26 Jan 2013 by Natasha Kim CM-
A young adults (YA) gathering was held at Bangunan Yin, SIBKL recently. This gathering was a rare occasion, held only once a year. All the young adults from SIBKL gathered together to meet including many of the Church Pastors as well. The topic for the day touched on a very important question, and that was “How are the little things you do today affecting your future?”
Mankind is trapped in the sands of time. We cannot change time nor can we make more or less of it. That power is not ours to have. What we have, is the choice of who (or what) we become within that given space of time. Waste it or spend it well.
The ever-bubbly, Pastor Dr. Lee Choo headed the talk today. She grabbed everyone’s attention with her smile.
“I want to talk about this season of your life. What is this young adult age all about? It is having left the ideology of your college years… I know you feel good about walking away from that phase, but I hate to tell you, that your dreams are about to be shattered!” said Lee. With that everyone laughed. However, she was serious and added, “It’s shattered because you meet the real world, the real girls, and the real guys!” Reality is good and it’s the critical season of everyone’s life.
Just before you enter the 40’s and the 50’s especially in the 50’s, the way you live, your perspective and the way you think are already set. “Those who are in their 50’s and above, if they have not trained themselves to look at life in a certain way, they will find it very hard to change. The secret is to grow a right perspective of life when you are a young adult” she said.
The ups and downs of life expose you to your inner person as you go through different cycles. The key to growing is to learn and manage each reality well because it will not only prepare you to face the world but to help others as well. She said, “Learn how life is to be lived so that when you’re 50 and above, you can look back and have very little regrets. That is the purpose of a young adult’s life. Do not look back with regrets and wish that you had a better perspective of life or that you would stop blaming people constantly for everything that goes wrong.”
“The danger of today’s world is that we have a very short perspective of life. The way you allow God to speak into your life will affect tomorrow.” she said. With that she invited Pastor Victor and Pastor Daniel on stage to for a Q&A session, to share a bit about their life back when they were a young adult. In short, both did not have the best of lives as a young adult until they learned to adapt and learned from their own mistakes and eventually become more obedient to God. The key point to learn from this Q&A is to embrace change. Those incidents taught them how to serve in a proper way and they became much happier people.
Embracing the Present
To embrace change, we need to embrace the present. For example, if you had a bad experience such as a break up, what do you do? Lee Choo said, “You do not do anything else but react to such a thing like…maybe cry. Embracing this moment is to allow this moment to enter you because you need to be in touch with your feelings and not fight it.” Feelings are neither right nor wrong, God gives us feelings!
You can embrace the moment by sharing your problems with a good and solid friend, someone who will listen to you and give you positive advice. At the same time however, she said, “If you respond to this wound of yours, if you keep it in andrespond to it by blaming and being bitter, it will only add salt to the wound and nothing will happen.”
Hebrews 13:5
5 Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said,
“Never will I leave you;
never will I forsake you.”[a]
Change is always painful but it is necessary and if you do not want to embrace change you will still be bitter 10 years from now and still have a bad perspective of girls or boys. “I believe that in relationships, even if it was good or bad, it enriches our lives and that is why we must allow our experiences to speak to us.” she said.
The best thing to do is not only embrace change but to allow God in our lives. She said, “Many young adults come to me telling me that they have prayed so hard but God has not answered their prayers!” She responded to them by saying, “God will not answer you because you are expecting a type of answer.” Many come to God and ask Him for answers but most of the time, the problem is that they have already decided the type of answer they want from God.
“If you did not allow God into your life, you might not get the best of that moment, because God is primarily your Father in Heaven who wants to love you, mentor you and help you grow.” She said.“One of the things I realized about God is that He doesn’t just answer you. Sometimes, He may let you do what you ask for because you ask for it so desperately. However, only when you start to allow God to answer your prayers, you allow God to help you grow.”
Hold on to His Promises
God allows instances in our lives, to merely rescue us and give us a hope and a future! Hence, when we are old, we can look back and be thankful for the life He has given us, because He has walked with us.
She then ended the talk of the night by saying, “If God did not answer you, what then does He do? He asks us to hold on to His promises.” When we hold on to Gods promises, we hold on to God. From there, we get to know God and His character of God. And while we hold on to these promises, God will start making these promises come true! She also urged everyone to do things that are beyond his or her comfort zone because it is only when we are stretched, that God can grow us and enlarge our understanding of ourselves.
Dear Viewers in Christ, if you find this article edifying to you, please share with your friends or loved ones by using the social media plugs (Share, Email to this article). The Lord will surely bless you as you bless others. May the Lord’s peace and love be with you. Amen.
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