The Forerunner Times

"A life journal by Nathan J. Elias, called under God's grace to be His forerunner and restorer for His glory."

How hard is it for you to choose sides? The people of this world seems to have no problem choosing side, because they only got one side to choose, while we who have found the Truth are often still stuck between the sides. I read God’s letter to the Laodiceans more than 1900 years ago in Revelations 3:14-16 and I can’t help to wonder if this is the same problem we’re facing today. I face it even more after I entered a professional life, when confronted between the truth and the lies, the wrong and the right during our work life, which side do we choose?

Sadly, we often do compromise. We let our own wishes and dreams stand first before the wishes of the LORD. Money rules our hearts and minds, lust consumes our thoughts and conscience, and we fall into the darkness. When the LORD comes looking for steadfast warriors to stand in faith for Him, how many will He find? Will you and me stand there before Him or will we be counted among the lost? Our lips speak of total surrender while our hearts still seek to regain control. How many times have we heard someone vowing to battle Internet porn in his life while still he refuses to erase all the porn he has in his hard drives? How many times have we heard someone vowing not to go too far with his girlfriend yet continuously he continues to date her in dark and secluded places, hidden from the views of others?

I know I did. I know even I compromised. Yet the LORD still loves me and wants me back. Let’s make it a promise today to know which side to choose the next time we’re faced with a compromising situation. Let’s make a commitment that the next time God’s looking for us, we’ll be on His side. Let’s make a decision to make His dreams be ours. Let us be His warriors and His forerunners that will fight for His vision and mission in the frontline of the battle against the devil. Don’t let the god we believe in to be a god of our own minds, to only follow our wants, needs and desires, but let us believe in is the one true God under the name of Jesus Christ.

Inspired by lyrics from Somewhere in the Middle by Casting Crowns:

Somewhere between the hot and the cold
Somewhere between the new and the old
Somewhere between who I am and who I used to be

Somewhere between the wrong and the right
Somewhere between the darkness and the light
Somewhere between who I was and who You’re making me

Somewhere between my heart and my hands
Somewhere between my faith and my plans
Somewhere between the safety of the boat and the crashing waves

Somewhere between a whisper and a roar
Somewhere between the altar and the door
Somewhere between contented peace and always wanting more
Somewhere in the middle You’ll find me

Just how close can I get, Lord, to my surrender without losing all control?

With eyes wide open to the differences, the God we want and the God who is
Will we trade our dreams for His or are we caught in the middle?
Lord, I feel You in this place and I know You’re by my side
Loving me even on these nights when I’m caught in the middle

Well, I’m back, hopefully.

It’s been a long 268 days since I last wrote something in this blog. Actually I was planning to make another blog titled Rants of the King focusing on spiritual articles written in Indonesian so that churches and organizations can pick it up to use in their publications, but my lack of time had made me unable to fulfill that dream (designing a blog can take a consuming amount of time) and seeing that this blog still works perfectly fine, here I am back again. Oh, and you might want to install the Calibri font to view this blog, because I have updated this blog’s template to use that font because it has better readability. If you don’t have Microsoft Office 2007, download the font pack here and install it, okay?

First things first, let’s start with a scoop of what I’m doing at the moment, okay?

Since September 2007, I have decided to move out from my old church to another one. Now I’m ministering in Christ Mercy Center (CMC). It is located on Ruko Panji Makmur D23-D25, Jl. Panjang Jiwo 46-48 Surabaya. Be sure to pay a visit when you’re in town, our Youth Celebration Day (or maybe you’ll call it Sunday Service) is every Sunday on 10 am. Currently we are gearing our ministries more towards university students, because this church was first established by a group of alumni from Surabaya University (Ubaya). Most of our ministers and our members are from Ubaya, and we’re also planning to minister in Petra Christian University soon.

For the outside movement, we are establishing evangelistic teams to be sent to small cities and villages like Kediri, Tulungagung, Blitar and so on — basically to places where the Gospel hasn’t reached and where most people won’t want to minister. Why some people would want to minister to other countries while there are still so many places in Indonesia where the Gospel hasn’t been preached yet is beyond me. Right now due to my busy schedule I’m confined to the inside movement, tending and counselling the university students, sometimes writing articles for the church bulletin and also attending the Young Professionals community. I haven’t practiced singing for a long time and I seem to have lost some of my musical aptitude, so now I’m gearing my ministries more towards writing, mentoring and counselling.

In my personal life, I’m starting a relationship with a friend I’ve first met in 2005 but had to leave for one year during my time in Singapore. I proposed her on May, 5th 2007 and she agreed on the condition that both of our parents must agree to our relationship. By one week, my parents already gave their green light for the relationship, but her parents wanted me to wait until she graduates from her bachelor degree. It means that I roughly have to wait until August or September 2008, and as of today I have been waiting for a little more than 10 months.

I am very thankful to God for giving such a precious someone like her to my life, and I also thank Him for the strength He has given me to wait these ten months. I’m surrendering my life and my relationship in God’s hands, and I believe that if she is truly the one for me, God will open up a way for us. Now that there’s only less than half a year to wait, my hopes are so high and my faith for this relationship is increasing. She has truly been the light of my life, always helping me in the times I sometimes stumble and fall. Her spiritual maturity and love for God has made me very sure about her, but I must learn not to trust my own judgements and my own heart, but only to trust in the LORD’s judgement and time. Hopefully by the end of it all, my wishes would be the same with God’s wishes.

Oh, and before I end this, like all good marketers out there, I should give this post a shameless plug. Right now I’m working on an IT solutions company called Multi Star Electronics. If you’re in Surabaya, Indonesia and you need computers, printers, notebooks or servers, don’t hesitate to contact me and leave a message. My company is the Premier Business Partner (Master Dealer) and Authorized Service Provider of Hewlett-Packard products in Surabaya and East Indonesia, and also an IBM-Lenovo Business Partner. So if you’re looking for IT solutions that consists of HP or IBM products, you know where to contact me.

This is it for now. I’ll update this blog with more posts soon, hopefully. Please pray for me so that I can find the time to write more articles to bless others despite of my busy and jam-packed schedule.