take the gift and give another one

26th March, Monday
ah ha! the message today was really good/relevant/timely whadever you want to call it. the preacher was an elderly man, looks so serious but he can be quite funny, esp the part he shared when someone called him e.t. haha. he's called l.t. can't rem the full name, paisei. anyway, he mentioned the cross in his sermon which was entitled walking by faith and not by sight. along the way he asked this question, "what does the cross symbolize? when someone tells you that christians should 'carry the cross of Jesus', what does he really mean?" that got me thinking for a while, and immediately the words pain, suffering and sacrifice came to mind. then he said that the cross is actually symbolic of self giving. tada! so anti climax right? but i still thought it significant enough to make an effort to run it thru my mind for memory.

so at night i was doing my qt as usual praying and all and almost suddenly, the full weight of the message seemed to dawn upon me. i felt tears welling up in my eyes. din really cry lah. haha. man liu blood don't liu tears. cos i've been wondering alot recently about the future, specifically, about what i'm gonna do when i graduate. the tried and tested path is, of course, finding an accounting/auditing/tax related job, the other option is to go into full time youth ministry. getting a job is pretty straight forward, not much worry there. its the idea of going full time that gets me on the seat of my chair. frankly i'm worried, worried about so many things i couldn't find space enough to list it down. kidding. like would i be a suitable candidate? i'm intensly worried that i'll reach a point and end up stagnating the rest of my life away. i don't wanna be like that, i wanna be sure that i can be effective! then theres the worry about finance. you've got to know my family background to be fully clued in on this but lets just say that a full time ministry position will never be as rewarding monetarily as a job in auditing. and so it was with this backdrop, that the weight of this morning's message came a-crashing upon me.

it struck me hard. like boom. haha. Jesus death on the cross was symbolic of self giving. not only that, in fact it was the ultimate act of self giving. it just dun get any bigger man. the guy laid down His life, not for himself but for someone else. He gave His life man! what more can a man give? is it possible to give more? i seriously doubt it. He gave me the gift of life, in exchange for his death. could i ever give back to Him more than what He gave to me? could i outgive him? well, all these years, i've served in the youth ministry (aga aga 9 yrs), the time i've spent, the sacrifices i've made. even if i added all these together they wouldn't amount to much. even if i let go of a well paying job to serve Him my whole life, even that would not add up. He paid the ultimate price, He gave the ultimate gift. and so the only logical thing for me to do, i think is to give my life to Him. even then, that could never, ever, be too much.