I actually wrote this on Sunday, and was going to post it at a much later date. But after reading Kelvin Tan's blog, I realised that I also had to post this. Although I do not really hold the exact same view as him, I would say the essence is more or less the same.
As most of you would know, a sine curve is a wave-like curve. It goes up then it goes down and repeats like that till infinity. Unfortunately, many of our Christian lives are like that as well.
Was at Festival of Praise over the past weekend and as I was walking out of the stadium I overheard someone say something that got me thinking. I am not sure if that person was a Christian, or whether she wasn’t one.
She said, “I don’t find any meaning in the whole thing. It was just noise; I find no reason behind it and I find no contentment at all.”
I have to say that to a certain extent, I agree with her. And when I talked to Ber about on Sunday, he more or less agreed with me. And as I began to chat with my other friends who are youth leaders in their own churches and were at FoP, they too said the same thing. I don't blame the organisers, I applaud them for one of the best FoPs in year. Those of you who know about cat and dog theology, the organisers are really the dogs, unfortuantely, FoP was attended by a bunch of cats.
How many of us mark off these kind of Christian events on our calendars and attend them at all cost. Fusion, WIN, Synerg!z, PowerPoint, Jubilee, Camps, Go Forth, Joshua21, Sonicfest, Festival of Praise etc etc. The list goes on. Nothing absolutely wrong with attending these events, in fact, I’ve attended all of the above!
But after a while, the same thing repeats over and over again. I go to these events, and if they are the more Youth oriented events, there’s a lot of jumping, shouting, clapping and dancing. But another thing that follows such things is depression.
I remember Rev Norman Wong, at the end of One Camp last year, he told the camp what to expect in the immediate aftermath. He told us to expect depression to come along.
Why does such depression come? Because we live for such spiritual highs. Instead of learning to spend time with God and His Word EVERYDAY, we base our whole Christian life on waiting for such events to come, attend it, feel a high, jump around, come out of it refreshed and be on fire on a few weeks. And then after that, fall into depression until the next such event comes along. If we were to plot a graph, it would look exactly like a sine curve.
Many of you have come to me and asked me, “Why can’t we worship the way we do on Sundays as we do at FoP?” You know what, you can! Worship is not something that the worship team provides like a commodity. But it’s something for you to offer to the King of kings and Lord of lords. There is nothing stopping you from praising God the way you do at FoP etc and from a normal Sunday except your own self.
Our times of corporate worship should be an outpouring of our times of personal worship. It’s in our quiet times with the Word of the Lord that truly sustains us.
Not sure if any of you at FoP observed this, the minute the musical worship ended, and the sermon began, a huge number of people began leaving the main arena. And the minute the sermon ended, they all came back to their seats.
When we lose our Daily Bread (the Word of God), we are going to feel hungry. And that is why our lives start to look like a sine curve. When we start to seek God only such events rather than seeking the Lord daily, we are going to be depressed.
"I hate, I despise your religious feasts; I cannot stand your assemblies. Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them. Though you bring choice fellowship offerings, I will have no regard for them. Away with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps." - Amos 5:21-23
Above the noise, above the dancing, above the jumping, above the singing, above these events, let’s learn to guard our quiet times jealously. And then, you will find the true purpose to why these events were organised. Not so that you can have a spiritual high, but so that you can find rest within the Lord again, and from there go out into the world and spread the Word. And then, your life can turn from a sine curve to an exponential curve.
