Pit Pastor #1
By: Troy Wong
02/01/07

In addition to co-founding PanicRev Ministries and currently sitting on our board Troy Wong is also a graduate from Talbot School of Theology and is the Senior Pastor at Gateway Friends Church in Diamond Bar, California. Troy recently agreed to write a monthly column to be featured here at PanicRev.org. Hope everyone is blessed by it:

So I'm walking JoJo and Nick to school this week. I ask them this question, “Hey, why do you think me and mom want you to do well in school?” Then I give them multiple choices,“A: So you can get a good job and make lots of money? B: So you can make us happy? C: So you can understand this world that God created?” They laughed and gave me the answer I wanted to hear, which was C. But, now that I'm sitting here at this computer, I wonder what the answer would have been if they didn't have the choices.

You see in my neighborhood we've got a lot of Asian immigrants. These people left their home country, family, learned a new language, (are still trying to learn how to drive!) to chase the American Dream (i.e. $$). Their mentality for their kids is basically, “Hey, I didn't leave all that behind for you to screw around. You're going to get good grades, get into a good university, and make good money. That's why I came here.” I want my kids to get good grades too, but for a completely different reason.

I've been thinking a lot about what kind of kids I'm raising. Do I want them to thrive in this materialistic, capitalistic, individualistic culture of ours? I recently saw on the web a video of Nate Ramsey showing off his cars – the Rolls, the Ferrari, the H1, the Escalade. At that same website, they also had videos of Ryno and Hansen showing off their vehicles. As far as I know Ryno and Lil' Hanny aren't Christians; as far as I know Ramsey is. So there Nate was showing off the bling, modeling for all the up-and-comers the goal of making it big -- bling. While not to slam Nate because I don't know him, my personal reaction was one of sadness when I saw his video; I wanted to see something different from a Christian.

So it's about now that I need to turn that critical eye away from immigrant parents and big time racers and onto myself.

The movie “Chariots of Fire” comes to mind. Rent it if you haven't seen it – it's based on a true story. In the movie there are two world class runners. One is a secular Jew, the other a devout Christian. The secular Jew runs for his own glory (and he gets it by winning gold). The Christian runs for the glory of God. One of the Christian's convictions is that Sunday is holy and he will not race on Sundays. Then comes the Olympics, the freakin' Olympics, and the Christian won't run! He won't run because he's a Christian.

So I ask myself this question, “ Troy , do you submit your dreams to God's will? Or do you just ask God to bless you're dreams?”

I think we all need to ask ourselves that question…

Matthew 6.33