Dear...
Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters.
Colossians 3:23
Humans are a strange lot. We have moments of happiness,and undue periods of unease and dissatisfaction. Emperor Qin Shi Huang seek the elixir of life, us lesser mortals just want permanent joy and peace. And we misconstrued that to mean an ideal set of circumstances as determined by us will provide that result.
With the haze, the lingering sense of being oppressed is back, and while the air filters and aircondition do provide some relief, it is never complete. How one long for the clear blue skies of past yonder and the crisp clean air of New Zealand.
And with the news just in that Singapore has an ever ballooning cases of confirmed Zika infection, soon one has to decide between Zika or heatstroke, from oneś attire of choice.
You raise me up - a song by Josh Groban, that always stir up that emotional reconnection in me with our Lord. What about a version in Japanese? Go to the above link and listen to it.
You might not understand the words, but Godś love transcends our understanding.
Though you have made me see troubles, many and bitter, you will restore my life again; from the depths of the earth you will again bring me up.
Psalm 71:20
Is this true? It is for me, these past 55 years of my life.
Does this apply to all of us who believe and seek to follow our Lord or are there the few whose life seem to be on the continuum of downward spiral?
God never leave us to walk alone. Peace and joy is from the grace of God, given to a heart that seeks after Him and not the world.
Today, I felt a little unsettled. I am blessed with control over my time. But my spiigot of financial plenty has reduced significantly. I now give financially from a position of just enough rather than from plenty.
It is humbling, yet liberating. It is not what the world values, yet what God validates.
Many of us have enough of the burdensome and immoral behaviour of our worldly masters.
And the desire to break free from the golden handcuffs permeates across many of us.
But can we truly give up the riches of mammon that Satan promises Christ and all in return for our subservience?
Like the Jews of Christś time, we all know that God will provide. But just like the Jews of old, our perception of Godś salvation is couched in the benchmark of the finite and sinful world.
The Jews were disappointed and could not accept a lowly carpenter as their Saviour, much as Christ performed many miracles.
Today, many of us are unwilling to go where God is showing us, because it meant giving up the accoutrements that define our place in society and learning to depend upon the Lord our God.
And God does not give us His blueprint for us in advance.
And success in ministry is very different from success as the world defines it.
Is always going to God and resting in Him and moving only when He moves us logical?
Has one become lazy and incapable? For the world values initiative, drive and strife.
If the Lord our God was just an inanimate idol carved from oneś imagination, then indeed this approach will end in grief for us.
But God is an omnipresent, divine and Sovereign God.
Everything at His timing and way. Like Peter who walked wonderfully on water. It is exhilarating if we learn to focus on Christ our Lord. It is downright daunting if we choose to look away.
God will work through us as we are. It is our heart that needs to be prepared, to only have a place for Him and Him alone.
God Blesses
Eng Hieang
1 Sep 2016
An afterhought
- Something I just received from brothers doing mission work in China. If we are not spiritually right with God, ministry will be a slog. The need to stay close to our Lord is imperative for all who seek to be His vessel of grace, for we are in the forefront of the battlefield.
- And God work through us, not we work for Him.
Hence the need to focus on letting His Spirit transform us unto a holy and acceptable
Vessel before He moves us forth.
And indeed God affirms this truth, as He led me to the Book of Joshua which spoke to me these words
- Victory comes through faith in God and obedience to His Word, rather than through military might or numerical superiority.
What does this mean in practical terms?
- In the ways of carnal man, we seek to do by our own understanding
- In the ways of God, we seek Him first, in His Words and in Prayers. And move only when He shows us. And for me in this journey of following, time with Him, in His Words and Prayers underlines my every day that HE grants me.
