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I had just bought my favourite Teochew-style fish carpaccio and mince pork congee from Maxwell Food Centre and was driving home when Jesus spoke.
Who is the ‘you’ in the passage ‘If you can, all things are possible to him who believes’? What kind of question was this, I wondered. “You, Lord?” I answered. “Correct”, Jesus replied. And the ‘him’ in ‘to him who believes’? “You again, Lord?” I replied, and I felt him smile. All this while I had the impression that my belief was crucial for God’s work to happen, but Jesus turned this right on its head. I was excited for, if what I was hearing was true, this would count as another encounter with Jesus, a new revelation. However, I feared these thoughts could also be mere figments of my imagination. I raced to check the Bible when I got home. I had read Mark 9:23 and heard it preached many times. I always understood ‘you’ and ‘him’ to refer to Man. Consequently, ‘you’ and ‘him’ also referred to me: all things are possible to me so long as I believe. But was this really what Jesus meant?
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God believes in me. These words exploded in my mind and spirit as I flew from Perth to Singapore on 16th March, 2008.
I had been watching an in-flight movie, ‘Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium’, and was fascinated by how a block of wood could do the most wondrous things if only the person, who was supposed to believe in it, believed. That was when God spoke to me, “I believe in you, Wilfred.” I was startled. It was as if I was the block of wood and God was believing into me. What did this mean? I was always taught to believe in God, told it was my belief that would allow him to work miracles in my life. But this seemed to be only one half of the equation. We love because He first loved us, we believe because He first believed in us! His belief in us is the missing first half of the equation. Astounding, marvelous, humbling and awesome were but some of the emotions I felt as the impact of these words began to grow within me. If God believes in me even in all my unbelief, how much more am I able to do all things through Christ who strengthens me? |
WILFRED YEO
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