Saturday, January 12, 2008
Psalmthing To Reflect About...

The year 2007 has indeed been a year of victory for me; however, I had my ups and downs for that year too. The most prominent thing that really tested my faith for that year was my relationship with my classmates. As I was reading psalm 6, the Lord brought me back to all the incidents that I had with my classmates.

My class was filled with a bunch of highly enthusiastic people and that was a good thing. For the first half of my year in school, I had my share of joy and laughter with them. In fact, I really thought that God has blessed me with a group of really nice people. I even had the chance to bless half of the class during the 100k blessing back some months ago. But the evil one will always try to take all the good things that God has given us in life.

I had an unpleasant experience while working with two of my project groups back in semester one. In my RHT group, one of my group members was, in the sense a “free-rider” and this caused the group to have some pretty high tensions. There were frequent disputes to who has to do whose work. As I was pretty fired up in doing all my church activities at that point of time, I failed to strike a balance in being 100% committed in my work. Being a 3-man strong group meant that we had quite a lot of work to cover for each other as one of our group members was not committed in the group’s success. This also meant that there was no room for error. Eventually this group member, a classmate of ours, dropped out from school. We did not get a very good grade for that subject even though we passed. I know I was partly responsible for the grade that the group has gotten and they partly shifted the blame to me. This misunderstanding carried on in semester 2 as I was unable to find a project group.

In my communication skills project group, everything was pretty much fine, just that nobody bothered to take the initiative to do any work. As the subject’s submission drew closer, everyone began to panic. Eventually one of them decided to just delegate the work without first seeking my permission even though I was the leader. I realized that a single remark that is not conveyed face-to-face could cause a major dispute to start. Out of compulsion, I said to one of them online ‘why didn’t anyone bothered to delegate the work in a meeting instead of delegating it at the last minute’. This caused the group to have the impression that I was blaming them when that was not my actual intentions. Thus, there were unwanted tensions between us. I ended up doing half of the work that the whole group was supposed to do.

So often I found myself asking God, ‘Why am I in this situation.’ I did not know what to do. I admit that my faith was push to the limit as I almost decided to stop going to church, something which I really did not want to give up. I remembered crying out to God as I was at my wits end, asking Him to deliver me from the situation I was in. Indeed, God was faithful and I saw the breakthrough I had been looking for.

I was glad that my relationship with my communication skills group was restored and the misunderstandings we had were cleared up. Thank God for the B+ we got for that project and that most of the teachers I had were Christians, hence I was able to relate to them about my problems. Though the relationship between part of the class and I were still hostile, I thank God that He is slowly restoring it.

As I was thinking of all that had happen during that period of time, I realized that God was indeed building me up by letting me face this situations. If God has never put me in those situations, I might have never known how to deal with those situations. I have since known how to strike a balance in my priorities and to be a stronger leader that I am today.

So friends, be encouraged for God will always listen to our cries. Think of what God is teaching you in every situation which you may be facing.

This will be PSALMthing I leave you to reflect about…

Labels: Devotion, PSALM devotions