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Habakkuk 3:17-19 – ‘Though the fig tree should not blossom, And there be no fruit on the wines, Though the yield of the olive should fail, And the fields produce no food, Though the flock should be cut off from the fold, And there be no cattle in the stalls,
Yet I will exult in the Lord, I will rejoice in the God of my salvation.
The Lord God is my strength, And He has made my feet like hind’s feet, And makes me walk on my high places.’
This verse is always an encouragement to me that even when outward circumstances seems unpromising, I can continue to praise God, for he is faithful. He is always faithful.
Sometimes when we serve the Lord, we always look at the results. We always want to see if we are successful in our service, yet we are discouraged because outwardly, all seems bleak and it seems as if we have served in vain. But this verse reminds us of how we should serve. We should serve like Jeremiah, the weeping prophet, serving the Lord wholeheartedly, looking beyond the outward.
Similarly, when we pray, we pray and do not receive. When what we pray for seems to be contrary to the situations around us, we become discouraged by God’s silence. May this verse encourage us again to trust in God and continue to pray him despite our outward circumstances for God makes all things beautiful in His time.
Rejoice in the Lord, always!
I went to bed at 1 am yesterday and I was unable to sleep until 5 am. I was there lying down on my bed, trying to sleep after a long day of doing my essay. My body was weary, but my mind was incredibly awake, wandering with random thoughts over and over again.
Frankly speaking, the busyness of my entire day had took away typically all my energy and strength that I wished I could just have a night’s rest, which I felt was legitimate and something I deserved after a day of hard work.
Before I went to bed at about 1 am, I decided that it was time to get right with God, so I prayed for a good night’s sleep. But instead of a good night’s sleep, to my horror, each time I was about to doze off, I would feel uncomfortable such that I had to toss and turn to another position. It happened the entire night.
I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t sleep, given that I had expanded typically all of my energy during the day. I went to take a drowsy flu pill to get me sleepy, however, it didn’t work. Frustration and anger kicked it while I was worrying over the fact that I needed rest and time was ticking away. At those moments, as I reflected, I realised how dreadful my days were:
In the mornings, for the entire day, I would be slogging out my life on work and at night, when it is time to sleep, I am needing for a good rest, so that the next day, I could continue to slog. The reason, I realised why I was angry and frustrated was because I couldn’t have the rest that I deserved. I began to hate the cycle that I was in. This cycle of restlessness.
Through my frustrations, I began to doubt and question God why I couldn’t rest though I prayed for rest, and it didn’t seem as if I would be having sufficient rest for the rest of the night as it was about 4 in the morning already. The answer from God seems to point to one thing: Do I trust him?
In any case, while I was having my Insomnia, God was testing my faith. The outward circumstance seems bleak and hopeless, as rest for the night seems virtually impossible. While I was in such a frustrating situation, it was as if God was asking me: ” Do you trust me to give you a good sleep tonight?” From the situation and the time, it didn’t look like I could have a good sleep, but suddenly I woke up at 9 am in the morning, not feeling as tired as I thought I would be.
It is really very frustrating to have insomnia, especially at this time when I know I need the energy and concentration during the day to do my work. I want to praise God for granting me that sufficient rest for the remaining of the night, though it was just a few hours.
I kicked off today in a hurry once again and rushed off to the library before going to school. I was about to begin a long day like yesterday, when I realised that the day could turn out differently. I had two choices in fact: 1) I’ll will or force myself to put through today or 2) I shall cease trying and go to God.
Thankfully, God led me to the second. As I was on the bus, on my way to school, though I was tired, my rest finally came and it was good. As I opened up my bible to read Hebrews 2 again, God spoke. My heart was refreshed. The heavy heart was lifted.
i asked for physical rest for the night, and God gave me a rest that is so much better: A Rest in Him.
-God has set principles of the world for a reason. There is a night and a day for a reason. There is a certain order which has to be followed. There is a time for sleep and a time for work. Night is the time for sleep. I shouldn’t go against that order, therefore, I shall sleep early.
Recently, God has been teaching me from the Book of Hebrews about what faith is. Having known theoretically the meaning of faith, I thank God for placing a particular situation in my life to test me. Looking at it now from hindsight, I want to use it to testify of God’s goodness and faithfulness.
As work was piling up during the last 3 weeks, I became rather stressed up, not because I couldn’t meet the deadlines, but because I wanted to do by best for the assignment.
This Film and History module in which I’m taking requires me to hand in a 500 words essay fortnightly for 5 separate weeks. I did relatively well for my very 1st essay, scoring better than most of the cohort and I was very pleased with my results. I reckoned that if I could reproduce the quality of my 1st essay for the other 4 remaining ones, I would be able to do well. However, though I tried my very best later, spending a lot of time and effort into writing, my grades for the subsequent 2 essays were not very good. I became very discouraged and disappointed with my results which couldn’t reflect the effort I had put in. I began to question why I had tried so hard in the 1st place and wanted to give up working hard.
At that point of time, I thank God that he revealed the truth to me. I realised that the good grades that I was having didn’t come from me. It came from God. I wasn’t because I was capable and good that I achieved good grades in the first place. I realised that I got those good grades because it was a reward of hard work by the grace of God. To put it in the broader sense, no man can truly claim the fruit of his labour by how much he has toiled and laboured, for all blessings come from God and God is the rewarder and the giver of all things.
When I saw that, immediately, my disappointments vanished because I knew who was the one in control. What a wonderful thing to know that my grades are also in the hands of the living God. The rewards of my hard work are reaped, not because I deserve it, but because it is given as a form of grace from God.
I also brought to the light about an inner problem that is within me. Once again, I discovered that the stress was not there because of the work, but because of my inability to fulfil my desire, which is to do well. There is nothing wrong per se in desiring to do well in studies, but I am convinced that my desiring was not pleasing to God because God was not first place. I had desired good grades more than I have desired God and hence, I was working so hard to achieve them.
This brought me to the experience of what faith is. Faith was a desire just as in Hebrews 11:16 is says: “But as it is, they (all those who died in faith) desire a better country, that is a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; for He has prepared a city for them.”
The problem was in my desire. Having desired a lesser thing which is good grades, and desiring God less, God’s glory and greatness is suppressed. When God is given less than first place, he is not given the glory and honour that he is due.
To me, this was an opportunity for an application of faith. I finally knew what it means to say ‘Seek ye First the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you’. It just means, “God, I have faith in you, because you are better and more precious in my life than my grades. I want you more than anything in my life.”
I finally understood what Matthew 5:6 – “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied” means. Hungering and thirsting is desiring. When we desire righteousness in our lives, we shall be rewarded.
When God is desired, first and foremost, above all other things, all the rest shall be added unto us. God turned my heart’s desire towards him and truly he took care of the rest. For my subsequent essay, I was rewarded with a good grade as a testimony of his faithfulness. Thank you, Lord!
This is my desire, to honour You
Lord with all my heart, I worship You
all I have within me, I give You praise
all that I adore, is in You
Chorus
Lord I give You my heart
I give You my soul
I live for You alone
Every breathe that I take
Every moment I’m awake
Lord, have Your way in me
May God truly be our heart’s desire and may we always trust in him to provide for us.
Very often as a student, it is extremely easy to live in a world of our own, going to school day after day, caring only about schoolwork and perhaps a little leisure time after school. Indeed a life of a student is a privileged life, free from much worries and cares, except for exams and assignments which we as students are most burdened about.
Recently, I have been rather busy with my schoolwork. with all my assignment deadlines approaching. I was feeling quite stressed up trying to put in a lot of effort into writing my essays in order to get good grades. On a side note, I realised that, to students, including me, grades have become the most important thing in our education. We often forget to participate in the process of learning, which is much more important than the grade itself.
As a student, I often planned what the future would be like. Thoughts would encircle my mind about how my life would be like when I graduated from university and so on. These thoughts, often based on personal desire and inclination, would then govern the subjects I take or my area of study. For example, It was as if I was absolutely certain that if I would to study medicine or law and I would become a doctor or lawyer and my future would be safe and secured.
I realised that there is this constant dread about the life at present hour and a hope that a better future is ahead. When I am studying, I would dread the very moment of hardship in studying and thought that everything would turn out better in the future. It was the same when I was in the army. Day by day, I dreaded those days of hardship and thought that when I go to university, things will be much better. But now, here I am in the same old situation of dreading today and hoping for a better tomorrow.
What I fail to realise is this: I am in absolute no position to determine my future. If I had, I would be living in my own dream world. It always seems as if a better future is ahead after all the present hardships and we work towards that future. The sad fact is: there is no better future in this world. No matter how hard we seek this better future on this earth, we will fail.
Looking at the situation around the world today; the milk sandal, the economic crisis, all the riots, bombings and natural disasters, one would be blind not to see that this world is a hopeless, fallen world and that we are hopeless, fallen men living in it.
We fallable humans have tried to savage situations, to maintain unity and to create a better tomorrow in this world. But how many times do we see the deja vu of past mistakes? This corrupted world from the history we learnt has never been truly peaceful for once. Instead, we learn of countless horrors from World War Two, natural disasters that take lives, nation going against nation, people against people. These are not just things that happen in movies. They are absolute real. In no way is history useful unless we see the sad reality that this world is corrupted.
The call of a christian is very much like the call of Abraham.
God called Abraham out of the Ur of the Chaldeans into a land of promise. It reads in Hebrews 11:8 that ‘By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed by going out to a place which he was to receive for an inheritance and he went out, not knowing where he was going.’
To many, it seems like foolishness for someone to depart from his place of security to somewhere that he wasn’t even sure of. Similarly, God called us, christians, out from this world in which we are comfortable in to a better one in heaven, somewhere which we do not see.
Just as God has promised Abraham that he going out to a place which he was to receive for an inheritance, God has promised us in John 14:2 that ‘in My Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you.’ He has promised us a place in his kingdom in heaven. He has promised that ‘He shall wipe away every tear from our eyes and there shall no longer be any death; there shall no longer be any mourning, or crying or pain’ (Revelations 21:4)
Do we believe him? Are we willing to depart from this fallen world of pain, mourning and death to claim this inheritance that God has promised us?
Hebrews 11:16 – But as it is, they desire a better country, that is a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their Godl for He has prepared a city for them.
Abraham desired a better world. Looking at the world situation today, do we acknowledge that this world is not our home and we desire too a better world, though now not seen physically by our eyes?
I am reminded of a song I used to sing at Youth fellowship:
This world is not my home I’m just passing through
my treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue
the angels beckon me from Heaven’s open door
and I can’t feel at home in this world anymore
O Lord you know I have no friend like you
if Heaven’s not my home then Lord what will I do?
the angels beckon me from Heaven’s open door
and I can’t feel at home in this world anymore
They’re all expecting me and that’s one thing I know
my savior pardoned me and now I onward go
I know He’ll take me through though I am weak and poor
and I can’t feel at home in this world anymore
O Lord you know I have no friend like you
if Heaven’s not my home then Lord what will I do?
the angels beckon me from Heaven’s open door
and I can’t feel at home in this world anymore
Just up in Glory Land we’ll live eternally
the Saints on every hand are shouting victory
their song of sweetest praise drifts back from Heaven’s shore
and I can’t feel at home in this world anymore
O Lord you know I have no friend like you
if Heaven’s not my home then Lord what will I do?
the angels beckon me from Heaven’s open door
and I can’t feel at home in this world anymore
Not I But Christ 