Selah to Hagah

Last Monday I was given the turn to share in YABS (Young Adults Bethany Singapore) prayer meeting. Below is the note I prepared before the session and tidied a little afterwards.

One of the struggles I overcame recently was gaming. Video games. It’s been 25+ days since the last time I touched my PlayStation 2 console. “Yeah, right. 25 days.” Well, we’ll have to see longer, of course. In any case, it was a great deal, no, huge deal to me. Why? Let me share a little background about my former hobby.

When I was 8, my dad bought an Apple ][ PC . Of course, being a primary 2 schooler, I only used it to play games. Two years later we had our IBM PC/XT compatible. More gaming was done, in intensity and number. Not long after that, we had a Nintendo Famicom. Well, I’d never really liked video game consoles too much, so PC/XT was still my primary gaming machine. In this machine I played my first serious game (game requires more than 2 hours each time played). After that, not many progress happenned, i.e. my dad stopped buying new toys for some reason. So while my friends got their PC/AT 286, I was stuck with my PC/XT. Still, games back then supported both platforms although more and more left PC/XT. Until one day we had a 386. Wow. This machine was simply the one that built my addiction and passion for gaming. This and the later Pentium 100 - I was simply sucked into gaming. Literally hours was burned during those time including one time I missed one mid-term exam due to a soccer game. Then for some reason, I got stuck again with this Pentium while the rest of my friends played with Pentium II and 3D graphic cards. But it didn’t reduce my passion for gaming, it’s just piled up until one day I touched multiplayer-networked gaming, I spent a lot of my after-hours in office playing Counter Strike and Unreal Tournament. My wife could share some of her thoughts back then when I used to fetch her from office - sometimes grudgingly

My latest addiction was a game series called Winning Eleven, another soccer game, started about a year before our wedding, ended just recently. This game was so captivating that I never got bored playing. It’s simply the only serious game I played for the last 2-3 years. Again, my wife would definitely be able to share her thoughts about this This was my “game of the century, decade, whatever”. I literally burned most of my evenings for hours in playing more than 50 total league seasons (each season consists of 50+ matches, each match takes 12-15 actual minutes). I can roughly average it to about 2 hours per day, continuously. Mind you, I was (and am) married. I played when I was in good mood, I played when I felt ‘blue’, I played anytime, anywhere, with anyone.

So, it was a big deal when all of a sudden the urge to play was not there anymore. After YABS retreat last May, God dealt with me for a lot of things, including this area of weakness of mine. I thank God for this.

At first, I thought I was going to endure for a couple of weeks and then lost it back to square one. After all, it’s my passion, and I have a not-so-good track record in conquering bad habits. And this “passion” things, without my knowledge, had been rooted deep in my thought. If I can recall correctly, it was my former boss who coined this term inside my head. Back then, my boss noticed that I was not too ‘happy’ doing my daily jobs (as a web developer) compared to when I talked about gaming scene. “You should pursue your passion. If gaming is your passion, you should go for it.” In the sentence itself, it doesn’t have anything wrong. It’s just when thrown to my addictiveness, it started to root and bore its fruit greater than I thought. It’s not that I disregard my former boss, on the contrary I myself still hold my utmost respect for my him, a lot of good things learned from him although he may have a different belief.

But still an impact it was to me. I was never really be able to let go gaming, even though I know it often did me harm rather than good. “It’s my passion.” I can’t give up my passion. Christ is my passion, I can’t give up Christ for whatever sake. And so it was always in my mind for sometime.

Fast forward to recently, before the retreat, I was in the car with my cellgroup leader, Bambang, driving me and my wife home. He’s quite a busy man, being posted in a fairly high position in a well known MNC, it’s not that often he could attend the cellgroup and share a car with me. One of the very short topics we chatted about that night was my “passion” for gaming. One thing that came out of his mouth was “Tsk, tsk, GT.. being this ‘old’ and you still like to play game! ” That’s all. Nothing religious or spiritual about that. All were said in chatty and joking mood. I simply grinned and replied “Yeaah.. what to do, it’s my passion after all.” And that night and the following nights I still continued my league season in my PlayStation.

Now, in retrospect, one thing that comes up into my mind is these 2 sentences from these 2 different guys. The first ‘planted’ a risky thought in my head, much without my awareness: “It’s my passion. You must maintain your passion.” The second one, also without much of my consciousness, pulled the trigger to take away the thought: “It’s nothing. You can live perfectly well without it.” This is another thing I’d like to share about: submission, authority, and annointing.

I am by no means a bible scholar, there are a lot of books, articles, studies that have already covered these topics very well. In here, I’m just sharing this as a typical working guy, doing his daily secular business while at the same time also pursue excellence to know and love God more.

I have always been a strong believer that in order to achieve a certain degree of success, one must be in a submission and authority. Although Paul described it more clearly in Ephesians 5-6 using real life examples, somehow I experienced and applied it more in the spiritual contexts.

When I first became a Christian, I immediately submitted myself under a mentorship (under an ‘authority’ if you could call that is) of my spiritual brother who led me in my sinner’s prayer - which was also happened to be my best buddy in highschool. He’s not even a year older than me, in fact just he’s just about 7 months older. In everything else we talk quite in the same level (we’re in the same age after all). Spiritually speaking, however, I will ‘ensure’ that I position him as my mentor and me as his ‘mentoree’. That’s a state or position I consciously choose. All this happenned quite naturally in me. After all, I also saw the same thing was applied in his life to his mentor, and his mentor to his, and so on.

On the other hand, I also saw several other ‘incidents’ where ones tried to ’step out’ of their areas of submission. I’m here far from any intention to form any judgement or anything else, but to simply put it, they seemed to be ‘out of radar’ from the whole corporative vision and movement in general. Of course there are processes and many other things which are out of the scope from what I’m sharing here.

Back to topic, continue to my years in Singapore. God rekindled the fire in my heart to serve and pursue Him ‘again’, I was put to join Bukit Merah cellgroup under Bro. Chandra’s stewardship. Again, naturally he and his wife became my and Siska’s mentors. A lot of priceless lessons had blessed us in various aspects through our act of submission. The same thing also happenned in YABS, Bro. Erwin immediately become our mentor, also quite naturally. A little bit different experience was when we’re told to join our homogenous cellgroups and thus were to be separated from our current ones. A that time, I and Siska were not too close to Bambang and Helen. But out of submission, we did our first cellgroup sessions with only the three of us (Helen was away) and indeed it felt a bit ‘awkward’. But we fervently continue to meet. Today, we’re minimum 10 persons each meeting and has splitted into new cellgroups.

Along the way, I recognized the importance of how I need to be submissive, even when I barely known how or who my appointed leader was, especially when I learned that among his busy schedule, he allocates quite some time in his mornings to pray. Although not said, I know for sure I and Siska are in his intercessory list. This alone worths reciprocal prayer from us and in fact, not much to my awareness, I began to revere him more and eventually I consciously placed him as a mentor where I’m in the area of submission to his stewardship.

I believe, when I choose the act to be in a submission under a specific authority/mentorship, God’s annointing really flows smoothly from top to bottom. That’s how a simple-chatty sentence like “this old and yet still play game” has a great impact that God could use to transform me. I mean, it could be a different story if I didn’t really choose to place him above me as mentor and place myself under submission; or, if it was from my other friend whom I didn’t consciously choose to submit under his ‘authority’.

So, what I can conclude tonight are:

• We need to be under a submission of some authority/mentorship
• We need to choose to be under that submission
• We need to act and choose (consciously and continuously) to place our mentors above us spiritually
• When we choose to do that, God’s annointing will flow smoothly from top to bottom
• We need to pray for our mentors, especially so that they will do the same

The problem with diamonds isn’t their scarcity, but their abundance.

A friend of my wife was asking for some articles about diamonds and its overly priced facts. I myself has known the ‘truth’ since 2003, which was about 6 months after I bought my first (and last ) diamond ring for my fiancée back then. But I don’t have any regret. After all, this was for a lady I will share the rest of my entire life with. Still, I’d consider myself lucky because she shares similar opinion since I revealed the ‘truth’ to her.. (or maybe not that similar )

Here are some articles from my ‘research’ (googling around):

• A Perception of Rarity (part of “How Diamonds Work”)
  Some diamonds, like the Hope Diamond, are extremely rare. However, most diamonds are much more abundant than we are led to believe.
• Have You Ever Tried to Sell a Diamond?
  While those who attempt to sell diamonds often experience disappointment at the low price they are offered, stories in gossip columns suggest that diamonds are resold at enormous profits.
• Ten Reasons Why You Should Never Accept a Diamond Ring
  from Anyone, Under Any Circumstances, Even If They Really Want to Give You One
• The Diamond Invention
  A whole book about the subject, long but very comprehensive.
• The New Diamond Con (August 3, 2000)
  The problem with diamonds isn’t their scarcity, but their abundance.
• Is a diamond’s price a true measure of its value?
  (contains a little note about Epstein above)
  … but I bet if your wife knew the real story she’d prefer her next gift to be a nice socket-wrench set. Diamonds are a con, pure and simple.
• Africa’s Diamond Wars
  Across vast stretches of Africa, diamonds fuel war.
• The New Diamond Age
  Armed with inexpensive, mass-produced gems, two startups are launching an assault on the De Beers cartel.
  “It’s too perfect to be natural. Things in nature, they have flaws. The growth structure of this diamond is flawless.”
• The cartel isn’t for ever
  With its near monopoly as a trader of rough stones, De Beers has been able to maintain and increase the prices of diamonds by regulating their supply.
  … Consumers believe diamonds are valuable largely because of decades of clever marketing by De Beers and its clients.
• Diamonds Aren’t Forever
  This one has nothing to do with De Beers et al… but still a good read.