My sincere apologies for missing out the 3rd month update, I was unexpectedly caught up in a draft of busyness. Sorry this is also somewhat of a rambling/brief update at times, writing this after wisdom teeth surgery and the pain interrupts my thought flow quite frequently.

something I'm thinking about in scripture

³⁵And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed. Mark 1.35 (ESV)

I wonder if Jesus was tired when he woke up to pray.

For sure, Jesus didn't use his time idly at night scrolling his phone until it was far past a reasonable hour to sleep.

Perhaps Jesus simply woke up, felt the inexplicable boost of energy morning people experience and went into prayer. Or perhaps Jesus woke up and felt the utter slog of crawling out of bed into the cold morning, eyes barely blinking open and lethargy slow to leave the body.

I know that when Jesus walked from Judea to Galilea, he was wearied from his journey, wearied enough to have to sit down (John 4.6). Jesus experienced hunger when he was going about his ministry (Matt 21.18). Jesus was tired enough to have fallen asleep right away as him and his disciples crossed the Galilean sea (Mark 4.38). Jesus was fully human, and thus capable of experiencing the need for sleep and for food.

But the more I looked into this the more that I discovered how much Jesus seemed to make prayer a regular rhythm of his ministry. Luke in particular seems to press in this point - Jesus would "depart and went into a desolate place" (Luke 4.42), and do so regularly to pray (Luke 5.16). The day before Jesus picks his 12 disciples he spends all night in prayer (Luke 6.12). The disciples are with Jesus when he was praying (Luke 9.18), and later on the disciples ask Jesus about praying when they see him pray (Luke 11.1).

But perhaps most intimately driving Jesus' prayer is his relationship with his Father. His encouragement to his disciples to pray his the comparison to earthly fathers - "¹¹What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; ¹²or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? ¹³If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”" (Luke 11:11-13). And when Jesus addressed his Father at Lazarus' tomb, he thanked his Father for hearing him (John 11.41).

There's still much I wish to dig into Jesus' prayer habits, but I'm certain that there are times Jesus was tired when he woke up to pray. Yet prayer was something that he saw as important in his ministry on earth, and something that he did out of being God's beloved Son. And that's something that I hope to remember too when I feel tired waking up to pray.

ministry updates

We're on to week 12 here in SMU wrapping up 3/4 of the semester!

Growth Groups: I've been quite encouraged by one of my GG members who struggled quite a bit with adapting to studying the Bible but is starting to become one of the sharpest Bible handlers in the GG! He comes from a church that doesn't really teach the Bible so he found Bible study quite the challenge and almost discomforting at first, and it seemed like he was genuinely thinking of quitting, but he's come to enjoy Bible study sessions quite a lot now.

I've managed to be more intentional catching up with the guys in my GG so got to meet them for a one on one chat over a meal, then there was this one guy who asked to catch up over a run. Bodily fitness was truly of some value in that case.

I've grown a lot more grateful for small things too, like when the group is able to discuss and figure out a difficult questions from the passage or when I get to sharpen someone's understanding of the gospel from the text.

Monday's Bible handling training in Ephesians: We've finished going through the sections of Ephesians in detail, so now we're going to take 2 sessions to go through the whole Ephesians and one to talk through applications. I must confess I did go in thinking I had most of Ephesians figured out having done almost 8 121s in Ephesians but I'm coming out convinced that all I've done is have interpretations that 'sound correct'. It's quite an interesting process where we'll be discussing the interpretation of a few ideas, I offer up an interpretation, and watch it crumble when I struggle to back it up or stand stronger than another idea. It's definitely not that there is a plurality of interpretations, but the exercise of going through evidence for different views definitely opens up the number of questions I can raise about a view's fit with the text. I am amazed at how much the whole group has grown in the sharpness of our observations when all the trainer has mainly asked is "Where do you see that?" repeatedly. It's also been personally a rich experience thinking deeply about Scripture for 3 hours each week, being struck afresh by the grandeur of God's plan, the beauty of the church, or the nature of our struggle being against spiritual forces of evil.

Thursday Training: We looked at the doctrine of atonement and Biblical counselling over the past two months. Besides a brief re-examination of Biblical evidence of the views for and against Arminianism and New Perspective, we talked a bit about church history and the way theology tends to develop across time. One consistent theme was the idea of recovering a lost emphasis, and how Christ's work on the cross is rather multifaceted (e.g. Christus Victor/Exemplar, Penal Substitutionary Atonement) but across time one of the facets might get emphasized, and a recovery of it leading to an imbalanced perspective. Another theme was how different movements tended towards reducing sin as a problem requiring God's rescue. It seems that sometimes in our zeal to bring others to salvation we think that holding out a less humbling gospel is the solution, until we've basically stripped the gospel into a religion rather than a proclamation.

Counselling was both unsettling and thought-provoking. As the previous associates handed over to us one of the things we were warned about was how G360 training has the potential to cause anguish and worry about the state of church and truth be told that's one of the results of the 4 weeks thinking about Biblical counselling. It happened as we did a reading about David Powlinson's x-ray questions (you can see the list of questions here) and the trainer asked us what we would think if these questions came up in casual conversation in Christian contexts. Most of us agreed that they were rather deep and bound to cause awkwardness. The trainer then pushed us to think about why and so answers like shame, discomfort, irrelevance came up. The trainer then dropped the bombshell that if we find these questions too deep, one of the possible failures of church ministry is that the gospel is not relevant to daily life, and simply exists as a ticket to heaven for most Christians. Specifically we aren't aware or comfortable seeing our sin as problems in our day to day life, and we are not prepared to speak nor hear the truths of the gospel to each other in day to day conversation. Other things that we were prompted to think about were how fast we thought people changed, how much we thought Scripture could speak into every situation and how much we were giving people training to speak the Word surgically into one another's lives.

Personally: I think God has helped me to see that a lot of life's complicated problems do genuinely resolve as someone comes to hear their Shepherd speak to them in the Word. I'm more confident that my trust in the Word is no simply a catch all for problems I don't have the answer to but that the gospel does genuinely deal with the root of any problem someone can face as it slowly transforms their heart's cognition, affection and volition. At the same time there's lots of anxiety and anguish as the God always seems to be too slow to change my own heart or someone's heart, but I'm learning to tell my heart to trust in God's goodness in his timing and plan. I think Christian ministry is increasingly a foreign thing in today's world where everything is quantified in a digital age promising precision and engineering masters the outcomes. In ministry it seems like we barely know anything, barely influence anything and lack many things. And so it becomes so much more important to persevere in faithfulness, to continue to labour over the people we love, and to continue to pray, trusting God to give the growth.

fun and unrelated things

The staff crashed Sarah's trip to JB during recess week! Nic's girlfriend and my brother came along, we had a visit to a book store and of course the pharmacy to get meds on ministry staff worker budget.

We also visited Brewsmith which was apparently good but it seemed like my conversation with the guy was too engrossing and he messed up my pour over :(

Also went to watch Dear Evan Hansen, I think I enjoyed how the play does quite aptly raise the question of how "no one deserves to disappear, to come and go without anyone noticing, to be forgotten, to fade away", the inadequacy of just be yourself in the face of bodily/mental/family brokenness, the thinness of online community that tries but fails to replace an embodied community bound not just by similar experiences or opinions, the fear of self-disclosure because everyone hides their worst parts of themselves, and the beauty of an unconditional love even if it's imperfect.

partner me

Please pray for me to continue growing in my trust in God, so that I'll be faithful in ploughing the field and watering the seeds despite times when things become slow going.

Pray for the upcoming Larkhill junior camp, for us to be able to proclaim the gospel particularly to kids who don't have gospel-centred environments.

Feel free to directly reply to this so I can pray for you too~!