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Today I would like to share this beloved song of mine that has really touched my heart over the past few years. The song centres upon the image of God. The 1st stanza with have what God has done for man and in the 2nd stanza we have what man ought to do. Here are the beautiful lyrics:
In the image of God,
Man was made long ago,
With a purpose divine,
Here His glory to show;
But we failed Him one day,
And like sheep went astray,
Caring not for the cost,
We His likeness have lost,
But from eternity,
God had in mind -
The cross of Calvary,
The lost to find,
From his heaven so broad,
Christ came down earth to tread,
So that man might live again,
In the image of God.
Now that I have believed,
And the Saviour received;
Now that I from the guilt,
Of my sin am relieved;
I will live for my Lord,
Not for gain or reward,
But for love, thinking of
What His grace has restored.
I’ll never comprehend,
Redemption’s plan,
How Christ could condescend,
To die for men.
Such a Saviour I’ll praise
To the end of my days,
As I upward, onward, trod
In the image of God.
I’ve been reflecting about the image of God for quite a while. What did it actually mean when God said “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness,” in Genesis 1:26a? Does it mean that we look like God? Yes, I think perhaps we are like God in some sense, not be a physical likeness, but nevertheless, a spiritual likeness. We have the spiritual attributes of God like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness to a certain extent, despite our fallen nature.
But the word ‘image’ actually reveals something more stated in the song
The purpose of being God’s image is to show his glory. An image is a reflection. Likewise, we are a reflection of God’s glory. When others see us, theywould see him.
What a wonderful thing it is if we could live out this purpose that he has for us from the very beginning, to be his image, the reflection of his glory!
Praise the Lord! Thank the Lord!
I’ve never been so joyful in my life. Today, as I was on the bus reading a short portion of scripture and a book on prayer, I discovered something so encouraging that I need to share with any one who reads.
I suddenly realised how God worked and I’m actually experiencing it first-hand! I’m so excited and happy!
Initially I was so apprehensive about having a prayer meeting for 40DOC. In my heart, I thought, who would be interested to even pray. It would be tough if I could just find a handful of people.
I began to call my prayer core group to join the prayer meeting. I was surprised that many were unable to make it. To be honest, I was rather disappointed and disheartened by the responses. It was so bad such that I thought the only two who were going to stay back on Sunday would be MelTee and me. That would make a prayer group of two people.
But nevertheless, having read the verse in Matthew 18:19 that if two agree on earth about anything that they may ask, it shall be done for them by our Father who is in heaven, I wouldn’t mind praying if there would be only two people. For if there is unity in the spirit, God would answer the prayers.
I was overjoyed when Sharene and Sien and Peggy came along after church to join the prayer group.
But it didn’t occur to me as much on Sunday than today that God was indeed working, that God was indeed answering our prayers for him to demonstrate his power, for him to prove himself to us!
I was reading Matthew 18:20, one more verse down today.
“For where two or three are gathered together in My name, there I am in their midst”
This passage was so familiar, but I saw it now under a different light. Not so much of two or three gathering, but two or three are gathered.
Two or three are gathered! I was like WOW!
It isn’t us gathering, forcing ourselves to gather together. Oh Lord, he has planted the holy spirit in us. It was the holy spirit’s working. It was the holy spirit’s gathering.
And I praise the Lord and thank him so much for that!
We can’t just gather or try to gather together ourselves to do God work. It always comes from God! We are gathered by HIS holy spirit, the very same spirit we share together as Christians.
I saw the miracle done on Sunday in a total new light.
The 5 of us didn’t just come together by chance, or did we try to come together just to pray for fun!
It was the holy spirit who brought and gathered us together! Praise God, for he worked! He didn’t just answer my prayer. He rewarded my prayer!
The spirit was really working, because prior to that, the holy spirit was working through Rev Paul Thian as he shared about prayer. And the spirit worked in some of them such that immediately after service, and it was really immediately, people came to ask me to join me in prayer. I believe it wasn’t chance or coincidence. It is the spirit!
This is great evidence of the spirit working. And seeing the spirit working now in our church, I’m glad that we can claim much much more and pray in further boldness, for our Lord is a God who answers pray.
God is going to work and has already begun his great work in our church. We need to believe and we need to continue to pray. And we will indeed see his glory being manifested that we will awe and wonder and praise from the bottom of our hearts.
I am really joyful today, seeing the Lord’s working. I blog this down as a testimony that he has worked.
This joy has given me strength. The joy of the Lord is my strength!
Since a sore back plus a flu has kept me from going to work today, I thought that this would be a good time to blog down something of a need that I see in the church today.
My church would be embarking on 40 Days of Community, an event lasting for 40 days purposed to bring the entire church together in community living and also in reaching out to the community outside the church.
Praise God! What a great opportunity this is for the church to grow spiritually and be a light in the society! This is indeed a tremendous event that could transform the lives of many.
As my youth ministry prayer coordinator, I have been given a most-privileged task of organising the prayer component of this blessed event. I am most thankful and honoured to be able to serve God in this ministry.
Many have emphasised and reiterated the significance of prayer for this entire event. We all know so well that prayer takes the utmost and highest place if this event is to be a success. Without prayer, we all know that all else is naught and that everything won’t fall into place.
But knowing all these, I still strongly feel that we have not prayed enough.
What if 40DOC would be a flop? Would it matter?
Yes, it would matter.
It would just simply prove that God is not in it. For if God is in it, manifesting his power during the event, how could it possibly be a flop? Would God fail himself? Would God simply let go of this opportunity for his church to grow?
May it never be, for God would never fail and he wants to see his beloved church grow spiritually at any cost.
This would bring the matter back to us. If 40DOC would be a flop, it would be us hindering the plans of God, preventing him from working and limiting his power that could be shown in this event.
This is a very serious matter!
Hence, we all need to pray and persevere in prayer.
How well the entire program runs doesn’t depend on how well our planning is, how well we execute our plans or even how clever or creative we can be to woo people to participate enthusiatically in this event. No, it doesn’t depend on all these.
It doesn’t even depend on how united we are, how well we work as team, because the church is not an organisation or a group of people working well together in great teamwork. If our unity is in the flesh, it isn’t true unity at all. What difference would it then make, if we would just call a group of experienced individuals who excel well in running this event to do it all for us? In fact, I reckon that they would run it many times better than we would.
How successful this event would be doesn’t depend on unity in the flesh, but unity in the holy spirit.
There is a great need to be united in corporate prayer, to come together, uniting our spirits to ask God what he really wants in this.
Matthew 18:19, 20 - Again I say to you, that if two of you agree on earth about anything that they may ask, it shall be done for them by My Father who is in heaven. For where two or three have gathered together in My name, there I am in their midst.
These are rather familiar verses to me. But i noticed something new within the lines, that, it is not about two agreeing on earth about anything, that it shall be done for them by our Father in heaven.
It is about two agreeing on earth about anything that they may ask that it shall be done for them by our Father in heaven.
This means that we may all agree and come together in a common logical consensus about a particular issue, but it is possible that God is totally not in it.
Because we have missed it all. It is not about agreeing on a certain issue, but agreeing on praying about a certain issue. Only through agreement on prayer about that issue, would God work in it.
Oh how often we just come to conclusions and decisions about things without God in it, all because we do not unite our hearts to pray as one. This is the true unity, the unity of the holy spirit.
And I trust and believe that where two or three have gathered together in My name, there I am in their midst.
God will be with us, in our midst, demonstrating his power and exhibiting his glory during 40DOC. We would be utterly amazed by how God would work when we come together in true unity, if only we could unite our hearts in prayer.
In prayer.
He would never ever fail us.
My favourite time of the year is back. This is only time in the year where I get two consecutive back-to-back holidays, or should I say two and the half days of holiday, as Chinese New Year’s Eve is a half day.
I used to really look forward to this time of the year very much during my schooling days because it means no school for almost half-a-week or more. And when it falls on Thursday and Friday, like this year, it means a very very long weekend. It means a very very long break from school.
The other thing I used to enjoy is the time of getting together with my extended family during the New year’s eve Reunion Dinner at my Granny’s place. There was always much joy and happiness during this time of the year. Everyone would be in the festive mood of giving (and collecting) Hongbaos, feasting on the good food and sharing laughs and jokes watching a nice New Year Eve movie together. Everything was so good and perfect.
However, in the past two years or so, things really change a lot. I’m not exactly sure whether I was the one who changed or it was just things that changed.
I no longer feel the joy of Chinese New Year.
It has became a dread for me to go to Reunion Dinner and to meet my relatives, who are very distant people to me. I suddenly did realise that the previous time I met my cousins was last year during Reunion Dinner. The people I see this year just felt like strangers to me, like I am not related to them in anyway. I had to drag myself to Reunion Dinner this year. Truly, I didn’t feel like going at all. I am just ’showing my face’, to applease my parents and my Granny. I didn’t feel the slightest bit of the Chinese New Year mood.
What’s wrong with me? Or what’s wrong with things?
I have yet to answer this question.
But it suddenly dawned on me that my family have been too engrossed with our personal stuff, our daily lives that we have forgotten that we have relatives in the first place. Life just went on and on day by day since last year and one year just passed like that. I grew older by one year without even feeling it at all.
I think I have became too selfish. All I care about is myself, what I am, what I am doing and what I’m going to become. It seems that the entire world revolves around me. I have forgotten that there are others living in this world too that I need to be concerned about, not just my family, but also my relatives who are so distant to me now, my friends and my brethren.
It’s time to step out of my comfort zone!
A life needs a vision, a purpose and a goal. And it doesn’t just involve ourselves, but others and God.
I’m suddenly reminded of this verse again.
Romans 11:36a – For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things.
This verse reminds me that I’m not the centre but GOD is the centre of all things. All things are from him, all things go through him and all things go to him.
Romans 11:36b – To Him be the glory forever. Amen.
I was listening to a sermon on Divorce by the late Dr S Lewis Johnson. Just as he was referring to a passage from Malachi 2:16, a fairly familiar passage concerning divorce, I realised something that gave me a lot of encouragement. I thought it would just be appropriate to share.
Malachi 2:16a - ‘For I hate Divorce’, says the Lord, the God of Israel.
Prior to this verse, I was referred to Matthew 19, in which some Pharisees were disputing to our Lord Jesus concerning the issue of divorce. Jesus answered them, saying in
Matthew 19:4-6 - “Have you not read, that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘For this cause a man shall leave this father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and the two shall become one flesh’? Consequently they are no more two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.”
This actually explains why marriage is such a sacred thing. Well, I’m not married yet, so I’m in no position to give marital advice, but this is what the bible says. It is because the two shall become one flesh that husband and wife are joined together in union, joined together as one.
But marriage aside, I suddenly realised that ‘one’ is a very common and significant word in the bible.
Even in 1 Corinthians 6:17, it says ‘But the one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with Him’ .
Not only husbands and wives are one. The church is also one in Christ Jesus, joined to him in the same spirit, just as husbands and wives are joined together in marriage. In Ephesians, marriage is likened very much to the union of Christ and us, the church.
And that really drew be a lot of comfort, especially when it says that What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.”
It is true that God joined the man and the woman in marriage, but hey, that is also true for God joining us together in Christ.
For many years, I’ve been struggling with questions like “Can a true christian lose his salvation?” and “Can a true christian be a non-christian again?” There were many fears and doubts in me that I could fall away from the faith. Moreover, at that point of time, I was sinning and sinning and sinning non-stop that I knew God was so displeased with my life. I did question my salvation a couple of times.
But what a great comfort this is to know that God hates divorce. I’m sure that just as he hates the divorce of a husband and wife, he would hate equally or maybe even much more the divorce between God and us.
I do believe that God does hide his perspectives and ways of spiritual things cleverly in the laws of the physical realm. I do believe that just as he doesn’t delight in couples divorcing, he does want to teach us from this physical law that he doesn’t delight that we are separated from him.
He had made us one with Christ. Would he then again destroy this union between Christ and the church?
Definitely not! And in this I rejoice even further, that in Philippians 1:6, it says:
‘For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.’
and in Hebrews 13:5b, it says:
“Be content with what you have; for He Himself has said, ‘I will never desert you, nor will i ever forsake you’ “
What a great solace it truly is that once God has chosen us to be his people, he will always be with us in this wonderful relationship!
Oh how much comfort this would bring me that I needn’t worry about falling away because he is always faithful! He desires in union, not divorce or separation. I would never fall away because he has begun the good work in me by joining me with Christ and he will surely complete the good work that he has done.
