Today's sermon really struck a chord in my heart. Before I begin my reflections, I would like to put certain disclaimers in place. I'm not going to seperate what was shared by Chris and what are my personal reflections. So if something sounds really smart, it's probably what Chris shared, if it sounds like mumbled gibberish, it's probably my own reflections part. If I made something sound like it was from Chris but it wasn't, I apologize.
Here goes.
The topic of today's sermon was "What to do when I hate myself". That's a really strong statement and I couldn't say I hate myself per se, probably just the flaws that I am aware of in myself or those that others point out to me. The hate that Chris was referring to, was not a hate of something general, for example, I hate it when people lap me when I run 2.4km. It's more of the hating of ourselves because of the sins we commit. The point was that sin did not make us any more unworthy in God's eyes. The illustration Chris gave was that of a diamond covered in mud; that we still have an intrinsic value that cannot be diminished by sin (illustrated by the mud, in this case). As a support of our value, God has created us to be the crown of creation, far above all other created beings. Even after we sinned and caused Him major grief, He still sacrificed His son for us. So if we take it that God thought us comparable in value, we must be worth quite alot.
Now that we got our inherent value bit out of the way, it's more of the sin part and our approach after committing it. As a regular christian we would have certainly heard the bit about if we repent of our sins then we are forgiven, as it is said in the bible. For some of us, we make excuses for our habitual sins as our God-given conscience seems to be getting hoarse and losing its voice, or find ourselves too unworthy and avoid approaching God altogether. This last sentence spoke the most to me because I find myself falling into it VERY often. The solution would be to have a contrite heart. The meaning of this word contrite is simple yet really difficult to attain. It speaks of being aware, having a sincere remorse of one's wrong coupled with the desire to atone for it. This concept is mentioned in Psalms 51 where David apologized to God for his sins. This passage also contains the knowledge that David has of God's character, that God did not hate him for the sins he committed but rather for the sins he committed.
A speaker once shared in COR youth that there are 2 ways to not sin; namely to remove the desire and to remove the opportunity. Too many services attended, I think I've heard messages like these far too often and forgotten them shortly after just as often. This time, I'm writing it down and remembering it so I'd do something about it!
After service went lunch with Kiat and the others. Haven't had lunch with him in abit because either of us had something on or somehow just didn't end up eating together. This cumulates to a great weekend because I was able to spend time with my best friends from church. =) Alas I am about to indulge in my next favourite activity, sleeping. If only doing both back to back wouldn't make me fat :(
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