Five Important Aspects Of A Christian Life

Pastor Albert Kang 

ince I was ten years old, I began questioning about the meaning of life. To my parents, I must have been the weird child of the family because I asked them difficult questions. Questions like, “Why was I born? Who really am I? Why am I here? Where am I going? What will happen after death?” I remember that one evening, when I was around twelve years old, my father and I sat at the balcony of our shop-house apartment for after-dinner chitchat. After the regular conversation about schooling, I decided to try my luck again on him with one of those tough questions. In fact, I was so tense in anticipating his reaction that I began to stammer. If you knew my father, he was a very kind but serious man. He rarely scolded me or even raised his voice but he would not tolerate nonsense.

“Father, what is the meaning of this life?” I asked boldly.

He paused, thought for a moment and calmly said, “Don’t think so much. Just study hard, find a good job and make a lot of money.”

In my mind, I wanted to ask, “After making lots of money then what?”

But I refrained from doing so. That was the last time I ever asked him the tough questions. My young adolescent mind decided that he did not know the answer himself. After some years of reading about different religions and visiting temples, I gave up and decided to become an atheist. However, God did not let me go. Some seven years after I asked my father that last question, God showed me the truth. It was during my military training time, that I experienced the salvation provided by the Lord Jesus Christ. Five years after that experience, my father also experienced his own salvation. He gave his life to Christ and was baptized. He had found the meaning of this life and the next. My father went home to be with the Lord in 1992 and I still miss him dearly. However deep down inside, I know that he is with his Lord and Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Let me share with you briefly in this article about the meaning of our lives here on earth.

Exalting God

We cannot find the meaning of life in ourselves. We have to find it in the Creator God. The Bible tells us that God has created us out of his heart of love. Those of us who are parents should understand that. When we look at that helpless little human being, crying selfishly to be satisfied, our hearts are filled with love. Why? That little human being is our son or daughter. No matter how inconvenient it is to be a parent, we would make every effort to take care of our kid! If we as weak human beings could find joy and love in taking care of our children, then why can’t we understand the heart of God? He is much wiser and has a more passionate heart than all the hearts of the parents in the world combined. He loves us more than we can even imagine.

We must not make the mistake of the Deists who believe that God just created us and left us hanging high and dry. This “clockwork world” mentality is wrong. He would never wind up the world and just let it go. No, that is not the way God operates. He has created us so that He might establish a strong relationship with us. Since the time of Eden, for the sake of connecting with His creation, He would transform Himself into human form. He would walk in the garden and had fellowship with Adam and Eve. This was a kind of theophany, which means that God manifested Himself in sensible form. However, after the fall of mankind, He rarely showed Himself in that way. The greatest theophany was the time when the second person of the Holy Godhead came to earth in the person of Jesus Christ. He came that He might reconnect the relational link between God and Man.

The way by which we continue that established relationship with God is to exalt and worship Him. When we worship God we have to worship Him in Spirit and in Truth (John 4:24). In the Spirit because we are basically spirits too. The connection is made deep inside us. In Truth - it is because we have to know the promises of God. In our short life, we have been lied to, conned and taken for many rides by the devil. Nothing will satisfy our souls unless we have the truth, nothing but the truth. Therefore when we come to God, He demands nothing more than what is within our spirit and our claims upon His promises.

After the fall of God’s ex-employee, Lucifer, God did not create another archangel to lead in worship. He created mankind to take the place of Lucifer. We are now the true worshippers and that is the reason why God “dwells in the praises of his people” (Psalm 22:3). Even though we are “made a little lower than the angels”, God has “crowned us with honor and glory” and given us preferences, privileges and authority to be His children and worshippers (Psalm 8:5).

Another reason why God wants us to worship Him is to keep us connected with Him for power. There is a spiritual warfare going on in the invisible. The devil and his fallen angels are not going to give up harassing us even when we become Christians. In fact, they rarely wanted to harass us when we were non-Christians. Now we have become their enemies and they are going to make life difficult for us. God knows that all along and He is not going to leave us powerless. He has created the avenue of worship as a means of empowerment. Therefore the only way for us to overcome the wiles of the devil is for us to worship. The more we worship God, the more connected we become. Like an electrical appliance that needs to stay connected to the power source so as to keep working, we need to stay connected to God to keep winning in our spiritual battles.

Worship is not just singing songs. It is more than that. Worship is a lifestyle – a lifestyle of making God happy. The Psalmist expresses very well in Psalm 84 about the result of a person who spends his time worshipping God. Even when he has to pass through the “valley of Baca (Weeping)”, he will find strength and blessings. In all these years of serving God, there were many valleys of Baca in my life. Many of those valleys were the results of my own doing but yet the merciful God did not consider my follies and left me to suffer by myself. When I bowed in worship, He came and comforted me.

Establishing Relationships

God wants us not only to relate to Him but to each other. We cannot say we love God when we do not love people. God has created all of us and He wanted us to live in the “Agape” love zone prescribed by Jesus Christ when He was here on earth. We are to do the activities that we will be doing in heaven – worshipping God and loving each other. If we do not practice these two activities here now, how are we to enjoy them in heaven?

This is the “fellowship” that the Bible talks about. Fellowship is not just having small group meetings and enjoying tea and coffee, it is much more than that. Jesus said that we must be willing to die for one another. It is when we are willing to die for one another; we will then experience the love of the Lord flowing through us.

Recently, Father Stefano Gorzegno, an Italian priest jumped into the sea, robe and all, to save seven children from drowning. He died after his own lungs were filled full of seawater. He was honored as a hero and rightfully so. If it were your child that this priest pulled out, no matter how different your theology might be from his, you would consider him a hero. We all can be heroes! Let’s all learn to let go of our lives and be “heroes” for our brothers and sisters. It will cost us something when we love but the reward is also great.

Someone says that “Fellowship” is the “fellows in the same ship”. In ancient time, when the sailing ships were plying the oceans, the crew of these ships knew what it was like to be the “fellows in the same ship”. When a storm hit, every member of the crew would be on deck, helping each other, to keep the ship sailing and most probably from sinking. The storm is already brewing around the world with the religious fanatics bombing churches, businesses, and government buildings and spreading terror. As I am writing this page, the luxurious Marriott hotel in Jakarta’s central business district has been bombed. In this troubled time, our church needs every member to work together - more importantly to love each other and fulfill the commandment of the Lord to love one another.

Enabling Discipleship

The next reason for our being is to become more and more like Christ. God has said that we are created in His image. It does not mean that we are gods but that we are to be godly. The only problem is that our God-like image has been marred by sins and is no longer acceptable. Jesus came that we might get a totally new beginning. He does not intend to just take an eraser and erase our sins from our “old paper” of life. He throws that old stained paper away and gives us a totally new sheet of paper. Whatever we put on this new paper will depend on how close we are with Christ. He does not only give us salvation for our souls but power to become the persons that God wants us to be while we are on earth. That is why “discipleship” means that we are to become Christ-like.

Living a selfish life is the easiest thing to do – you will need nobody if you have the money to buy what you want. You can buy fabricated “love” in the form of foreign brides or bridegrooms. You can buy “friends” by throwing lots of parties and giving gifts. You can pay people to listen to your nonsense and get them to work for you. You can even be rude and uncaring; as long as you have money. There will always be someone who is willing, for the sake of money, to allow you to be rude or even to insult him or her. When a person becomes so highly independent, he thinks that he is some kind of god. That is a tragedy because that was what Lucifer did and subsequently paid heavily for that stupidity.

As you know, men and women make very lousy gods. In fact, many of them make lousy employers too. When given a little bit of money and authority, they sometimes behave badly. Just look at the number of maid-abuse cases in Singapore and you will know what I mean. That is the reason why Jesus said that it is easier for the camel to go through the eye of the needle than for rich people to enter the kingdom of God (Matthew 19:24). We have to be very careful. With added authority and financial freedom, we should always remember that we are servants of Christ. We must remain humble and always recognize that we are not the masters but that all of us serve a higher master who is the God of glory. We indeed have to put away the sinful nature of pride and put on Christ (Romans 13:14).

I have made it a point to check myself every day because I know that I am extremely weak. Am I becoming more loving and caring? Am I becoming more like my Lord? Have I some grudges in my heart? Am I hoping that my enemies will suffer disasters? When I pray for them, am I sincere about it? This is the struggle of my flesh trying to die. Like Paul the Apostle, I am learning to die daily (1 Corinthians 15:31). Sometimes, it seems like a losing battle but in the long run, I discover that something is happening within my spirit. After all these years, I have learned that if in this life, I have achieved nothing except becoming more like Christ, I would then have achieved everything.

Equipping Ministers

Since I attended church way back in 1974, I have been serving in different ministries. I remember the first time when the usher chairman invited me to serve as an usher. I was so happy and gladly attended the training. No sacrifice was too much and I even bought a brand-new necktie for this ministry. Later I went for voice audition and succeeded in being selected to join the choir. At one time, I had to perform my ushering duty and then rushed to sing in the choir. I was also involved with the church drama, building props and even writing scripts. The church decided to print its first bulletins and I somehow got myself involved. I did not only edit it but cut the stencils and ran it through the cyclostyling machine. Later I became the president of the youth ministry and also the worship leader.

When the cell ministry got started in the early 1980s, I was a cell leader. When the church moved the worship services to a hotel, I was the van driver and helped in moving equipments. Then when everything was unloaded, I drove the van to pick up children for Sunday school classes. When I got elected as a deacon, I became even busier. I had also become a Sunday school teacher and thus needed extra biblical knowledge. I made time to attend night classes in Singapore Bible College. When time became too tight, I took correspondence bible courses.

You must be wondering whether I was jobless while serving in so many ministries. The fact is that in all those years, I had full-time jobs. As a young man, I could do other things but then I had to decide what was my priority in life. Serving in God’s ministries may be tiring but it was rewarding too. I am saying all these not for the purpose of boasting but to impress upon you the importance of serving others in the church. This is called “ministry”. We must never be afraid to go the extra mile for the Lord and His people. 

Evangelizing World

The next thing that we need to recognize is the importance of evangelism in our lives. This is our mission as commissioned by the Lord. It is actually more a commandment than a commission. Sadly, very few Christians take this commandment of the Lord seriously. We have to go out into the world and make disciples.

My first experience in evangelism was with my neighbors. At that time, I did not even know that it was known as “evangelism”. Before I became a Christian, I used to hang out with this group of boys from the neighborhood. After I got saved, something inside me told me that these boys needed to know Christ too. I knew that they would never listen to me explaining the gospel. So, I had to think of something else. Back in 1974, it was a grand occasion just to be able to watch a movie. I went to Youth For Christ ministry and borrowed a Christian film entitled “The Cross and the Switchblade”. The film was screened at a neighboring hairdressing salon, which belonged to a Christian. After the film, I shared my heart out. As I was only a few months old in the Lord, I did not realize that I was preaching. The boys actually responded to the altar call that I made. Out of about 20 plus boys who attended, about 15 of them gave their lives to Christ. Today, one of these boys has become a pastor while others are elders or deacons in their own churches.

After I won my best friend, Alfred, to the Lord, he and I became partners in evangelism. Together, we rode our motorcycles to different housing estates to give out tracts and share the gospel. At one time, at the back of a flat, we encountered some gangsters. They were bare-bodied and had tattoos all over their bodies. Strangely they did not harass us but accepted our tracts and even asked us questions about Christ. The Lord had given us favor.

One of the most memorable occasions was when we were giving tracts in Queenstown, one of the older housing estates in Singapore. The Holy Spirit impressed upon us to walk down a path towards a small park. We saw a group of five boys gathering around a park bench. The Holy Spirit told us to approach those boys. We were a little puzzled but we obeyed. I did not know what got into me but it was definitely not from Evangelism 101, because my first question to this group was, “Do you know God?”

There was a stunt silence and one of the boys began to weep. We were shocked when we found out that just before we arrived, those boys were challenging God that if He were really God then He would send someone to tell them about Him. That night, we led those boys to accept Christ as their Savior.

Since then I have never looked back. God has opened many doors of opportunity to preach Christ. Recently, I led a 14 year-old girl to Christ on the Internet. She was asking the same tough questions on a Christian chat site. After she accepted Christ, I was able to direct her to attend a church in her hometown of Indianapolis. I still could not believe it but the Internet has opened up new avenue of evangelism. God wants us to be faithful in being his voice. There are many who are lost and we have to keep reaching out. Ask anyone who has the privilege of winning souls and you will find that he or she really appreciates the joy of witnessing.

Final Words

In conclusion, let us remember that we are created by God to exalt His holy name and to worship Him. Then we are to establish strong relationships with our fellow brothers and sisters so that we will have unity in the church. We have to become true disciples of the Lord by becoming Christ-like. Then like a bird that needs two wings to fly, we will need to do ministries in the church and also do mission in the world. Let’s all be faithful and have great fun in serving the Lord.