The VOICE Conference > the VOICE staff blog > faith

A Tale of Two Composers

Posted on April 3, 2015 by Tim Chen

Photo by will_spark and alvincchen / CC BY

Imagine two different 28-year-olds.

One is a New York Broadway lyricist and composer. His first musical on Broadway has just received the prestigious Tony award (the Oscar award for Broadway musicals). His future is bright, full of exciting opportunities.

The other was born in New York, but has lived in Taiwan for the past 20 years. He works at the VOICE Conference, and every year, he writes a musical for the conference attendees to perform. His future is uncertain, with nothing exciting planned.

You can probably guess that the second 28-year-old is me. Several years ago, I remember watching with admiration at a clip of a new, young composer named Lin-Manuel Miranda rapping his acceptance speech upon receiving a Tony Award. In my heart, I thought “When I’m 28, I want to be just as successful.”

Now that I’m the same age, I’m faced with the reality that I haven’t accomplished what I hoped to. I can’t help wondering, does it mean I’m not talented enough? Am I not hard-working enough?

More to the point, am I… a failure?”

Recently, I’ve gained a new appreciation for Psalm 42. The Psalmist is experiencing great, unsatisfied longings within his heart. “As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul…”

Now, the Psalmist could try to convince himself he wasn’t thirsty. “You know, I actually have a pretty good life. I should be grateful with what I have.” Or what if he tried to solve the problems on his own? “If only I had chosen differently, I wouldn’t be thirsty now. If I work really hard, then everything will be okay.”

The key point is he knows what can truly satisfy. “…So panteth my soul after Thee, O God.” Though a thirsty hart may enjoy grass, hay, and corn, only water will do. And while I would like to be famous and successful, none of those things will satisfy. Only God will do.

So what does the Psalmist do? He acknowledges his desires, and looks to the only one who can satisfy them. “Why art thou downcast, O my soul? and Why are thou disquieted within me? Hope in God, for I will yet praise Him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God.”

The point isn’t whether or not I am a failure. The point is, am I putting my hope in God? Is He MY God?

What Did You Expect?

Posted on March 5, 2015 by Wes Dudley

I was watching “The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian” with my daughter not long ago, when there was a scene that took place that I haven’t been able to get out of my mind. After the children arrive back in the fantasy world of Narnia, they find it’s changed drastically, and Aslan (the Jesus-type figure) is nowhere to be found – and it’s looking like he isn’t even in Narnia anymore.

As the kids start roaming the countryside, the youngest child, Lucy, looks across a deep gorge and claims to see Aslan. However, after her siblings look, Aslan isn’t there. Since no one believed Lucy, they took the long way around the gorge. Later that night, Lucy’s brother, Edmund, asks her “Why do you think I didn’t see Aslan?” Lucy responds with a very wise answer: “Maybe you didn’t really want to.”

The point is that Lucy probably first noticed Aslan across the gorge and over in the woods because she was expecting to see him in the first place. The other children were just going through the motions and weren’t sure if they even wanted to encounter Aslan. In the end, everyone meets up with Aslan, but some challenges could have been avoided if they had simply wandered through Narnia with a greater level of expectancy right from the start.

Now before you start believing that you’re the Lucy in this story, don’t forget that Jesus’ own followers were not even ready for Him after He rose from the dead. We’re talking about people that walked with Jesus face to face, heard Him say that He would die and rise again, and they still didn’t expect to see Him.

Walking through life with a heart full of faith isn’t an easy thing. Do I expect God to show up each day? Am I anticipating God to do the impossible even when God doesn’t seem anywhere to be found? The reality of living like God is real boils down to maintaining a level of expectancy that He rewards those who sincerely seek Him. The awe of our God is that He is still faithful despite our unbelief; nevertheless, do we really want to miss out on an encounter with our King merely because we were not expecting Him to show up?

To the Max

Posted on November 16, 2014 by Luke Kallberg

I was talking recently with a father of nine. His youngest are now about junior high age. He had an interesting perspective on the difficulty level of raising different amounts of children. “When you have your first kid, it’s all you can handle. You’re maxed out,” he said. “Then when you have your second kid, you’re maxed out. When you have your third kid, you’re maxed out. It’s all you can do just to keep up. With four kids, you’re maxed out. With five, you’re maxed out. It’s all you can handle.” And so on. Actually he might have only gone up to four and then said, “That’s how it just keeps on going.”

What’s going on with that? Clearly there’s more going on in this guy’s life with nine kids than there was with one. Clearly there’s more going on with two kids than with one. Did his capacities just keep on increasing? Did his need for sleep keep on decreasing? I doubt it. Probably there were some changes in his personal priorities, some willingness to pursue his own interests less, so that he could spend more time and energy on the kids. But surely that cannot account for all of the “more going on” that happened as his family’s size increased. It seems like there must have just been a lot going on that he wasn’t even aware of, and that group of “things going on that he wasn’t aware of” increased as more kids came along. Nevertheless, he remained engaged in as much as he possibly could all along the way: he was “maxed out.” (It would be interesting to find out whether his wife would describe it the same way he did, but if she would, I bet this analysis would apply to her as well.)

I think it makes sense that there is a certain amount of stuff that I can be engaged in at any point in my life…and that God would put the situations into my life at each point that would “max out” my engagement capacity.

Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men (Col. 3:23).

The parable of the talents also seems to say that God has given us the right amount of business to keep us busy doing His business.

What does this mean? Well, if it’s true that God has put just the right amount of stuff in my life to max out my engagement capacity, then if I’m over my capacity, there must be something I’m engaged in that isn’t for me right now. Conversely, if I don’t feel maxed out, there must be something in my life that I need to be dealing with, I need to be engaged in, that I’m not. Think about it. Are you overworked or underworked? Are you over-engaged or under-engaged?

Churches and Friends

Posted on June 3, 2014 by Rowan Gillson

Austrian church in the forest About 2 months ago my wife and I decided to switch churches. This shouldn’t be one of those casual decisions like “Which burger joint should we hit tonight?”

The Church (note capital C) is a spiritual body that Jesus Christ established when He was here on Earth, as, get this, part of His own body. He put Himself as the head and every single Believer as a member. So in one sense, it doesn’t matter which church you attend, because they are all part of the “universal church” as long as Christ is truly the head.

Proverbs says “He who walks with the wise becomes wise, but a companion of fools suffers harm.” The people we are with will shape the way we think, act, and the people we will become. So in this sense, the people we hang out with, at church and otherwise, are going to have a strong impact on who we will be in 5-, 10-, or 50 years.

Now, back to our story… For about 2 years we attended a young, hip church here in Portland. I enjoyed it and participated in small groups or ministry teams. About a year ago my son Lewis was born, and our family was ushered into a new chapter of our lives. As we adjusted, well, everything to being parents and having a child, we noticed that the church we were attending was no longer a fit for who we were or who we were becoming. Looking around, we noticed that there were a lot of young couples, and even a few young families, but there really weren’t any grandparents or great-grandparents. The counsel of friends and peers is extremely valuable to us, but so is the wisdom of the aged and the advice of mentors.

God has blessed us with a quick and easy transition into another church we love. We now have both close friends and wise grandparent-types in our church community, and continue to value the relationships we’ve built in both churches.

You may not have a 1-year old or feel the need to change churches, but my thought this week is to consider who you spend time with and how they are shaping the 5-, 10-, or 50-year version of yourself.

Blessings!
Rowan

Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend.

Giving by Taking

Posted on February 21, 2014 by Lauren Chen

Have you thought lately about how God blesses us through what He takes away from us? I don’t just mean trials and burdens… I mean taking away “good” things.

The blessings He GIVES us are easy to see! Just think about the VOICE ’13 staff! Since we said goodbye in August; David & Anna moved to Nantou – Jerry & Ada moved to Pingdong – Ethan moved to Taichung — Audra had a baby – Zack got married – Brianne moved to Pingdong – I joined SYME in Taichung – Loren and Tina got married to each other! 😉

These are all added blessings that we naturally thank God for… but do we remember to thank Him for the process? The journey? For the things He takes away? – I’m sure each of them had to give up or allow God to replace something “good” in their lives before they received these new and wonderful blessings… but, at the time, they may not have known why they had to let go! They just had to trust Him.

Sometimes God takes things away in order to give them back to us in His way.
Sometimes He replaces good things with better things.

God restored Isaac to Abraham; strengthening and proving Abraham’s faith, while still fulfilling His promise of both descendants and a Messiah!
The Lord blessed Joseph’s life, used him to preserve the nation of Israel, and allowed him to see his beloved father and family again face to face!
God blessed Job with twice as much material wealth as before, spoke to him personally out of a whirlwind, and directed the story to be preserved so that we could understand His mind and ways better.
After the cross, the disciples received their Master back AS SAVIOR! Moreover, they and we will be in His presence for eternity!
Through Jesus’ sacrifice of power, glory, holiness, etc. He received the church as His bride and inheritance, the keys of the kingdom, all honor, glory, power… the list goes on!

It is much better to praise Him right away (Job 1:20-21), and choose the “good portion, which will not be taken away” from us (Luke 10:42) — relinquishing things of earthly substance in order to receive blessings that are of heavenly/eternal value!

Through times of loss, sadness, pain and disappointment, I have experienced some of the sweetest times of fellowship with God! I have been blessed by trials when I’ve consciously chosen to praise Him in faith, trusting that He was working for His glory and my good, even when though I didn’t understand.

Our hopes can change easily; but, if we seek to only have what God chooses for us, then our desires don’t ever need to change! Moreover, instead of attaining our goals, we can instead joyfully give those desires of our hearts back to Him for safe-keeping… if they are blessings He wants to fulfill, He can do so a hundredfold!

So why wait 2 years (or however long) until we understand WHY God has taken something away before we thank Him? Let’s do it now, trusting that it is a blessing from Him!

“Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” – I Thes. 5:16-18

Loving Fathers

Posted on December 28, 2013 by Rowan Gillson

Merry Christmas!

2013 has been a year of dramatic change for me and my family. On June 7 my first son, Lewis, was born. Watching him grow and learn has been one of the greatest joys of my entire life. I could easily bore you with far too many tales of his exploits, but I’ll try not to…

Having a son has also opened up my eyes to new ways of understanding old truths of the Bible. I have always known that God is a father, but I only knew about one side of the father-child relationship. I always understood that Jesus was the Son of God, but I didn’t know what it was to be the father to a son.

Lewis is a dare devil. He is, as yet, unafraid of anything. He dives, lunges, crawls, topples, and bonks his way through every day, pleasantly unaware of all the near-pain experiences he has. Today he learned a new trick. As my wife and I were sitting on the floor with him he would pull himself up on us from sitting to standing and then let go, falling into our hands. He did this over and over for 20 minutes, slowly learning how to stand up, but still not capable of balancing on his own. Never once did he fall and hurt himself, because his mom and dad caught him every time.

This amazes me when I think about my Heavenly Father. Scripture says that God’s love for us is greater than a mother [or father] for her child. (Isaiah 49:15) I love my son enough that I will catch him when he [almost] falls off the couch or can’t quite balance on his own. Usually Lewis isn’t even aware that I’m hovering over him, alert to keep him safe.

God loves us enough that He promises, not to catch us every time, but to turn every situation for our good and blessing. (Romans 8:28) I don’t have a clue how this promise will work out for me or for you, but I do know that it cost Him deeply to fulfill it. The only way He could was to send His Son to Earth, to live a perfect life and to die in our place, as the Redeemer.

It grieves me that I cannot protect Lewis from pain or suffering, but I am so grateful that God would give His Son to care for mine!

Flawed Infallibility

Posted on November 15, 2013 by Tim Chen

As my sisters tell it, I was quite the bossy little boy. I knew I was always right, and that God was on my side. When others DARED to disagree with me, I would ask them in a shocked, nasally sing-song voice, “You don’t listen to God?!”

This attitude may be amusing in a child, but to my horror, I’ve found it still prevalent in my life, and in the lives of fellow Christians. We think our understanding of God is infallible, shaking our heads, pointing our fingers, presuming to speak on His behalf.

Two examples.

Politics
As a Christian born in America, I subconsciously believed my political party was a part of my identity as a Christian. I never realized that I held this belief, or came to question it until 2001.

One Sunday during the aftermath of 9/11, I attended a service in Taiwan where a pastor criticized the American government for seeking revenge, and emphasized the importance of forgiveness. I was disturbed for two reasons. One, how could a Christian disagree with the decisions of my political party in America? Two, why didn’t I understand enough about politics to defend my country’s actions as right and moral?

Creationism
God created the world, so evolution must be wrong. How can people believe in Jesus and the Bible without knowing the truth?

One year at VOICE, someone on my team disagreed with creationism. I tried to convince him that his science textbooks taught him lies, but in the end, his belief in evolution – and lack of belief in God – remained unchanged.

When I shared my experience with my pastor, he told me something that has slowly transformed my way of thinking over the past ten years.

“We must not allow secondary issues to distract us from what is most important: whether or not they will accept Jesus as Lord.”

But you might ask, what about the verse in I Peter 3:15 that tells us, “…always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you…”?

Exactly. The hope that is within us, that is what we must defend. In all other areas, we must be open to the possibility of our fallibility, or else we will be like Christians joining a murderous crusade to the Holy land, the Catholic church condemning the scientific discoveries of Galileo, or like a self-righteous little boy who has still so much to learn about God.

The taking of Constantinople. Public Domain.

Why?

Posted on June 22, 2013 by Luke Kallberg

Damage from a tornado in Moore, Oklahoma last month.

Why do bad things happen to good people? Why do bad things happen to anybody? If God is good, why does He allow bad things in this world – sometimes terrible things?
Last month we had several very powerful tornadoes in our area. One of them came within one mile of our house. Thousands of houses were destroyed, billions of dollars of damage, hundreds of people injured, and more than fifty people killed. I attended the funeral of one of the victims whose father I knew. Hundreds of people were there…and amazingly, it was a hopeful, encouraging time. Everyone was supporting each other, seeking God together, reminding each other that God goes with us through our pain. God suffers when we suffer. And God brings good out of our suffering and His suffering.

I don’t know why God let the tornadoes happen – probably there are many reasons. Probably there are special reasons in the lives of each person who was affected. Some of God’s reasons might be difficult to accept if we knew them. But maybe it wouldn’t be so difficult if we saw how everything fits together.

The week after one of the storms, I was listening to a sermon on Sunday morning and noticed what Joseph said to his brothers in Genesis 50:
“As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good…” (Gen. 50:20).

You know the story of Joseph, right? His brothers sold him as a slave into Egypt, where he was falsely accused of assault and imprisoned for three years. Because of that, he met the king’s wine taster. Because of that, he met the king and saved Egypt from a famine. Because of that, his own family moved to Egypt. Because of that, the family grew into a large nation: Israel. Because of that, the Egyptians hated them and they left Egypt and wandered in the wilderness for forty years. Because of their experiences in the wilderness and the Law that God gave them, they learned to trust God instead of themselves. Because of this, Israel was set on a path that would prepare them and even us to trust Jesus Christ. The evil done to Joseph was an integral part of the picture of God’s redemption of the world.

And this all began because Joseph’s brothers intended evil against him. Who fully understands God’s power to bring good out of evil? Certainly not me. But I think we can see glimpses of it at times, and those glimpses can help us to believe in bigger pictures like this one. This is part of living out God’s reality…in the middle of the reality around us. VOICE 2013 starts in less than a month and we’ll be talking about all kinds of stuff like this with more students and staff. See you there!

We Walk by Faith

Posted on May 3, 2013 by Joel Feig

Have you ever had doubts about your life as a Christian? Are there concepts within your faith that you cannot rationally comprehend with human logic? Often we are confronted with questions from unbelieving friends that may bring about questions in our own minds. How do we know that God is real, or that the Bible is true, or that the earth was created? Each one of us has struggled with questions either before we believed in Jesus Christ or after. James encourages us to embrace challenges, and to realize that through testing and trial, we grow in our faith (James 1:2-3).

In a recent discussion group some friends of mine host for local university students, we read the story of Jesus walking on the water and the response of his disciples from Matthew 11. Like Peter seeing Jesus defying gravity and everything my science book teaches about buoyancy, we find many ideas about God and living the Christian life to be difficult to believe. And like Peter and the rest of the disciples, our reasoning cries out: “It’s a ghost!” Or a fairy tale, or just too impossible to believe. But then we take a step of faith and trust that what God is telling us is true. We step out of the boat into the water and try to walk like Jesus does.

It is hard to leave the safety of the shore, or a boat, or whatever our logical reasoning has clung to in the past, and step out on the water. Peter did, and he started out fine. But then he noticed the wind and the waves, and began to have doubts about the reality of what he was doing, and began to sink in the water. We also may take a few steps in faith and then encounter circumstances that bring about doubt in our minds regarding the legitimacy of our faith and beliefs. Often, like Peter, these doubts lead us to rely on our own wisdom and reasoning, and we start to sink in confusion and fear.

Our doubts and struggles are indications that our faith is being strengthened. We have the opportunity to search out the truth for why we believe what we believe. Sometimes we may not find an answer to our questions that satisfies our own reasoning. This is when we step out in faith and believe in what we have seen, and heard, and know to be true. Step out!

Ashes of the Past

Posted on March 23, 2013 by Tim Chen

“What once was beautiful–
Enthroned in light–
Has withered into ash.
Now bliss is blight.”

The Taiwan CI (Children’s Institute) ministry reached its height back in 2001. The Taipei seminar was filled to capacity: 450 children, with even more turned away at the door, it was almost more than the teachers could handle. As an interpreter that week, I personally had a blast, especially once I discovered that my team leader and I had the largest small group.

Two teachers. Twenty-seven children. Ultimate bragging rights!

Little did I know that not only was it the biggest team that week, there would never again be a team of that size. From that point onward, the CIs in Taiwan entered a slow but steady decline, until finally, twelve years later, they hit the low point at the 2013 Hualien seminar.

Twenty-three teachers. Twenty-seven children. How times have changed.

For the past fifteen years, I have been involved with the Taiwanese CIs in practically every way possible. I first participated as a child, progressed to passing out materials, interpreting, teaching, and telling stories, and eventually became the director in 2007. As my responsibilities have grown, so has this once-thriving ministry withered. Despite doing my best to lead the ragged remainders, it gets rather discouraging.

“Why am I STILL doing this?” I ask myself. “Others have moved on with their lives – isn’t there something more important for me to do?”

Then guilt comes along. “Is it MY fault that the CIs have come to this? I should just give up; face it, the glory days of CI are over.”

The Israelites returning from captivity in Babylon faced a similar situation when rebuilding the temple, a legendary structure from the glorious reign of King Solomon. Upon the completion of the foundation, those who remembered the original structure burst into tears. The barely-begun temple clearly could never compare to the original. Why even bother continuing?

In the midst of their despair, God comforted them with these words, which in turn comfort me as I continue to serve in the CIs.

“Does anyone remember how glorious this temple used to be? Now it looks like nothing. But cheer up! Because I, the Lord All-Powerful, will be here to help you with the work, just as I promised your ancestors when I brought them out of Egypt. Don’t worry. My Spirit is right here with you.” (Haggai 2:3-5, CEV)

Although it would be too complicated to detail how this year’s seminars went, suffice it to say that God WAS still with us, and He still helped us to finish the work, just like He did back in 2001. You want to know more? You’ll have to ask me to find out, or better yet, join the CI some time as a teacher.