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My favourite verse is Romans 12:1 – Therefore, I urge you brethren, by the mercies of God to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.
This was the verse that made a long-lasting impact on me a few years ago. It was the very verse that turned my life 180 degrees round. It is a call to what God demands. A call of sacrifice, not of goats or lambs, but a sacrifice of self. A sacrifice of all. It is a laying down of our lives which God desires; the laying down of our lives just like Isaiah who says, “Here I am, send me”. It is our only true worship, laying down ourselves before God and saying “Use me, use even me!”
I would like to share a song that has made a huge impact on my life. Coincidentally, it’s Reverend Philip Heng’s favourite song. Although it is an old song, it is a song that we very much need to sing today. This is song after God’s own heart. It is entitled: Let Me Burn Out for Thee.
Oh God, the world is lost in sin,
And so few that seem to care,
Many of whom profess Thy Name, No burden will help to bear,
We need a passion, Lord, for souls,
To bring the lost back to Thee,
Our hearts must be stirred till all have heard
At least once of Calvary.
Refrain
Let me burn out for Thee, dear Lord
Burn and wear out for Thee
Don’t let me rust, or my life be a failure, my God, to Thee
Use me and all I have, dear Lord,
And hold me so close to Thee
That I feel the throb of the great heart of God
Until I burn out for Thee.
How cold has been our giving, Lord!
How selfish our love has been,
Keeping from those who never heard
The gospel that saves from sin!
How often we have turned aside
Neglecting to do our part,
Forgetting Thy tears and agony,
Forgetting Thy bleeding heart
Refrain
Meet us and break us up, dear Lord
Until driven to our knees
Bare to our gaze, Thy cross and love,
Of blood-baptized Calvary,
Speak till we hear again Thy call,
And hold nothing back from Thee.
Oh, burn on our hears the hopeless wail
Of souls damned eternally.
Refrain
O God, with shame I humbly bow,
In tears and a contrite heart.
Forgive me for the broken vows,
And failure to do my part.
I heed Thy call and say “Farewell”
To all that would hinder me;
Thy grace and Thy love to lost ones tell,
And my life burn out for Thee
Refrain
My love of God had grown cold. My zeal of God had been quenched. Nevertheless God has brought me back to him again though sometimes through pain and rebuke. I really thank God for his promises in the bible.
Heb 12:6 – For those whom the Lord loves He disciplines, and He scourges every son whom He receives
Through this verse, I would not lose heart because every discipline and rebuke from God is a proof of his love to me as a son.
As I opened my bible, my eyes went to Hosea 6:1-3 and it encouraged me instantly:
Come, let us return to the Lord, For He has torn us, but He will heal us; He has wounded us, but He will bandage us.
He will revive us after two days; He will raise us up on the third day that we may live before him. So let us know, let us press on to know the Lord.
His going forth is as certain as the dawn and He will come to us like the rain, like the spring rain watering the Earth
I thank God that though I have fallen away repeatedly, he always brings me back to him, he always rekindles his spirit within me, he always heals the wounds.
I thank God for his faithfulness which is like the spring rain, with ever-so-much certainty. His faithfulness endures forever.
Praise the Lord!
Yesterday during Discipleship Group (DG) meeting, my group viewed a video on the life of Samson. The lesson topic was on confronting evil. I realised that what God was speaking to me was nothing new. He has been using sermons after sermons including this one to remind me of the one same thing recently. I felt that it was an important lesson that I have to learnt. It was not to live a life of compromise as a christian. Samson’s story was very apt in illustrating the lesson I had to learn in life.
The Story of Samson was set in the time when Israel was in close contacts with their enemies the Philistines, which from the video I learnt that was a culturally, technological superior race compared to the israelites. These Philistines settled next to the Israelites with the foothills of the Shephelah serving as the buffer zone separating the two people. Due to the proximity, there was a culture clash and Philistines began their oppression upon Israel.
During that time, God raised Samson, to deliver the Israelites from the hands of the Philistines. Samson was a man borned as a Nazrite (Judges 13:7). A Nazrite was a man called of God to be different from rest of the world, not just to be odd for the sake of it. But he was to be as a testimony to others to be different from the culture they live in, so that people would know that they would need to be different also.
In other words, a Nazrite represents modern day christians who are to be salt of the earth and light of the world (Matthew 5:13, 14)
I felt that there was a very important lesson that God showed me through the life of Samson. Instead of drawing boundaries, he went down to the Philistines land of Timnah (Judges 14:1). Instead of having nothing to do with the enemies, he married a wife from the uncircumcised Philistines for she looks good to him (Judges 14:3). Instead of confronting the enemy, he participates in the culture, value and system of the Philistines.
Finally, this led to Samson’s downfall. He fell in the hands of the Philistines who gorged his eyes out, humiliate him and finally, he had to die with them.
In modern times, Samson would have actually been said to be a good strategist. Instead of having emnity with the enemy, he tried to win them over with soft power and diplomacy. He went into the Philistines culture and even married a wife to claim relationship with his enemies. He could slowly win the Philistines through good relations with them on the account of his wife and thus deliver the Israelites via the peaceful approach. Wouldn’t that be a good thing to do?
But God wasn’t pleased. It was God’s plan for the Israelites to drive out the original inhabitants of the land, not to live and mix among them (Joshua 3:10). Samson had disobeyed God.
Samson’s life has many parallels to Christianity today.
The Philistines culture, a sophisticate culture was a attractive culture to the Israelites, God’s chosen race. Similarly, the world’s culture is so appealing to christians, God’s chosen people. We as christians are given the great commission in Matthew 28:19 to go and make disciples of all nation and teach them to observe all of God’s commandments. The question we should ask ourselves is: are we doing it God’s way or are we doing it Samson’s way?
Samson’s way seems like a very effective way of winning people over – diplomacy, good relations, compromise - The church should win over the world by incorporating their cultures, by bringing world values in so everyone is accepted, by using worldly means like music, dance or magic shows to win others over or by giving Christianity a brand new worldly look? Yes, it is indeed an effective way of winning over worldly christians. And because of this, the world is in the church and it gives Satan a new path for his work. Now he now longers needs to be outside, he is INSIDE! Very soon, we can no more tell the difference!
But what is God’s way? What did God said?
James 1:27b – ‘and to keep oneself unstained by the world’
What does this mean? I would like to suggest not that we should mix well into the worldly culture, but we should keep ourselves unstained, clean, spotless, having absolutely nothing to do with the world, just as God wanted Israel do have nothing to do with the Philistines.
John 15: 19 – ‘If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this the world hates you.’
It is stated clearly in the bible that the world hates us christian. Notice that we christians ‘are not of the world’, which means we don’t belong to this world just as the Israelites don’t belong to the Philistines. We should ask ourselves: Are we hated by the world just as the Philistines hated the Israelites or are we loved by the world? Because if we are loved by the world, and we love the world and fit in so nicely into its culture, values and practices, are we Israelites or Philistines, are we God’s in the first place?
The emnity of the world and christians is very real. Would we choose to compromise like Samson and be led into destruction? Or would we choose to live the life of a Nazrite, different from the world, as a light to this world of darkness?
I thank God that I have not given up on the chinese language, that I’m still able to understand most words I have learnt.
Today I’ve just came upon a very good slide presentation about the link between the chinese characters and events of the bible. I felt it as very good proof for the bible.
Here is the link to it:
http://students.washington.edu/cbsf/cool/Chinese.swf
Do take a look. May God bless you through it!
After listening to a short segment of a sermon message, I found it would be good for me to blog down my reflections. The sermon was on the incident when Jesus’ authority was challenged in the temple.
In Matthew 21:23, the priests and the elders of the people of Israel came to challenge Jesus’ authority. Instead of answering directly the question of “By what authority are You doing these things, and who gave You this authority?“, Jesus asked a counter-question:
Matthew 21:24b-25a “I will ask you one thing too, which if you tell Me, I will also tell you by what authority I do these things. The baptism of John was from what source, from heaven or from men?”
The thing that caught my attention was the response of these chief priests and elders. They could not answer the question directly, instead they began to discuss among themselves the answer to Jesus’ question.
Matthew 21:25b-27 – And they began reasoning among themselves, saying, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ He will say to us, ‘Then why did you not believe him?’ But if we say, ‘From men,’ we fear the multitude; for they all hold John to be a prophet.”
Then, I asked myself a question.
Was it because Jesus’ question of the source of baptism of John was too difficult that even through discussion among themselves, the chief priest couldn’t come up with the collective answer?
No, I realised that it was a relatively simple question. The source of John’s authority was clearly stated.
John 1:6 – There came a man, sent from God, whose name was John.
Clearly stated in the bible, John the Baptist was sent from God, not men to preached the message of repentance.
From the discussion of the chief priests and elders, it was quite clear that their concern wasn’t about giving the correct answer to Jesus’ question, but it was about what response/ consequence would come if they had answered in a certain way. They were in a dilemma because on one hand, if they answered if John’s baptism came from heaven, they would be questioned for unbelief, and on the other hand, if they answered that John’s baptism came from men, they feared the people.
From here, we see that the chief priests knew very well the answer to Jesus’ question, that John’s Baptism was from God, but they lied to Jesus that they do not know.
Reflecting on this, I realised that very often, many times I am like the chief priests in this situation.
When faced with a situation in which truth ought to be spoken, instead of speaking the truth for what it is, I begin to weigh consequences of speaking up. There is always this thing in the back of my mind fearing what would come when truth is spoken. For example, will I be condemned for saying this? Will people be pleased after hearing it? Then, I shut myself up instead of proclaiming the truth. Very often, the fear of standing forth truth stifles truth from being heard.
This doesn’t only apply to situations, but also when facing with the fact of the word of God. Many times when the fact of the word of God is blatant in front of our eyes, I prominently evade it. I will go into many various stages of denial, coming up with a lot of legitimate reasons to evade the truth. It is just like the chief priests here who knows that John came from God, but denied it in their hearts.
I thank God for showing me the real motives of my heart. I realised that by considering so many other factors and not proclaim truth speaks a lot into the real concern of my heart. Is my real concern the Truth of God? Or is my concern the consequences of saying it? Am I denying truth because of outward circumstances? Do I choose truth or do I cover up truth and reject it?
