Haowie Dayng: Week 2

Dear friends,

I was trippin semi-hard over the weekend and earlier this week as I was trying to finish my personal statement, holler at professors for recommendation letters, and catch up in my classes. Thankfully, I was straightened out when a sermon directed my attention to Isaiah 51:12. Here God declares, “I, I am He who comforts you. Who are you that you are afraid of man who dies… and have forgotten the LORD, your Maker?” This really caught me off guard because it’s not a typical response you’d expect to give someone who’s feeling anxious or worried. But here, it’s like God’s getting confrontational, “Who do you think you are?? What are you trippin about? Don’t you know who I am? I’m the Juggernaut!”

Personally, I often fear and worry because I feel I’m inadequate and unable to reach my aspirations, whether academically, socially, spiritually, or whatever. In other words, the anxiety stems from the belief that if I were more capable and competent, I’d be able to handle life. This belief didn’t really seem to be a spiritual issue to me at first glance. If anything, from the world’s perspective, I may have a self-esteem or self-confidence problem. However, from a Christian perspective, I do think this is a self confidence problem, but in the opposite way the world understands it. The problem is NOT that I have too little self-confidence, but rather I have placed far TOO MUCH confidence in what my personal attributes can or cannot accomplish. In Christianese, that boils down to a deadly sin called pride. Which is why I think God replies the way He does: “Who do you think you are that you’ve forgotten the LORD your Maker?” I thank God that He reminded me once again to humbly appreciate who I am: a forgiven child of God, not to be concerned with vain self-confidence, but to embrace superior God-confidence in Christ alone.

VERSES  (Isaiah 9:1-2 & 60:1-2, 19-20)

The themes that stand out to me are LIGHT and GLORY. It’s awesome that in the middle of bleak darkness, His light will shine and come through for us (and has already come thanks to Jesus). Perhaps (dare I say) even more astonishing is all this talk about future glory: “He shall make it glorious”; “His glory will be seen upon you”; “The Lord will be to you an everlasting light, and your God your glory.” All this glory talk reminds me of Romans 8:30: “Moreover whom He predestined, these He also called; whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified.” That’s totally krazy. If the Bible didn't spell it out so explicitly, I would not dare to even imagine somehow partaking in God’s glory. Notice the unbreakable chain of events here; we who have been justified (saved by faith in Jesus) will be glorified fsho. So whatever you think you are based on your own qualifications, wise or foolish, attractive or homely, strong or weak, talented or mediocre, cross it all out. You are the glory of God. This reality is mind-blowing and changes everything about how we ought to live! For example, let me end with a quote from the end of The Weight of Glory by C.S. Lewis. (It’s long & intense, but I hope it’s appropriate):

“It may be possible for each to think too much of his own potential glory hereafter; it is hardly possible for him to think too often or too deeply about that of his neighbor. The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbor’s glory should be laid daily on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken. It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature, which if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations… There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal… But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit – immortal horrors or everlasting splendours… Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbor he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ – the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden."



P.S. For exercise, I speed walk to class really fast if I'm running late & I've been doing my pullups & pushups a few times a week :)

By the way, this brotha goes HAM on his rendition of a well-known song: http://youtu.be/y7CtdRoWPyA