Have we ever thought of God's Love ? Sometimes we measure love by what we get, or what we can get ? Maybe this does not sound right to you. But let us ask ourselves what is the first thing we think about when we wake up ?
Let us think of God' s commandment. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your soul and with all your strength.Notice that the commandment says "with all", why is that ? Is God so selfish, that He commanded that ?
Continuation of that commandment, is for us to love our neighbor as ourself or yourself.
Jesus our Lord says On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
Let me ask you, can we do that or follow that ? Is it natural on our part ? or do we have to force ourself ? Even as I write this blog I find myself thinking hard too. But I believe here is the key, we need to know God's love and have God's love, that way when we know or have God's love we can live it, show it, and give it.
I believe the best way we can know God's love is to look at Jesus. Looking at Jesus is not a one time event, it is daily. We need to spend a quiet time with the Lord, preferably early morning before we eat breakfast and before we go to work or do things we want to do.A word of caution, it is wise to allow for enough rest time or sleep time, so some of you have to sleep early,or do what works for you.
In John 3:3 Jesus answered Nicodemus and said , Truly, truly I say to you, except a man be born again, he can not see the kingdom of God.
Nicodemus, said to Jesus, how can a man be born again when he is old ? can he enter the second time into his mother's womb, and be born ?
Jesus answered, Truly, truly, I say to you, except a man be born of water and of Spirit, he can not enter into the kingdom of God.
That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.
Comment: Have we thought about these ? what do we know about these words ? What are we taught about these ?
Every year we celebrate our birth into this world (our birthday) and we thank God for that. I believe the passages above talks about being born into the Kingdom of God. Have you confessed Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior ? If yes, I believe you are in Christ, you are born again. You will see and enter the kingdom of God.
If these sounds unbelievable, pray to God to enlighten you.
I was participating in a discussion group in the internet when focus came on Matthew 5:18 For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law,till all be fulfilled.
I had trouble understanding the verse so i looked for a clearer translation. I found "The Message" translation, and it says God's Law is more real and lasting than the stars in the sky and the ground at your feet. Long after stars burn out and earth wears out, God's Law will be alive and working.
Wow !
But what are God's Law ?
God gave man through Moses the ten commandments and the Jewish laws. But man could not follow them, man disobey at least one or more of those commandments. God's laws just showed man's inability to follow or it showed man's sinfulness. God's laws appear to be wall between man and God.
Man is doomed , he can not follow God's Law but wait, God sent His Son Jesus Christ to fulfill the Law and pay for man's sinfulness. So Jesus did exactly that and man is redeemed from the Law. Apostle Paul later wrote that those who are in Christ are no longer under the Law. But what is the Law now ? are we above the Law now ?
Those who believe in Jesus Christ, receive the Holy Spirit who produce fruit in us. The fruit is love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, gentleness , kindness,faithfulness, meekness and self control . This fruit allow us to love God and our fellowmen (neighbor). When we love our neighbor, the Bible says there is no laws against that so in short, apostle Paul said Love is the fulfilling of the Law.
Now back to Matthew 5:18 that says God's Law will last longer than the stars and the earth, that means God Law is powerful than the physical laws that govern the universe, the earth which include the air we breath , the water we drink and the food we eat. That means the laws that science discover are actually laws that God put in. Now can you imagine that God planned the minute details and laws of our life.
That tells me God loves us so much. He gave us His Son, His Holy Spirit, His love,His Words, His laws, and Himself. Oh what an Awesome God we serve!
God's guidance help us do the right thing and eliminate a lot of mistakes.But it needs for us to control our human tendency to do things right away and proceed without waiting on God. This is still my problem. Entering a new day we have many plans, people to meet, assignments to do. Then when the day comes things we do not expect comes out and then sometimes we do not know what to do next.
Prayer in the morning is a good way of starting the day. Jesus our Lord and Savior prays too sometimes all night according to the Bible.
There are many things to pray for and sometimes we tell God what to do, but when that happens we are not asking for guidance but ordering.
If you have not tried this(praying in the morning) , try it. Pray for God's guidance.
I would guess that everybody knows that we are dust and to dust we will be. Even in life we grew up accumulating things and the older we go the more we realize that we will be leaving those things and even while we are living we learned that we have to throw away things . The Bible says in 1 Timothy 6:7 For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out.
Let us look at the above verse. It said we brought nothing and we can carry nothing out. But it does not say we are nothing, is it not ? We are something because God created us.God is our Source.Since God is our Source or Creator, there must be some reason why God created us.
In Genesis 2:7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathedinto his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
In the above verse, we became a living soul because God gave man the breath of life. Did we notice that that God gave man or us the breath of life ?
Let us look at another verse: Genesis 2:15,16,17 And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it or to keep it.And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat: But the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat of it: for in the day that you eat thereof you shall surely die.
We learned that Adam and Eve disobeyed so man died or eventually died. In Genesis 3:22-24 The verses mentioned about the tree of life, that if man eat, he will live for ever. But God kept man from it because man already disobeyed and have the knowledge of good and evil.
Now let us ask , how can man who is dust, who got the breath of life and disobeyed God and was told they will die, have a better future ? How can we live or even have eternal life ? The answer is in Jesus Christ. I hope by this time in your life you already know. If you don't know yet , pray to God for Him to let you know or have somebody tell you about Jesus Christ. I hope you'll see how much we really need Jesus Christ in our life.
Through science man appeared to bring us to realm we have never been before.Man can predict weather, build space station, devise numerous ways of transportation, worldwide communication, advances in medicine and almost anything we could think of.
Yes we think how far can science take us ? Some said that science and religion (God) does not mix. Some said that science deals with natural phenomena while religion deals with the supernatural.
Having studied engineering and later falling in love with the Bible, I see the relationship between the two (science and God).But this could require more discussion by itself.
Where science fall short is it does not deal with the problem called "sin". Sin is the disobedience to God.Where science deals with the study on natural or physical laws like gravity, force, energy, matter and making use of these studies to discover and design more things. Disregard for natural laws means failure of man's invention, machines etc. Same thing with regards to God , disobedience to God's laws means man's downfall.
Science can not give us yet cure for cancer or give us eternal life. Eternal life is beyond the realm of science. But God gave us His Son Jesus Christ that we may have eternal life. Science is still dealing with depletion of our planet earth while God promised there will be new heavens and new earth.
Though i admire science , i still see our need for God.
We all build something.When we are students, we build our knowledge and skills to prepare us for work. In our lives we also build our resources through savings and wise use of money. We build friends when we love our neighbors. It seems simple we can establish our goals and start building to reach them.
How about building our faith ? yes our faith in God. Can we build it ? How do we do that ? Just like we build material things we can also build faith.
How about you, how do you build your faith ? If you ask me this is how I build my faith. I read the Bible. But reading the Bible is not enough, we need to apply it. Jesus said in Matthew 7:24 Therefore whosoever hear (in our case read) my sayings (words) and do them, I (Jesus) will liken him unto a wise man , which built his house upon a rock( or foundation ).
Let us build our faith, build our lives on Jesus, His words. So when typhoon (problems, etc.) comes we will remain standing.
