What Singleness Shows Best

As part of our date nights, Cheryl and I have been (slowly) working our way through John Piper’s “This Momentary Marriage” (thanks Rainbow for getting it for us!). It’s a great book and we’ve learnt so much from reading and trying to apply the truths in our lives.

Cheryl’s been sick recently so last night I had the joy of reading our latest chapter out to her, titled “Single in Christ: A Name Better than Sons and Daughters”. As I was reading it out to her, we had to keep stopping just to digest the awesome points that were being made about the Bible’s teaching on singleness – and how it applied to us!

Singles, as “eunuchs for the kingdom” (Matthew 19:12) have a crucial Christ-exalting calling.  Here’s an excerpt (emphases and bible references mine):

So I say again to all singles in Christ, God promises you blessings in the age to came that are better than the blessings of marriage and children. And with this promise, there comes a unique calling and a unique responsibility. It is not a calling to extend irresponsible adolescence into your thirties. It is a calling to do what only single men and women in Christ can do in this world, namely, to display by the Christ-exalting devotion of your singleness the truths about Christ and his kingdom that shine more clearly through singless than through marriage. As long as you are single, this is your calling: to so live for Christ as to make it clearer to the world and to the church

  1. that the family of God grows not by propagation through sexual intercourse, but by regeneration through faith in Christ (John 3:3, Gal 3:26, 1 Pet 1:3-4);
  2. that relationships in Christ are more permanent, and more precious, than relationships in families (Matt 12:48-49, Lk 11:27-28, Mk 10:29-30);
  3. that marriage is temporary (Matt 22:30) and finally gives way to the relationship to which it was pointing all along: Christ and the church (Eph 5:31-32) — the way a picture is no longer needed when you see face-to-face;
  4. and that faithfulness to Christ defines the value of life; all other relationships get their final significance from this. No family relationship is ultimate; relationship to Christ is.

(Note: Piper bases much of this chapter from Barry Danylak’s “A Biblical Theology of Singleness”)

I hope these points are an encouragement to our unmarried brothers and sisters in Christ – you can help us to see these truths clearer!

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-William

HBC Service Redux: 16 January 2011

Here’s a recap of the service and the songs we chose this past weekend at Howick Baptist Church (You can find links to the set lists of this church and many other churches each week at theworshipcommunity.com). You can also read through previous HBC service recaps here.

Order of Service

(worship leader: Jon Scanlan)

1. Indescribable – Laura Story. Praising God as “all powerful, untamable” is normally a fantastic way to start the service. Funnily though the church seemed quite hesitant in their singing to begin with. Perhaps it was the lyric operator who was distracted and failed to put up the words in time through the first verse and chorus, maybe it was a bit of lingering “holiday singing”, or perhaps the instrumentation (solo acoustic guitar/piano and drums) was on the light side to accompany the majesty of the words.

2. Let Your Kingdom Come – Bob Kauflin. If the church were quiet on the previous song, they were LOUD on this one! Easy to sing and quite well-known and enthusiastically sung now. I think we introduced it midway through last year and it’s a great way to refocus our hearts on His glorious cause, that “Jesus Christ be known wherever we are”.

3. Be Unto Your Name (We Are A Moment) – Robin Mark. Played during the offering. There are some fantastic vocal harmonies that can be done on this song, so that was great to hear – appreciated the effort Kat and Ray put into those to expand the overall sound. With the key change it goes fairly high (too high for most men) but it’s one of those songs where you’ll give it a go anyways because you’re singing straight from scripture (Rev 4:8, Rev 5:12):

Holy, holy, Lord God Almighty
Worthy is the Lamb who was slain!

4. Give Thanks – Henry Smith. An old classic from the late 70’s – we’d probably need to work at the musical arrangement so it doesn’t also sound like it’s from the 70’s! But a simple and singable way to encourage thankfulness (which was one of the points in the message today).

5. Salvation’s Song (Loved Before the Dawn of Time) – Stuart Townend. We introduced it for the first time in October, and since then our worship leaders have loved the richness of the words and the beautiful music. I was very encouraged by the care Jon took with this song to space the music’s dynamics and instrumentation over the length of this song. By the time we got to the bridge, the whole church was ready to belt out:

Singing glory honour wisdom power
To the Lamb upon the throne
Hallelujah I will lift Him high!

Craig (one of our worship leaders) made a good suggestion that we could probably try it in a higher key next time. Most of the song is in quite a low range, though I guess the trouble is that in the bridge it goes well into the high reaches of a singer’s range too!

Sermon: Colossians 1:9-14. Our associate pastor Joe Fleener continued a preaching series through the book of Colossians, examining the question: “What is God’s will for my life?” The answer, thankfully, is found in the Bible!

You can listen or watch the entire message for free here.

6. Oh the Mercy of God – Geoff Bullock. The third verse of this song links quite closely with the next part of Colossians 1:15-20, which speaks of the deity of Christ:

Oh the glory of God  expressed in His Son
His image and likeness revealed to us all
The plan of the ages  completed in Christ
That we be presented  perfected in Him

And it’s all “to the praise of His glorious grace”!

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– William

Letter from the Queen

Last year, just for a bit of fun, I wrote to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II last year following the announcement of HRH Prince William and Kate Middleton’s engagement. Here’s the response (printed on official, Buckingham Palace letterhead – how charming!):

15 December, 2010

Dear Mr. Chong,

The Queen has asked me to thank you for your recent letter offering your good wishes and requesting an invitation to the Marriage of Prince William of Wales with Miss Catherine Middleton.

The list of those to be invited is being carefully considered by the Lord Chamberlain’s Office and a proportion of invitations may be allocated to the general public. As I am sure you will appreciate, we have received many similar requests and as a result, a ballot may be held and successful applicants would be written to in due course.

In the meantime, may I take this opportunity to send you my best wishes for a most enjoyable festive season and a very happy New Year.

Yours sincerely,

Mrs. Sonia Bonici
Senior Correspondence Officer

There’s hope yet!!

P.s.: If you ever feel the urge to write to the Queen, these instructions may be of use. You will generally get a response, though usually written by one of Her Majesty’s correspondence officers.

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– William Chong

YLC 2011 Days 3-5

Day 3: more great talks and workshops. Bryson unpacked Psalm 22 detailing Jesus as the suffering King, Peter Collier covered the gruesome coronation and crucifixion of Jesus (Matthew 27:27-61). Powerful stuff. The workshop on youth ministry gave practical points. In the strand groups we grappled with trying to summarize the passage into one “big idea”, and to think through its implications for various audiences.

Day 4: Bryson preached on the brainteaser of Psalm 110 which predicts a future priest King for the nation Israel and the rest of the world. Peter talked through the conclusion of Matthew’s gospel, showing from the text its reliability of the account of Jesus’s triumphant resurrection. Dave Morgan gave a helpful workshop on how to manage a one-on-one bible study. In the strand workshop we started to put questions together for our own bible study. Stayed up very late to finish it!

Day 5: YLC finished with one more talk from Bryson (on Psalm 118), and in our strand groups we presented our bible studies to each other and got feedback on them.

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– It’s been a real joy to meet new Christians from all over the country, in different parts of the Lord’s Vineyard. People like Andrew, Amy, Brad, Matthias, Scott, Greg, Sarah, Matt, Martin, Anna and lots more folk I’ve forgotten the names to; all likeminded followers of Christ.
– Sure, there are theological differences on secondary issues and tertiary issues for some speakers. But there’s no doubt the group at YLC are unflinchingly gospel-centered, evangelical and bible-focused. That’s so refreshing to see.
– The best thing is that we’ve been told all recordings will be made freely available in 2 weeks’ time. The talks have been great example of biblical expository preaching – I’ve been particularly impressed that each talk gave a big picture of the passage, rather than just explain each verse without drawing them into an overall theme or lesson.

We’re definitely going to try to be back for YLC 2012. Until then, I pray what we have been learning will be applied in our lives and be of benefit in the various ministries at HBC. Soli Deo Gloria!

YLC 2011 Day 2

We had much milder weather today on the second day of YLC 2011 – thanks be to God! I read on the weather forecast last night that it got up to 32 degrees yesterday – no wonder we were sweating all day! Today it was a much more manageable 21 degrees.

OK – recap of Day 2.

Psalm Talk Two – Bryson took us through Psalm 8. I appreciated this talk because it’s a particular psalm that I’ve wrestled with a number of times over the years (and chatted with different people about). In particular, I’ve been often vexed on whether this passage refers more about humans, or about Christ, particularly from verses 6-8. Answer? Both. I learned a lot through the way Bryson explained it, covering: the context (ordered strategically in the midst of a range of psalms related to suffering and hardship), the content (taking both of the glory of God and the glory of man when rightly understood as part of God’s incomparable majesty), and explaining how our understand of the psalm is broadened when we analyse the way it’s quoted in Matthew 21:14-17 (used to still the enemy and the avenger, the Pharisees contending with Jesus) and Hebrews 2:5-10 (directly using it to prove Jesus as the fulfillment of what Psalm 8 describes).

Strand 1 Workshop – This built upon yesterday’s work in reading and analysing the content of the passage we’re working together as a group. Today we learnt about the importance of taking the bible passage being studied in its literary (think: English teacher), situational (think: investigative journalist), and theological (think: priest/minister/pastor) contexts. And we all gave it a go putting on these various hats to understand the context of the text. It was a very helpful exercise that helped to unpack the same passage we were looking at yesterday.

Afternoon Workshop – Jay Behan, Minister at St. Stephens Anglican Church, led a very interactive, thought-provoking, and convicting workshop on evangelism. What exactly was great about it? Well, there was no magic formula for how to share the gospel, or special 3-step technique for evangelism, or any of that sort of thing. It was just a well-thought-out workshop where all of us were encouraged to ask ourselves some important questions: what is evangelism, who is to evangelise, how are we to evangelise, what are the essential components of the gospel we are to evangelise, and the use and misuse of personal testimonies when we evangelise.

If giving my own biased assessment, I’d say this has been the most practically useful evangelism workshop I’ve ever taken. It gave me a fantastic framework in order to share my faith better. All of us were challenged to search the scriptures to back up why we believed what we believe about evangelism. And talked through a host of tougher questions (do we use tracts? what’s your opening line? what’s the place of street evangelism?), and there was a really collegial atmosphere in the workshop as different people contributed to the discussion and helped each other out. This was my first time hearing Jay lead a workshop, but after such an encouraging and challenging workshop, I’m definitely looking forward to hearing from him Jay again when he comes up to Auckland for STAND Conference 2011!

Matthew Talk Two – Peter Collier took us through Matthew 26:57-27:26 on the trials that Jesus was subjected to in the lead-up to His death on the cross. Peter showed a number of things that provide a decent counter to the claims of New Atheists that deny the reliability of Jesus’s claims to be God. By pulling this passage apart, he showed that in these words there’s a lot of strong evidence that Jesus is the ultimate fulfillment of the Old Testament, of God’s redemptive plan, and of everything He prophesied that would come to pass. And the challenge was this: eventually, one day, what we think of Jesus doesn’t nearly matter as much as what Jesus thinks of us. And there’s hope for Christians daunted by the rise of the evangelists of New Atheism: at least they’re in the discussion about Jesus and Christianity, and not indifferent or apathetic about it!

Peter Collier is one teacher I’d love to hear preach at HBC again: Joe and I have extended the invitation, so I hope that gets followed up and we’re blessed with some sound Bible teaching!

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Some more random thoughts about YLC:

– The food is fantastic. We’re being fed physically by a faithful team of servants who put on really generous dishes for us (breakfast, lunch and dinner). Some of these helpers are former YLC attendees that come in just for the joy of serving the delegates here – a real treat to see!
– And to work off that food, we’re getting really fun times of playing sport as well. Great to get together with guys and girls during the afternoon break time to just fellowship in good competitive sport! (p.s. Chua scored a goal, what a star!)
– We’ve had the joy of getting to know more and more people here. Most are from Christchurch and similar regions, and they’re still very encouraged that so many of us came all the way from Auckland to attend!

– During the evening session, Joe was invited up on stage to bring greetings from HBC (pictured). He was also invited to read the passage that was being studied. And here’s an example of dedication to service that all bible readers would do well to take note: he practised reading it in his room a number of times beforehand. The drama, depth and emotion of the passage really shone through as he read it.

OK – sleep time!

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– William