A Reflection of Darius Tng

I am very impressed by our young people in church. This reflection is by Darius Tng, one of them.

At the beginning of the internship, I struggled with a concept regarding Godly behavior. On the 18th of Jan, I was sitting in the pews and listening to a message from Senior Pastor about focusing on God. I had a stumbling question in my mind - How am I to differentiate between forcing myself to produce godly behavior and using spiritual disciplines to achieve godly behavior?

Was not godly behavior supposed to be natural?

At that moment I was struggling to find the balance between this concept of godly behavior and spiritual disciplines. Keeping spiritual disciplines and refraining myself from doing certain things seemed like I was forcing myself to be a "better" Christian. All this while I had thought that a close relationship with God will automatically make one more Christ-like. As the days passed, I found myself caught in situations where I was tempted to act in an ungodly manner, especially at home. My patience grew shorter and I was easily irritated by my mom's nagging.

It was not until two weeks later that God spoke to me in one of the lessons with Bryan Lim and Pastor Luke. While going through the book ‘Life with God’, the author explained the importance of spiritual disciplines. Spiritual disciplines present ourselves as living sacrifices to God that He might then take us and transform us. We are not dead sacrifices who are void of reason and logic. We are living ones that think, act and feel.

I learned that spiritual disciplines are steps of obedience that don't enable or force us to become more Christ-like. Instead they make us malleable to God's use and receptive to God's voice. Only God can change our behavior and turn us around. It is not by our own efforts that we become more holy but by God's will that we do. Simply put, 'The tools for transformation are the choices we make.' Every choice we make, whether at home, at the office or in the public is in itself a tool used by God to transform us every waking moment.

In the end God taught me an invaluable lesson. We do not achieve, it is God who gives.