https://odb.org/MY/2022/08/10/standing-boldly

The story of Esther 4:7-14 is about an evil scheme made by some of the officials in the Persian Royal Court to kill and annihilate the Jews that were brought to Persia in exile after Israel was defeated in battle. Mordecai got wind of the scheme and sought the help of Esther to speak to the King as she was the Queen in the Persian Royal Court. However Esther replied that she can’t go to the King without being summoned. The law was that if you do so you risk being put to death unless the King signifies his consent by extending the gold spectre to them and spare them their lives. So Esther faced a real dilemma. But Mordecai then told Esther if she doesn’t speak to the King (and risk death), it doesn’t mean that she and her household will be spared from the destruction that comes from the evil scheme. Furthermore, God will use someone else or other means to rescue the Jews. Then Mordecai asked her don’t you think there is a purpose for you to be the Queen of Persia at this specific time? Meaning to say, don’t you think God put you in that position at this time for a special purpose?

I think the question we should ask ourselves is what is our calling and purpose at the place we are in right now? Does God have a calling and purpose for us that requires us to take some significant risk that requires us to be bold to step forward in faith? Or is Jesus calling us to step out in faith with boldness because He has called us out of where we are to another place? The place, time and position of Queen Esther were crucial to her fulfilling her calling and purpose by the LORD but what was more crucial was her calling. She was called to rescue the Jews from the evil scheme and it came with a significant risk to her life. As for us, we may not be in the place, position and time yet to fulfil our calling for God but will we dare to move out in faith like Father Abraham did? When the LORD called Abraham out of the Url of the Chaldeans to uproot himself and his family and go towards Canaan, he did not know exactly what was his destiny and calling. In the end, God made a Covenant to be the God of his people (starting with his family) and to make him a father of many nations (eventually through Christ, extended beyond Jerusalem to Samaria and to the Gentiles of the world) and to give his people an inheritance in the Promised Land (initially Israel and through Christ our place in heaven).

If we don’t make that move, God’s calling for our life will not materialise but God will achieve His purposes through someone else or other means. But if we take the challenge and move out in faith, we will see the fruits of our boldness like Esther and Abraham did!

https://odb.org/MY/2022/08/09/humility-is-the-truth

Another fundamental principle coming out across the bible is humility. If we are a believer, we cannot avoid this teaching that we need to be humble, before God and before man. God exalts the humble and opposes the proud. Pride of life is one of those things that may bring about the downfall of a person. We have seen that in countless stories and it a theme often repeated in literary works whether in novels or for the small screen (mobile), the big screen (TV) or theatrical releases. Most often, pride or proud peoples’ fall from grace are attributed to some divine attribution and this is both in popular culture as well as the bible. Lucifer bring banished from heaven was also attributed to his pride in thinking that he is greater than God Himself and he employed the same trap on Adam and Eve appealing to their pride to be like God knowing good and evil and causing them to doubt God’s word that surely they will die if they eat of the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Pride is also subtle and thus deceptive. Will we as mere humans think that we are greater than God? Surely we are not like Lucifer. Surely we as mere mortals will not be able to be like God and yet there are times we may behave like that. How? When we ignore the wisdom passed down to us from the bible and think that we will do better on our own.

What’s the wisdom in the bible, the prevailing theme in Proverbs, for example? It is still that we should love the LORD our God with all of our heart, soul and mind and ultimately the wisest among us is to choose Him over every other thing. Obey and follow His laws and percepts to honour our Covenant relationship with Him. In other words, we do as He says and Christ teaches and as articulated by Paul, John, James and all the Apostles. We follow their advice and lead. We do as the bible says as the bible teaches, and the bible is the Word of God. That’s humility! Thus humility is the truth is true because God is the truth.

The moment we say we don’t need the bible, we don’t need to obey and follow God’s laws, no need to listen and follow Christ or the teachings and advice of the mighty men and women of God in the bible, we have allowed pride to seep into us and that pride will destroy us. Not so much divine retribution but losing that fellowship, protection and relationship with God. A proud person is one who doesn’t need to follow what the Word of God says. He lives by his own principles and rules. A proud man is a man who doesn’t need God.

Thankfully we as believers know that we need Jesus every moment of our lives and we want to live under the shadow of His wings and want to do as the bible, the mighty men and women of God taught from Genesis to Revelation, from the Old Testament to New across the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, the various Epistles.

God exalts the humble but opposes the proud. We should all constantly remember that.

https://odb.org/MY/2022/08/08/discerning-right-paths

Those of us who are parents will always want the best for our children. So we see what are their strengths, inclinations and interests, and we prayerfully direct them to a path we hope will bring the best out of them. In the process we teach them independence – like they drive themselves (but we still repair and service the car ourselves), they get their own food or cook themselves (but of course we buy or cook for them too), do their own laundry and iron their own clothes etc. As much as they still live with us, we want them to make their own decisions – of course, in consultation with us.

Yet as much as we plan and pray, there are times when things don’t go according to plan. An opportunity could have presented itself or circumstances could have changed. Or perhaps our child wants to breakaway from the planned schedule and take a gap year? Or perhaps he wants to explore more of the world or gain experience working overseas before coming home? What do we do? Do we religiously stick to the schedule? Or are we flexible enough to accommodate changes to the plan because in the end, it is their life and not ours anymore? In my case, I’m already at the last leg of my working life before I embark on a different adventure but my own children are just about to make their entry into the working world (actually the elder has just graduated while the younger is still in college).

I think we should make adjustments where necessary but ultimately they must be on the right path with God. They must know their appointed place in God even as they find their place in the world. They must be assured of their salvation and know their Saviour and Lord. Even in the changes that they make, they must seek God and find the reality of God in their midst as they look for a job and even a place to stay. Christ must be present in their lives even as the plan and schedule is revised.

As seniors in the faith, we have a responsibility to not only guide our children but those that we shepherd so that they are on the right path in their careers, ministry and their walk with God. We have the experience and knowledge of the world and the faith; thus must impart that as much as possible to our children and sheep. As believers, it is definitely possible to work our way in the world and yet still remaining firm for God and His Covenant relationship with us, living according to His laws and percepts, upholding His name in all that we do. We can surely be in the world but not of the world. Earn our living without compromising our beliefs and faith in God. Trust and believe God for our children and our sheep. God will be their shepherd and their protector! Amen

https://odb.org/MY/2022/08/07/strength-to-let-go

One of the prevailing themes in the bible is God giving strength to the weak and weary. The LORD gives strength to those who are weak and weary. There are many examples. David, when he was being hunted by Saul and declared the LORD is my strength when the LORD delivered him from Saul. Moses when the Israelites crossed the Red Sea as the only way to get away from the chasing Egyptian army is to cross the Red Sea to safety and leaving the army behind in the sea!

I think finding strength in God is a personal journey every believer should go through to see for ourselves and experience the reality of God – the love and compassion, the grace and mercy of God. It’s an experience that will have a lasting effect on us and will remind us of His goodness every time we face storms of life. We remember that He brought us out of the miry clay, out of the pit of darkness and thus we have confidence and faith the next time we face a difficult and tough situation in life. We know that the LORD is our strength. He is our deliverer. Like David and Moses, we will dare to believe in Him and put our full trust on Him.

Are we feeling weak and weary? Are we at the end of road? Are we facing a cross road? Are we perplexed and do not know where to turn? Is it to the left, the right or straight ahead? Do we stay or move on? How do we live on after losing a loved one? These situations may put our faith to the test and the best way forward is still one that places our total hope and full reliance on Christ. That Jesus is our strength since God gives strength to the weak and weary.

I will say that I had experienced God being my strength when I had faced life crises before and the aftermath of those crises had deepened my trust and strengthened my dependence on Him. My faith in Him grew. It is indeed true that He gives strength to the weak and weary. We are not afraid of the future when we know that God is with us. We are not afraid of our next move because we know the Lord is with us. We seek Him and we follow His lead. It will not lead us to destruction but eternal life!

https://odb.org/MY/2022/08/05/we-need-his-help

I think we all know very well that we need each other’s help to do things and that includes our ministries and spiritual lives. At work, we achieve more as a team with each team player doing his or her part to reach the goal or KPI. There are superstars among us but it is better to be a superstar at mobilising people than just a lone star. A good example will be Obama who through organising and mobilising managed to become the first black President of the United States of America.

Today’s ODB makes an interesting point. We all also know that we need Jesus’s help in our every day lives. In all that we do, if we are totally reliant on Jesus, we will achieve much. But the point made is more to rely on Jesus in our spiritual walk, in our spiritual life. That’s really true and pertinent. This is because sometimes we tend to think that when it comes to our spiritual walk and life, it’s our own journey to make. Christ has opened the way. He has built the bridge for us to cross over to the other side. He has gone ahead of us to prepare a room for us at our Father’s mansion. Isn’t that wonderful enough? We thus have to make our own way over there. That’s somehow how we may tend to think. Christ has done so much, we thus need to do our part to make the journey there.

The truth is that even in the journey there, to the place of eternal life, the mansion with many rooms or some translations say the place with many mansions, Jesus is there with us. Christ is there to help us. As we strive for the fruit of the Spirit, to be made more like Christ, Christ is there to help us. Even in our spiritual life, Christ is there to help us as He would in all other areas of our life. Christ and our Heavenly Father and the Holy Spirit, they are not like judges who want to test and see who will make it across the line. Instead, the picture is that they are like facilitators or coaches who will give us all the support they can, all the help they can, so that we can make it across the line. There are rules of engagement of course. The devil and his cohorts are always there to draw us away from the right path. The world and all its fancy lights will tempt us away from God. Our own fleshy desires will want to dominate us and rule over our spiritual aspirations. But know that we are not alone, Christ is and will always be there to help us. He has also given us the Helper, the Holy Spirit, to empower and help us in our weaknesses in order that we have the strength to endure and make it through the journey to the finish line.

https://odb.org/MY/2022/08/04/the-privilege-of-stewardship

We can see from Genesis 1 that as human beings we were supposed to rule over the fish in the sea, the birds that fly and every living creature that moves on the ground. This means that humans were created above all other animals and living creatures and we know that because God created us in His image. In His image in the sense we are also spiritual beings and we share His character like having a kind, loving and merciful nature and disposition or at least we are capable of that! Of course we know the serpent came and disrupted all that with sin and now although we are still above all other creatures on earth, we don’t have dominion over them. Given a chance, the carnivores among them will attack and devour us. We are after all still food to them!

As we were supposed to have dominion over the animals and creatures of the earth, in a sense we are like stewards of them. We are their guardians and shepherds the same way God is our guardian and shepherd. That is why the writer of today’s ODB argues that as humans, we have a responsibility and obligation to care for the welfare of the animals and creatures of the earth. I do not disagree with the writer but for this morning, I like to point out another facet of our stewardship.

As much as we are stewards of God’s creation that we originally had authority over, we are also stewards over our God-given talents and giftings. The talents, giftings and skills God have blessed us over the years with or that we were born with, we need to harness and hone them all for the Kingdom of God. We need to make sure we are contributing to His causes, making use of our God-given talents and giftings and skills. We need to be good stewards of our talents, giftings and skills – never shy to use them to bless others and glorify His name. Never shy away from glorifying Him because we recognise that it was God who gave us all that. Speak for God if we have the gift of the gab or sing for God if God had blessed us with a sweet and melodic voice. Write for Him if we are good at writing and preach for Him if that’s our passion. Disciple people if that is our gifting or plant churches if that is our calling. Our time on earth is limited, whatever we want to do for God, do it now, do it today. Time and tide wait for no man. We don’t have all the time in the world to do what God has put in our hearts to do for Him. Just go out and do it now and in the process we will be good stewards of our God-given talents, giftings and skills!

https://odb.org/MY/2022/08/03/when-prayer-shakes-the-earth

Like the sand on the beach is able to reveal much about the seashore in terms of the content of the minerals, sea shells and coral fragments and I will add remains of marine life, our little prayer can actually shake mountains! In Revelation 8, John actually saw the prayers of the saints together with the fire of the altar bringing peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning and an earthquake! It was the combined prayers of all of God’s people and it helped bring about and usher in the end of time and the second coming of Christ!

Our little prayer matters in the Kingdom of God. Things move in the spiritual realm as we pray. Hearts are touched and turned towards God even as we pray and our prayers can move the hand of God. We can see justice even on earth as we pray. Miracles, signs and wonders, and healings can take place in our physical bodies. The natural may be moved by the spiritual even as we pray.

More importantly the little things we do including our prayers matter. They carry weight when combined with the prayers and efforts of all the saints. That is why it is perfectly fine to contribute and participate from where we are, from our own little spot and corner on this earth. Nowadays with WhatsApp and the Internet, we can reach out to people at the other end of the earth. But even without that, what we do for God at our own sphere of influence matters. Our contribution may be minute and microscopic even but it is never de minimis. Nothing is too small to not matter in the eyes of God. The concept of immateriality as we know it in accounting is not present in God’s books. Everything is material and carry weight. The two pennies from the poor widow meant the world to her and to God too!

Continue to do what we are doing in the Kingdom of God. Strive on forward. Press on forward. One day, we will see Christ come again!

https://odb.org/MY/2022/08/02/authentic

The Book of Proverbs contains mainly wisdom teaching that stand the passage of time. This means that it was relevant then and still relevant now and will still be relevant in the coming days. But if we were to dwell deeper into Proverbs, we will find that the prevailing and prevalent theme is probably best summed up by this phrase, “the fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom”. In the end, the wise man is the man that fears God. In other words, to be wise is to love God. We heed His laws and percepts. We follow the prompting of the Holy Spirit. We do what our heart tells us to do as we hear and seek Him out. If Christ corrects us, we repent and turn away from the error of our ways.

There is thus a strong case for us to heed the advice of others who made the loving effort to correct us. Few are bothered or will want to risk the friendship to correct another but to those who dared, we must take note. It is not optional. If they dared, we must take heed. We must listen and change. Ultimately it is for our own good. For example, if someone were to advise us not to only think of our own interests when making decisions. We may argue that it is natural and therefore permissable. This is how the world works. No one looks out for others. But if we continue on this road of destruction; one day, we may taste our own medicine and sonetimes that day can be much sooner than later. Even if one does not believe in God, God exists and He is a God of justice. The same way as the existence of God is not dependent on our beliefs, the existence of divine retribution is also not a matter of whether we believe in it or not. So as Stephen Covey taught, always try to find a win-win outcome and not a win-lose consequence, just because we can.

Proverbs 15:31 advises – whoever heeds life giving correction will be at home among the wise. Heed the advice. Don’t laugh at what God says as the pride of life will lead us to destruction. The Lord only advises us because He loves us, because He doesn’t want us to suffer the consequences of our wrongful decisions. Just because everyone is doing it doesn’t mean it is the right thing to do.

https://odb.org/MY/2022/08/01/in-this-together

To those of us who used to enjoy warm fellowship with others because of our work position, there could be a sense of loneliness when that fellowship disappeared because we are no longer in that position. It could happen because we moved departments or had taken another role or had moved on to another company or to a different industry. In the work context, we need to restart the process of getting to know new people at the new place and establish new bonds.

Paul had a similar if more dramatic experience. He was imprisoned and facing imminent death. At his first defence, everyone fled and deserted him. Now as he is facing imminent death, he longed for Timothy, his protégé, to come see him the soonest. Alexander, the metal worker did a lot of harm to him. When everyone deserted him, the Lord however was with him. The Lord stood with him and gave him strength. The fact that the Lord was with Paul is of course not surprising to the least since Paul practically demanded to be tried before Ceasar so he could proclaim the good news of Christ crucified and resurrected to Ceasar in Rome and he knew that he would most likely be sent to his death.

We are likely to be in a less extreme or precarious position than Paul and yet it is my trust and belief that if almost everyone has deserted us, the Lord will still be with us. He will nevertheless stand by our side in our moments of loneliness and desertion. Our past friends and colleagues no longer call us or interact with us like in the past. We may feel that we are all alone and deserted, yet we know God is always by our side. Make new friends, establish new bonds. Rebuild our network. We start afresh at our new place. Wherever that is. But know that in this journey, Christ is and will always be at our side, giving us strength and supporting us. Even as there may have been people who had meant or done us harm, God will deal with them in His own way and time. Don’t dwell too much into the past or our previous life. Instead look ahead and strive on forward to reach out to the goal Christ has set before us even as we look towards Him heavenward to finish our race and take hold of the prize that awaits us in Christ Jesus!

https://odb.org/MY/2022/07/31/make-it-your-own-dawg

As we look to Paul’s life as an example for our own spiritual journey, we see that he started anew when he got to know Jesus. He considered all that he had learned as a Pharisee as nothing even though he used to take pride in his achievements. He started afresh in his new faith, not in terms of knowledge but in terms of achievements. Meaning to say what he had achieved previously was nothing to be proud of, just dung – everything a loss. Paul’s knowledge of the law and sculptures were essential in his crafting of the new testament theology based on the death and resurrection of Christ and yet what he had achieved in the past was nothing. He started again His walk with God by preaching Christ crucified and resurrected and thus his apostolic journey planting and building churches.

There is a sense that as we enter into the Kingdom of God, what we had achieved in the past whether as a student or a working adult, our excellent examination results or our work achievements, are nothing in the Kingdom of God. We need to start anew. The knowledge and experience gained are useful but what Christ has in store for us has no bearing on who we are or were in the world. Like Paul, we need to start again pressing on heavenward towards the goal Christ has for us, forgetting what is behind and straining forward to what is ahead. The Kingdom of God is a totally new and different world. It works on a different set of principles and motivations. Its goal is the salvation of mankind. It is not the revenue or EBITDA or PAT numbers. Not our sales. Not our profits. It is the souls and final destination of our friends and families.

Thus I fully agree with the suggestion by today’s ODB writer that we make it our own. As much as we look to Paul, David, Joshua and all the other great men of God in the bible, in the past and present, our spiritual journey is our own to make. We are who we are before God. We are fearfully and wonderfully made by God in His image to conform to His will. There are specific plans and purposes for us. We must forget what is behind and strive forward to grab hold of all that Christ has prepared for us that only we can take hold of. Don’t miss making our own mark in the Kingdom of Heaven. We all have a place, we just need to make it our own place! We have our own journey with all our idiosyncrasies, weaknesses and human frailty but with Christ in our lives, we will be restored and made anew and be that someone our Heavenly Father will be proud of. We could become all that we could ever be in Christ! Amen!