Benjamin: The Power of "Spiritual Friendships"

Tuesday, April 09, 2013

The Power of "Spiritual Friendships"

"To create space for God among us requires the constant recognition of the Spirit of God in each other. When we have come to know the life-giving Spirit of God in the center of our solitude and have thus been able to affirm our true identity, we can also see that same life-giving Spirit speaking to us through our fellow human beings. And when we come to recognize the life-giving Spirit of God as the source of our life together, we too will more readily hear his voice in our solitude. Friendship, marriage, family, religious life, and every other form of community is solitude greeting solitude, spirit speaking to spirit, and heart calling to heart. It is the grateful recognition of God’s call to share life together and the joyful offering of hospitable space where the recreating power of God’s Spirit can become manifest. Thus all forms of life together can become ways to reveal to each other the real presence of God in our midst.” - Henri Nouwen

"Spiritual Friendships" a subset of the big term "Discipleship" which has been one of the key topics that the leadership in the youth ministries been in discussion in the past couple of years. When one think of "Spiritual Friendships", without hesitation I would say Rev Dr Tan Soon Inn and Rev Ivan Tan as two people whom I know are an epitome of what Spiritual Friendship is about. I've learnt much from them and would like to share a series of events that led me to see the power of "Spiritual Friendships" in this journey of faith.

Few weeks ago, I suddenly felt this sudden period of low and an apparent dryness in my spiritual walk after coming back from my mission trip. It actually started after I caught the flu bug and was down for a week. Initially thought the flu bug have led me to this sudden low. But even when I recovered, I felt some disconnect in my spiritual life. It even went to the extend that led me to question my calling, started to question God and even how much I tried to keep my spiritual discipline to read His Word, and to take regular Sabbaths, yet my heart felt distant. Each morning waking up and stepping into the office suddenly felt mundane and I started to feel a strange sense of discouragement and I didn't know why?

During this time, I recalled a similar period a year ago where Ps Ivan shared with me how our lives is like a ribbon effect. In this journey, there are seasons of high where God maybe preparing you for the lows. And this was where I knew God was really putting me to the test of "Walking by Faith, & not by Sight". I knew the answer to this in my mind but somehow I couldn't experience that intimacy of God in my heart. I started to download podcast of sermons from Andy Stanley, Craig Groeschel, Steven Furtick and Christine Caine to listen each morning on my way to church. Even attended this very charismatic night rally, the Kingdom Invasion conference where Heidi Baker was preaching that night. Hoping for some powerful divine revelation and encounter with God. It felt good being there with so many passionate christians, but then again God was teaching me something much more deeper.

As a youth worker in church, I try to keep this "front" and image that i'm alright, especially in front my youths. It's hard to be vulnerable when there's this kind of "holy" image and expectations that people have of you, and i'm always very careful not to show my weakness thinking that I might stumble them.
And than I realised on hindsight, it was only when I let my guard down and be vulnerable to people that I saw God starting to lift my heart again. And this was when I began to see God starting show me the power of spiritual friendship.

It all started at the recent YM GAP prayer retreat on 16 Mar 2013. There was this segment where we broke into small groups, and this 3 other youths who were all younger than me actually shared something to me in that time of listening prayer for one another that encouraged me deeply.

And this was what they felt God saying to them to me.

"Do not be disheartened , your doing a good job. "- 17 year old youth

"Wait upon The Lord, to be steadfast in your walk with God"- 19 year old youth

"God has place different people in your life to encourage you" - 14 year old youth

When the 14 year old youth said that, it reminded me so much on the power of Spiritual friendship. And this was someone who was 10 years younger than me! I realised that each time I became authentic to people, to share my weakness and actually asked for prayer, it open the door for God to come in. And all things started to pick up when I started to share with my small group, a couple of close friends and even to one of my youth who was going through a rough patch of his life.

And then came 22 March 2013, when God spoke to a dear friend of mine who is studying in Australia. He randomly drop me a message just before I left the house in the early morning for the YM Sec 1-3 Camp.

22 Mar 2013 (The text I received in the early morning I woke up before Sec 1-3 camp)

(Got his permission to share this)

"I was praying in this morning devotional for a couple of good friends especially you who impacted my christian journey . I am grateful and thankful for you. Without yo , I wont be here today. This very day,something hit me on my knees and I teared badly this morning. I opened up my worries and anxiety to God …He comfort me when a soft warm voice , Don't worry, I am in control. Have faith in me, even in your pain, even in our troubles. Through these all, my love will transform you , perfect you and complete in you. I could bearly hear the rest words but piece together his thoughts towards my worries. Dear Ben ,when troubles come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing. For this, I prayed that faith and courage will stand within you through not only good times ,and bad times . If there is any problem , if comfortable , if I can't be there for you physically , I pray for you .God bless and you have been missed:) " -Gifford

That prayer meant so much to me and it lifted my spirit just in time for me to serve as a mentor for the Sec 1-3 camp. And it didn't end there God showed me a couple more incidents at this camp that encouraged me.

23 Mar 2013
At the last night of this camp, I saw all the 17year olds from my youths batch who were now serving as leaders for this camp, coming together to share and encourage each other. And they gathered on their own without any older leader initiating it. This was when I began to see spiritual friendships naturally developing in their time in YM. Rev Dr Tan Soon Inn would probably say this is an example of "Friendship Discipleship".

24 Mar 2013
Right after we broke camp, I received a couple of texts message from 2 of my sec 1 youths who were fairly quiet in my camp group. One of them wrote a very long heartfelt text message of encouragement. He didn't share this at the group time, but God actually touched him in a very special way for the first time in his life. He even wrote a prayer in that text for me that touched me deeply as what he said in that prayer actually reminded me of my calling of why i'm serving the Lord in full time minstry today.

What can I ask more right? God actually use someone who was only just 13 years old to encourage me again. This is the power of words and encouragement and prayer from people that I would want to encourage you all reading this to pray for your leaders, your pastors and friends too. If not for this people whom I came in contact with the past few weeks, I probably won't have seen the power of spirtual friendships becoming a reality in my heart.

True discipleship takes a life long process, in my recent mission trip to Nepal, we were laying the foundations of the church building project and we saw how the brick was literally laid one brick at a time. I see the process of this foundations being laid through the means of spiritual friendships.

There will come a time when we are down and spiritually dry. But besides doing the daily spiritual disciplines to maintain your walk with God, I believe God wants to use people around us to encourage one in this journey with the Lord.

I see spiritual friendships potentially being form naturally, whenever there's groups of different ages and spiritual maturity interacting together for a period of time. This are platforms which I hope the older leaders of such groups can take opportunities to be intentional in such groups.

If I can think of a particular sub-ministry, I will say our YM GAP prayer ministry is one of the best platforms that I see God using in Wesley YM for spiritual friendship to evolve from. With so many youths from different small groups of different ages & I believe also from almost every single sub-ministries coming together every friday to worship, share & prayer together. God is really doing something here and its's so encouraging to see so many young youths as young as 13 yrs old coming to pray together with the older ym leaders.

My hope and dream one day is to see true spiritual friendships naturally forming in the church and outside the church. Wherever we are, we have friends that will pray for each other, who constantly encourage and build each other up. Using the youth lingo of "HTHT aka Heart to Heart talk" where one share deep personal issues with each other. Instead of having any normal "HTHT", I hope one day there will be an increase of natural spiritual "HTHT" conversations that starts of naturally whenever friends meet up. That's the kind of conversations that I've always enjoyed and always feel spirtually refresh just talking about things that matters to God. :)

Hebrews 10:24-25
New International Version (NIV)
24 And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, 25 not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

Below are just some of this platforms that I've seen Spiritual Friendships being formed in my life the past year which i'm so thankful for! :)

"BPX" the name of our mentoring band with Ps Ivan

The "SBJ" mentoring band, the group of youths that I gathered to form a mentoring band group

Our yearly Men's Spiritual Kelong Retreats

My own small group God's Clay which have been lasting for more than 10 years.

My youth small group. God's Everlasting Love (G.E.L)

The Disciple 1 Classes, an amazing platform of spiritual friendships to be form where I see youths and leaders coming together to spend 9 mths studying His word together.