Simply Katherine, a Christian blog

No, I'm not a doctor but have you heard sometimes people say that "the best doctor is the patient herself?" Oh well, maybe that's not a popular notion after all. Let me then put it this way: I realize that I should be careful here addressing the matter of depression and anxiety since obviously I'm not an expert, who can medically help anybody in that sense. However, I must say that due to the simple fact that we all live in a convoluted cosmos, a complex system of living in the world, we're all bound to suffer from some extent of depression and anxiety. I'm making tons of generalization since I'm simply referring to the overall condition of human race.  Mrs. L 's husband once said, " Anxiety is the totality of the natural human life ." So the easiest way to talk about all these is for me to share with you what happened this past week. Yes, I was a basket case indeed.  I was reading Psalm 90:10  - how our years are short and t...

The Education of Our  Conscience There needs to be the acquirement of the knowledge of the glory of Jehovah through our reading, studying, enjoying, and experiencing His Word in the Bible. How we need to be reconstituted  with  and  by  the Word of God. How we need to read the Bible and being educated in God's language. Now that I consider more, if all the  consciences  (if there's a plural form of the word) on this earth are properly functioning, we would not need any human government. Everyone would behave. There would be peace and order everywhere we turn our head, but that is not the case today - is it? A foreigner once mocked a Christian, an ex-cannibal, for reading the Bible. The Christian simply responded, "You should be thankful that I'm reading the Bible. Otherwise, you would be here (pointing at his stomach) by now." "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." (John 1:1) "For the eart...

Few days ago I was having a fellowship with my Christian companions. We got into this matter of "having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience" (Hebrews 10:22). One of them brought up the etymology of the word, " conscience". So I decided to do some homework on it. The Etymology of Conscience The Latin word for "conscience" is conscientia.  The preposition com- / con- means "with" or "thoroughly," meanwhile scientia means "knowledge" or "knowledge acquired by a study." So literally, the word  " conscience" means "with knowledge." Cultures Influence the Function of Our Conscience Vincent Van Gogh once said, "Conscience is a man's compass." Yet it just dawned on me this morning how our conscience is daily bombarded with all kinds of education, all kinds of knowledge existing out there in the world. For so long, I've learned that conscience is the le...

Have you all heard about sing-reading ? Sing-reading is simply singing the Word of God.  "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to God." (Colossians 3:16) It's quite simple, so I'm going to do a little demo here. My little disclaimer: The point is to make a joyful noise unto the Lord. Just make up your own tune and sing the Word of God with grace in your hearts to God. Here we go! This is sing-reading Psalm 84:4-5. "Blessed are those who dwell in Your house; they will yet be praising You. Selah. Blessed is the man whose strength is in You, in whose heart are the highways to Zion."

Please read my previous post: Secret of Secrets - Why Bad Things Happen to Christians? A lot of times, this is my case. My faith would anchor me into trusting in His perfect heart toward us, that He is always right, that His purpose can never be thwarted. Yet many questions would still linger: Why does my family have to pass through these complex sufferings? Why did one of my relatives die young? Why can my parents be successful in their business? Why do they have to always end up in such a dire situation? Until I went into  the sanctuary of God , then I perceived  the secret of secrets . I became clear once I entered into this realm, the realm of  my spirit  and  the church . Just like in the Holy Place mentioned in the Old Testament, within our spirit and in the church, there is the shining of the golden lampstand with the seven burning lamps of fire, of which the fuel (i.e., the olive oil) is God Himself.  I learned that  the...

"Certain secrets in the Bible were not made known to us until we came into the twofold sanctuary - our spirit as the personal sanctuary and the church as the corporate sanctuary." This morning, I was struck by this sentence from my morning devotional book. The statement refers to chapter 73 of the Book of Psalms, beginning from verse 16 until the end of the chapter.  The psalmist was faced with a dilemma. He began the psalm by saying, "Surely God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart." But then it became a "troublesome task" in his sight to understand why the wicked could live so prosperously while he, a genuine God-seeker, suffered. "When I considered this in order to understand it, it was a troublesome task in my sight, until I went into the sanctuary of God..." (Psalm 73:16-17) This is not a mere doctrine or theory. I believe most of us have the same question. Why do bad things happen to good people? Or more specifically...

When I hear the word " spiritual revival ," I immediately think of a big Christian movement involving a large congregation of some sort. These words come to mind: dynamic, animated, exuberant, explosive, extraordinary , and so on.  Being revived definitely means "being made alive." Well,  I have experienced "being made alive," everyone. I don't know about you but as a God-seeker, sometimes I would come to the point of feeling dry and numb within. I mean outwardly, I would still read the Bible, pray, fellowship with other Christians, serve in the church, shepherd others, but inwardly, I would have this sense of numbness that's rather difficult to describe. Strange, right? That happened to me recently. I did not know exactly why such feeling lodged in my heart since I was actively participating in different spiritual activities, church services, you name it. I tried to ignore the way I felt inside, but as time went by, the feeling acce...

Mrs. L 's husband once said that in our following the Lord, what would divide us were actually not the major things but the minor things. Should we print the gospel tract in yellow pamphlet or blue pamphlet? Should we pray out loud or pray silently in the meetings? Questions such as these are minor details in serving the Lord Jesus, yet often they become the divisive factors in our laboring together with fellow serving ones. I have many examples and experiences that I could share with you concerning the temptations of being divided over the small things in my Christian service, but today I just want to share with you concerning a more minor thing that happened in my life. I live far away from home, so I don't get to talk to my mom that often. Recently I traveled across the ocean to visit my home. There was this one night when my mom and I got into an argument over something so silly. It was about what kind of water I should be drinking in Texas. Within me, I was burni...

Last year I attended one of the college-age gatherings with Christians on Campus. I learned a new Christian song called, Our Human Spirit.  The lyrics were directly taken from several verses in the Holy Bible. So I just want to share it with you all. Please note that I obviously did not write this song. Our human spirit is different than our soul.  "Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." (1 Thessalonians 5:23) It is the innermost part of our being that is specifically created by God (Genesis 2:7), to contact God (John 4:24). So here's the song lyrics. Our Human Spirit  It is in our spirit that we were born again (John 3:6);  it is in our spirit that we were made alive (Ephesians 2:5; Romans 8:10);  it is in our spirit that God has come to dwell (Ephesians 2:22; 2 Timothy 4:22; Romans 8:1...

Today I did my usual reading from the Life-Study of Exodus, an in-depth exposition of the Book of Exodus. As I was reading Message Eighty-One, I came across this quote: "Presenting an offering to God is a matter of experience. All the materials prepared by God must become our possession, enjoyment, and experience. Then, through our experience, we shall have the right and the position to offer these materials to God as a heave offering." Many times when I read about the offerings, all I could picture in my head were lamb, doves, rams, etc. However, I never really thought about how the children of Israel possessed those animals. For sure, they did not obtain them by stealing. That would be both a sin and an insult to God. A lamb was created by God and prepared by God, but the person who would like to offer that lamb had to first properly possess that lamb. Then not only gain the lamb, he had to properly   handle the lamb.  In our experience, I found out that the princi...

In this trip back home, I got to spend some time with my lovely grandmother. I missed her so much, I actually still do. She missed me a lot too. She won't directly ask me to just stay and live in my hometown, but I always have this sense that she's always waiting for me. Whenever I tell her that I and my sister are coming home, she will start counting days until the day we actually come back home. Thinking about my family all day is too sad, that's why I'm not doing that.  I'll tell you later why I choose to stay in Texas and live here. It's not because I don't love my family or anything like that.  Today I just want to write a short post on my grandma reading my blog post.  I told you before that my grandma knew Mrs. L. My grandma used to send Mrs. L organic bird's nest for health purposes.  My grandma doesn't really speak English but she took some English classes before (in her sixties). So I showed her my blog post about my conversat...

Sorry for the long delay of this post. I finally arrived safely, back to Texas. I think I arrived on Tuesday evening. Then I had a bad jet lag. Well, there's about 12 hours difference between Texas and back home in Southeast Asia. It's the ultimate jet lag. Total opposite. Day and night. Check out this post for some documented adventures that I had with my siblings during our travel to Asia: Singapore's Chinatown Frog Porridge I'll get back to my blogging routine soon, everyone.

I'm taking an extra week or so off from work, so I was reading this book called, " God's Need and God's Goal, " by Witness Lee . The first chapter is very touching. While man (humanity in general) has feeling only for his need, God has a greater need. The chapter begins with Luke 14:17, "Come, for all things are now ready."  This verse is then followed by Luke 15, the passage concerning the forgiving father and the prodigal son. In this story, we often focus on the hungry, filthy, poor son who desperately needs to return to his father. However, if we read more closely, we will soon realize that the father himself has been longing for his son to return.  The prodigal son realizes his need after he has squandered all his possessions, yet the father has been longing for his lost son since the day that son left his house. The father has probably prepared the best robe  for his son's return long before the actual day of the return.  ...

I haven't added more posts on my series, Conversations with Mrs. L . Honestly, I didn't spend that much time with Mrs. L. During those two years in California, it was so busy that I only had time to visit Mrs. L maybe twice a month. There was this one day, I was sitting in Mrs. L's living room. I asked her concerning a semi-real scenario, "Mrs. L, in the event of a confusion in the church life, for instance, if there's someone dissenting against the leadership in the church, what should we do as sisters? - I mean whom should we believe and stand with?"  Like always, she never failed to smile and calmly answer, "Keep eating the tree of life. Just enjoy the Lord." Yes, it's Mrs. L. Her answers were always elegantly simple. She continued, "And just pray." It was like a heavy burden lifted up from my shoulders. We all know that there is only one Body of Christ in the universe and we have to keep the oneness of the faith at...

I wish it would stop raining. Po, I, and my brother are in Singapore. We're trying to visit as many places as possible in Singapore but the weather isn't cooperating at all. It's been five days since we got here in Singapore. The trip from L.A. to Singapore was remarkably filled with obstacles, due to Po's passport problem. United Airlines refused to fly us to Singapore because Po's passport is expiring soon. Long story short, our brother helped us from back home. So five minutes before missing the flight from L.A. to Singapore (via Tokyo), the airline cleared us to fly. Then we got stuck again in Singapore, trying to get Po to pass through immigration. It was the most difficult airplane trip I've had thus far. The encouraging part was we still managed to pass a gospel tract (which includes a free Bible offer) to the airline counter's staff in LAX. She was quite receptive, although we didn't get to speak about it much (we were in a hurry, almost miss...