https://odb.org/MY/2022/07/30/puddles-of-sunshine

I was in the United Kingdom recently to attend Ivan’s graduation and the first thing I noticed when I touched down is the long day. It was summer and dawn breaks early at nearly 4.00 am but the sun only sets like around 9.30 pm! First time I experienced it as someone who had lived all my life in the equator and it was a truly amazing experience! With more than 17 hours of daylight, there is a lot of excitement in the air and it sorts of usher in a sense of us wanting to do as much as we can to take advantage of the long day. Thus we were up early, had breakfast and off we go seeing the sights, taking the tube and then just walking and walking and walking! When we join a local tour, they pick you up at 7.15 am at the point of rendezvous! Or they start at 8.00 am sharp. The local Sainsbury store opens at 6.00 am and only closes at 10.00 pm! In fact, we could walk out and get coffee at the cafe at 6.00 am!

Light brings excitement and motivation. Light penetrates into the darkness and provides a clear vision ahead. As much as artificial light tries to do the same, it is not the same. Artificial light is just not prevalent and all encompassing enough. That is why when Jesus came into the world, He made such a major and significant difference. He was the light of the world, breaking into the darkness allowing mankind a breakthrough in the spiritual realm. Mankind that was lost in sin was rescued, redeemed and restored to our normal self with access to God the Father – a privilege only extended to one nation before that and even then, under strict rules and regulations. Jesus made it possible for the Gentiles i.e. the rest of the world, all the other nations and tribes to know God and He will come again once every tribe and nation have been given the opportunity to hear the Gospel and accept Jesus into their lives.

By extension, we are the light of the world wherever we are as we carry the name of Christ and have the power of the Holy Spirit who resides in us. Wherever we are, we can be that summer day to extend the day break into darkness and let the light prevail longer and longer over darkness. We hold the key to the light for the world in darkness as we are an extension of Christ. The Kingdom of God is alive and present wherever we are. The heavenly realm may penetrate into the physical whenever and wherever we are as we are the Kingdom of God. We are the signs and wonders, the miraculous healings of God.

My encouragement and exhortation to you and I today is as much as we love the puddles of sunshine and light over the shadows and darkness, remember that we are the extended light of the world. Play our part to illuminate the path and direct others to the right path that we may all enjoy and bask in the glory of Christ and the glorious presence of God!

https://odb.org/MY/2022/07/29/followed-by-his-goodness

“Surely Your goodness and love will follow me for the rest of my life” as proclaimed by David in Psalm 23:6. Other translations use the phrase, “goodness and mercy”, a phrase I’m more acquinted with for Psalm 23. Surely this is what we as believers want for our lives as we give our hearts to God. That the quid pro quo for us entering into the family of God, besides the eternal and everlasting life, is a life where the goodness and mercy of God follow us for the rest of our lives. He is our God and we are His people. We obey His percepts and He protects us. He is our King and our Shepherd. We are His people, the sheep of His pasture.

I recall when young and a non-Christian, the Chinese, in general including my own extended family, were preoccupied with the concept of luck. Praying and hoping for good luck and good fortune. That’s why the blessing for Chinese New Year is always about prosperity and good health. We hope that bad luck will not follow us. Instead we hope that we will have good luck. It usually is but not necessarily meant for gambling as good luck can be for all areas of our life. Good luck means good fortune and that can be for our studies, our business, our work, our company, our family etc.

The difference now as a believer is that goodness and mercy of God is the personal involvement of God Himself in our lives. Goodness and mercy is like good luck and good fortune except these are not independent concepts of reality. Goodness and mercy are realities that come with the person of God Himself. In our context, it is the goodness and mercy of God, not just goodness and mercy alone or good luck and good fortune. In other words, we have goodness and mercy because the Lord willed it for us and it is His goodness and mercy. Not just goodness and mercy, but the goodness and mercy of the LORD, our God. It is therefore NOT good luck and good fortune – alike but not the same thing. It is a life where we dwell in the presence and peace of God, the giver of true rest as mentioned in my post the day before on Looking At The Right Place. In other words, we may or may not have good fortune but we are assured that God is with us for the rest of our lives and that actually is what matters most. That is why I believe David also proclaimed in the following sentence in Psalm 23:6 that he will dwell in the house of the LORD forever, meaning to say, that he will be in the presence of God even as the goodness and mercy of God follow him for the rest of his life.

https://odb.org/MY/2022/07/28/when-the-whole-world-sings

A song sang by every nation and tribe praising the Lamb of God for His sacrifice on the cross that reconciled man to God! What a fantastic and amazing moment that would be!

The thing which spoke to me this morning as I read Revelation 5 is that Jesus dying for our sins is the truth and not some religious teaching conjured by Paul to explain and justify the death and resurrection of Christ. It is the truth. Christ truly and really died for our sins as the second Adam, the Son of Man who is also the Son of God. This was confirmed by the revelation given to John as recorded in the book of Revelation. What John saw confirms and corroborates the fact. There are many more things that John saw that will usher in the end of times but he also saw the Lamb of God being praised and worshipped and celebrated for what He did for humanity, for giving us the chance to be reconciled to God, to enter again into a fellowship and relationship with God, the creator of heavens and earth. John is independent of Paul and thus what John saw is an independent confirmation of the teaching of Paul on the meaning and significance of the death and resurrection of Christ.

How does this impact us? I guess it should reaffirm our faith that all of this has been carefully planned by God. From the coming of Christ to the raising up of Paul, the creme de la creme of the Jews, to expound and expand the detailed theology of our faith through the power and presence of the Holy Spirit working in him and the other Apostles. It also proves and shows us that even we as ordinary Christians may learn and experience of the revelation of the Holy Spirit as we read and study His Word. Even as God spoke to Paul as Christ reached out to Him in a vision and God spoke to John through a dream that revealed to him the coming of the end times, God may likewise speak to us and reveal truths about our lives to help and motivate and encourage us to continue this walk with Him vigorously. Don’t despair and give up. This is real and we will see the fruits of our labour and gain our crown of glory one day! Persevere on in the faith, Christ is and will always be with us until the very end!

https://odb.org/MY/2022/07/27/the-key

I have been away abroad to attend my elder son’s graduation from Cardiff University and thus didn’t continue my early morning routine of writing devotional thoughts as I was in a different time zone. When I came home, I suffered from jet lag and managed to only sleep when I was going to wake up. Anyway, here I am back again at this and it is my hope and prayer that you will be blessed by my early morning thoughts.

I think the example given today of a teacher looking for a lost key in the garden because the light is good when the key was lost inside the house although silly illustrates a common but silly mistake made by most of us. This is because we also have the silly but common tendency to look for answers at the wrong places. We also tend to look for joy and happiness in material things, in the world, in our jobs or work or ministry, or even in our family and loved ones or friends when we knew all along that Jesus is our true source of joy and happiness. We know that the key to all of our burdens is in God and yet we look elsewhere. The lost key must be somewhere in the house and yet here we are looking for it in the garden because the light is good! The place which we think is more conducive to finding joy and happiness is irrelevant when it is the wrong place! This is because true joy and happiness do not exist at that place. So no matter how much we try, we will not find true joy and happiness. No matter how much effort the teacher and his disciples put in finding the lost key in the garden, they will not find it simply because it was lost inside the house!

The key to unlock the heavy burden we face in life is in Christ. His yoke is light and we will find rest in Him. He is our true joy and happiness, not material things or our jobs or work or ministry or our family or friends. Ultimately, we need to work to survive. We need friends and family to have companionship and fellowship. We are definitely drawn to material things to reward ourselves since we have worked so hard all these years. Yet always remember God in all that we do. Pursue Him even as we pursue our goals in our work amd ministry. Pursue the person in Jesus, the giver instead of the gifts and we will find true joy and happiness. We will find our rest in Him for His yoke is light. He is humble and gentle in spirit. He truly loves us and wants the best for us.

https://odb.org/MY/2022/07/10/watching-out-for-one-another

We can never avoid doing good or helping another or looking out for someone’s needs if we are in the Kingdom of God. This is because the Kingdom of God is a community of believers who live as a community with a common goal although in present times we live separately. We are supposed to administer justice by showing mercy and compassion to one another, and not to oppress the widow, the fatherless or the poor or the foreigner. In other words, we must show mercy and compassion to the weak and downtrodden, the oppressed amongst us.

It is the nature of God to help the weak and the oppressed, the fatherless, the poor and the foreigner. Thus as children of God we must follow after our Heavenly Father and do the same. It’s not optional or a matter of choice or preference. It is a must. It is part of the process of us not conforming to the pattern of this world and being transformed as we renew our minds. As we tune ourselves to God’s wavelength, we will understand and want to follow God’s heart.

Yet it is not a question of those with giving to those without. Not only the strong and able versus the weak and downtrodden. True compassion and mercy are applicable to everyone including those who are fatherless, widows, poor and the foreigner. We will receive as we give of ourselves to others. I think we need not go to the extent to live out of our car to save the rent so we may give away our rent money to other more needy people. But the point is at whatever level we are whether in abundance or lack, we can still give and bless others. Whether we have much, little or more – we can all give and look out for others. Most are living on a shoestring budget but if we are able to stretch our dollar to bless another, do you think our Heavenly Father will not make sure that our needs are met too? It’s a paradox but actually the key to receive is to bless and let go. Not arithmetically like give 100 and receive 1,000 or 10,000 but if we give, we will receive. That’s just how the economy of the Kingdom works. As the natural economy is stimulated with spending, the Kingdom economy is stimulated by the giving of ourselves. This is because the more we give and the more many amongst us give, the windows of heavens will open up and more and more of God’s blessings will flow down and we will see a Kingdom that is overflowing with the love, mercy, compassion, goodness and power of the Almighty!

Let’s all learn this spiritual lesson well. Give and you shall receive. It applies to everyone, whether poor or rich, whether those with fathers or the fatherless, whether those with spouse or widows, whether you are a native or a foreigner. Practice this in our lives and see for ourselves the floodgates of heaven’s blessings opening up and flowing down into our lives!

https://odb.org/MY/2022/07/08/food-that-says-i-love-you

I recall that when I was attending my previous church, we had a meal together as a church at first every Sunday and later I think it was once a month or once a fortnight. We had the basic meal catered but with add ons cooked by members potluck style. So every Sunday worship service was eagerly anticipated as we get to enjoy a nice meal together and later when the inhouse meal became once a month or once a fortnight, a group of us would still adjourn somewhere nearby for a simple chicken rice meal together. A family that prays together stays together and I would add that a family that eats together stays together. That applies to a congregation of church people as well. There is something special about sharing a meal together.

We can also see that in the bible God speaks about feasts, wedding banquets, festivals, meals together and even the well known Psalm 23 on the Lord is my Shepherd makes references to feasts. Jesus also used the illustration of wedding banquets in His teachings on the Kingdom of God. In fact, He performed His miracle of turning water to wine in a wedding feast.

Most significantly, the last meal Jesus had before He was crucified was the Passover meal with His 12 disciples. It was significant because He will not partake of that Passover meal again until He comes again. That is also why He taught us to break bread and drink of the wine as a remembrance of Him until He comes again.

It is unfortunate that the modern church has turned that last meal into the ceremonial and symbolic holy communion when it was originally a full meal shared together by Jesus and His disciples. Sharing a meal together as a congregation is really a good practice that we should all emulate and if we read the book of the Acts of the Apostles, we will also see that the early church ate together. I also think it is a good practice as the poor and needy will at least have one meal assured at church. As the church mandated singing for worship, I wished it had also practiced having meals as part of the service.

While most of us are not in any position to advise or instruct churches to organise meals amongst its members as part of the Sunday worship service celebrations, we ourselves can practice this among ourselves. Let’s eat together with others after worship – either go out as a group or join a group to eat together. Eating is surviving as it is one of the major things we need to continually do to live. Wild carnivore animals spend most of their time hunting for their next meal while herbivores continuously eat the vegetation in their surroundings. It is part and parcel of living, like breathing. That is why God Himself who created us also celebrates meals together among His people with happy and joyous references to banquets, feasts and festivals! God loves us and knows that we all love to eat!

https://odb.org/MY/2022/07/07/hurry-up-and-wait

Not to compare with the era of Keynes (the economics theorist that everyone who had studied economics cannot not know) in the 1930s but even say, 30 years back, the pace of life was slower. I remembered when I first came out to work, we were still using typewriters and even word processors like Wordstar and WordPerfect followed the way of the typewriter when formatting and aligning text. I can’t remember whether we even get to select the font type and size! We typed out our letters and send them by mail and fax. You only get to see the photo after it was processed and printed out as it was still purely 35mm film then. No mobile phones yet when I first started work. Of course later when mobile phones came, we started sending sms texts. Still information was not as readily available as now at our finger tips via Google and the world wide web.

So strangely even as Keynes predicted that with the advent of technology and machines and heightened economic activities, humans will only need to work 3 hours a day or 15 hours a week – we have turned out to work longer and longer hours! 12-hour days with traffic and commuting is pretty much the norm nowadays! In larger cities and metros, it is always a rush to get to work. We go through a sea of people as we take the tube, the underground or in KL, our LRTs and MRTs but more likely we see thousands and thousands of cars and motorcycles on the road. I recall that the favourite mode of transportation back in my day was the No.11 and 12 minibuses prowling the PJ-KL city centre routes.

Will we pause to wait for the Lord? Will we, like David, seek to learn what the Lord will do for me? What is the plan? What is God’s plans and purposes for us?

Life will not slow down. It will get more hectic until the day we retire. There will always be things to do, deadlines to meet. I have just been at my new workplace for a month and there are already multiple matters running in parallel that we need to chase and close. In IT, the world is evolving into the cloud, into digitalisation, big data and analytics. People are talking about curated content, targeted advertising and recommendation engines.

As humans, we always need to adapt as the world changes but as believers we must always maintain an eternal perspective on things while seeking the Lord every day as to what the Lord will do for me, or rather what does He want us to do? Remember as children of God, we have a specific mission on earth. We may be pilgrims passing through, but we are all pilgrims with a calling. Wait for the Lord, seek Him and He will be the lamp unto our path!

https://odb.org/MY/2022/07/06/you-can-do-it-2

We are all acquinted with the power of encouragement as the teaching is always it is better to encourage than to criticise. So someone didn’t do as well – we say, it’s ok, try again or work harder and do better next time. It is a good principle to follow whether in the world or the church, just that in the former people tend to be more exacting in their pronouncements, less forgiving and more demanding of results. So bosses have less patience to tolerate incompetence and tardiness and will surely scold and rebuke us if we produce less than stellar results or are slow. The reason I guess is that at the work place we are paid to do a job and thus there is a clear expectation of our job scope and responsibilities.

We can adapt the same approach in the church. If someone doesn’t conform, we can scold and reprimand and criticise. However, in matters of faith, there is also the concept of voluntariness as well as pace. Different ones of us are changed differently and most of the work is done by the Holy Spirit on the inside, in the heart which is not outwardly visible immediately. We should let the person change and grow at his or her pace.

The encouragement I like to emphasise this morning is somewhat different. It has more to do with dealing with disappointment and hardship in the walk of faith. Sometimes the going is so tough that instead of the tough gets going, we are tempted to throw everything away and walk. The eternal promises are just so far out and unreachable that the toil of the present living just overwhelms us. It may be too difficult to live out the faith if we are constantly persecuted by friends and family. That is why the body of believers need to step in to encourage those going through such severe difficulties in the faith. Don’t give up. Don’t despair. God is with us. The sufferings will not last forever. Everything we go through now is still worth it and cannot compare to the glory that awaits us in eternity Paul wrote this before in Romans 8:18 and it is true. We must hold on and believe that it can only be true because we are trusting in the one amd only true and living God!

Be the encourager, be the builder of faith. That’s our role as a fellow believer. Don’t give up. God will come through eventually. Even if he doesn’t, we are already assured a place in eternity. In the end, that’s what matters. He is our God and we are His people. Let us all be like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego who went into the fiery furnace and believed that God will save them but declared that even if God did not save them, they will still not bow down and worship the golden statue made by King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon – see Daniel Chapter 3.

https://odb.org/MY/2022/07/05/wisdom-and-understanding

I think while it is outstanding and astounding that Julian of Norwich spent 20 years praying in isolation to seek the Lord after seeing visions of Jesus’ crucifixion as she was healed from a sa crerious and potentially fatal illness, it is probably not something practical in the modern world. That was in the 14th century. To spend 20 years in solitude praying to seek the meaning of those visions now would look very much an opporunity lost to share and testify of that experience – but the point remains that God speaks and reveals things to us, during ancient times speaking to Abraham and Moses and all the prophets, to Paul and the other Apostles, to Julian of Norwich as well as to us here in 2022. The Lord reveals of Himself and the mysteries of the Kingdom as we seek Him in prayer, as we dwell and meditate upon His Word.

I’m sure many of us have experienced receiving revelations from God as we read His Word. Something like a different perspective to a passage of Scripture. As we read on and pray, God may reveal an aspect of Him that we didn’t see before in a familiar bible passage. To those of us who prepare sermons, we know that even as God speaks, we must never take passages out of context. Any Scripture needs to be read in the context of the chapter and the book and in line with the literary style of the period it was written, in consistency with the cultural practices of that time and most importantly in conformity with the established tenets of our faith. We are not here to propagate a new movement of the Christian faith! Although God may use a passage or word to speak to us literally, it is not wise to rely on its literal meaning to form the basis of a message or sermon. A personal Word to us is not the same as a Word for sharing with others or a congregation or for teaching.

Having said that, I encourage that we all seek to pursue the Lord speaking to us through His Word as revelations confirm and assure us that God is alive and real to us in our personal context. As we read and pray and meditate, ask that He opens up our mind to see and our hearts to receive of His Word to edify and encourage and strengthen us. For Him to let us know and assure us that He is with us as we go through the rigours and the ups and downs of life, its many challenges and storms. The reality of God in our lives is an essential facet of our faith that we must cherish and cling on to dearly. We have the means and the ability as a child of God redeemed by the blood of Christ to reach out to the most powerful force in the universe, a direct line to the Great I Am, the Almighty God, the creator of heavens and earth. Read His Word, study it, meditate upon it and He will give and teach us the Wisdom of His ways!

https://odb.org/MY/2022/07/04/no-greater-love-7

There is no greater love than a man who lays down his life for his friend. Jesus said this in John 15:13. Although He did that for us when He died on the cross for our sins, He meant it both literally and figuratively. This is important because although the literal meaning is the ultimate, the figurative meaning is what most of us will likely encounter in our lifetime. That means love involves sacrifice. When we love, we are willing to part with something. It may not be our life but there must be something that gives. There is a cost to love. If there is no cost, then perhaps the love is just verbal, just words without action. It is just saying but without doing anything.

Jesus taught us to love God with all our heart, mind and soul and to love our neighbour. Is there something that we can do to show that we love God and our neighbour? Is there an action that can follow our love for God and our neighbour? Are we helping the poor and needy? Are we giving our time and talents for the church, for the Kingdom of God? Are we serving God? Are we putting in time to attend our cell group so that we may grow and help others in the group with the sharing of our life? Do we share our thoughts and our life experience during our cell group meetings? Do we share about our walk with God? An action is involved, a sacrifice is made when we do something for someone and that may just involve us sharing our life in a cell group. Or we could clean the church or the toilets as our sacrifice and love for the congregation. That is love because love must be love in action. Loving God and our neighbour is not merely refraining from sin and doing evil. It is not passive. It is active. It usually requires something from us.

Unless we are in the battlefield fighting a war for our country or the police confronting criminals to maintain peace and order, we are unlikely to be sacrificing our lives for another. But sacrificial love need not only be about sacrificing our lives. Can we give of something that is ours to give? Our time, talent, money, effort for someone else, for the Kingdom of God, for the glory of the Lord? We cannot remain passive and uninvolved forever. It is time to step out, step up and get into the fray. That is what love really means. Love = sacrifice. Have a good week ahead everyone and let’s action our love!