Like many others, I was quite struck by the viral youtube making its round in the internet, of a frumpy, middle aged lady looking 10 years older than her 48 years would suggest; coming onstage for Britain’s Got Talent show among jeers and snickers and completely sweeping away the audience and judges with her rendition of Les Miserables “I dreamed a dream”. No, this is not another post for Susan Boyle, but just a reminder that we all have certain prejudices towards people, without even knowing them. We put people in jars, in containers whether we’re conscious of it or not. I admit, I have a few: BMW drivers being reckless; mechanics are out to cheat us all the time etc. Our worldview is so small, it has a devastating effect on the way we deal with others.

Why not widen our views, and give extra grace because of what grace has been given to us? Ask God to increase our tolerance for others, to break us out of prejudices, to allow us to view each other as brothers and sisters, and to pursue peace with all men. I always think that conflict, like love, is a decision. We can choose to hold on to the bitterness of unforgiveness or relent and forgive each other…as Christ has forgiven us.

And back to Susan Boyle…I think her rendition of I dreamed a dream is probably one of the best I’ve heard, and mind you, I’ve heard a lot. I have several recordings of the original barbican, the broadway, the new casts, the australian cast etc. Patti LuPone is still the original Fantine and she has a great haunting voice, perfect for Fantine, but in terms of strength and power, Susan Boyle’s delivery is fantastic…especially when she hits that “And they turn your dreams to shame”, the toughest stretch of the song where she transposes. Most singers break at the last transposition, but hers didn’t. Of course, the song dynamics is a little different, i.e performance vs play but still it was close to call.

I’m a certified Les Miserables geek, so anyone who wants to discuss Les Mis with me, I am more than game! =)

OK, here’s the summary of what happened in our first Jeopardy-like Battle of the Sexes last week:

For guys, we found out that:

1. Chanel “Diamond Forever” Classic Bag is USD261,000,

Leiber Precious Rose cost USD92,000 (Guys answer) and Hermes Matte Crocodile Birkin Bag - USD120,000. Next time girls, listen to Mel, since she carries LV around.

2. KC knows that Louis Vuitton collaborates with Gisele Bündchen and fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

3. The smallest bra size is AAA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brassiere_measurements (search for AAA))

4. Hairspray can be used to remove ink from fabric.

5. All guys know the main characters of “Sex and the City!”

6. Johann is very proficient at knowing that Reiki is NOT a massage, due to years of experience in Massage parlors.

Girls also learnt:

1. Spider-man’s first love is Gwen Stacy, not Felicia Hardy or Mary Jane Watson.

2. Dune 2 is the father of all Real Time Strategy Games

3. The golf wedge club with the lowest loft is the pitching wedge. There is NO SUCH THING AS A GREEN WEDGE!!

4. Wolverine’s claws are made of Adamantium.

5. Real Madrid is the club that won the most European and Champions League Cup - 9 times.

Strangely, the guys also know a lot about Lipstick Jungle actress Brooke Shields and know that Vivien Leigh was Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind. The girls know Bruce Willis played Detective John Mclane in Die Hard.

We also learnt that Alvin Chan is considered as the most knowledgable in all girls and guys aspects, moving between the teams 5 times over the round. Questions he could answer included:

1. Fashion house in Italy not based in Milan - Gucci

2. Actor who played Mr Orange in Reservoir Dogs - Tim Roth

3. The line “The Best trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist” came from The Usual Suspects.

4.  Roger Wilco was the character from – Space Quest

5. The brother of Gouken in Street Fighter and wants to destroy Ryu - Akuma

The two questions that no one could answer?

1. What is Thallasotheraphy - Use of seawater and marine products in Spa

2. Who died defending her team from Vargas in Extreme X-Men Series? Psylocke.

Final Score: Guys 4 Girls 4!

It sounds like a great title for a book, doesn’t it?

A simple illustration we used in cell a couple of weeks back on priorities in life was this:

1. Get an empty glass

2. Fill it with golf balls (you can probably fill it with 3 - 4) without it spilling over. Once again our cell host offered to be the Vana White assistant to the illustration.

3.  Ask,is the cup full of golf balls? Can we put in any more golf balls without spilling? (Yes and no)

4. Now, open a bag of kuaci. To the uninitated, kuaci are roasted melon seeds, extremely addictive, usually a delicacy for birds or chinese people who sit around coffee shops. Oh, for some reason, it’s impossible to resist it during chinese new year, especially when watching a kung-fu movie or playing cards. Anyways.

5. Pour the precious kuaci into the cup. (Don’t worry, kuaci is quite cheap). It will fill up the gaps between the golf balls.

6. Ask, is the cup full of kuaci and golf balls? Can we add anymore kuaci without spilling and making a mess? (Yes and no again)

7. Finally, fill in water. The water will seep through the balls and kuaci till it is full. Now you got a great kuaci-golfball cocktail!

8. Use another cup, but this time do it in reverse. Fill the cup with water, then try adding kuaci and golf balls without spilling anything. Is it possible? (No. If somehow it’s possible, you better relook at your steps)

What’s essentially being said is this. The cup represents our life. We have choices to fill it with different things. The golf balls are the important things in life. Our relationship with God, our family, or health, true friendships. Basically, if everything else is lost, and only these are left, your life will still be full.

The kuaci represents all the other stuff that are good to have but not essential. Our jobs for instance. Sure, money is really required. But hey, if we lose our jobs, is that at the same level of losing our family, our kids, our health etc? We can still adjust, if we have our health. Take a lower paid job, adjust expenses etc. Our house, our cars are all good to have, but if we need to scale back to a smaller car, a rented house, we still can do it. It’s nowhere at the same level of losing our faith, or losing our family members.

The water represents all the other things in life. The small stuff. Your sports. Your golf. Your movie times, your hangout times, your parties, your hobbies. If we don’t do these things, sure, we feel like we’re not fulfilled somewhat, but hey, don’t sweat the small stuff.

If we put in the small stuff first in our lives and worry about it, we’ll never have enough room for the things that matter. If we fill the cup with water, we won’t have time for the kuacis and the golf balls. And see, not everything can become your golf balls, because they are big and they take a big part of our lives. Sometimes I find it hard to understand how anyone can obsess over their cars and sports like golf and football and neglect their family or relationships. It’s ridiculous, to devote so much time into silly things like that. There’s a difference between passion and obsession. Passion is controlled, and is positively infectious to others around. A person passionate about his football team is a great person to be around. But obsession is uncontrolled. A person who neglects his duties as a father, husband and continuously choose hobbies over family and God and ministry? He’ll end up miserable, because he has filled his cup with useless water. And worse, he makes others around him miserable.

So, let’s pick the golf balls over the kuacis, and let the kuacis come first over the water.

We had a great time eating the remaining kuacis in the mamak later. Hmmmmm.

Now that we’ve gone through the verses that describes the joy of Peter, the frustration of the author of Hebrews and the outburst of Paul, each using the Milk Metaphor; we’ll look into what this ‘milk’ and ’solid food’ mean to us.
Milk

Milk can be described in a few ways.

One, milk is a very basic, easy to stomach liquid that requires almost no effort on the drinker’s part to take in to them.  All they have to do is swallow the milk.  The diet of an infant consists mostly of milk, because an infant can’t handle anything more complicated.  Spiritual milk for the Christian is the basic teachings of our faith, the fundamentals, and every baby needs the basic essentials after all.

Two, an infant requires someone to feed the milk to them in some fashion; this lessens the load on the infant even more, making it easier for the milk to get in them.
Three, milk is the springboard in to higher levels of food, without it, the infant never matures to the point of learning how to eat solid food. I want to look at a few verses here in the New Testament that deal with spiritual ‘milk’ for the Christian.

Solid Food

One, solid food is complex, deep, and requires a more mature and ready ‘stomach’ to handle.  It is the deeper teachings of the Christian faith; the things that help us grow up even more in to our salvation and bring us from infancy to maturity.  They are the things that hopefully will transform us in to being more and more like Jesus, and more effective for Him in this world we live in.  Without solid food this transformation cannot happen.

Two, as a child grows they begin not only to have these more complicated foods, but they begin to learn to feed themselves as well.  Anyone will tell you that this step is a normal and necessary step in the development of a child, so why not Christians?  This is the other aspect of what it means to have solid food: self feeding.  When you grow up in to an adult most of your food primarily comes from you ‘hunting’ down the food, cooking it, feeding it to yourself, chewing on it, digesting it, and then getting it back out of you (do the rough metaphor yourself lol).  Christians need to do this very thing.  We need to seek out the solid food of the Word, get it in to our spiritual mouths, and chew on it.

This means we must think long and hard on it, meditate on it day and night (Josh 1:8), and hide it in our hearts (Ps. 119:11).  We must let it become part of us as we ‘digest it’ in to ourselves, letting God’s Truth permeate us and become part of our very being, putting it in to practice, putting it in to “constant use”.  This is the step we need to make, from milk to solid food, from babe to adult.  If we just let someone else always teach us, then even if it is ‘solid food’ in the ‘deeper spiritual truths’ sense of the phrase, it’s still basically milk, i.e. spoon feeding.  What happens when we learn to feed ourselves and mature in to adult Christians?  I think these verses speak greatly to this question:

Three, I want to note that even adults still drink in the milk sometimes.  The fundamental truths of Christianity are great to always be learning about and remembering.  It should also be said that having someone give you a glass of milk is never a bad thing (like a sermon on Sunday!), it’s just that you cannot survive on that alone.  A pastor who is teaching and spoon feeding you the ‘simple milk’ all the time will never be enough fuel for you to continue to mature in Christ.

Solid food is primarily a self-feeding endeavor because like it says in Hebrews 5:14, it is by constant (personal) ‘use’ of solid food that a mature Christian is able to distinguish good from evil.  So now when a child becomes an adult, what do the adults do?  They feed the children their milk so that they can move on to solid food, and guess what?  They teach them how to get that solid food for themselves while they’re at it!  It’s the adult’s job to teach the children how to feed themselves, so that they can grow and help mature others.  In other words, you need solid food and not milk in order to grow in Christ to the point of becoming everything God desires for you to be in Him.

In cell, we had an interesting group illustration, although simple, that managed to outline the concept of ‘milk’ and ’solid food’ that was often used in the New Testament.

I had 4 winners of the icebreaker lead the illustration. First, I had my assistant leader pour each of them a glass of milk. Yum. I love milk. Apparently, many do not share my enthusiasm. When asked to describe the taste, ‘bland’ comes to mind. ‘Milky’ is another classic description. Next, I gave each a chocolate chip cookie and asked them to dip into the milk. That tastes a lot better. Finally, I asked each of them to find food in the room and each found bars of chocolate (strategically placed beforehand of course). They then shared the chocolate with the other cell members.

The word ‘milk’ occurs 5 times in the New Testmament and all but one are used metaphorically. Although used by different authors, there is a link between the 3 verses stated here.

1 Peter 1:1-3

 1Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind. 2Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, 3now that you have tasted that the Lord is good.

Hebrews 5: 11-14:
“We have much to say about this, but it is hard to explain because you are slow to learn. In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.”

1 Corinthians 3:1-4
 1Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly—mere infants in Christ. 2I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. 3You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere men? 4For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not mere men?

Peter starts the ball rolling by saying, “Wow, welcome to God’s family! Now, put away the old and crave the good stuff. Crave spiritual milk, like newborn babies.” It was an illustration everyone understood. Babies have an instinct to need milk. That’s the way they grow, it was a natural law. (At this point, I must wonder how lactose intolerant people get about growing up…). But Peter is not done. He goes on to say, “Hey, just taste the goodness of God, BUT from this, you need to GROW UP in your salvation!” Interesting. Peter knew drinking milk was the first step but it wasn’t the end. They had to grow.

Second passage in Hebrews had the writer getting a little frustrated. He’s saying, “Man, there are a bunch of stuff I want to share with you but you’re too young to learn. In fact, you should be teaching others by now, yet, you need to go back to start again!” That’s frustrating. When I was a kid, I hated learning the piano. Hated it. Everytime my teacher came, I regressed instead of progressed. After a few years, I got worse. Imagine, as a teacher, how frustrating that is. The author of Hebrews could have just sighed in resignation when he said, “You guys are still infants, so you are immature. You can’t distinguish good from evil.” You see, it’s not just growing up and getting stronger. It’s the fact that it would protect us, with the maturity we have. We know what is good, we know what is bad, but only if we are matured and we graduate from Milk School.

Third passage, we’ve got everyone’s favourite apostle, Paul. Or maybe not, since he wasn’t a guy you probably want to have a cup of tea with. Paul was often blunt and forward in his writings. If he had to take someone down, he would. He wasn’t out to make friends and influence people. He knew he didn’t have the time for it. He starts his scolding by saying: Brothers. Ah how nice. Not.

The next sentences, he just goes ballistic.  He says brothers a little sarcastically, because he goes,  “you guys are worldly, not spiritual. I can’t talk to you in the way I want. So, instead of the meat of the message, I’m still going to give you milk. God loves you. John 3:16. Be kind. Come to church. Don’t gossip. I’d love to talk to you about the 3 fold ministry or apologetics, but it’s way beyond you. You guys are too worldly, too petty. Come on, grow up!” Now Paul won’t mince his words and he just takes onto another level: “You are jealous, you argue over silly stuff, you guys are just not getting it! Are you carnal? Are you guys just like the world? Haven’t you all changed?? I’m just so sick and tired of your bleating about, ‘Ooooh, I like Apollos because he’s handsome,’ and ‘Oooh, we like Paul because he is the founder.’ Come on, move on. Grow up.”

Or something like that.

You see, we can’t stand by milk forever. We need to move onto something. A Christian who continuously just go to church, sing a few songs and go home, year in year out is like a full grown man prefering to suck milk from a bottle. Isn’t that troubling? If we were all having good steak, pasta, spaghetti, Char Kueh Teow and suddenly this friend of ours, 30 years old, full grown man with no defects, whips out a baby bottle and starts drinking from it. It’s weird.

So, Christians, fellow cell members, we need to get off that milk diet and start progressing to something solid!

I heard pastor saying that Nehemiah 3 was possibly one of the most difficult chapter to read because of its names and such. I’ll have to disagree there, because any chapter in the bible with names like Tower of the Hundred, Tower of the Ovens, House of the Heroes, Pool of Siloam has got my attention. I used to read fantasy books when I was younger and was constantly fascinated with all these exotic sounding names. It makes you wonder, wow, how did they get their names? What happened? How did it look like?

Overall, in chapter 3, the word ‘Gate’ was mentioned more than 10 times. There were 10 gates to note in Chapter 3 and in many ways, it might reference to something symbolic. This is an interesting way to look at these gates one by one:

The Gate Symbols

The Sheep Gate: The Apostle Paul reminds us that we are crucified with Christ unto the world, and the world is crucified unto us. This is the gate that must be kept in repair if you want to grow into a strong Christian.

The Fish gate: “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men,” {Matt 4:19 KJV}. Throughout the Old Testament fishing is a symbol of witnessing to others, of the necessity of acknowledging that you belong to Christ. You witness by your words and actions.

The Old Gate: That is because truth remains the same throughout the centuries. Truth never changes. So this gate calls us back to the basics of life, back to the time-tested paths that have led to stability, security, and order.

Valley Gate: A valley in Scripture always represents humility and the judgment of conceit in our lives. John Stott calls humility “that rarest and fairest of Christian virtues.” If pride is the ultimate sin, then humility, its opposite, is the ultimate virtue. Peter tells us, “God resists the proud, but he gives grace to the humble,
The world applauds pride. It tries to make every individual feel capable of handling anything that comes. It even applauds arrogance. But God applauds humility. This is the first lesson in the school of the Spirit. Jesus said, “Take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly of heart, and you will find rest to your soul,” {cf, Matt 11:29}. One of the reasons why many people are so restless today is that they have never learned to be humble to be meek and lowly of heart.

Dung Gate: It is the gate of elimination, the gate where all the rubbish and corrupt things in the city were brought to the garbage dump in the Hinnom Valley, outside Jerusalem.

It is necessary to have an elimination gate in our lives as well. Paul urges us, “Cleanse yourselves from all filthiness of flesh and spirit,” {cf, 2 Cor 7:1}. One of the reasons many people are unable to function as God wants is because they seldom use the Dung Gate. They do not deal with their secret sin, with private corruption in their own lives. Jesus warned that doing so may be very painful. He said it may be like cutting off an arm or plucking out an eye. But it is something that has to be done or otherwise it leads to ruin.

Fountain Gate: So here is the Spirit-filled life, overflowing to others. As the Apostle Paul said, “Keep being filled with the Spirit,” {cf, Eph 5:18}. You will notice it comes immediately after the Dung Gate. After the corruption is cleansed away by the consent of the believer, then the cleansing of the Spirit washes clean.

Water Gate: Water, in Scripture, is the symbol of the Word of God. This is the gate that reminds us of our need for the Word of God. The interesting thing about this account is that they did not repair the Water Gate. It did not need repair. The Word of God never needs improvement or repair for it lasts forever. It is indestructible. What it needs is to be re-inhabited.

Horse Gate: This is the gate that reminds us that we are not on a picnic: We are not on a Caribbean cruise. We are on a battlefield! We are going to be under attack. We are going to be assaulted by surprising events.

There is much joy in the Christian life, but it will not always be without struggle. Everybody is going to face battle. We need to be alert to the fact of spiritual warfare.

East Gate: It is on the eastern side, opposite the temple area and facing the rising sun. Thus, it is the gate that speaks of hope and expectation. It is the gate through which the returned Messiah will enter the city of Jerusalem.

What does the East Gate tell us? It tells us that God has yet a glory awaiting those who trust him. The story of life does not end in despair and tragedy. Jesus said to his disciples, “When you see all these things coming to pass, lift up your heads and rejoice, for your redemption is drawing near,” {cf, Luke 21:28}. We ought to be like tea kettles — even when they are up to their necks in hot water, they are still singing!

Inspection Gate: The word in Hebrew means “the appointed place.” If you are familiar with the book of Hebrews, in the New Testament, you will recall 9:27, “It is appointed unto man once to die, and after that the judgment” {Heb 9:27 KJV} — the inspection!

It is a reminder that we must give an account of our journey: We must learn at last the truth about our lives as God sees it. We will see all that has happened, exactly the way it really was.

Then at the end of the chapter we come again to the Sheep Gate, where we began. The Sheep Gate stands for the cross and the cross must be at the beginning and at the end of our lives. Undergirding everything is this principle, out of death comes life. Out of the subjection of our natural desires to the will of God comes the life of God filling us full and blessing our hearts.