Pauline’s Notebook

Back when I was a kid, taking a holiday meant filling my backpack and going on a road trip. Some days, my family and I would drive for 800Km on the Australian highways (when there were no smooth freeways and no air con in the car), stopping at the Big Banana, or the Big Koala, the Big Oyster or the Big Sheep. For 4 weeks every year, we’d do road trips, seeing the landscape change and setting up camp at a caravan park.

These days, for most people I know, taking a holiday means traveling overseas, experiencing a different world than the familiar place we call home. But, is the Australian outback a familiar place to the typical Aussie? Well, for the city born and city lived, I think not. There is the smell of the Australian native bushland, it’s distinctive acidic characteristic, the sounds of the native birds and the crackle of the dry leaves underfoot. There is the buzz of catching fish at the local river bed and having it for dinner.

This year, we bought a car. A car that can take me back to the familiar places I call the Aussie country. I’m looking forward to these road trips. My kids are now pre-teens and I’m looking forward to holidaying with them in the outback.

In the past couple of months, my life had being a concoction of pressures on all sides. There were the long hours of work and the pressure to deliver things on time and of the best quality. Then there was a family crisis on one side and a stress fracture on another. My husband was also traveling during this time and I was left to juggle work and a young family on my own. Health began to deteriorate and I felt like I was in a pressure cooker. As I go through this period (I’m still in the midst of it as I write), I’m trying to work out how to breathe and be still (some call it His shalom). I mean it’s normal in life to get stress fractures (everyone gets it). But it’s knowing how to breathe in the midst of it all.

What really struck me throughout this pressure cooker period was how my life priorities had turned completely upside down. I tackled the external pressures first and neglected what should have been more important. Most devastating was that my devotional life was left to only when ‘I had the energy’… and I rarely had much of that. My marriage became strained and disconnected. My kids got fed and cleaned and put to bed - but got very little else.

Throughout this period, I realized how important memorizing Scripture is. It’s during these times that my memory of God’s Word would come to me when I had little energy to read it anew. The passage I have kept meditating on this past month was Psalm 73:25,26.

Whom have I in heaven but you?
And earth has nothing I desire besides you.

My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart
and my portion forever.

This is so true. And so comforting. There is nothing here on earth that I should need. There is nothing here on earth that I should want. I should not desire to succeed at work or in life. I should not desire to find favor in the eyes of friends, family or colleagues.  They are just external pressures. May I desire only Him and may He be my portion forever. Amen.

On Sunday, I made a new friend. He’s only 6 years old, he doesn’t say much and he can’t see very well. He has limited mobility and is much more at home in his wheelchair. I had the opportunity to get to know J better as I looked after him during Sunday School. I found that even tho’ J cannot talk, I would eventually understand him just by his arm movements and his eye contact. By the end of my 40 minutes with J, I was close to tears. Within that short time, I felt a love for little J that was so real that it seemed as if God was wanting me to see a glimpse of His love for J. I was so blown away by my time with J. Our world is so concerned about looking up to our celebrities, those who look good and have that ‘personality’. Meeting J was re-learning how God sees the heart of even a little child.

Matthew 18:1-5. The Greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven

¹At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”

²He called a little child and had him stand among them. ³And he said: “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. ⁴Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

⁵“And whoever welcomes a little child like this in my name welcomes me.

This is an extract from a talk written for the Gracepoint FCG Womens Group. It has being broken down into 4 parts. To continue reading the rest of the talk, click on the link to part II.

The messages out there in our western culture is wrong and it’s perverted. I want my daughter to be aware of that. I want her to dress and act wisely so that she does not stumble others. I want her to learn about what the Bible means to be ‘pure’ as she turns into a woman one day. I want her to learn about the way she should see herself in the way God sees her - through biblical truths. And my prayer is that we can become women pure in heart and in our relationships.

The Wrong Understanding – from our toxic culture

Since the beginning of the industrial revolution, the western world has been using sex appeal to sell products. They use the idea that our sex appeal - the way we dress, the way we smell and walk, revealing our body shapes - will get us the admiration and attention that we crave for. A recent article tells of Lady Gaga explaining why she dresses the way she does. “It’s to provoke a response”, she says. It’s purely to gain the attention onto herself. Ask yourselves this question - why do you dress the way you dress? Why do you buy certain clothes and certain styles and styles of cuts in clothes? Why did you buy that handbag or shoes or sunnies? The world wants to sell to us the message, that we are no. 1 and we deserve the attention and admiration by how we dress. Everything we buy is to give people an impression - whether it be our handbags or shoes or clothing label. We buy Chanel because it’s the image of sophistication. We buy Donna Karan because it’s in vogue. What the world also wants us to believe is, that the way we style ourselves will keep the guy or even get the guy we like. This is the second message they want us to believe, that for women, we can gain what we privately crave for in life – to be forever loved and cherished by another just by how we look, smell and walk. Our society has being buying it for decades! This message has been slowly seeping into our advertising for years, even amongst the time of our grandmothers when they started watching TV and reading magazines. Mothers and even grandmothers have bought into this lie. They are undergoing botox and liposuction and waxing and breast implanting and wearing certain cut clothes just because they think that their body parts are what will keep their relationships or give them attention or power. It has drenched our way of life so much so that the idea has now become a fear factor for us. I’ve been personally told that women (in general), had better watch our weight and dress and look well, otherwise we’d lose our husbands to another woman! We are so immersed in this culture that we are blind to it’s polluted message and it’s sad to see mothers dressing their little girls in clothes and styles that should be for adults. The objectification of women to our body parts and the sexualisation of everything has polluted the message of healthy relationships between a man and a woman. What should be a healthy image of ourselves as women and how we should relate to guys has been abused and polluted. I‘ll give you an example of how these polluted messages start in our world-view. It was a school holiday and I decided to take the kids on a day outing to Darling Harbour. In the middle of our monorail ride, my kids started to laugh and whisper to each other. They were both staring at a poster stuck on the wall of the monorail, giggling at the picture. I looked up and there glaringly in front of me was picture of a half naked woman!! Her hands were barely covering her breasts as she seductively licked this melted chocolate off her hands. The chocolate was dripping everywhere, completely covering her naked body. My 5 y.o (at the time) first comment was, (out loud mind you) “Oooh! She’s naked! That’s naughty!!” and she began to laugh….. So begins, my kid’s first lessons from our culture about sexuality and womanhood. That a woman should not be ashamed of exposing her body. And that men and womens’ experience of joy and pleasure can come from seeing a naked woman licking on melted chocolate! Now, is that how you see yourself as a woman? I would hope that as girls become woman, that we believe we are more than just the physical sums of our bodies. By the time my daughter is your age, with the total amount of billboard ads, TV shows, video clips, movies, commercials, magazines and books all telling her that it’s OK to use her body for attention - it comes to little surprise that this is how she is to live by. And it will come to no surprise, that is how you live by. But, let me tell you the sad but also hidden outcome of all this… Statistics show that this polluted message has contributed to mental health problems, leading to eating disorders, self-harm, depression and anxiety. Studies have shown that one in 100 girls in Australia are anorexic and one in 5 is bulimic. There are lots of girls who are eating, purging and throwing up. They have obsessed themselves with their looks, spending hours on their hair and make-up. They have lost the concern for real intimacy and connection with their mums and dads, friends and to the opposite sex. Boys too, growing into men, through the same polluted media messages and video games are corrupted. They no longer see girls as whole women deserving of respect. It affects their relationships. They don’t know how to relate to girls as friends anymore and everything is overlaid with overt-sexualised messaging. This is why Paul tells us in Romans 1:24 … Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen. The sad reality is that we are crippling ourselves because we worship created things. We worship ourselves and we worship relationships that are broken and never perfect – no wonder we get devastated when we don’t get that guy or we break up. Its the end of the world because we’ve put all our trust in what is created and this leads to depression and all sorts of other problems! We have so immersed ourselves in the lies of this world that we can not see sex for what it is anymore – a created thing, a good thing created for our lifelong partner - but still a created thing. And we are worshiping it rather than worship our Creator Himself.

To continue reading the rest of the talk, click on the link to part II.

This is an extract from a talk written for the Gracepoint FCG Womens Group. It has being broken down into 4 parts. To continue reading the rest of the talk, click on the link to part III.

The Right Understanding

Worshiping our Creator, by putting our hope and trust in His Word is the first step in living rightly. We need to understand that our Creator is infinitely supreme and nothing compares to His glory, honour and praise! And because He is supreme and all loving, then what He demands of us, is for our greatest joy and delight. He knows whats best for us. Do you trust and believe that your Father in Heaven is supreme and that what he demands of us will be for our joy and delight? Or do you think its more important to trust in what you think is best for yourselves? The mistake is that we say with our lips that Jesus is our Lord and Saviour – but surely it doesn’t hurt to be a bit like the world, to dress for attention and power. Surely, it doesn’t hurt to behave and talk like others - to make snide comments about others – otherwise they’d walk all over us. It doesn’t hurt to be sarcastic because thats what the Aussie culture does. When we do this, we are really saying to God that He isn’t supreme and that what He demands of us in Scriptures are not worthy to follow. So when we dress a certain way, or act a certain way towards the opposite sex, we are saying to Him that our body parts gives us worth and value. Scripture, in contrast to the world’s message will tell you that you are worth more than your body. Your true value is worth more than how you look. In fact, you are worth so much that God gave His Son, Jesus Christ to die on your behalf. Romans 5:6-8 explains it like this…You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly (thats you and me). 7Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. 8But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners (while we were self-obsessed with ourselves, and in our quest for relationships), Christ died for us…. Christ died for you and He has risen, to give you a new life. And in so doing, allows you to find your greatest joy and delight in Him alone and in living in the way He demands of you. Even if you have fallen into sexual sins, you will be forgiven if you turn back to God and acknowledge that what you have been doing is wrong and that you have been exchanging the truth for a lie. Ask for forgiveness and He will forgive you (Acts 10:43; Romans 4:7; Heb 8:12; 1 Jn 1:9). Even as forgiven people, the sexual impurities are inherently in us, the Bible assumes that. It’s part of our DNA, just as much as anger or jealousy is a part of our DNA. But as we have being crucified with Jesus and given a new life in Jesus, we can control it and be pure. Gal 5:23 tells us that self-control is a fruit of the Spirit; 1 Thess 5:8 tells us that since we belong to the day let us be self-controlled, putting on faith and love as a breastplate, and the hope of salvation as a helmet. God wired it into us as believers. We can train ourselves through regulating what we feed into our brains. If we feed our brains with pornography and fringe sexual practices on TV, we will become more and more dependent on them and will respond less and less to being pure in our relationships. If in contrast, we fill our minds with fun and exciting things, communicating with our family and friends with purity, then we will become more attractive and they will take pleasure in being with us and us with them. Proverbs 31 and Titus 2 tells us of such free and liberated women and how they behave in purity. She is enterprising, and uses the gifts that God gives her in a worthy manner. She complements her husband (and men in general), by utilising and recognising the different roles that they have between men and women, yet also knowing they are equal in God’s sight. A woman is admired when she is pure in heart (that is, not self seeking or doing things for self gain). She is hard working, takes care of those in need, doesn’t give in to idleness or idle talk and loves her family. Above all, she glorifies God and fears Him. You can be an attractive woman, graced with dignity and admired because your graciousness, your compassion, your patience, gentleness, humility and love towards others Col 3:12-14. This is not to say that we don’t care about our outward appearance but rather our inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, is of great worth in God’s sight (1 Peter 3:4). Whether you are single or in a relationship, these things are to be what we strive for in all our relationships because God is supreme and demands it from us. He does this for our benefit, for us to truly experience ultimate joy and delight in living His way.

To continue reading the rest of the talk, click on the link to part III.

This is an extract from a talk written for the Gracepoint FCG Womens Group. It has being broken down into 4 parts. To continue reading the rest of the talk, click on the link to part IV.

Recognizing the toxicity in us and stopping it on it’s tracks.

Here are some practical ways to recognize the pollution of our culture and to stop it on it’s tracks. First, we need to recognize that some of the clothes we buy are harmful, not just to ourselves but also to the guys around us. Here is a principle you can apply based on 1 Cor 6:12 passage that says all things are permissible but not all things are beneficial. So, is it wrong to wear bikini tops? Well, no… but if we are wearing it because we want to get a reaction from others, then yes, it is wrong. Then, you say you aren’t doing it out of vain conceit…. Is it then wrong to wear bikini tops? Well, no… but it may be a stumbling block to the guys around you as they have being perverted by the toxic messages of our culture and will get the wrong message from you if you wear it. So, then the answer to the same question could then be yes, it is wrong to wear singlet tops - if it causes the guys to stumble 1 Cor 10:32; 1 Cor 6:12. Recognise the brands that sexualise their clothes and stay away from them. Cotton On has sexual slogans on t-shirts. Girlfriend and Cosmopolitan magazines are lifestyle bibles for girls and women, yet they depicts very demeaning messages to them. Recognizing and avoiding clothing lines, magazines and books is the first step. When communicating to the opposite sex, be aware when your texting becomes sexting. If you are in a relationship, be aware that the pressure you might get from your boyfriend (to look good and to engage in sexual practices) is also because they themselves have been bombarded with the same unhealthy sexual messages you have had! One way to stop yourselves from going down that road is to ask an older male to hold your boyfriend accountable. This older guy can regularly ask your boyfriend those hard questions. Likewise, do the same for yourself with an older female. In this day and age, even parents will let you and your boyfriend travel on holidays together. This to me spells BIG trouble! Don’t even contemplate it even if others around you say it’s OK. When you go out with your boyfriend like to a movie, make sure you tell another person to call you when you know the movie is over and when you should be due home. Better still, tell your parent or a friend to expect you to be home at a certain time so to avoid making out in the car. It’s about making yourself accountable to trusted people to preserve those sexual desires to be saved for the one you love – your lifelong partner. If you realise you love your boyfriend and he’s a godly guy, then get married quick because those sexual urges will get stronger! Now you may think that it’s getting overboard to get someone to call you when a movie is over. But the mistake is that you think you are strong enough to overcome your sinful nature…. and you aren’t. The reality is that all of us will struggle with our sensual desires which can easily overcome our dedication to Christ. So be honest with yourself and be honest with your friends.

To continue reading the rest of the talk, click on the link to part IV.

This is an extract from a talk written for the Gracepoint FCG Womens Group. It has being broken down into 4 parts. To read from the beginning of the talk, click on the link to part I.

Developing the purity of relationships in the best possible way.

This is how you can develop purity in your relationships in the best possible way. Fill you time understanding and working on your graciousness, your compassion, your patience, gentleness and humility towards others. What does it mean to be gentle at home? What does it mean to be gracious? Who do you need to be patient with now? Who can you extend your compassion to this week? Work at how to show unconditional love towards your brother, your sister, your mum and dad as well as to your friends or work colleagues. Learn to relate healthily with the guys at church using these qualities rather then on how you look. For those already in a relationship, keep working on the romance and the love affections. Fill your time with your boyfriend doing fun and exciting things both of you enjoy. If its sport then do all those outdoor activities. For others, its going for long walks. In others, its the pleasure of cooking up a meal together or eating out and trying out new foods. Fill your time communicating with him and renewing your minds together by praying and reading the bible. Pray for this constantly between the two of you – that…. whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about such things. (Philippians 4:8).

Conclusion

I know the pressure is there…Let me share with you what someone recently shared with me. She says…I honestly find it getting harder being a single 23 year old who wants so much to follow Jesus and be a servant for His kingdom, and yet have all my girlish desires. To want to be loved and cherished by another, to want to have children to dote on etc etc. I wonder what God has in store for me, a companion to walk with me through life, together into deeper love for Jesus…? This is such a faith journey for me, and sometimes, I admit the social pressures I get from this world shakes me a little. Its easier to settle for less, than to wait for something more… I’ll say it again… its easier to settle for less, than to wait for something more. So, I pray that as the world continues to shake you, resist the urge to settle for less. Jesus did not die for you to settle for less. He has already given you the best of Himself – his life. And He will give you even more as you trust in him and follow Him faithfully.

Prayer:

Our Heavenly Father, as your children, help us to be aware of and say no to sexual immorality in the way we dress, what we read or watch and the way we act towards the opposite sex. Help us to know and believe that You alone are enough for us and is our greatest delight and joy. Help us to replace our precious time filling our minds with things above and loving our family and our friends, building on the good things that lasts. For those in a relationship, help us to especially replace our precious time together building on the good things that lasts. Amen.

This is an extract from a talk written for the Gracepoint Parents Group. It has being broken down into 4 parts. To continue reading the rest of the talk, click on the link to part II.

We do not Love

Scriptures tell us that due to sin, relationships are broken. Yet despite broken relationships, we still see in some marriages, a love that is special and good. But, even in the most devoted couples, there are the “in-laws”. There is a common saying that we get to choose who we marry but we did not get to choose whose family we are to marry into. Sometimes marriages do get rocky but we do love our husbands. It’s easier to love our husbands because we chose to love them. It’s like how most people have a little circle of ‘in people’ - those whom they find easier to love. We chose our husbands so its easier to love them – but we certainly did not choose our in-laws! Now here is the challenge … bible passages that speak the language of love towards our husbands – agape love (unconditional) - is also the same love language Scripture uses towards those around us. In other words, we are told to have the same agape love towards our in-laws as we do towards our husbands. The tensions we get relating to our in-laws are pressure points but when we respond with anger or revenge onto our in-laws, we sin against them. We do not love them. We do not love them when we get angry and complain about them. We do not love them when we set boundaries up to avoid seeing them. We do not love them when we stop our children from seeing them.

Why we need to Love

We are called to love them because God loves them. God’s love has providential love. In other words, He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous (Matt 5:45). His love is unconditional to all people, so much so, that He sends His Son Jesus to die for all, the righteous for the unrighteous – thats you, me, your spouse, your family, your friends and your enemies. Yet in this broken world, most people love those who are like them and resent those who are different. Jesus tells us to love our enemies – a love that is rich and costly. We love even when it’s hard to love, because it marks us as the children of our Heavenly Father. We love even when it’s hard to love, because that shows our transformation of becoming more like Jesus (Rom 5:8). We love because that is our calling. We love because we know that God is sovereign and He alone will exact justice on those who wrong us. And finally, we love because of the promises and hope that is to come, comes with many blessings.

To continue reading the rest of the talk, click on the link to part II.

This is an extract from a talk written for the Gracepoint Parents Group. It has being broken down into 4 parts. To continue reading the rest of the talk, click on the link to part III.

How we can Love

And this is how we can show love to them. Col 3:12-14 says. Therefore as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues, put on love, which binds them altogether in perfect unity.

(i) Love through our virtues

Do you exhibit these virtues when you relate to your in-laws? Are you patient, kind and gentle to them? Or do you fester quietly inside and later rant and rave to your husbands afterwards? Love is not about being nice but rather loving those who can be overbearingly hard to love. When your in-law criticizes you about how poorly you feed your child, respond with gentleness. When your in-law openly expresses his/her expectations to you about your role as a wife or mother, respond with kindness and humility. When your in-law disciplines your child without your consent, respond with patience. We do this because we are God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved.

(ii) Love before Sacrifice

The irony is that many of us are quite involved in church ministry. We spend time and effort being involved in small group ministries, or music ministry or 1-1 discipleship. Yet in private, do we work at loving those closest to us? We harbor our grievances about our in-laws in private and then we air our gifts in public. How do we know we are a child of God? By our services to Him? No! Jesus says in John 13:35, “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” If you are having conflicts, Jesus says in Matthew 5:24…First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift.

(iv) Love through our actions

For some of us there are no conflicts because we hardly see our in-laws due to other reasons like language barrier or distance. To love someone does not mean we need to communicate in any deep level. ‘The Five Love Languages’, says that expressing love doesn’t need to be said but rather shown in our actions like regularly visiting them or helping them through acts of service. For the past 5 years, every Friday my in-laws would spend the whole day together. I don’t have to join them – they are, after all only my in-laws and not my immediate family. Eugene isn’t there either, he’s still working. But, I allocate most Fridays with them. I know that it speaks loudly that I care about them if I spend time with them. Some afternoons, I will visit my MIL 1-1 just to see how she’s going with no real agenda - I just hang with her. Those years of giving them my time speaks the language of love to them. If distance is an issue, then weekly phone calls and regular updates on emails show them that you are thinking of them and love them.

To continue reading the rest of the talk, click on the link to part III.

This is an extract from a talk written for the Gracepoint Parents Group. It has being broken down into 4 parts. To continue reading the rest of the talk, click on the link to part IV.

Forbearance and Forgiveness

Loving our in-laws will not be easy. I think most people would agree that it’s almost heroic to love those who persecute us (like persecuted Christians among the third world). But to love our in-laws… its a daily struggle and the daily little conflicts that fester and boil is just so much harder. It is much much easier to live far way from your in-laws. The world teaches us that if people are just too difficult to get along with, then avoid them. But the Colossians 3 passage tells us otherwise. We are to bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances we have with each other.

(I) Forbearance

Forbearance by definition is tolerance and restraint in the face of provocation. Angry outbursts, avoidance of, or passive aggressiveness are all the opposite to forbearance. Some define forbearance as patience. In most cases, the power we possess over our in-laws are ourselves and our children. We can dictate how much time they get to see our family depending on where we choose to live or how open we are to having them over. Sometimes, when we are provoked by our in-laws, we might use our rights to stop our in-laws from spending time with our kids. To think like that is sinful. You cannot bear with each other if you are not allowing your in-laws and your family to spend time with each other. We need to constantly challenge ourselves to stop avoiding them or purposely living far away from them just so to avoid working on our relationship with them.

(ii) Forgiveness

Now, let’s talk about forgiveness. I know of a couple who live next door to the husband’s parents. Many years ago, the DIL got angry at something her FIL said. Up to this day, she has not spoken to nor acknowledged his presence and they still live next door to each other! In the words of DA Carson, there is something profoundly evil about nurturing a resentment of this order for many years. So often we allow what our in-laws have said to us, to fester and boil for many years. We even go so far as to allow it to cripple us - to lose sleep over it, to allow our minds to keep thinking about it over and over again. We allow past hurts to cripple our lives and our relationships. Yet look at how Jesus responds to those who actively sought to kill Him on the cross. He prays that our Heavenly Father may forgive them. We need to constantly forgive our in-laws even if they have wronged us. It is a daily approach to the foot of the cross, to remember how we ourselves need forgiveness for wronging Jesus and those around us. We are all people bought by the blood of the lamb of God in need of forgiveness – we are all in the same boat.

Tough Love

So far, it all sounds like we’re going to be doormats and let our in-laws get away with everything. So, when is tough love necessary and when can we be confrontational? Well, there is just anger. Jesus certainly showed that at the temple when he overturned the market tables. But that anger was a just and confrontational anger, directed at those who did not give God His deserved glory, honor and praise. When we get angry, is it because God was not glorified or did we get angry because we were not glorified? There has only ever being a few times where I’ve had to be confrontational towards my mother-in-law. And my idea of being confrontational is a gentle but firm conversation in private with my MIL. So, what would I put on the line between myself and my MIL? I would have to say that the only thing worth fighting for, is my godliness, my family’s godliness and her godliness. Everything else is not worth fighting for.

To continue reading the rest of the talk, click on the link to part IV.