I have been thinking a lot about ships since
the first intercessory prayer ship to set sail around the whole Taiwan Island last
week during Rosh Hashana. My friend's aunt was on the ship and she photographed
a cross appearing on someone’s flag.
My parents told me that the first time I
saw the ship, I exclaimed, “a swimming car!”
I moved to the United States when I was
eight, and rode on a ship for the first time. Immediately I realised I get
seasick. I can never stay inside the cabin because I’d vomit. Therefore, even
if someone pays for me to go on a cruise, I will not go.
In 2015 marked the greatest number of times
I rode on a boat in one year. I went back to Taiwan in June because my paternal
grandmother suddenly passed away in June. There was a typhoon coming to Taipei,
so to avoid the typhoon, we went on a trip south to Sun Moon Lake, and that was
the first time rode on a yacht in that lake. The Sun Moon Lake is often called “the
heart of Taiwan” because it is located in the centre of Taiwan geographically. Furthermore,
it plays an important role as water plants and power plants for Taiwan. In the
centre of the lake is the Lalu island, where the Aboriginal tribe of Shao
practices ancestral worship. This island gradually became smaller and smaller
as the water level in the lake rose. There used to be a Taoist temple (“The old
man under the moon temple”) on the island, which got moved elsewhere when the
island sank too much. There was also a tragic yacht disaster in the Sun Moon
Lake in 1990, and one of my friends was a survivor of that disaster.
During the Feast of Tabernacles in 2015, I
was on the Jesus Boat in Israel (exactly two years ago today). During the flag raising
when the boat was preparing to set sail, a cross suddenly appeared in the Israeli
flag!
During the Christmas/New Year holidays in
2015, I visited Taiwan again and took my maternal grandmother on a round-island
tour group. I did a marching prayer during that trip. Coincidentally the first
stop was the Sun Moon Lake, where we rode a yacht around the lake.
On the day before the “Twelfth”
(Orangeman’s Day, Orangefest… usually a time of instability in Ireland because
of potential clashes between the Catholics and the Protestants) in July 2016, I
visited the Museum of Titanic in Belfast. The Titanic was built in Belfast, and
I learned of many heroic and sad stories from the museum, which gave me a
deeper understanding of shipwrecks. As soon as I returned to Australia, there
were nonstop incoming of speakers talking about missions both in the church and
in Morling College. The most profound thing I remembered during that time
period was watching a shipwreck film produced by Reinhard Bonnke’s ministry, which
used a rescue ship called “Corpus Christi” (Latin, meaning "the body of
Christ") to describe the church.
In November 2016, I went on an educational exchange
with the Mackay Memorial Hospital. I gained a deeper understanding of the
missionary George Leslie Mackay from the Mackay Museum and the hospital library.
In his diary, I saw that he was constantly seasick and vomiting! It is hard to
imagine! I get sick just staying on a boat for minutes, and those missionaries
had to stay on ships for weeks! No wonder so many people died on the ships in
ancient times!
In Rosh Hashana, 2017, I began to reading a
book about church leadership for a Morling assignment. The author also used ship
as a metaphor for the church. He said that the mission is the direction of the
ship bound, the vision is a picture of the destination port, the core values are
the navigators’ souls, and the strategy is how the ship will actually sail to
the destination.
Just as a navigator cannot guide a ship
from port to port without a compass, strategic leaders cannot guide their
ministry ships toward their desired destination without a ministry compass.[1]
The church is a "ship without a compass" when it doesn't have a good
visionary strategic planning.[2]
The vision provides us with a picture of what the mission will look like as it
is realised in the life of the community, a picture of the port where our boat
is headed. The mission states the direction and the vision supplies a picture
of it.[3]
The navigators not only sail ships, they also have a soul. Churches, like
people, have a soul: a collective soul.[4]
Core values explain who you are. They form the foundation on which the mission
and vision are built. They function like the GPS. Eg. Acts 2:42-47.[5]
The ministry strategy is, “How will the leader-navigator guide or sail the
ministry ship to the designated port?”[6]
Interestingly, many of the church
vocabularies have “ship” in it: worship, fellowship, leadership… and even sheep
sounds like ship. The Chinese character for “ship” is interesting too. It’s composed of three simpler Chinese characters: ark + 8 people. This is reflective of Noah and his family on the ark. Our ancestors were on a ship to escape a flood of mass destruction once upon a time (since we are all descended from Noah)! We are all people of the ship! Paradoxically, “waves” are often used as the metaphor for
revival, even though waves pose as one of the greatest threat to ships! And we
do see that historically, revivals tend to happen during times of great instability where the church
were persecuted!
Been thinking about "fear of the
Lord" lately from my Psalms studies.
In Ps34, “fear of the Lord” is the psalm’s
most profound insight, where one simultaneous trembles in dread and joy due to
the paradoxical awareness of one’s fragility, mortality and sinfulness as
opposed to God’s almightiness, immortality and graciousness (V10).Lions is a
metaphor for those who do not fear or seek the Lord (V11).
In Ps36, the wicked is not described as a
violent threat to the psalmist but pictured as one who lives life by setting up
the self as the autonomous standard, living life according to “what seems good
to me.” Another word, one who is self-dependent instead of God-dependent.
Revival has to start from the self first. I
really need seek God more and to pray for the Holy Spirit to help me better align
of the word of God with real life actions.
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