Sharing Two Visions

For Bible Study this week Jin Lian told us that Debbie and I will share a vision from God. The vision should relate to the first lesson of the Bible Study book - Foundation Truths 1. So Monday last week as we went for the Morning Prayer at Paya Lebar I asked God to show me something. When I received it, I was like, "Really? Are you sure this is it?" . It seemed a bit off and plain weird to me, so I asked another vision.

The great thing about God is that He didn't say, "Why can't you just work with the first one I gave you?", He did give me another one.

Today, I shared with Jin Lian the second vision first, because I thought it was better than the first one. I wasn't even planning to share the first one because I was embarrassed, but then I just said it anyway. And Jin Lian said that the first vision (which I thought was a bit scratch-your-head type) gave her goosebumps! Just goes to show how limited and simple my mind is and how God had been right all along the first time.

Anyway, this is what I received:

The First Vision: Indoor Climbing

Have you ever gone indoor climbing before? If you're a beginner there's someone called the belayer who'll help you through the climb. In my vision, there were three things that struck me about climbing and how it is paralleled to our Christian life.

The Grips : Which look like rocks on the surface of the climbing wall. It symbolizes God's Word (both rhema and logos), without His Word we're unable to navigate through our Christian "climb". We cannot go from where we are to where we should be if we don't hold on to the Word that God gave us.

God's Word is our foothold and handhold, to steady us and to support us.

Some grips are colored and mark out a route, different colors for different levels of difficulty, in the same way we must know the path that God has marked out for us and not stray from it.

The Belayer: What was powerful to me was the concept of the Belayer. That the Holy Spirit was the one holding the rope for us. According to Wikipedia:

By using a correct belaying method, the belayer can hold the entire weight of the climber by using relatively little force, and can easily arrest even a long fall. By using a mixture of belaying angle and hand-grip on the rope, a climber can be lowered gently by the belayer to a safe point where climbing can be resumed.

What a nice picture of the Holy Spirit! I remember that one time I went wall climbing, I am scared of heights, and having seen another girl reach the top and then begin to cry hysterically because she couldn't go down terrified me. But I also remembered that during my ascent, one of my closest friends belayed for me. I felt confident and secure that my friend won't let me be harmed during the whole climb. That's what God was telling me, the Holy Spirit is there to support me, and He can keep me from falling.

Another thing that's important with belaying is that the belayer and the climber must communicate. There must be an ongoing communication between me and the Holy Spirit.

The Climber: I also realized that the attitude of the climber is very important. Because even if the grips are there and the belayer is very skillful and communicative, if I release my hands and feet from the grips and call out "I give up", no matter what the belayer says to keep me going, there's no way that I'll finish the climb. I will just hang wherever I am or let go. Plus climbing is hard work and mental conditioning, it involves discipline and a love for what you do...kinda sums up being a Christian, right?

The Second Vision: God the CityBuilder

In my vision I saw first a beautiful city with a wide array of buildings, some tall others wide, some nicely decorated, others minimalistic, and then I saw a big piece of paper being unrolled right in front of me. It contained a lot of geometric shapes and measurements, then I understood that it was a master plan, a draft of what the city needed to look like.

I asked for wisdom about what I saw, and God told me that He's the Citybuilder, and people are buildings, before the city was built, God had already planned for everything, the layout, the position, the purpose of each building. He had planned that every building (that's us) to have a sure foundation (Jesus, the cornerstone) so that the city will be not just be stable but be eternal.

How beautiful or how tall the building will be depends on the materials that were used to construct it. Our life experiences, lessons we've learned, attitudes, spiritual disciplines we practice etc...are the building blocks of our buildings - our lives. We decide the quality of our life by what we do or how we react to what is given to us.

Anyway, by sharing this, I hope you guys have been blessed as I have learned a lot. Not only about the visions but also on obeying God.

Have a great week ahead!