content with skin-deep transformations and ‘feel-good’ reliefs. Yet God wants to do so much more in our lives than to give us only superficial outcomes. He wants us to grow in a mature self-awareness that leads to a greater compassion for others.

There are generally two categories of people in our lives: those who empower us to be more than we settle for, and those that enable our settledness in spite of the absence of personal growth. It’s hard to straddle being in the company of both groups because our growth will engender new conversations that make the ‘settled’ group feel uncomfortable and our settledness will frustrate the growth group.

In the same way, it’s near impossible to love God and embrace ‘settledness’ because God’s love is not a feel-good doctrine that guarantees ‘settledness’ as a way of life.

So how do we know when someone loves God, really loves God? If you’ve recently met a new bride or groom, you could easily tell that they are in love. Their body language, energy and conversations give off effusive vibes about their newfound joy. They are always conscious about what the other likes or dislikes, and ready to make adjustments and changes to keep the relationship healthy. Even couples who have been married for years long to continue being loved and loving someone in return. The Bible describes this longing so poetically in Song of Songs 8:5, ‘Who is this coming up from the wilderness leaning on her beloved?’

In early 2020, when humanity was in the throes of a fast-spreading pandemic, a church in the US released a song based on Numbers 6:24-27. Overnight, groups and churches recreated their versions of the song on YouTube in different languages as a show of human solidarity, resilience and hope. They were simply singing four Scripture verses!

Indeed, these short verses demonstrate the heart of God – His indefatigable love and mercy towards humanity. These were the same verses that God had given Aaron and his sons, through Moses, to bless the Israelites during a time when there was disobedience and rebelliousness among God’s people.

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.