The dream was to establish life transforming communities all across Malaysia. These communities would center around homes of Christians. We took a good 7 years to refine our vision and to solidify our identity. Who were we and how did we want to live as a Christian community. We met in homes in the Klang Valley. The idea was great and the commitment and genuiness to share our lifes with each other was very high.

I was one of two co leaders and we were in the 90s going through busy young family lifes. We had newborns and the task of raising young children was upon us then. Evenings were often taken up meeting and counseling with singles who made up of more than half our congregation. The day time was dedicated to work and business. Our wives who were also very much involve in ministry took much of the pressure. Looking back, I can only have attributed our lifes to the grace of God who kept our faith….and our sanity.

Continuing “Lost in the Middle” (Paul Tripp) on “traps to avoid at the death of a dream.”
1) Envy Trap
2) Bitterness trap
Many of us are tempted to look back during mid life and do an accounting. We add up all our hard choices, good decisions, and disciplined labors and compare them to “good” things in life that we think we have earned a right to. If the good results do not match the the labor that we have invested, then we tend to feel we have been the victims of a cosmic con. ……They think back at all they have done and simply can’t understand why they don’t have more to show for it.

Tripp suggests that if we dwell on this inbalance and injustice the more bitter we get and ultimately the bitterness gets aimed at God.

I can name many including the organization that oversaw us whom I felt disappointed with. The people in the community etc. There were a thousand fingers to point to. The thing I realize is that if I did not see this entire death of the dream and the process of finding this new church community as the sovereign design of God, I could very easily have spiraled down into bitterness or regret.

It was only last Friday, when Luke (a brother who got saved through our community 6 years ago) shared in cell group at CDPC about his spiritual journey from Holland to Malaysia. He received Christ 7 years ago when we met him. We were a small part of that journey and I am grateful that God allowed us to be an influence in that period of his life. God’s time horizon is much bigger than ours and I realize that looking at my particular dream was like a fish in an aquarium thinking that that was the ocean. The dream, a gift from God, took personal ownership but also became a stumbling block to seeing God’s wider perspective thus limiting God’s glory and His incredible work in and among us.

As I sat in my new church community, listening to Pastor Wong preach from the vantage point of Moses atop Mount Nebo on the peak of Pisgah (Deuternomy 32), my mind wondered to the years past and my journey and failures and what I had accomplished and what I had to show for……in my physical eye......... (and in the eyes of others around me) nothing much…...

I returned in 1992, after being away overseas for 5 years. The first Sunday back at the home church, there was an embarrasing public squabble between the pastor and the church board. It was masked in “prophecies” and in the sermon. This finally led to the ouster of the head pastor and confirmed my thoughts of "organized church" and its unattractiveness.

My involvement with a church group while overseas shifted a lot of my theology as I began to find through scriptures, Biblical support for much of what I had based my Christianity on. The most major of which was probably in my Sophomore year in college when a doctorate student from our little house fellowship committed suicide. He was manic depressive. The Lord assured me of his salvation and after much wrestling with scriptures, I was assured of my salvation and that because I was saved by grace through faith in Him, I could not lose my salvation. If it (salvation) did not depend on me (or my wisdom) in the first place, then how can it depend on me (to lose my salvation). I was delighted and have since celebrated in worship everyday for my freedom in Christ.

The second most drastic shift was in the way leaders and pastors were raised within the church. Pastors were recognized within churches because of their faithfulness to the Word and their character. That was a major change in my thinking as I grew up in a church organization that ordained pastors after a seminary degree. Many of my peers went into seminary and later ordained as pastors straight after Form 6.

With this excitement and zeal and the unattractiveness of fomal church, I began to start a Bible study group. Many of whom were those who had fallen out from the church squabble. Soon, leaders from Singapore who were affiliated with the group I was with in the US, came to Malaysia to start a church based on the house church model. We grew and in the 12 years we saw many come to the Lord as a result.

12 years on, I am sitting at this Presbyterian Church in the suburb of Subang pondering at what may seem to be the funeral of my dreams. Paul Tripp in "Lost in the Middle"outlines several traps that easily ensnare us at the funeral of our dreams:

1) The envy trap –“ It is easy to notice those who have are successful. It is easy to be captured by envy, that somehow God had gotten the wrong address.”

I thought we had the right formula, we were sincere, probably more so than the mega church leaders around – but yet we “failed.”

“Envy destroys 2 great commands: 1) Destroys loving worship of God. Envy debates His wisdom, doubts His sovereignty, and questions His love.” It accuses God of failing to be the wise Father that He promised to be. “

Although I was not consumed with envy, I did question “why” and failed to see this, not as a failure but as God’s sovereign plan to move on to a new vision for myself, for the other leaders and the church members. I failed to trust God and to have an attitude like Moses who realized his time was up and he was not going in to the promise land. Moses in Deut 33, recited blessings for each tribe....
......To be continued...................