雜崩能閱讀報告
JBL Reading Report

This is the song I wrote for the 51st Canadian Chinese Christian Winter Conference.

但主愛更深廣
曲／詞：余子麟
Copyright 2011 Alan C. Yu. UBP ARR

誰能叫我與主愛隔絕，
患難困苦逼迫麼？ 

然而信靠復活的主，
這一切事我已經得勝。

曾聽信仇敵控告，
忘記了後嗣名份， 

但我軟弱時主總看顧，
致令我更深信：


主的愛更深更廣，
主的愛更深更廣， 

主的愛橫越高低生死，
超過現在將來；

主的愛更深更廣，
主的愛更深更廣， 

沒有誰人能奪去破壞，
主的愛永遠擁抱我。

Music Score

Labels: Recommend

Posted by Alan Yu at 1/01/2012 08:00:00 AM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

This is a composition assignment written by my son Alpha in grade 2.

A burning bush
June 24, 1999BC

Dear Diary,

Today, I was given rank of a shepherd.  At precisely 12:00 noon, my third sheep yelled: "BAAAA!" As if to say, "Come follow me." And then she ran away!  Shepherd's cane in the air, I sprinted after her.  3 minutes later, I tracked her down.  She was at a narrow valley, with a single bush.  Then it caught on fire! I mean, it was not!  But it was! It was burning but it was not burning.  I mean, it was on fire but did not burn!  Then I was struck by the voice of GOD! "Take off your sandals Moses, for you are on Holy Ground.  When you have gone into exile from Pharoah, I have seen your people work hard.  Go back to that land where you killed a native.  And say: Let my people go.  And now!" But I yelled, "For I am a fat feeble old man!! I am 10000 years old - Too old!!! I am not a good talker!!!!" "I will send your brother Aaron with you." God boomed.  "Still, no." I complained.  So God said, "Moses, throw thy staff on thy ground." Now, I sensed a trap.  I could have said no but this was God speaking to me.  So I did as I was told.  Then instantly, it turned into a snake.  Not a snake, but a cobra!!!  I freaked out, but God said, "Moses, pick up thy staff." with a shaking hand, I did so.  And it turned into a staff.  "Still, no." I said.  "Moses, take thy hand and put it into thy collar." So I did.  "Take thy hand out of thy collar." God boomed.  So I did.  With a ssh-shads sound, it was a thick slime that covered my fingers.  "Now you have to put thy hand in collar." So I did.  And... No more slime!!!  "Now you have seen the power of God." God exclaimed.  "Now go." So I did.  Time for this entry to end.  Bye bye.

THE END!

Labels: Interesting

Posted by Alan Yu at 5/05/2011 10:47:00 PM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

• Be CAREFUL in taking care of our body as the temple of God.
  
• Burnout is a syndrome of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and reduced personal accomplishment that occurs in individuals who work with people. (Too much caring; too little resource.)
  
• There is no such thing as failure in God's kingdom, only forced growth.
  
• Burn-out could take 5 to 6 years to work out.
  
• Burn-out people say, "Yes, there is a God, but He just doesn't care about me." That sense of loss is what is devastating about burn-out.
  
• When you lack support, your chance of burn-out increases dramatically.
  
• Support has to come from top-down. You cannot look to your congregation for support.
  
• Causes of burn-out includes situational and ongoing minor conflicts, inadequate support and rewards, low-grade depression, irrational expectations and lack of assertiveness. Over-work is not the key.
  
• Stress-out is the exhaustion of your adrenaline system; burn-out is the exhaustion of your emotional system with loss of empathy, caring, hope and detachment. Both are forms of depression.
  
• Type B personality is more prone to burn-out.
  
• We suffer burn-out from emotional triangles. Training in systems theory can help reduce burn-out.
  
• We suffer burn-out from not having a safe place to express intense job-related feelings (aggravated by confidentiality issues).
  
• We suffer burn-out from a confused sense of purpose accompanied by administrative overload.
  
• Humour is powerful in putting things back into perspective.
  
• 1 in 3 pastors 10 years in ministry shows signs of burn-out.
  
• Leaving your ministry will not help your burn-out.
  
• Sympathy is actually not helpful to ourselves as well as to the people we help. We need to learn empathy.
  
• We need to develop healthy theology of compassion, self-care, success and failure.
  
• Success has little spiritual and therapeutic value. It does not make our life better. Success is just a bonus God give to those who are faithful.
  
• God is not in the success business but the refine business. God cares about the maturity of our life more than the size of our church.
  
• Because of the information technology revolution, pastors now are constantly being compared to the celebrity pastors. This has created tremendous stress on pastors.
  

Labels: Reflection

Posted by Alan Yu at 2/04/2011 10:43:00 AM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

• “It is exceedingly clear that the chronic stress of twenty-first century living is not a mere inconvenience, but a major problem that needs to be recognized and treated seriously. Unless we as a society learn to slow down, breathe, examine our values and change our hectic lifestyles, we will continue to suffer from cardiovascular disease, immune deficiencies, depression and a host of other illnesses. Further, we will pass these traits and poor coping skills to our children who could experience even greater suffering given their exposure to severe stress from the first days of life.” Jessie Shaw -Newsweek
  
• Stress is being stretched beyond your limits and extending yourself without adequate time for recovery.
  
• The advent of electric light took away 2-3 hours of sleep; and the advent of television took away another 2 hours. Our lack of sleep is a major reason for our failure in stress management.
  
• MInistry is all about dying, but it must be strategic dying. Accelerated dying is not in God's plan.
  
• We are a chain of elastic bands - our stress affect EVERY part of our body.
  
• High blood pressure and high cholesterol are stress problem. Diet only provides the environment for them.
  
• High cortisol (the "stress hormone") level shrink the hippocampus in our brain, reducing our ability to learn, to remember and to forget.
  
• Caffeine boosts our adrenaline level, which gives us energy, but at the same time shuts down our other systems such as logic thinking (so we cannot learn), immune (so we get sick) and reproduction (so we become impotent)
  
• If you "need" caffeine you are already out of control
  
• Type A people produces 4 times as much adrenaline and 43 times as much cortisol as other people.
  
• Choose your battles and your emergencies where you will truly need your adrenaline
  
• Resign as the “keeper of the universe” and focus on that which God has given you to do in your part of His vineyard
  
• Sleeping less than 5 hours a night on average will guarantee an early heart attack. The boundary of danger is 6 hours. Sleeping less than that is hazardous to your health.
  
• The optional length of sleep is 6 90-minute cycles, that is 9 hours.
  
• Sleeping is a process similar to defragmentation of a harddisk. What the alarm clock do to us is like unplugging the computer in the middle of a harddisk defragmentation process.
  
• The sleep switch in our brain is not time sensitive but light sensitive. Turn down the lights way before you sleep to get into the mode, and turn up the light as soon as you wake up to stop the melatonin.
  
• Nap is not sleep. Nap is good for lowering adrenaline, slowing our system and refreshing our mind, but it does not equate sleep. An effective sleep takes at least one sleep cycle, that is 90-minutes.
  
• Anxiety is a warning system for danger approaching us. But when we are anxious all the time, the alarm does not mean anything anymore.
  
• Worry anxiety is a bad habit of the mind. It is a spiritual issue more than a psychological issue.
  
• Fear and worry are different. Worry has no tangible threat but only imagined, while fear does. We cannot handle worry, but we can handle fear. Therefore, we should treat worry with facts, reality and reason.
  
• Panic anxiety discarder is a biological disorder created by prolonged psychological stress.
  
• Panic anxiety discarder is the #1 mental problem for women in USA. For men, #1 is substance abuse and panic anxiety disorder is #2. The men are self-medicating themselves.
  
• Panic attack is a gift to slow us down.
  
• When you worry, write down what you're worrying and set your mind to intentionally worry them for at least 15 minutes.
  

Labels: Reflection

Posted by Alan Yu at 2/03/2011 03:12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

• Being assertive doesn't mean winning the battle, but having the choice to do what you think is right and best, and not being forced to do what you do not want.
  
• Being assertive is having the right to choose to sacrifice. It is based on strength and courage, not cowardliness.
  
• When you're angry, you disqualify yourself from assertiveness. There is a big difference between assertiveness and aggressiveness.
  
• An effective board cannot function with a lot of secrecy.
  
• "No" gives meaning to your "yes".
  
• Difficult and irritating people are there sometimes because they crave your respect.
  
• We need to develop flexibility in our personality.
  

We also have some interesting discussions about homosexuality in class today. I will not post those insights here because you will have to understand our discussion in a comprehensive and holistic way in order to avoid misunderstanding, and it will be too much to post here in order to present a comprehensive understanding of the point. I'm lazy - that's why I leave it out. If you're interested, seek me out and talk to me in person. I'll be glad to share with you.

Labels: Reflection

Posted by Alan Yu at 2/02/2011 03:01:00 PM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

• You can harm a child as much by inflating their self-esteem as deminishing it.
  
• If you're not doing well, you need to know it. If you're doing well, you need to acknowledge it. We must be honest.
  
• The goal of Christian redemption is not self-fulfillment nor self-negation, but self-transcendence - to become “transparent” to self. (seeing less of self, seeing more of Christ)
  
• Many consumer economies stay afloat by manipulating the low-esteem of consumers.
  
• The fact that something has a name doesn't mean that it exists.
  
• Buckminster Fuller: "I never went to university, so I never learned what cannot work."
  
• Can you esteem a fallen self? Can you not esteem a regenerated self?
  
• We have not engaged enough theologically the emotional struggles that we have everyday. We are in desperate need of a theology of the self and of emotion.
  
• We must incorporate the doctrine of regeneration into our concept of self-esteem.
  
• Dr. Martin Seligman: “There are almost no findings that self-esteem causes anything at all.” "What needs improving is not self-esteem, but our skills for dealing with the world."
  
• Why are so many successful, competent people plagued with chronic low self-esteem? Somewhere, behind external achievements, there must be an internal filtering device that denies the successes and hoards the failures, and then serves them up as the fruit of one’s life.
  
• The effect of life circumstances (successes and failures) and other external factors are NOT an adequate basis for understanding the origin or maintenance of high or low self-esteem.
  
• A healthy self-esteem is the acceptance of a positive and undistorted self-image.
  
• Mistakes are what we used to inform our improvement. Mistake is not failure.
  
• The generation struggles with low self-esteem, while the new generation struggle with narcissism.
  
• "The best thing you bring to leadership is your own transformed self." -Strengthening The Soul of Your Leadership, Ruth Haley Barton
  
• Feeling and practicing gratitude is the single strongest predictor of satisfaction with life.
  
• Many of us are just living off other people's genuine spirituality.
  
• Many people are languishing because of spiritual carelessness (neglecting and not taking care of our spirit).
  
• The number one thing to help reduce stress is silence and solitude.
  
• It is important to train young people to increase their capacity for silence.
  

Labels: Reflection

Posted by Alan Yu at 2/01/2011 03:09:00 PM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

• Sexuality: Excessive denial a major weakness, and our silence about this topic will be our greatest downfall.
  
• Steven Berglas (of Harvard Medical School): The Four A's of Success: Aloneness (loss of accountability), Arrogance (loss of humility), Addiction (pursuit of novelty), Adultery (pursuit of pleasure)
  
• Pastors are more likely to attract transference than any other helping professionals. And it is the reason for many extra-marital affairs for pastors.
  
• Only honesty and a matching ruthlessness in our quest for biblical truth can provide a balanced and healthy sexuality for both men and women.
  
• H.B. London: Some sheep bite.
  
• We need to laugh more. Ministry is often too serious and we lost our humour along the way.
  

Labels: Reflection

Posted by Alan Yu at 1/31/2011 03:31:00 PM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

• The coffee industry will be today's tobacco industry in the future.
  
• 2Cor 2:15-16 - The fragrance of Christ is from the perfume used to anoint a dead body. It is fragrance of life and the aroma of death at the same time.
  
• Anger as feeling is always valid – but may not be justified (misperceptions etc). One feels for a reason – even if its not a good reason. But anger as behavior is seldom valid – except in extreme cases of self-defense or danger.
  
• Anger is like a boomerang - you throw it out to hurt someone but it came back to hurt you.
  
• We should never equate the wrath of God with human anger. There is no such thing as "righteous anger", only "anger of the righteous one."
  
• Justice does not need to be motivated by sustained anger.
  
• The angry feeling is neutral, but it is dangerous.
  
• 雅各書1:20 人的怒氣並不成就　神的義。
  
• Anger can be a conditioned response. It can be unlearned - just like temper tantrum.
  
• Ventilation does not release the anger, it rehearses the anger.
  
• No mater how terrible things are, always greet your spouse with a smile when you go home.
  
• Forgiveness is surrendering my right to hurt you back.
  
• Forgiveness is not reconciliation. Forgiveness is a personal and private decision and only involves ourselves. I cannot request the other party's apology or confession as a condition for our forgiveness.
  
• God has forgiven us before we confess our sins. Our confession is a requirement for reconciliation, not forgiveness.
  
• Forgetting has nothing to do with forgiveness. Forgiveness is not emotional but an ethical choice.
  
• Forgiveness doesn't take a long time. It is just a decision in a moment. But it may take a long time to bring yourself to the position where you can forgive.
  
• Don't tell the person that you have forgiven him/her unless they ask you for that. Write down your forgiveness and get rid of it. Don't ever send it. Otherwise you are just punishing him/her.
  

Labels: Reflection

Posted by Alan Yu at 1/28/2011 11:08:00 AM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

• To grief is to understand the meaning of the our loss to us. We need to know what we are saying goodbye to before we can really say goodbye to end the depression.
  
• You cannot move forward with your life without grieving your loss.
  
• Finding a substitute is just short-circuiting the grieving process. By substituting you are holding onto your loss and the depression can never end.
  
• We create unnecessary losses by not adjusting our values from previous depressions.
  
• After all the psychological issues are sorted out, what we are left with are theological issues. There is no solution and hope except to submit to God's sovereignty.
  
• We do not need cheap "bible verse" comfort, but we need to process our losses with biblical truth.
  
• Reactive depression is a tool for self-growth. We learn more from depression than from success.
  
• In the digital revolution, change is coming not just to how we counsel, but what and who we counsel.
  
• Facebook Depression is already a proper diagnosis.
  
• Texting has a reward reinforcement pattern in our brain similar to slot machine.
  
• We believe that we are good at multitasking. Scientific studies show that we are not (35% worse performance when multitasking).
  
• Multitasking improves our feeling (it makes you feel capable), but destroys our productivity.
  
• Multitasking is an addiction.
  
• The brain is not designed for multitasking. Period.
  
• When multitasking, we are using the more pleasant tasks to help us sustain the less desirable tasks. This is not helpful in our character development.
  
• We are distracting ourselves to death.
  
• We are taught to value multitasking because it creates more business.
  
• Two-thirds of US undergrads now score 30% higher on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory.
  
• Instead of using the Web to learn about the wide world, the young use it to gossip about each other and follow pop culture.
  
• Students now are using drugs like Adderall (for treating ADHD) as neuro-cosmetic to compensate for their loss of intelligence and attention due to their digital lifestyle. This is crazy.
  

Labels: Reflection

Posted by Alan Yu at 1/27/2011 03:03:00 PM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

• God is not so much interested in what you do but who you'll become.
  
• Surviving ministry is a matter of surviving depression.
  
• It is a high priority for pastors to prepare the people to deal with loss.
  
• Within 5 to 10 years, every teenager will be on antidepressant.
  
• Spurgeon: "Repose is as needful for the mind as sleep is to the body. Our Sabbaths are our day of toil, and if we do not rest upon some other day we shall break down."
  
• Disillusionment is inevitable when we “idealize” a calling.
  
• Abuse and misuse of our physiology is too easily “justified by our cause”.
  
• Everybody needs to be an expert in sleep. Seriously.
  
• Sometimes God do not prevent us from the consequences of our stupidity, but this is not for punishment but for discipline.
  
• Exercise plays a critical role in the regulation of our cortisol level.
  
• Some sleeping pills are just anaesthetics. They are not giving you sleep but are just shutting down your brain, which doesn't bring rejuvenation.
  
• Chronic stress can reduce the size of the Hippocampus in our brain by 30%, which reduces our ability to learn and to forget. Yet this is reversible by physical exercise, and by experience of love.
  
• Stress relates to the issue of control. To what extent do you have control over your life? We feel stress when we feel lack of control (helpless and hopeless). Therefore, the janitor is more stressed then the CEO, and the pastor is more stressed then the janitor (because s/he has the most bosses)
  
• If you surrender to the symptoms of depression, you will probably get through reactive depression sooner.
  
• Female feels their depression; male acts out their depression (such as through rage and addiction).
  
• Most male depression cases were misdiagnosed because all tests and assessment methods are female-based.
  
• We have adopted a theology and psychology of "feeling good" and it is tragic. Feeling good is of lowest priority. Survival is.
  
• Studies show that just by talking to a patient can change the biology of his/her brain. That's why psychotherapy works. That's also one of the reasons why preaching works.
  
• An observation: The classroom projector is not working but it is ok, because only 2 person in our class of 25 do not have a laptop in front of them with the powerpoint file already distributed to them through the class online forum. The 2 person who don't have a laptop use iPads. So we don't actually need the projector. It has become obsolete.
  

Labels: Reflection

Posted by Alan Yu at 1/26/2011 02:59:00 PM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post