Nice May Not Be Nice

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We often hear people make remarks about others by saying, “He’s a nice guy” or “I like her. She’s nice”. And after hearing that, most of us develop the general idea that the person is good enough. But what does it really mean when we describe people as “nice”?

In the Filipino culture, we often hear people saying, “Mabait ‘yan. Go withthe flow lang ‘yan.” (He is nice. He gets along with everybody). Most of us even like the company of people who we describe this way:  “Sobrangbait ‘yang taong ‘yan. Hindi umiimik ‘pag nilalait ng iba.” (That person is really nice. He just keeps quiet when people mock him).

If I were younger, those statements would make me think it’s “safe” to be with those kind of people and I wouldn’t mind hanging out with them often. But now that I am grown, I have realized that nice can be overrated, that I just don’t want to simply be nice and don’t want to influence others to be the same. I have come to an understanding that “safe”or “nice” is sometimes not wise and ironically, “safe” could be dangerous and bad in certain situations.

If you look around, “nice” has taken on negative meanings in many different ways. Underneath being nice could be webs of problems that sadly, no one has dared to deal with – because nobody wants nice people to change. Yet being nice could just mean not having the courage to do certain things for fear of failure, or just going with the flow for fear of rejection, or it could mean pleasing everybody to drink a sense of fulfillment from their praises. It could mean a lot of other different things. In other words, nice may just be a mere sign of sin and weakness.

I have seen the life of a couple with the husband described by everybody as “nice”. But this nice just means being henpecked and having a wife whose delight is to make his husband submit to her wishes and who is proud of it.

I have seen too many people even at church who are nice. They won’t gossip, won’t cheat or tell a lie. They are nice. But there is something about them that seems devoid of life – of the abundant life that God wants His children to live. There are so many people at church who speak about joy as written in the Bible – yet you see them tired, restless and worried all the time. Yet they remain nice because nice is supposed to be good.

I have seen people including myself who refuse to speak truth – truth that could have changed the lives of many but chose not to because we don’t want to throw stones into peaceful ponds. We don’t want ripples. We want the nice status quo.

Nice as it may seem, I believe to be simply nice is not God’s plan for His children. He wants us to be gentle as doves but shrewd as snakes (Matthew 10:16). He wants us to speak truth for those who cannot speak for themselves (Proverbs 31:8). He wants us to follow His ways even if it means going against what everybody likes (Romans 12:2). He wants men to lead their wives and not vice versa. (Ephesians 5:22-23) It is therefore not a good thing when husbands just simply follow whatever the wife says. That is not being nice; that is being scared. In fact, the nicest thing you think you could do to someone might be the most dangerous thing for him or her.

If we look deep in our souls, we don’t want to simply be nice; what we really want is to develop a good character. If you ask me how to do just that, I have one thing to say: trust in the Lord Jesus Christ and allow Him to change every bit of who you are. Jesus is like salt. Salt brings out the true flavor in the food. If you invite him in, He will help you become the person you ought to be. But the whole process is not all nice – it can be messy, I tell you. But then again you don’t want nice –you want life, the most abundant kind.

The Big Audience

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Life in the workplace is probably one of the places where it is not so hard to feel one’s worth.  Just do your thing right; walk the extra mile; make your boss smile; come up with great ideas and execute well and you will be recognized and regarded as important for all your efforts and exceptional talents. It’s also easy to feel like you are making a huge difference in the world when you are in a big ministry with 200 people under your leadership and you are out there feeding the hungry, making Christ known and hugging weeping strangers who just lost their homes to an earthquake. Even as you are going through hard times in your service for God and people, you can look forward to sharing a glorious testimony and see a twinkle in people’s eyes because you have again inspired them to make the best choices in life despite all its difficulties.

Yet it is another story when God takes you to another journey when you no longer have a big audience. This is the season when your biggest ministry is reduced to one or two people and to a cat, a dog and a few chickens and rabbits. This is when you can’t give in to your food cravings to protect the growing life inside you – and yes, that is a thankless job in the meantime and sometimes, what you get is a kick instead or a heart burn and sudden shortness of breath. While before you would spend three hours designing a curriculum for high school kids feeling like a catalyst for societal change in the process, you are now spending three hours keeping the house together and thinking of ways to move things forward. Sometimes, that means googling an interesting recipe, engaging in it for an hour but coming up with something entirely different. Sometimes that means feeling happy you got the fire going and realizing later that you were not supposed to build fire in the first place because 65 degrees is not cold enough for others.

When you think you just moved mountains by moving one piece of furniture, but there is deafening silence rather than a round of applause but you think it’s ridiculous to post about it on Facebook, you get tempted to doubt whether it’s worth it to move mountains in the first place. Yet, I realized that when I hear no words or when I don’t see my name in the paper, that’s when the voice of God should be loudest. I realized that in everything I do, I can glorify Him– whether it’s teaching gerund phrases to high school kids or making sure I don’t burn the house down.  It is humbling to be a housewife and a mother – but God considers it a great calling. What a big audience does not see, God sees. What 200 people do not hear, God hears. God is my biggest audience. (Jill Christianae Robinson)

The Perfect Solution

 

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The Lord Jesus is not popular and controversial for nothing. To many, he was just a wise man that came to earth to set an example. However, Jesus was more than just a role model. According to the Bible, God made peace with everything through his death on the cross. (Colossians 1:19-20)

Jesus' death on the cross means everything to us who believe. It's the ultimate solution for the most major conflict of life which is MAN VS GOD. It did not only bridge the gap that separated Man from God, it continues to provide solutions for everything else that comes with accepting such truth in one's life.

Faith in this sacrifice for mankind is like that access road finally made and even concretely paved. It is that deus ex machina in a movie, that vaccine that stopped an epidemic, that light bulb idea that sparked an invention.

Jesus' death is the perfect, exact solution to the biggest cryptic drama of living and dying. It paid for ALL the sins of mankind. Therefore, there is no SIN too small or too big that God will not forgive. Otherwise, His plan was a complete failure. Jesus is not only the way to peace; He is the peace. He is not just the way to the answer; He is the answer. Jesus taught man how to live - not so that man may be saved; but that man may know how to finally LIVE because he has been saved.

Loving or Just Filling a Void?

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When we are being kind to the one we love, what are the chances that we are merely repressed and scared to challenge circumstances and materialize our fear of isolation? When we are being patient and silent and opt to say the good words instead of the bad ones, what are the chances that we just hate changes and that we’d rather live peacefully with those we are not even at peace with? Could it be that we are merely preserving ourselves when we refuse to hurt them and try our best to prove that we are the real deal and always will be? Could it be that we are too scared of a broken relationship in the future that we’d rather have our partner be the antagonist so just in case, we won’t have anything else to think about but move on? When we try to be good to them, is it because we care or are we simply trying to keep them because they fill a void in our lives?

There is a thin line between loving others well and using them to fill an empty space in our souls. I use the phrase “love others well” because I believe we are all capable of loving; some people just don’t know how to do it well. I still fail sometimes yet since I came to know the Lord Jesus, I have learned that loving others is not enough – I should do it well. The love I give to them must be an outflow of God’s love for me. The popular way of loving though is the kind that sucks life out of somebody else, the kind that destroys rather than builds, the kind that kills rather than gives life.

We cannot give what we don’t have. The reason we are failing could be that we are drawing love out of an empty cistern. We have nothing more to give. We seem deprived of love ourselves yet we are disillusioned by the thought that we are heroes or heroines in somebody’s life, and have perhaps been possessed by the notion that our “love” is the drug they need. No pun intended.

To love well is to know what love really is. We could start with it being patient and kind according to 1 Corinthians 13:4-8. If you believe that it is otherwise, then perhaps this is not the thought you want to hear. When we love people, some may love us back, some may not but if we are to love well, the reciprocation should not be the motivation. We don’t love simply because it is exciting. We don’t love because we feel empty. We don’t love because life is a mess. We love because it is a God-given gift and privilege. We love because it is God’s command and it blesses others. We love for many good reasons and we love especially because God first loved us (1 John 4:19). He has so much love to give and he created our hearts to be capable of receiving it – we just need to open it up. 

Simply Because

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Life is not always exciting. It is at times difficult, confusing, boring, plain, depressing, sad and disappointing. This is so if we are looking at events or the people that make them happen or even worse, the frailties of our very being, that weak part of ourselves we have been trying to deal with all our lives – wounds that run deep and date back to childhood. We are in constant watch of our tendencies, careful not to make any more mistake. Then sometimes, all we could do is sigh – simply because life has not turned out the way we want it.

But the truth is that there is a huge percent of life and destiny that we cannot control and we have the option to be grateful, to be hopeful, to feel blessed, to try harder and not grow tired of doing what is right, simply because it is the right thing to do, simply because God is pleased. We can choose this path simply because God is with us, simply because we have a personal relationship with Him and simply because He is much greater than Life itself.

On Being Secured

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Many people have spent most of their lives securing their world, building fences around their heart so that life is smooth-sailing. They spend much of their time every day making sure everything is in place and none will fall apart soon. Nothing wrong with protecting one’s self. In fact, this is one natural instinct of mankind - yet, if the act has placed an obstacle for God to intervene then such goal, however seemingly normal, is only rooted in fear, pride and disbelief.

Too much craving for control is synonymous to mistrust in what God could possibly do – not only to the circumstances of our lives, but to our hearts as well. It is saying NO to God’s invitation to come to him those who are weary and burdened and He will give them rest (Matt 11:28). It is saying NO to the Spirit of God whose presence could give peace, change minds, spark wisdom, inspire a thought and affirm one’s worth.  This world has placed so much emphasis on façades and many have put up a pretty and happy front yet deep inside are longings, loneliness and confusion. We live in such a broken world that people try to make things happen to make their lives look normal.

I have watched Episode 1 of the series, the Desperate Housewives. One character there named Bree is a control freak, though everybody knows it except her. She’s also an alcoholic but she would just attend AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) sessions to prove that she was being a good parent.

Most people in the world are like Bree. They go through life controlling facades. They tend their gardens well; their house is clean and they are even known to be “good” neighbors. But inside their homes are broken lives and relationships. What Bree is guilty of is pride. She has shielded her heart from vulnerability – and if I may say from God’s desire to touch her life. I wonder if someone has ever told her about Christ – about His love that changed many lives for the better, including mine. The sad thing about people like her is their unawareness or denial of their problem.

We could only secure ourselves to the extent that we know best but life will always be uncertain. There will always be sink holes, confusing crossroads and sad events that seem useless. Yet until we relinquish the control of our lives to God, the giver of real security then none of these things will make sense. Until it all boils down to God and His plans, then everything will boil down to nothing and unless God alone is enough, then nothing will ever be enough.

Married Forever

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I realized that to come to a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ is to pledge to stay delighted in Him despite any situation one is in. The essence of Christianity is not to devise one's own plans, manage one's own life outside the master plan of God and beg Him to bless them; the essence of Christianity is to be in constant communion with the Father by prayer, by reading His word and by living out His truths by grace through love whatever happens. It is to bask in who God is and allow one’s self to be a channel of His work in the world. Everything else falls secondary to what God wants so bad from us – our hearts, hearts that are generally committed to a lifetime of surrender to Him, a lifetime of commitment to be driven by His guidance.

When people reject Christianity, it may be that they don't want to be intimate with this God that appears to be unsafe because of his many surprises. The Lord is an adventurous God indeed. He takes people to roller coaster rides, to mountain hikes, to bungee jumping, to SCUBA diving and the like. He does not promise safety from bruises, cuts or falls but He promises that in the end, after all the adrenaline rush, one is eternally secure.

I cannot emphasize it enough that the essence of being a Christian is the relationship itself that which should go through thick and thin, for better or for worse, for richer or poorer. Yes, like that which requires the highest commitment mandated in Marriage. When we accept Jesus in our lives, we are married to Him - forever and ever. And if it is easier to understand the love expected to manifest between a husband and wife, then that is what I mean.