I was going through all the notes that I've made over the years when I found this from last July. I'm posting it up because I feel like it will always be relevant to me, and it may very well be relevant to you, too.
July last year, eight of us from NextGen went to Kuala Lipis and Bentong for a ministry trip over the weekend.
My role was initially to lead worship, but something happened over the few months before the trip that changed that (I've written about it before here, but I will go through it in this post, too). Because of that change, Pastor Sara asked me to share a testimony in line with her message instead.
So, here is the script that I wrote with a little bit of edits here and there to better suit an audience who is reading instead of listening.
Sunday, 22 July 2018
Hi, my name is Yun Qing and I serve as a cell group leader and a worship leader in NextGen. Today, I’d like to share with you a story of how being really sick changed my perspective of my relationship with God.
I have been coughing for two months now and I’ve made a total of three visits to the doctor. I’ve kept to a very strict diet of no spicy, no fried, no oily, no sweet, no sticky… which is practically every other kind of Malaysian food that we eat everyday.
On my first visit, after a week of coughing, the doctor diagnosed me with a viral attack. In spite of that, I was still serving in the worship team for the overnight prayer before Election Day and also for our main celebration service that same weekend.
I know, I know, I probably shouldn’t have done that.
I wasn’t getting any better even after the medication from that first visit (gee, one can only wonder why) and so I went back for my second visit.
The doctor then told me that the initial viral attack had then become a secondary infection because my immune system was not picking up the medication fast enough. He started me on antibiotics and restricted my diet even more. And thankfully, after that, my cough got a lot better. I was almost completely okay!
One day, about two weeks after that second visit, I was at a barista training workshop. Wanting to try out what I made, I took a tiny sip of coffee.
And if you didn’t already know, the biggest no-no when coughing is drinking coffee.
Almost immediately, my throat was itchy, scratchy and uncomfortable. The pain and the sore from weeks ago returned in less than a second and I was coughing all over again. For the days after that, my phlegm began to have traces of blood in it. And as the days passed, more and more blood was seen.
Another big no-no when you’re sick is to Google what’s wrong with you. Because apparently, according to Google, I had lung cancer. And even though I knew that it probably wasn’t true, a small part of me was genuinely concerned and went “Oh no...”.
I went back for my third visit to the doctor and told him what happened - the coffee, the return of the coughing, the blood and everything in between.
The doctor took the tongue depressor, aka the popsicle stick, and looked at my throat.
He said that I had damaged my throat from all the coughing, and that it made my throat extra sensitive, almost as if it was allergic to everything that I was eating and drinking, and even to the environment that I was in.
He started me on another batch of medication and begged me to rest up to let my throat completely heal.
I went home that night and I cried.
I cried and I cried and I cried.
I was so angry at myself.
Why couldn’t I have done a better job at taking care of myself? Why didn’t all the hot honey lemon, gargling with sea salt, and all the medication do anything to fix it? Why God, why?
In the quietness of the night, amidst the brief pauses between inarticulate sobbing, I heard God ask me this.
“Qing, why are you so upset?”
For all the thousands of whys I had asked God and for all the ones that I didn’t manage to ask, He only needed one why to leave me speechless.
Why was I so upset?
I mean, sure, I was losing sleep for many nights in a row because the cough kept me awake. This whole ordeal has been taking a toll on me mentally, physically and emotionally and of course, being sick is never the best situation to be in, ever.
But, why was I this upset?
I dug deeper down into my heart, going through layer after layer of pride, ego and selfish ambition. And that's when my shovel hit the lid of the treasure chest.
I realised that I was upset because all this coughing has taken away my ability to serve God.
“Worship is about the posture of your heart,” is something I tell my worship team all the time. “This includes what you do on stage and off stage. What if one day, God took away your hands, your feet, your voice - how then will you worship?”
Above all else - above your service, your appearances, your stature… God looks at the heart. Our service, be it singing on stage, doing lyrics from the sound booth, serving as a leader, or even as a pastor, comes from a place of knowing and loving God first.
You love God, therefore you serve God.
Just because you serve God, it does not necessarily mean that you love God. If we think that we love God merely because we serve God, then our service is just based on performance, rather than on our relationship with God.
Don’t get me wrong - serving is good and serving is needed in the life of a church, even Jesus Himself came to serve. But serving should be the fruit of our love for God, not the seed.
This is not to say that we cannot learn to love God more when we serve Him, because that's where a lot of people personally encounter and experience God's love and grow in their relationships with Him, myself included. But, again, it always has to come from a place of love first.
There is a huge difference between saying "I love God because I serve (as a worship leader/a cell group leader/an usher)" and "I serve (as a worship leader/a cell group leader/an usher) because I love God". Because if our service - our offerings of our bodies as living sacrifices - do not come from a place in view of God's mercy, in view of God's love, then I think it's pretty pointless.
That is why DUMC's tagline is “Love God, serve people, make disciples.” There is a purpose in it being in that order.
The thing is, I knew all of this.
Like I said, this is something I almost consistently urge my worship team members to think about. This has also been preached on the pulpit for many weekends now. But when it came to a point where God actually took away my ability to sing - my ability to serve, I somehow lost sight of that.
I caught myself thinking, how will God know that I love Him if I’m not leading a congregation into worship? How will God know that I love Him if I can’t share the word during cell group? How will people know that I love God if I am unable to show it?
There you go, Qing, that's what's wrong.
At this point, I realised that my service was on the verge of becoming merely a performance. Because of my mental equation of serving God which equals to loving God, not being able to serve made me feel like I was loving God less.
Right then and there, the tears that before this came with asking God questions turned into tears that came with asking God for forgiveness.
I was pretty upset to say the least, to only then realise that all of this has remained as head knowledge and that it did not fully become heart knowledge.
I guess I should also put it out there to take this as an episode of Confessions of a Real-Life Worship Leader.
All of this is very real.
Being on the worship team is not always, in fact, not ever about the glitz and glamour. It is a lot of hard work and often a lot of heart-work as well.
What you see for 25 to 30 minutes on Saturday evenings and Sunday mornings are many times what come after days, weeks and sometimes years of wrestling with God, coming to terms with our sins, surrendering our crowns and listening to His voice above all else. And for some reason, I have this dreaded feeling that some of us are starting to forget that.
Did my cough go away the moment I had this revelation?
Nope.
Did I manage to get better sleep as the nights passed?
A little bit, because Vicks VapoRub is pretty amazing.
The reason why I'm writing all of this down is for me (and maybe for you) to remember to hear God's voice in every situation that we are in. Instead of constantly asking God whys after whys after whys, maybe it's time to stop and ask, "What are You trying to tell me?"
Doing so didn't fix my problem immediately and I don't blame God for that. But it gave me a new perspective - His perspective of the situation that I was in.
So, I thank God for bringing me to a place where I met Him, even if that place was uncomfortable, even if that place was me crying alone in my bed at night. Because if it wasn’t for the coughing that went on for week after week, if it wasn't for all the sleep that I've lost night after night, if it wasn't for me desperately wanting to hearing God's voice in the stillness of that hour, I might not have been able to come to my senses about my relationship with God.
__
Ever since then, I've been on a break from Resonate for half a year now. More so because I wanted to fully commit my Saturday afternoons to the GENesis kids, but the break has also helped in realigning what serving means to me.
And since I'll be away for the whole of this year not just from the worship ministry but also from leadership in NextGen, I thought that it would be a good time to revisit this moment as I look forward to what God has in store for me in the months to come.
What about you? Have you been asking God too many whys?
Hi, my name is Yun Qing and I serve as a cell group leader and a worship leader in NextGen. Today, I’d like to share with you a story of how being really sick changed my perspective of my relationship with God.
I have been coughing for two months now and I’ve made a total of three visits to the doctor. I’ve kept to a very strict diet of no spicy, no fried, no oily, no sweet, no sticky… which is practically every other kind of Malaysian food that we eat everyday.
On my first visit, after a week of coughing, the doctor diagnosed me with a viral attack. In spite of that, I was still serving in the worship team for the overnight prayer before Election Day and also for our main celebration service that same weekend.
I know, I know, I probably shouldn’t have done that.
I wasn’t getting any better even after the medication from that first visit (gee, one can only wonder why) and so I went back for my second visit.
The doctor then told me that the initial viral attack had then become a secondary infection because my immune system was not picking up the medication fast enough. He started me on antibiotics and restricted my diet even more. And thankfully, after that, my cough got a lot better. I was almost completely okay!
One day, about two weeks after that second visit, I was at a barista training workshop. Wanting to try out what I made, I took a tiny sip of coffee.
And if you didn’t already know, the biggest no-no when coughing is drinking coffee.
Almost immediately, my throat was itchy, scratchy and uncomfortable. The pain and the sore from weeks ago returned in less than a second and I was coughing all over again. For the days after that, my phlegm began to have traces of blood in it. And as the days passed, more and more blood was seen.
Another big no-no when you’re sick is to Google what’s wrong with you. Because apparently, according to Google, I had lung cancer. And even though I knew that it probably wasn’t true, a small part of me was genuinely concerned and went “Oh no...”.
I went back for my third visit to the doctor and told him what happened - the coffee, the return of the coughing, the blood and everything in between.
The doctor took the tongue depressor, aka the popsicle stick, and looked at my throat.
He said that I had damaged my throat from all the coughing, and that it made my throat extra sensitive, almost as if it was allergic to everything that I was eating and drinking, and even to the environment that I was in.
He started me on another batch of medication and begged me to rest up to let my throat completely heal.
I went home that night and I cried.
I cried and I cried and I cried.
I was so angry at myself.
Why couldn’t I have done a better job at taking care of myself? Why didn’t all the hot honey lemon, gargling with sea salt, and all the medication do anything to fix it? Why God, why?
In the quietness of the night, amidst the brief pauses between inarticulate sobbing, I heard God ask me this.
“Qing, why are you so upset?”
For all the thousands of whys I had asked God and for all the ones that I didn’t manage to ask, He only needed one why to leave me speechless.
Why was I so upset?
I mean, sure, I was losing sleep for many nights in a row because the cough kept me awake. This whole ordeal has been taking a toll on me mentally, physically and emotionally and of course, being sick is never the best situation to be in, ever.
But, why was I this upset?
I dug deeper down into my heart, going through layer after layer of pride, ego and selfish ambition. And that's when my shovel hit the lid of the treasure chest.
I realised that I was upset because all this coughing has taken away my ability to serve God.
“Worship is about the posture of your heart,” is something I tell my worship team all the time. “This includes what you do on stage and off stage. What if one day, God took away your hands, your feet, your voice - how then will you worship?”
Above all else - above your service, your appearances, your stature… God looks at the heart. Our service, be it singing on stage, doing lyrics from the sound booth, serving as a leader, or even as a pastor, comes from a place of knowing and loving God first.
You love God, therefore you serve God.
Just because you serve God, it does not necessarily mean that you love God. If we think that we love God merely because we serve God, then our service is just based on performance, rather than on our relationship with God.
Don’t get me wrong - serving is good and serving is needed in the life of a church, even Jesus Himself came to serve. But serving should be the fruit of our love for God, not the seed.
This is not to say that we cannot learn to love God more when we serve Him, because that's where a lot of people personally encounter and experience God's love and grow in their relationships with Him, myself included. But, again, it always has to come from a place of love first.
“Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God - this is your true and proper worship.” — Romans 12:1 (NIV)
There is a huge difference between saying "I love God because I serve (as a worship leader/a cell group leader/an usher)" and "I serve (as a worship leader/a cell group leader/an usher) because I love God". Because if our service - our offerings of our bodies as living sacrifices - do not come from a place in view of God's mercy, in view of God's love, then I think it's pretty pointless.
That is why DUMC's tagline is “Love God, serve people, make disciples.” There is a purpose in it being in that order.
The thing is, I knew all of this.
Like I said, this is something I almost consistently urge my worship team members to think about. This has also been preached on the pulpit for many weekends now. But when it came to a point where God actually took away my ability to sing - my ability to serve, I somehow lost sight of that.
I caught myself thinking, how will God know that I love Him if I’m not leading a congregation into worship? How will God know that I love Him if I can’t share the word during cell group? How will people know that I love God if I am unable to show it?
There you go, Qing, that's what's wrong.
At this point, I realised that my service was on the verge of becoming merely a performance. Because of my mental equation of serving God which equals to loving God, not being able to serve made me feel like I was loving God less.
Right then and there, the tears that before this came with asking God questions turned into tears that came with asking God for forgiveness.
I was pretty upset to say the least, to only then realise that all of this has remained as head knowledge and that it did not fully become heart knowledge.
I guess I should also put it out there to take this as an episode of Confessions of a Real-Life Worship Leader.
All of this is very real.
Being on the worship team is not always, in fact, not ever about the glitz and glamour. It is a lot of hard work and often a lot of heart-work as well.
What you see for 25 to 30 minutes on Saturday evenings and Sunday mornings are many times what come after days, weeks and sometimes years of wrestling with God, coming to terms with our sins, surrendering our crowns and listening to His voice above all else. And for some reason, I have this dreaded feeling that some of us are starting to forget that.
Did my cough go away the moment I had this revelation?
Nope.
Did I manage to get better sleep as the nights passed?
A little bit, because Vicks VapoRub is pretty amazing.
The reason why I'm writing all of this down is for me (and maybe for you) to remember to hear God's voice in every situation that we are in. Instead of constantly asking God whys after whys after whys, maybe it's time to stop and ask, "What are You trying to tell me?"
Doing so didn't fix my problem immediately and I don't blame God for that. But it gave me a new perspective - His perspective of the situation that I was in.
So, I thank God for bringing me to a place where I met Him, even if that place was uncomfortable, even if that place was me crying alone in my bed at night. Because if it wasn’t for the coughing that went on for week after week, if it wasn't for all the sleep that I've lost night after night, if it wasn't for me desperately wanting to hearing God's voice in the stillness of that hour, I might not have been able to come to my senses about my relationship with God.
__
Ever since then, I've been on a break from Resonate for half a year now. More so because I wanted to fully commit my Saturday afternoons to the GENesis kids, but the break has also helped in realigning what serving means to me.
And since I'll be away for the whole of this year not just from the worship ministry but also from leadership in NextGen, I thought that it would be a good time to revisit this moment as I look forward to what God has in store for me in the months to come.
What about you? Have you been asking God too many whys?
