Journey Outside the Camp

Salvation is only possible with a Triune God

My wife and I have been teaching about the Trinity in our training sessions. One of the questions we encounter is why study about the Trinity at all? Why hurt our heads with the study of the very difficult notion that our God is one God but expressed in three distinct Persons? What does it matter to our daily living if we understand this truth or not?

Understanding the Trinity has many implications. It impacts the way we live, the way we relate to each other; it impacts our roles and responsibilities with our spouses, our church and society.

Practising the presence of God

I've been heads down working on new Sunday School lessons since December (hence the scarcity of posts). One of the series that my wife and I are working on is called Christian Fundamentals. Not the world's best title but it's a follow-up series for our gospel lessons based on The Stranger on the Road to Emmaus by John R. Cross. At the end of the The Stranger, the class now understands the gospel and believes. But the immediate question is: "What do I do now that I believe?" That's where Christian Fundamentals comes in to answer those questions and show what new believers should do to get closer to God.

One of the things we talk about is seeking God's face daily. And the phrase I lit upon was from Brother Lawrence's book, Practicing the Presence of God.

Ee-Taow!

Over the Hari Raya Haji weekend, my wife and I conducted a two-day seminar. We taught the Bible chronologically. Based on the book, Stranger on the Road to Emmaus, we brought 30 participants through the gospel message, beginning with Genesis all the way through to Jesus' resurrection. The participants were all youth leaders (or youth leaders to be) as well as several Sunday School teachers from other churches.

As always, teaching for my wife and me, has been a time of worship. Though we were familiar with the material, we were both moved in our spirits as we taught God's truth. And the Holy Spirit really moved—not only our hearts—but the hearts of the participants too. We saw their eyes light up with fresh understanding; we saw the participants coming to a deeper understanding of how amazing God is and how the familiar Bible narratives actually add up to one single gospel message. We saw people weep.

Parents are the primary spiritual trainers

My wife and I had the honour and privilege to address the fine folks at All Saints' Church this afternoon. We spoke for a little over two hours about how to cultivate piritual habits in children. (The content was very similar to what we taught at the Spiritual Habits seminar. In fact, one of the staff from All Saints' had attended that one and invited us to deliver something similar at her church.)

We emphasised the role of parents as the primary spiritual teachers of their children. After the session was over, one of the Sunday School teachers chatted with us and she lamented that in her experience, many parents had come up to her to complain that Sunday School had not done a good job instilling a spiritual life in their children. This teacher was so shocked that parents were expecting the Sunday School teachers to do the heavy lifting on forming a spiritual life in the children. What was worse, many parents did not have their own spiritual lives but recognised that it was something important that they wanted their children to have. But instead of developing their own spiritual lives and then teaching their children how to do likewise, they pushed the responsibility to Sunday School.

What is baptism?

My wife and I were teaching our Sunday School class today and we talked about Jesus asking John to baptize him. We discussed the meaning of baptism. We told the class that the root word was baptizo and that since there wasn't really an English equivalent of the word, translators simple used baptize.

Baptizo implies identification. When a piece of cloth was dipped into a vat of dye, the cloth took on the colour of the dye. This was process was called baptizo. The cloth became identified with the colour of the dye. In other words, the cloth took on the dye's colour.

Similarly, baptism was a symbolic ritual of identification. When folks came to John the Baptist to be baptized, it wasn't that the act did anything to clear their sin. They were just identifying or agreeing with John's message that they needed to repent in order to be accepted into the Kingdom of God. When Jesus asked to be baptised by John, it wasn't as if he had any sins that needed repentance. He was simply identifying or agreeing with John's message that repentance was needed in order to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. He was validating what John was teaching.