Sharing Gospel to My Junior Boys

At the start of the bible study, I threw out a question to them: "Do you think wisdom is easy or difficult to get?" Almost all of them said difficult, their reasoning was that if wisdom was easy, then everybody will certainly have it. I told them that in today's lesson we are going to discover the answer from the bible.

The text was taken from Proverbs 1:20-33.

"Wisdom calls aloud in the street, she raises her voice in the public squares" (Proverbs 1:20)

Here wisdom is illustrated as a person who is calling aloud to the people to respond to her.

This is what wisdom is saying to the people:

"How long will you simple ones love your simple ways? How long will mockers delight in mockery and fools hate knowledge?" (Proverbs 1:22)

Wisdom further said what she would do if the people had responded:

"If you had responded to my rebuke, I would have poured out my heart to you and made my thoughts known to you." (Proverbs 1:23)

From the above passage, we can learn that:

1. God wants everyone to have wisdom. God wants to give wisdom to everybody.
2. The reason why many people are not wise is simply because they wanted to remain foolish.
3. If we would only ask God for wisdom, God would freely give us all the wisdom we need.

"So," I asked the boys, "who wants to be foolish?". (Nobody raised his hand). "Who wants to be wise?" (Everybody raised his hand)

"We have just read that God would give us wisdom if we ask wisdom to come into our hearts. Who wants to ask Wisdom to come into our hearts?" (Everybody's hand still raised)

"The bible also said that Jesus Christ is the wisdom of God (see 1 Corinthians 1:24), so when we invite Jesus, we invite Wisdom into our hearts... so, who wants to invite Jesus to come into our hearts?"

At this, I led these precious ones to say the sinner's prayer. Among these, 2 of them accepted Jesus for the first time in their lives. Praise God!

My New Job As Legal Advisor

It has been more than a month since my last post. At first it was because of the hectic Chinese New Year celebration, then i got this new job... Oh! This is so exciting! I thought I must get back to my blog to record it down, to give glory to God.

I was approached for this job from a friend whom I have not been in contact for some time. Quite unexpectedly too! He said that his company is involved in a new project, and needs to hire an in-house lawyer.

I went in for an "interview" and agreed on the job on the spot. The terms were so appealing, what I would call an ideal job. It's like God had the job tailor-made just for me:

1. The retaining fee (salary) was slightly more what I used to get when working as a legal assistant, with a promise to increase it to almost double from what I used to get after 3 months.
2. My main job functions are to advice on company law and drafting agreements. Exactly what I had wanted. Something I enjoyed doing, and something I'm good at (I think!)
3. The job is on a retainer basis, meaning I can still practice as a lawyer or even get retained by another company (or companies).
4. They will give me a room to work in. My own office. They even invited me to set up my permanent office there. This one I'll have to consider. The downside is that I'll be "on-call" the whole time, but I can sure live with that. The plus side is I get my own office rent free, and I get to meet my own clients there.
5. The project they were planning to do is going to be a huge one. It is a nation-wide campaign involving some big names. In terms of exposure and experience, this is surely a God-sent. How I can get myself into this? This is surely by the grace of God. I soon found out that they are actually planning another large-scale project, and there's still another one in the pipeline. Talking about God's double blessing... this is a triple or multiple blessing.

All these I have been wishing and desiring in my heart, without actually putting it into prayer. All I remember doing was just a simple thought in my heart, "wouldn't it be nice if..."

Now I'm already in the job for about 2 weeks. During these 2 weeks, God has granted me favour upon favour with my "bosses":

1. The CEO offered that I may charge a further small amount for each of the agreements signed. This is being generous because the whole idea of retaining a lawyer is to save up on costs because they are doing the agreements in bulk. This "side-income" is expected to add up to a lot, as they are planning to get some couple of thousand agreements to be signed.
2. The Owner asked me one evening after dinner in which we had conversations about when I'm going to get married, etc, asked me, "So when do you plan to get married?". I said, "probably end of this year or early next year." Then he replied, "Good... because by that time you will probably get a big angpow from me. If your wedding is now then I can't afford a big angpow."
3. The CEO said to some of us in the executive level, that he will try to get us a salary of xxx (what they promised to give me after 3 months) starting from this month.
4. One of the managers, my friend who had invited me into the company, told me that he will try to talk to the bosses to double up my salary, ie. what I will be getting this month because now I'm handling the matters for 2 companies (ie. for the second project).
5. The CEO again. This only happened today: As part of my job, I have been requested to draft and prepare letters and correspondences with other parties. So, this afternoon as he was going through one of my draft letters, he said that I can bill the company separately for each of the letters prepared. And he said that I can bill the company for xxx amount (a very generous sum for drafting letters), just send him the bill and he will sign it. He added further that, he wants me to earn xxx amount (a very, very generous amount this time) every month while working here.

The amazing thing is, all these "additional terms" were offered by them out of their own initiative. I had not requested or demanded for a single item.

I believe that this year my life is going to be marked by God's favour. God's goodness and love will surely pursue and hunt me down, because the LORD is my Shepherd.

Teaching Junior Bible Study

This is my first week at work at my new job (read my post on 7/2/2008), and it has been really busy for me. It's not that kind of hard labour, but it is mentally exhausting.

That was my reason (excuse) for not preparing for my bible study lesson.

I had considered skipping bible study this week and teach other things, but since I haven't prepared for anything else either, I decided that I would stick to bible study.

I had just come back from work this morning itself, and so was quite tired. Up to the time when I distributed the bibles, I had no idea what I should teach on. I thought I would just read some verses and explain a bit, and dismiss the class.

Then I thought, wait... I'm not going to settle for this kind of lazy attitude, because I am going to preach God's word. God's word must be preached with excitement everytime, all the time. I prayed to God, "Lord, please speak through me to these children."

I began to teach them, continuing where we left off the last time. At first it was just plain and ordinary, i constantly had to remind myself to put on a smile, but things came to life halfway through. God brought to my mind a particular experience that well illustrates my point. Praise God! This is the summary of what I taught today.

Solomon's Guide on How to Get Wisdom:

Text: Proverbs 1:8-19

1. Listen to your parents' advice. Learn from their experience.

Parents can give us some very good advice, if we will just slow down and listen

2. Don't listen to a bad advice.

a. Learn to recognize which is a good advice and which is a bad advice.

b. There will be someone who constantly think of how to do bad things or how to harm other people. Some of them will ask us to join them - Don't do it.

3. Choose your friends carefully.

a. There are some good friends, and there are some bad friends.

b. We may eventually follow what they are doing.

Illustration:

When I was still studying at 16 years old, I was mixing around with a group of friends. Since most of us had just gotten our motorcycle licence, we were very excited about riding our motorcycles outside the school. A few of us already owned a motorcycle and rode it to school. I was one of them.

It began with just some harmless riding around to and fro, until later when someone suggested that we have a race. The race was to see who can go to 100 km/hour when riding along a narrow stretch of road just outside school. What actually made the race difficult was that in the middle of that stretch there was a sharp 90-degree turn that no one could manage to make that turn without slowing down, and therefore no one could make it till 100 km/hour.

I was a new Christian then, being young and adventurous. I arrogantly told my peers that I would try to win that race, and the way I'm going to do it is by doing a grand-prix style cornering at that turn. So I got to my bike as they watched on.

So off I went... at the speed of 90 km/hour I was already nearing the sharp turning. I decided to pull of my stunt as planned, but the road was too narrow my bike began to swerve to the other side of the road, and went out of the road towards the grass at the side of the road.

I tried to pull my brakes to the max but the bike was just going too fast. I was heading towards a lamp post and there was nothing I could do. My mind went blackout for a moment as my bike hit the lamp post headlong with a small thump.

I was stunned for a while and looked around. The bike was okay. I remember I had hit straight on the lamp post. At the speed I was at there should be more serious damages than this.

I checked and I realize that at that particular lamp post there were some soil being piled up around the lamp post, as a result of some digging work being done nearby that area that particular day. That pile of soil had actually absorbed much of the impact.

After that day, I began to wonder what would happen if there weren't any soil being piled up at that lamp post. I began to realize that God had miraculously delivered me from a serious accident.

I began to think how my life would be different if I had lost a limb on that day. I could have even broken my neck. From then on, I ride my bike very slowly, because I value my life. (Even to this day I would not speed on my car.)

Moral of the Story:

Sometimes, we would do some stupid things that we won't normally do, but because we mix with the wrong group, we will tend to follow their ways. It is wise to choose your friends.

Conclusion:

Wisdom is - knowing which is the right decision, and the ability to make that right decision.