just-selah

selah ˈsiːlə,-lɑː/ "pause calmly and think about that"

[just-selah]

5 Things I Learned From Being a Cell Leader

Hello there! This is a little late because the year was over a good two weeks ago, but I thought I’d post this anyway. As you guys may or may not know, last year was my first year taking up a leadership position in church. I was a cell leader for the first time, and I thought I might share what I learned from having that privilege.

  1. Don’t bite off more than you can chew

Romans 12:3

My previous years at church were a legacy of anonymity (or attempted anonymity at the very least), so suddenly realising that I could minister in church through things like worship, cell leading and writing was really exciting for me. I literally signed up for nearly every ministry: I was in the creative writing ministry, the drumming ministry, the cell leading ministry, and the tear-down ministry (that is, packing up the equipment and things at the end of service). On top all of that, I was getting into my first year of IB. I thought doing a lot at church equated to being good enough for God, but in the end, it just left me feeling exhausted. That feeling almost stopped me from going on to lead again this year, but this year I’ve quit all the other ministries instead, and am redirecting all that energy and time to my cell kids. The whole process of getting stressed by multiple ministries helped me to remember that God doesn’t need me to be “good enough” for church or for Him. He needs me where He needs me, and although it’s good to help everyone out, it’s better to go where He calls.

2. Acceptance and love go a long way

1 John 4:19

We love because He first loved us, right? That’s a quote I got to really understand last year. Already (I’ll admit it) it’s difficult to give love to my siblings… and I only have two! Guiding and getting to know seven thirteen year old girls wasn’t easy. I struggled at first because I didn’t understand how to balance discipline and friendship. I also didn’t know what to do with thirteen year old girls. I was an offbeat thirteen year old, and mostly grew up with my brother. I was never in on the latest trends or anything, and I was at a loss as to how I should relate to my cell girls. Eventually, God revealed that all I had to do was show them love, and forget about judging them so much. He reminded me how my first years in youth service were torture because I felt like I didn’t belong, and how that chased me out of church entirely. I guess as a cell leader we have an added responsibility in making sure that other youths know why they want to be at church before we go about trying to correct them. Without the relationship it’ll just feel like you’re putting them down.

3. Family comes first

Proverbs 1:8

This one is really important to me because I didn’t realise this until it was way too late. My brother is thirteen, just like the tweens I lead, so he’s being led by one of my peers. He was fresh in the youth ministry and interested in what was going on, but slowly started to lose interest, and I didn’t know why. Later on, I learned that he felt discouraged by the fact that I was a cell leader but didn’t seem to have time for him. Our relationship has always been like that of close friends, despite our four year age difference, and I guess for him, me suddenly having this label of “cell leader” felt like a one-uppance that he couldn’t beat. Perhaps this wouldn’t have been so bad if I had doted on him the same way I did my cell kids (I laughed at their jokes, prayed with them, listened to them even when I was already late meeting my dad, bought them things…), but I was always so worn out after cell and service and school that I never did that for him. Looking back on 2014, that’s one thing I wish I had done better.

4. Have a prayer group

Ecclesiastes 4:10

Yes, cell kids are your friends. But as a cell leader (especially one so much older than them), there will be things you can’t tell them, and struggles you shouldn’t burden them with. That’s why it was important for me to go back to the prayer group at school (bless them, they kept me sane) and to openly share at Leaders’ Cell on Fridays. On one hand, it keeps you sane, and on another, these people can keep you in check. Sure, there may be things you’re not comfortable sharing with them, but as time goes on, those relationships deepen, and then these prayer groups will help make sure you’re receiving some spiritual love and not just giving it. (Giving is not a bad thing. But it can be hard to give when you don’t think you have anything left to give, as in the case of love.)

5. Mind your behaviour

1 Timothy 1:5

“Commanding” your tweens in love is going to be a tall order if you’re not actively demonstrating that love. And getting them to listen to you when you say “dress appropriately” is going to be extra hard when your own skirt is too short. Cell leading in that sense turned out to be a lot of pressure; you’re never not being watched. It could end up being an avenue for you to lead a double life (“my church self is too stressful to maintain outside of church”) or it could help keep you in check. Don’t be discouraged though: you can do this!

  That’s it from me for now. These are my reflections on my year of cell leading. God bless, and have a great week ahead!

[just-selah]

I just wanted to say kudos to you for being outspoken on an important issue that others normally like to skirt around. You're amazing. Also to the previous anon who said those two particular lyrics aren't degrading to women? They absolutely are. Those two lines objectify women and turn them into sex objects. They're vulgar AND degrading to women. Also fyi it's not just a man's right not to have sex with someone - it's a woman's right too and she shouldn't be shamed or harmed for that. (Cont..)

(thank you for this, and yes i totally agree with you! God bless you & have a brilliant week/year ahead! happy new year!)

[just-selah]

(Continued from first ask) You're right. It's totally her problem if she doesn't like the song. Except in her post, she wrote that that song was being blasted in a hugely popular retail store that catered to young females. That includes impressionable teenagers and tweens. That includes women who would have been uncomfortable with the lyrics and what they were insinuating. That includes women who happened to be shopping with their families, their friends or their boyfriends. (Continued again)

~~

[just-selah]

(Continued from second ask) So on second thought, maybe it doesn't just become 'her problem' anymore. But whether she came across the song alone or YouTube or heard it while she was shopping with her family, she had every right to 'overreact' to lyrics that objectified and demeaned her gender in a really gross way.

~~

[just-selah]

Reflection: "Dry Seasons"

Hey guys! I hope your week went great, and if it didn’t, that you haven’t given up yet, because Jesus isn’t giving up on you! Thanks for sticking around; I’m finally back, and the thing that’s been on my mind recently is dry seasons.

First off, I have to admit that the reason this is the thing I’m interested in is because I’m going through one, so if there aren’t a whole lot of Bible verses in here, I apologise in advance. I’m working on this, on getting the Bible back into my head.

Awhile back (a real long while back) I went through a similar (but shorter and less emotionally charged) dry season. My walk with the Lord became stale, and I saw it as a problem because I kept hearing things about needing to be on fire for the Lord, and I kept remembering actually being on fire for the Lord, and I kept missing it. I talked to one of my church friends about it, and one thing he said was that dry seasons are completely normal, and everyone goes through them.

Another thing he brought up was that dry seasons can be good things, because they prompt you to re-evaluate your relationship with God.

I was thinking about that recently, and I want to add on to what he shared with me, because this past year has been dry not in a monotonous way, but in a negative way (I know I’m not making much sense; give me a couple minutes oops). The reluctant attitude I had towards God was a result of me questioning some things about my belief system and my religion: I read Exodus 23, and there are some graphic descriptions of rape and killing of women. And so on the 12th of October, 2014, I wrote in big letters on my Bible: “God help me: is this a misogynistic faith?” And this is, admittedly, something I am still in the midst of clarifying (and something that got tiring to clarify, which led to me… not trying very much anymore). And when I do have some inkling of an idea as to how our faith sees women theologically, I’ll blog about it. BUT this isn’t what I came here to discuss.

What I’m saying is that my “dry season” wasn’t a season of nonchalance. It was a season of defiance. And because most of us (or me, at least) file that under “dry seasons”, it’s easy to get swept away by the idea that “I’m just going through a phase, and if I wait it out, I’ll get out of it”.

I think what we – what I – need to acknowledge is that a dry season isn’t a “Pass Go” situation. It’s not like waiting in a queue and knowing for sure that we’ll get exactly what we signed up for after the wait. We’ve got to work hard at this faith, pick up the Bible, and do something. I’ve learned this the hard way I guess. Feelings of doubt aren’t a reason to ignore God. And the whole romanticising of dry seasons needs to stop. It’s okay to have doubts. It’s not okay to tap out of our faith because we’re not feeling it anymore.

If you’re going through a similar situation, I pray that God will grant us the humility and courage to re-download those gospel songs and invest in a new devotional plan and go out there and find people to pray for and with us.

God bless you guys, have a great week ahead (:

[savingsundays]

you know, as Christians, we sing praises to God for His love, we thank Him for being who He is, but maybe it’s time to start believing it and living it out as well. i don’t want worship to be just a song. we praise God for His works of nature: the mountains, the valleys, the impossible sunset. all...

[just-selah]

hey guys! im seeing your messages, but im currently overseas and i dont want to give you guys half-witted answers while worrying that the wi-fi will get cut off or that ill need to go somewhere so i am holding off responding but i will get round to replying (and posting!!) real soon. God bless you guys and i hope you guys had a blessed Christmas. (i also understand it can be a particularly difficult time of year for some people and if you are one of those people, keep your head up! im proud of you for getting through this holiday season. Jesus loves you!)

[just-selah]

On Why This Has Been The Hardest Fast I've Ever Done

Hey guys! Thank you for sticking around, and for the prayer requests and testimonies. They're hugely inspiring and I promise you that I am going to respond to them ASAP! Anyway. This is going to be my reflection of my forty day social media fast which I wrote I think twenty days into the fast (:

I’m not a social media addict. I think. Yes, I do check Twitter everyday. I Instagram things nearly daily. But ask me to go a month without social media, and I usually meet with uncontested success. In the past five years, I’ve done three forty-day social media fasts. In my experience, the days pass quickly. I find other meaningful things to do. I invest myself in reading the Bible or playing Xbox with my brother. Time normally spent on Tumblr contributes to discovering new things about Ezekiel, or learning how to bake a chocolate cake. Stuff like that. By the time the forty days are up, I usually don’t want to go back.

For some reason, these twenty days so far have proved to be the total opposite to my previous social media fasts. One day feels like ten. I’m constantly telling myself to shut up because the voice in my head is trying to come up with loopholes for this fast; “technically Youtube isn’t social media”, “you could go online for awhile but just don’t post anything”. I see things and immediately wish I could tweet them. Even though the chunks of time I used to spend on social media are vacant, I still find myself falling asleep at 2 A.M. and feeling too tired for devotions.

I’ve been going back and forth and wondering why this is happening. I know that a fast is important because you give up things that matter to you, and you give it all back to God. But the thing is that the reason I went on this fast was that I didn’t feel I could cope with the demands of social media. I mean, don’t tell me you’ve never gotten tired of poring over a selfie for ten thousand years, picking out your flaws and deciding whether or not it’s an attractive rendition of your face.

To be entirely honest, giving up social media for forty days shouldn’t have been a chore. I have literally nothing to lose. If anything, I should be gaining things from being able to leave my digital alter ego behind. Why I’m craving the platform that cost me sleep and self confidence is beyond me.

 In the past, I wondered what it would be like if we treated Bibles like smartphones. What if we checked it to find out if we were free to meet a friend for lunch? What if we developed compulsive disorders that made us addicted to perusing Psalms? What if we documented our entire life stories on its pages, and redirected our friends to particular verses that we associated with specific segments of our lives?

I’m starting to think that that idea may be less fantastical than I originally thought it was.

Maybe I’m too dependent not on what other people think of me, but what I think other people think of me. I mean, come on. I will never know your reason for favouriting my tweet. I won’t be able to decipher what your like on my Instagram photo means to you. But I can create meanings from these for myself. I can measure my self worth against likes. I can measure my appearance against heavily-edited profile photos. I can measure my likeability against comments. I can measure my sense of humour against carefully thought out one-liners.

And at the end of the day, I’ll be frank. I couldn’t care less what the people on my timeline think of me, mostly because I don’t know what the people on my timeline think of me. But I know what I think of me. I know my aesthetic. I’m able to compare my daily life to the life of my online avatar.

What I’m missing isn’t the ability to share my life with others. What I’m missing is the ability to showcase my life for my own approval. If it sounds contrived, it’s because it is. If it sounds narcissistic, it’s because it is. If it sounds absolutely ridiculous… it is.

And hey, at this point, it would be easy to stop typing and move on with life, with the knowledge that my social media isn’t a network, but a billboard.

But God has something to say about this kind of behaviour. At the root of pride is a rebellion against His control over my life. Airing my opinions for me, myself, and I, leaves God out of the equation. It ditches whatever values the Bible taught me for the things that make me superficially pleased.

Yes, we need attention. Human beings are gregarious creatures, and we need people to notice us. We’re attention-seeking. Is that a bad thing? No! But the thing is that too often we let our desire to be loved by people (including ourselves) overtake our desire to be loved by God. It’s easier to find solace in a flattering angle that I can see than to find comfort in a figureless Holy Ghost that I can’t see.

Self-worth never really comes from us. I guess it should be called Christ-worth. We’re our own worst critics. We see the pimples nobody else sees. We call out photos for being unflattering when our friends think they look fine. We cringe at things other people never even noticed about us.

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:38-39)

God, on the other hand, sees all our flaws, and still goes, “I love you”. God finds our worth in our relationships with Him, not the way we look or speak. I’m not fully there yet, but in the moments that I realise where my value should really lie, it’s impossible to feel shame or inadequacy. I struggle with placing my image in His hands, especially my image in my own eyes (it’s hard to agree that you’re beautiful when you don’t match up to a digital standard of, well, your own beauty), but I’m determined to get there. I’m determined to put my focus on putting on the whole armour of God (Ephesians 6:10-18) instead of on putting on the whole armour of airbrush.

God bless you guys!

[just-selah]

Hi all! I'm going to go on a 40 day fast from social media. In light of that, for those of you whose birthdays are anywhere between 20/10 and 29/11, have a blessed birthday! And for everyone, God bless you guys. I've been thoroughly blessed by everyone's messages, whether or not they were intended to be edifying. I haven't had the time to respond to all of them, but I see your prayer requests guys! I'm going to write them all down tonight and keep you guys in my prayers over the course of the forty days ^^ Ooh. Also. Somebody recently brought up that in my F21 post, I seemed to be condoning sexual violence under certain circumstances. I just wanted to clarify that I don't. I definitely don't agree with the music, but because the message wasn't aimed at music producers but at the store, I felt it was necessary to play the devil's advocate as well! Yez. I was recently discussing with my mom about how not even clubs should play music like that. Even more so in clubs or sex shops, because these are places that have the stigma of sex attached to them, and although I DISAGREE with pre-marital sex, if sex is going to be conveyed, then sex must not be conveyed as violent or political. The environment must give women and men the ability to say no if they don't want to have sex, and mustn't normalise abuse and rape as just a different form of sex. Yez. I thought I needed to clarify this. Oops. Anyway. I'll see you guys in 40 days. God bless you all! I guess I'll leave you guys with my verse-of-the-season!

Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. - 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

[just-selah]

GIRL YOU DID THE RIGHT THING. I HAVE SO MUCH RESPECT FOR YOU RN. :")

ANON PRAISE GOD AND THANK YOU

[just-selah]

thank you so much for your post on pornography..i'm a girl and i think i'm struggling with it too, it started with kissing videos and then i find myself going further and further down the road. every sunday i tell God that i will control myself better but i keep stumbling. i won't stop trying though but thank you for letting me know i'm not alone in this struggle. God bless you!

Hey there! Praise God and YES DON'T GIVE UP! God hasn't given up on you, and you've got more willpower than you think you do ^^

[just-selah]

To the anon who said: "It's responses like yours that perpetuates the notion that Christians are uptight and irrelevant to culture". When did respecting women regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, etc. become a 'Christian thing only'? Showing respect is plain & simple common sense & basic manners. No need to drag religion of any kind into it. And why should it be okay that there are people out there condoning/making money out of disrespecting women?

Amen! Agreed! Although to be fair it's nice to see this religion getting a good rep HAHA. Associating respect with Christianity is a pretty cool thing. But yeah! I agree. Let's get organised-ly angry at disrespect towards women! It's not okay!

[just-selah]

I chanced upon your F21 article on facebook, and it led me here! I felt like i had to read on & i just wanted to let you know that youve been such a blessing with these posts, thank you :) May you grow more in Christ and keep the posts going! :)

Hey there! Thank you so much; to God be the glory ^^ God bless you and your friends too! Keep on shining His light in your life (~:

[just-selah]

(continued) The way God has spoken to you that porn was a way of seeking intimacy, and seeking intimacy with Him will fill that void - man, that is a whole new perspective. Please pray for me, and to try to seek God more and to really have that deep, personal relationship with Him. Thanks :)

Hey Emily! Wow. It's honestly so encouraging to hear that because I was conflicted about putting that post up. But hearing that it helped you, and hearing how your WHOLE YOUTH GROUP came together to chat about sexual sins... that's incredible. That's amazingly courageous and inspiring, and wow. Wow. And YES I will keep you in prayer! God bless you (:

[just-selah]

hey, i'm emily. I just wanted to say thank you for sharing your girl problem post because that is exactly what I'm dealing with. You've put my struggle into words and I can't thank you enough for sharing this. Based on your suggestion, our youth group had a night where we shared all our sexual sins - and we did this anonymously. Accountability groups were made, but up until this point I still am not able to quit pornography. (continued next ask box)

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[just-selah]

Hey, I really respect what you took the time to write to f21. on the other hand, could you maybe not generalize rap as a genre that promotes rape culture? Rap is an african-american genre that gets a lot more shit for misogyny than other genres that are equally misogynistic, mainly bc racism and stereotypes of black men as criminals and rapists. Not to say that many rap songs arent sexist, but think about what you're saying here. Again, I do agree with what you're saying about the music tho.

Hey! Oh dear. I didn't realise I made that generalisation, but looking over the post again now, I can see that I DID. I'm so sorry. I definitely didn't intend for it to come out that way. I agree!! I'm terribly sorry. Below is a link to an article that does a really great comprehensive job of summing up misogyny as a general issue in the music industry. And yes! Rap isn't the only genre. Thanks for the tip!

http://changefromwithin.org/2011/01/26/its-not-just-rap-misogyny-in-music/

[just-selah]

(Continued) and she's a believer too... I just feel being so fixtated on our body image draws us away fr God and puts us in a worldy mindset.. But I know it's not my part to judge and everyone is sinful.I know you won't be able to reply this since I don't have an Acc but just trying to build the wider network of Christians in SG :-) Anw God knows and sees ! :) have a blessed week ahead! - Sheryl

OOH OKAY I SEE SORRY HELLO OKAY

Hmm I guess there are two ways of looking at it! On one hand, our body is the temple of God, and staying fit could be a way of showing reverence to God. On the other hand, too much focus on attaining a perfect body (if that exists) might make us forget that God made us in His image, and there's no way to seem more beautiful to Him.

I'll keep you and your friend in prayer! And hopefully you see this Sheryl~ God bless you beautiful!