Righteousness - A Work Of Faith

To most of us, churchgoers; coming to the church services is one way for us to show that we are active members of such church. However when outside of the church service, do we still keep ourselves active in expressing our faith? Or we simply keep ourselves quiet about it and simply go along with the worldly deeds of our unbeliever peers.

The brother of Jesus, James, reminds us in his epistle that faith must be accompanied with works -- "For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead." --James 2:26. There are two separate phrases in this verse which are correlated with each other as the former refers to the church and the latter to its member.

Being member of Christ's church does not start and end in coming and leaving the church service. Membership starts on the day of your salvation, the time you accepted Jesus as your Savior and repented on your sins; and ends in eternity with Jesus. Our physical death will not end our goal for eternity, it is only an end of our physical bodies but it continuous until Jesus has return and judge the world. Therefore, in everything we do, comprehend, think, and feel; it must exhibit our faith which Jesus established in our hearts. The faith that God gave us as a result of His salvation must support the fulfillment of the law of God and not to break it. The church that breaks the law of God does not bear the Spirit of God which he also leaves in us to be our guide and our power to advance all the good works God asked us to perform.

But being a member of the church is not a guarantee of eternity because every person has to work on its own salvation. Church of Christ has already established to bring every soul inside of it. But once you are in, every member needs to exercise the faith that they accepted, a visible faith that is lighted up and is giving light especially in darkness.

The faith does not just believe God and knowing Jesus, it has to be accompanied by works acceptable to God which is righteousness. As a clue in James 2:19 says "You believe that God is one; well and good. Even the demons believe that - and tremble with fear."

God bless everyone!

Be Contented as a Child

When I was looking at the old photographs of my children, it reminds me how beautiful they are when they were still babies and I noticed how quiet and contented they are when I was carrying them in my arms. It is good to be a child, indeed, as you are not aware what things are happening around you. 

Psalms 131:1-3 

1 O Lord, my heart is not proud, nor do I have a haughty look. I do not have great aspirations, or concern myself with things that are beyond me. 

2 Indeed I am composed and quiet, like a young child carried by its mother; I am content like the young child I carry. 

3 O Israel, hope in the Lord now and forevermore! 

The psalmist in Psalms 131 is trying to console himself and not to concern the things that are beyond his. With our limited knowledge and wisdom, we cannot explain and longs for things that cannot reach by human capabilities. There are things that we can only hope for to God that everything we need will be taken care of by Him. Like a mother to His child, God want us to rest in His Hope. 

Though we all on our way to maturity in knowledge, experience, and physical aspects; our attitude toward God's control over our lives must remain like a child. We need to be humble before God and do not boast about ourselves as his child doing everything he required from us to do. Instead, he encouraged us to hope in God about concerns that we cannot understand even to the point of suffering while serving Him. 

God wants to reach us and hold in His arms, and take his rest. Resting before God assures us of peace away from any troubles we are worried about. God wants us to keep ourselves quiet and be a child before Him, that as a child we simply trust our mother as she carries us in her arms. 

There, our contentment allows us to enjoy the moment with her. The next time we come before God, let everyone of us hope to the Lord now and forever to enjoy peace in eternity with Him. 

God bless everyone!!!

Be With God or Completely Useless

There was an event during the days of Jeremiah where God shows a great illustration of how he desire to bound Israel to Him forever, to be His chosen people (read Jeremiah 13:1-11). But in all the efforts of God to restore them, they keep on failing and breaking the heart of God. He was then making a decision to punish them and like the linen belt will be completely useless. God shows us that the linen belt was initially a new one. It is tied to Jeremiah's waist and it looks great, he is happy to wear it and show to everyone how good the belt is. Likewise as the chosen people of God and though we are not new, God declared us as His new creation when reconciled with Him through His Son, Jesus Christ. It says in 2 Cor 5:17, "So then, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; what is old has passed away - look, what is new has come!"

When Christ holds us or wears us in Him, His favors is also with us. He is too happy to showcase us as to world and how blessed we are knowing we are side by side with our God. What a great joy and privilege it is, indeed! But He also warns us that if we were kept away from Him, we are going to be useless. But that's the good thing about it; we are only going to be useless, if and only if, we are placed under the soil for some time and were ruined. This is a kind of warning that we do not want to happen in us, I believe.

God illustrated that getting ourselves away from Him; we'll end up being useless. We don't set our time, talents and treasure to Him anymore. We are too busy in our lives and keep on forgetting a time for prayers, devotions, reading the Bible, and fellowship. We are no longer interested to join the church services, meeting and gatherings and offer some help and assistance through ministries, evangelism and mission. We are so contained to the basic personal needs and gratifying wants, allotting nothing for the Lord; giving offerings and tithes now in compulsion.

All of these actions are becoming regular and seems to be normal, are also the soils that will bury us deep into ruin which later make us to be totally useless. Again in Jeremiah 13:9-10, “This is what the LORD says: ‘In the same way I will ruin the pride of Judah and the great pride of Jerusalem. These wicked people, who refuse to listen to my words, who follow the stubbornness of their hearts and go after other gods to serve and worship them, will be like this belt—completely useless!"

God bless everyone!

Examine Our Ways and Return to God

“Why should any living person complain when punished for his sins? נ(Nun) Let us carefully examine our ways, and let us return to the Lord. Let us lift up our hearts and our hands to God in heaven” - Lamentations 3:39-42.

When staring in a beautifully painted wall, we may get amazed to its outstanding beauty at the first look. But staring to it for some time, we start looking for the defects, a hole, paint patches, dirt, etc. The tendency of human mind is to always try to find out of what makes a perfect imperfect.

It seems that there is no difference in our relationship with our God, we tend to complain on His alleged imperfections to us especially when we feel punished by our committed sin. We assume that God is unfair as if it is Him who caused these pains to us. We are acknowledging our sin against Him, thus we repent, but we do not want to be punished. This is not a true repentance then, it is just admittance.

Though God accepted us wholeheartedly, we still have to bear the consequences of all our actions while still in earth - from past, present and future. Jesus forgives our sin when we confess before him and He breaks the eternal death as a reward for true repentance, however, it is not guarantee that you will have a good life based to what you like or based to human standard. But if we continue to our walk WITH Him, we are guaranteed of contented life through the guidance of His Spirit (Gal 5:22-23).

I encourage everyone to always examine our ways and return to God where we have to ask for His wisdom and guidance. We submit our hearts and long for God's help instead, rather than complaining of our situation that is not according to what we expect. Because changes in our sinful ways is impossible without God's lending hands. He is waiting for you to lift your hands to Him and He is very willing to reach you and renew your heart. For "... if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; what is old has passed away - look, what is new has come!” - 2 Corinthians 5:17. 

God bless everyone!

Participate in God's Restoration

When we accepted Jesus as our personal Lord and Saviour with all our heart, in truth and in action; we experienced a rebirth of our spirit. We, together with Christ, have overcome death which is the wages of sin and given a renewed life born of Spirit from God and promised of eternal life with Him. This metamorphosis drama of redemption is indeed an illustration of God's abundant grace and love to all humanity. Finally, we are now restored in our relationship with God that once had been broken by our sin.

The faith of every believer, his cries, and his longings; moves God spirit and that what gives us the opportunity to live a renewed lives. Jesus, in one important event of his ministry on earth, awakened Lazarus who was buried for days then. You can follow this story in John 11:1-44. When Jesus called Lazarus to wake up, there was no participation from crowd occurred. However when Lazarus came out from his tomb, Jesus commanded them to "unwrap him and let him go." It was written in John 11:44 The one who had died came out, his feet and hands tied up with strips of cloth, and a cloth wrapped around his face. Jesus said to them, "Unwrap him and let him go."

These words of Jesus are of great significant to all of us, children of God, to do our part in every people borne of new faith after God's merciful redemption. We are ask to help the new believers in their journey of a righteous living, to unwrap them to unleash their new lives with Jesus and not to keep them in their dark, stiffed, and sinful old lives. From then, you also have to let them go if you help the person to find himself a new creation with Christ.

We have the responsibility with our fellow believers, not because we are their brothers and sisters in Christ but because we are simply ask by Jesus to do it.

God bless everyone!

Defense, Offense, or Preaching

Every believer is entrusted with the Gospel of Jesus the moment he accepted Him as their Lord and Saviour through the Holy Spirit who draws us near to Him and gives His wisdom abundantly. Therefore, it is our responsibility to preach to everyone without any exceptions. However as we try to share Jesus' Good News, we either trying to be caught in emotional defensive and/or offensive conversation rather than victorious salvation of souls. We all fall in this invincible trap that almost unrecognizable and later becomes our habit already.

A habit of defensive and offensive preaching of the Gospel is not the main characteristics of it. It may only lead to sending people away from hearing the Word of God. The good news of Jesus, indeed, exaggerates the image of God such as Kind, Love, Mercy, Grace, Just, and Eternity in heaven.  Paul summarizes it in Titus 3:4-7 says "4 But "when the kindness of God our Saviour and his love for mankind appeared, 5 he saved us not by works of righteousness that we have done but on the basis of his mercy, through the washing of the new birth and the renewing of the Holy Spirit, 6 whom he poured out on us in full measure through Jesus Christ our Saviour. 7 And so, since we have been justified by his grace, we become heirs with the confident expectation of eternal life."

On the other hand, some believers preach the Gospel of Jesus that emphasizes the God's wrath, Punishment, Hell, and Eternal Death. Though these are equally important to be known, it is not suppose to come out of our voices at first. Rather, we mixed it along with our exhortations as part of truth and knowledge. Our goal is to bring the good news of Jesus to as many people as possible that we can to reach out everyone. We must be bold in sharing the Gospel of Christ that unleashed the power behind it and that is the Salvation of all humanity for those who believe in Christ. In Romans 1:16 “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek." 

God bless us all!!!

Wisdom, a Sweet Delicacy

As we age, most of us are prohibiting ourselves from consuming too much of sweet delicacies as part of prevention to any future diseases like diabetes. However, we cannot avoid it completely as eating sweets is truly part of our lives since we were a child. In the same way in our walk of faith with Jesus, we all started as a child. In 1 Cor 13:11, "When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child..."

When we grow in faith, we also grow in wisdom. Proverbs 24:14 said, "Likewise, know that wisdom is sweet to your soul; if you find it, you will have a future, and your hope will not be cut off." Wisdom is a sweet that prolongs our lives, indeed, with great future and hope as we often find and consumed by it. Wisdom is the sweetest food of our soul, which is sourced from God Himself. Job 12:13 "With God are wisdom and power; counsel and understanding are His.

We have to seek God through Bible reading, Personal Devotions, Prayers, Fellowship with other believers, hearing testimonies of God's people. Therefore if we scarce of it, we have to seek it from Him as it says in James 1:5, But if anyone is deficient in wisdom, he should ask God, who gives to all generously and without reprimand, and it will be given to him. My only desire for everyone is to be continuously consumed by the Wisdom from God and not of our own understanding.

We have to be mindful of every words that comes out from us as words from God's wisdom has power while ours are nothing but a dead phrases. Paul, indeed, affirms this in 1 Cor 2:4-6, "4 My conversation and my preaching were not with persuasive words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power, 5 so that your faith would not be based on human wisdom but on the power of God. 6 Now we do speak wisdom among the mature, but not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are perishing. 7 Instead we speak the wisdom of God, hidden in a mystery, that God determined before the ages for our glory." 

God bless everyone!!!

Branching from the True Vine

Today, the inauguration of FBGC Pointcook , is a celebration of the birth of a new bud (this church) branching from The True Vine (Jesus) who is under the care of our Gardener (God, The Father) --- John 15:1. Everyone enjoys the atmosphere of Spiritual Breakthrough as a product of this blossoming creation of God, the opening of our church here in Pointcook. We, our church, are a work in progress. We are not made of any non-living raw materials. We are God’s most loved living creations who have body, soul, and spirit. We are rational, social, and spiritual being. But like any full grown branches, we are starting from being a bud. Our main goal is to grow, glow, and go.

Jesus reminded us in John 15:5 “I am the vine; you are the branches. The one who remains in me – and I in him – bears much fruit, because apart from me you can accomplish nothing.” In order for us to grow, we have to keep a solid connection to vine, to be fed by his living water, and hold us firmly even in the time of adversities. Jesus wanted the church to GROW autonomously, but remain dependent to The True Vine (Jesus) who source life and keeps the branch to GLOW in leaves, flowers, and fruits.

And as we keep our church connected with God, we will stand still with Jesus even if the seasons change. We sway when the wind blows, rejoice when the rain comes, work when the sun shines, and cool when the night appears. These continuous dynamic changes will develop our bud to branch to fruits. Then it is the time to GO, the fruit has to leave the tree and its seed needs to be scattered in the soil (hearts) of the ends of the earth. This is the process which we need to understand that the new Church has to take place. If we remain with Jesus and Him in us, there is no other reason that will keep our bud not to grow into branch. I encourage everyone to take hold of our faith in Jesus, to be fed and nurtured by Him, with the care of Almighty Father and bear fruits through the works of the Holy Spirit that has entrusted with us.

God bless everyone!