Beyond the grit

"The city had no need of the sun or of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God illuminated it. He is its light. And the nations of those who are saved shall walk in its light, and the kings of the earth bring their glory and honor into it. Its gates shall not be shut at all by day (there shall be no night there). And they shall bring the glory and the honour of the nations into it." (Revelations 21:23-25)

The Awesome Shampoo!

Okay, so imagine I've invented a new and improved shampoo product called Free. Why is it called free? Because that is exactly what it is. Free. I created it because I had a dream that everyone would look good with awesomely healthy hair from using this product.

So I knock on your door, and ask if you would like to use this shampoo. I try to convince you that it's a new shampoo that will do wonders to you hair - it would give you the best shine, the best smell, the strongest roots, it works on every type of hair and best of all, it's free! Just judging from what I have told you with a big smile and a sample of Free in my hand, would you accept it for all that it is?

The fact that it is free, you might be attracted just a little, but you would want me to tell you more about it to decide for yourself if it was a scam or whatever. But most of all, you would probably ask for a demonstration cos it seems pretty sketchy that you're being offered free shampoo without seeing how it works.

You're probably a bit confused at why I'm writing this but basically, that free shampoo I'm offering is like Faith in God. You could just nod your heads and accept everything I'm trying to say about God because you respect me maybe, or maybe you're just trying to be polite. But until I live a life that goes in line with what I say, all that I talk about, would just be nothing but hypocritical.

So you might believe that God is real, but if it's just a thought and not an action then it's not really believing at all. We do what we believe. I believe that food is awesome therefore I eat. I believe that my Pantene shampoo makes my hair silky smooth which is why I use it.

Faith without doing is dead. But doing "good" things without faith is dead too.

Phewf!

What an awesome week, what an awesome day, what an awesome God!

I just want to write a quick note to say that today was a day where after learning so much about God and repentance, I was challenged to give everything to Him in asking for forgiveness for everything from things I had done, things I struggle(d) with and just having a wrong view of God and myself.

I've been so selfish, so driven by what's good for me and what I feel even when it comes to saying sorry to God. God has been awesome in showing me that it grieves Him so much when we don't listen to Him. Before Jesus died on the cross, he said "Father, forgive them for they do not know what they do." Jesus already took the first step to forgive us before we did. Just understanding what Jesus had to go through so that he would die for everyone just makes me want to cry and just thank God for all He has done.

So to summarize things, I'm glad that all these burdens have been lifted from me and that I have Jesus in my heart who has just taken all my pain and shame on the cross. I have a lot to do now by asking certain people to forgive me which is not an easy task but I'm ready to be open because no longer do I want to feel guilty, no longer do I want to be who I was before, but I want to find my identity in Christ.

No longer do I think that I'm a failure, that I could never love God but I am just so completely amazed by Him and His faithfulness to me throughout my life, that all I want to do is just give my life to Him so that He can use it to make Himself known.

No longer do I want my life to be a lie. I want people to know who I was and who I am now. I want to start afresh. Make a change. I'm not going to waste my life pursuing my own selfish desires as it leads to heartache and emptiness.

No longer will I be persuaded by people, or tossed to and fro trying to be a people pleaser. That is not who I want to be, and that won't be who I am. I am not gonna spend my life trying to fix myself and trying to get everything right cos then I'd just fall over. I'm just going to focus on knowing God, making Him known and being completely amazed by Him and His works.

It's going to take a whole lot of work to relearn a lot of things I thought I knew or took for granted. I'm probably going to stumble here and there and face lots of challenges. It won't be easy and I know it'll be a pretty lonely road at times, but as long as God is with me, I have nothing to worry about.


I'm a fool for Christ! :)

Meta-Noia

What is true repentance? Is it just one of those words in the christian pool of jargon that is commonly attached to 'salvation' or 'forgiveness'? When we accept Jesus as our God and Saviour, and we're told to repent, do we actually know what that means? I didn't.

The hebrew word for repentance is "metanoia". More literally, metanoia means "to change/alter thought or to have another mind. This was really new to me because I assumed that repentance was just an act of saying sorry for our wrong doings. So when Romans 12:2 talks about "renewing our mind" this is the straight up deal.

Okay, let's rewind just a little bit. Before I dive into what repentance means - and i'll try my best to explain it and what this means for us (I've really only learnt all of this since Monday!), let's take it back to why we're led to repentance...

So, I accepted Jesus into my heart as Lord and Saviour because I acknowledged that He was the Son of God and I wanted to have a relationship with Him. This was because since the beginning of time, when God created us and everything, he made everything good (Genesis 1) and He made man so that we could enjoy our Creator (God) and the creation around us. Since day one, we were made to love God, to have a relationship with him - i.e. to be holy. I remember someone saying in class that "holiness should be normal, and anything else is abnormal." This is what we were created for.

Everyone was made in God's image therefore, we don't realise this but we reflect a lot of God's nature. For example, we love, we get angry, we feel, we think, we imagine, we create, we remember, etc. This is how we can relate to God. God is not remote. He did not just place us on this earth and leave us be. He wants to be a part of our lives, He wants us to realise that there is more to life than just living for ourselves.

What comes to your mind when you think of God? I grew up in a family knowing that God defines love and He is our Father. However, though I knew these things, I did not take it to heart as whenever I felt bitter, selfish, alone, or just plain ashamed I sometimes would imagine that God just wanted to punish me, and could not stand to see me in a state of mess. This is completely wrong. I did not realise how much I distorted my view of God.

God is love. It says in 1John4:7-8, "Beloved, let us love one another. For love is of God and anyone who loves God is born of God and knows God. He that does not love, does not know God for God is love." (1John4:7-8 Do we actually know in our hearts that He is as He says He is? If we really believed it and knew who God was - His nature and His character, we should be compelled to not feel ashamed to just come to Him just as we are.

In the letter written to the Romans, Paul says that it is God's lovingkindness that leads us to repentance (Romans 2:4). Nothing else but the understanding of God's love and what He did for us on the cross should compel us to repent- to change our mindset. It is not an inward focused action for having a selfish attitude towards asking for forgiveness and wanting to change is not repentance at all. In fact, sin is self.

Going back to who God is...because God is love, He does things out of love and for love, not anger. It is not God's intention for us to think that He has set us up to fail, to be embarassed, or to feel ashamed. We are His children. He wants to see us do well. It breaks His heart when we make the wrong choices, but He loves us the same even though we may not love Him. Life is like a love story: God created us to have a relationship with us - a two-way love bond. God could have programmed us to love Him but He gave us freewill to make our own choices because He loves us. Think of it this way, you would not want the person you loved to be like a robot who is made to love you because that just is not true love. That love has no emotion, no personality, no commitment, no depth. So God loves us but He took a risk- giving us the choice to love Him back. Think about how much rejection God gets everyday...

A lot of people understand that if God is God. He is powerful but they don't understand that He is about Love and Relationship. We often think that God controls and governs the universe with sheer power. If this was the case, if God's justice was brought on this earth, we'll be wiped out in a second. "All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." (Romans 3:23) So thank God that we are saved by sheer grace through love! God uses His power to bring love and relationship, not complete domination - after all, we do have free will.

But with free will comes responsibility (haha, that sounded like something that came from Spiderman). When Paul talked about the "renewing of our mind", he was talking about the basis of repentance. Whatever we choose to be starts from our thoughts. Whatever good or bad thoughts we have will manifest into a specific attitude if we don't stop these thoughts. However, if this attitude develops, we act on it and if we do it often, it becomes a habit. It then evolves as part of our character over time and instances, it then leads to our destiny.

to be continued...

Does God know what we're going to choose?

This week has been full of great revelation and headaches after being overwhelmed by everything that I've been learning. Learning about repentance hasn't been much of a breeze as I thought it would be. I realised I know nothing about this and my mind has just been completely reversed and meddled with but in a good way, because now I'm beginning to understand God, His love, freewill and choice. (See notes on "metanoia" for more information on this)

Hokay, so...the question is at it says above.
Here are the facts to set the scene:
- God is all loving, all knowing, all powerful.
- God sees everyone as good and loves everyone just the same, and therefore has not created any of us to fail/reject Him.
- God has given us free-will to choose.
- Because God loves us, He is risking the fact that there are some that will not choose to love Him back (e.g. Think about a person you really love - you would try to pursue him/her with the risk that he/she may not love you back, but you take that risk)

What do you think?