Unity in Church

https://odb.org/2026/03/07/one-russian,-one-ukrainian,-one-lord

Ephesians 4:1-6 NIV – 4 As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. 2 Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. 3 Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. 4 There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism; 6 one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the war that followed, a Russian man and a Ukrainian woman walked into a building. There was no argument or hatred exchanged between the two. Instead they sang together in unison. Why? The building was a church, and the two were Christians, worshipping together. “In here we have one leader,” Nenad, the minister, explained, “Jesus Christ, nobody else. Over the centuries, across the world, people who should be sworn enemies have united in Christ and called each other family. It is remarkable. In the apostle Paul’s day, the great divide was between Jews and Gentiles. Though Gentiles were always welcome to worship God in the Jewish temple, they were relegated to a separate, inferior area. (Tanya Marlow, Our Daily Bread 7th March 2026)

I guess divisions in the church may transcend even racial/political lines as in the case of Russians and Ukrainians or Catholics and Protestants amongst the Irish or even the hostilities between the Chinese and the Japanese due to the atrocities of the latter during WW2. More often the church is divided because there are those who support one group while there are others who support another group. Pretty similar to divisions in political parties. Except that for the latter it is about power and we all know power corrupts. Sadly, sometimes in the church itself, divisions may sometimes be also about power. That’s so tragic because the church should be all about Christ crucified and Christ resurrected.

Paul’s exhortation in Ephesians 4 thus becomes meaningful because we must live lives worthy of our calling. Paul advises us to be completely humble and gentle and be patient, bearing one another in love. Indeed humility and patience are essential in church. There are just so many colourful characters in church. Most mean well and are totally sincere. But there are few who may actually be wolves in sheep clothing. Not agents of the devil per se but just simply driven by the lust of power or pride or just plain personal agendas. Paul hopes the Ephesians would make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit, meaning to make sure we are united as a body. Not to have groups or alliances for political purposes in church. In other words, there should be minimal or no politics in church! Everyone should all work together for the good of the Kingdom of God.

With the ongoing war in the Middle East and its potential impact across the globe, this may well be another milestone towards the Second Coming of Christ. Therefore let us all focus on what really matters and remove the peripheral and the personal. In all that we do in church, always put the community of believers first. We do our best for the good of everyone. Make all effort to keep the unity of the Spirit as Paul teaches!

Goodness of God

https://odb.org/2026/03/06/god%E2%80%99s-goodness

Deuteronomy 6:10-19 NIV – 10 When the Lord your God brings you into the land he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to give you – a land with large, flourishing cities you did not build, 11 houses filled with all kinds of good things you did not provide, wells you did not dig, and vineyards and olive groves you did not plant – then when you eat and are satisfied, 12 be careful that you do not forget the Lord, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.

13 Fear the Lord your God, serve him only and take your oaths in his name. 14 Do not follow other gods, the gods of the peoples around you; 15 for the Lord your God, who is among you, is a jealous God and his anger will burn against you, and he will destroy you from the face of the land. 16 Do not put the Lord your God to the test as you did at Massah. 17 Be sure to keep the commands of the Lord your God and the stipulations and decrees he has given you. 18 Do what is right and good in the Lord’s sight, so that it may go well with you and you may go in and take over the good land that the Lord promised on oath to your ancestors, 19 thrusting out all your enemies before you, as the Lord said.

Even good things can become dangers when they turn us from what matters most. Moses cautioned God’s people about this after they left Egypt and before they entered the land God was about to give them—a land with “houses filled with all kinds of good things” that they “did not provide” (Deuteronomy 6:11). “When you eat and are satisfied,” Moses warned, “be careful that you do not forget the Lord” (vv. 11-12). Remembering God in our blessings helps us because He is the source of “every good and perfect gift” (James 1:17). When we humbly respond to His goodness by loving Him with heart, soul and strength (Deuteronomy 6:5), we find in Him the best blessing of all. (James Banks, Our Daily Bread 6th March 2026)

One of our weakness as a Christian (myself included) is that sometimes in the “euphoria” of complaining about life and its challenges, we forget about God’s goodness. Granted, life could have dealt us a better hand. Who wouldn’t want to be born with a silver spoon? Who wouldn’t want to come into this world and be part of a family with wealth and influence and power? Yet even those with wealth haggle over silly things like why was I left with RM10 million while my brother had RM100 million? There are challenges at different families.

Philosophically, I think, we should accept that we need to make the best of what we have or what we were given. Actually, that’s the fact of life – everyone makes do with what God has given them or where God has placed us and we do the best under the circumstances. Some do better than others. Some do exceptionally well.

I think when it comes to physical wealth or riches, contentment is key to being at peace with our station in life. We strive to do better but as believers who live based on “right side up”, we balance our quest for achievements with contentment. At the same time, in parallel, we have spiritual goals and milestones. We know our destiny is not here on earth. We are pilgrims passing through. But far from not being bothered with the affairs of the world and live life in isolation, we are aware that we’re very much an integral part of this world. We fully participate in its affairs although we are not of this world. Fulfilling God’s calling, His plans and purposes for our lives is more essential than living out our own dreams and aspirations.

Be contented and be grateful for where we are in our career, spiritual walk and ministry. We try our best to live a balanced life. We do our best at our jobs. We do our best in our ministry. We fulfil God’s calling for us for this season and His plans and purposes for our life. Most importantly, we appreciate and are thankful for His goodness in our lives – our job, our marriage, our family, our ministry, our wealth, savings and assets. The opportunity to travel while we can. Our health, our physical body, our home. God has been good to us. He is good, all the time! Amen!

P/s

We are thankful for the opportunity to travel to the UK to see and chill with our first-born. We are grateful for the goodness of God and His grace that we avoided the Dubai mayhem although in our Emirates flight to London on Friday/Saturday, we had a 5-hour layover in Dubai. We missed the Iranian missiles targeted at Dubai International Airport by a few hours! There’s some hassle rebooking our flights back to KL to avoid the Middle East and at the same time incurring some additional expense. But that’s nothing compared to the situation if we had been stranded in Dubai in the midst of war.

Does God notice our service?

https://www.odbm.org/en-GB/devotional/devotional-category/the-unnamed-women?ts=1772582400000

The parable of the sower
Luke 8:1-3 NIV – After this, Jesus travelled about from one town and village to another, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God. The Twelve were with him, 2 and also some women who had been cured of evil spirits and diseases: Mary (called Magdalene) from whom seven demons had come out; 3 Joanna the wife of Chuza, the manager of Herod’s household; Susanna; and many others. These women were helping to support them out of their own means.

After wiping down tables with disinfectant, Shelia stooped to tie a rubbish bag filled with used cups and plates. She heaved the bag over her shoulder and turned to survey the church’s social area. She’d volunteered to clean it for the next gathering and wanted to make sure it was ready. A thought fluttered through her mind: Would anyone notice? It’s easy to wonder if our everyday contributions to the kingdom are valued. Whether we clean, balance spreadsheets, lead a Bible study or give money, so many of us remain unseen in our places of service and unnamed in public commendations. (Elisa Morgan, Our Daily Bread 4th March 2026)

I think most of us have at some point in our lives thought about whether anyone notices our service in ministry? Our pastors and leaders surely know exactly what we’re doing in church but no one in church may know if we serve elsewhere in our personal capacity whether for voluntary organisations or other Christian ministries. Except if we publicise the same via social media or some other means.

However, I believe most of us don’t and won’t mind if no one notices because we know in our hearts that we’re serving God and we know God knows. It’s a personal conviction to serve the Lord and the motivation is always Him and Him alone. We serve Him because we love Him. It is our simple way to repay Him for all He has done and is doing in our midst. For His goodness and grace upon our lives and our family.

Of course, over a long period of time, sometimes our service ends up being a responsibility and an obligation and may eventually become a burden. Instead of joy, we struggle and end up serving grudgingly. That’s a tragedy but if we are in this predicament, we should, in my view, re-examine our calling and see whether the Lord has a different calling for us for this present season of our lives? We should always experience joy and gladness in serving God and not dread or misery. Or only a sense of responsibility or obligation.

What’s our calling for this season of our lives? He is forever in our lives and He is with us and sees us through the seasons. Yet His calling may evolve over time as we grow older and mature in our faith. The work the Holy Spirit is doing in our midst may be changing. Spend some time to seek out His plan and purpose for us at this period of time. Serving Him must be the happiest thing we could do in our life. Something is terribly wrong if we are grieved when serving Him. Allow the Holy Spirit to speak to us and guide us so we may find peace, joy and love in again in serving Him!

Blessings of generosity

https://odb.org/2026/03/02/refreshing-generosity

Proverbs 11:24–25 (NIV): 24 One person gives freely, yet gains even more;
another withholds unduly, but comes to poverty. 25 A generous person will prosper; whoever refreshes others will be refreshed.

An auditorium full of medical students at Albert Einstein College of Medicine listened intently as ninety-year-old Ruth Gottesman spoke. As she concluded, Ruth announced—to the students’ gasps, cheers, and pandemonium—that she was donating $1 billion so they could finish their education tuition free. This is the largest donation ever given to a medical school. Yet in the interviews that followed, you would have thought that Gottesman was the one receiving the gift. She expressed joy, delight, and honor to be able to give her money away. Proverbs tells us that this is how generosity works. The one who “gives freely,” far from being left diminished or bereft, finds blessings they hadn’t anticipated (11:24). (Winn Collier, Our Daily Bread 2nd March 2026)

Just like to glorify the LORD our God that we flew off from KLIA via an Emirates flight on Friday 6.30 evening KL time and after an 8-hour flight landed in Dubai for a 5-hour layover. We then boarded the connecting flight to London Heathrow (LHR) and landed safely in LHR at 6.45 am (UK time) to the news of the US and Israel having attacked Iran and Iran countering with missiles towards US bases and allies in the Gulf including the Dubai International Airport! We missed the missiles but more importantly we were not caught stranded in Dubai! Praise the Lord indeed! God was good to us! We usually take a past or near midnight flight to LHR but this time we somehow booked an earlier flight and those 6 hours could have saved us from being stuck in Dubai in the midst of the war crossfire.

Getting back to the topic at hand on generosity, an oft-repeated topic in these blog pages. Nevertheless it will never go stale or outdated. This is because the Kingdom of God, in my mind, is all about the generosity of God. God in His grace has been generous to us with His abundant grace, mercy and love. Picking us up in our lives when we least deserve Him. Beyond the principle that we should repay God for being generous to us for sending Jesus to die for our sins that we do not perish but have life everlasting (per John 3:16), there is a spiritual principle at play that as we give, we will receive. Giving doesn’t deplete but increases. Crazy but true!

It is a spiritual principle where its reality has been exploited by the “properity gospel crowd” to give to God in order to have a breakthrough out of our financial situation. It was exploitative in the sense that the Godly cause is their ministry but their success albeit its somewhat dishonest application, speaks of its reality. In other words, I’m sure that many have experienced God’s generosity as they give out of their misery and poverty. It may look like fraud in a large scale but I’m sure that many have somehow benefitted when they put this principle into practice! I don’t advocate as I believe this is wrong. Yet I believe it is difficult to dispute the reality of the principle!

Rather than enriching others (read questionable ministers) for Godly purposes in name (questionable ministries or causes), we should, in my view, just be broadly generous. Not to enrich ourselves in the process but to use resources at our disposal for the Kingdom of God. When we are working, we set aside some for the rainy day. Yet we should also allocate some for generosity’s sake. But when we retire or about to retire and need to start dipping into our savings as we age without a fixed income, we should nevertheless be generous. There is no need to horde. Remember the story Jesus taught about the rich man who tore down and wanted to build bigger barns to store wheat for years to come? That night itself his life was taken from him! The point is we could hold on tightly to our fortune to keep healthy reserves for our old age but we may end up having too much when we pass. Alas nothing can be brought across. Granted it’s a fine balance to hold and yet give but the spiritual principle remains that if we are generous, God will bless us. In other words, we need not worry too much what lies ahead if we were to give to help someone out. We have a responsibility to God to be a good steward of our wealth, for example, for our old age and our children’s future but that responsibility in my view also includes the obligation to be generous for Kingdom causes. The spiritual principle is that the more generous we are, the more will we be blessed! Amen!

God’s Rainbow 🌈

https://odb.org/2026/02/26/gods-rainbow-answer

Genesis 9:12–16 (NIV): 12 And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: 13 I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. 14 Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, 15 I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. 16 Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.”

Owen was on holiday abroad when he received a disturbing message from a colleague: “The boss is looking to replace you.” Deeply upset, he prayed one morning at dawn and asked God, “Where are You?” Then he went to the window to open the curtains—and spotted a huge, beautiful rainbow suspended above the lake outside. Immediately a comforting warmth gushed over him. “It was as if God was simply telling me, ‘It’s okay; I’m here,’ ” he recounted later.

In Genesis 9, God promised not to destroy the earth through a flood again. He promised, “Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth” (v. 16). This covenant was everlasting and unconditional. It depended totally on God’s protection and provision, not on humanity’s performance. (Leslie Koh, Our Daily Bread 26th February 2026)

I only learnt about the origin of the rainbow quite late into my Christian life. I’m sure it would have been taught in Sunday school but then I never attended Sunday school when young. This is because I only knew God in my teens. The other thing about my Christian life experience is that I also didn’t grow up singing hymns. Instead I grew up as a Christian in pentecostal/charismatic churches although I did attend a Methodist outreach for a few years when I first came to know God. However that outreach was a startup and thus they sang more youth fellowship kind of songs.

We all would have learnt about the rainbow in school as part of a subject in Science. The rainbow 🌈 is unique as the colours of the rainbow represent the spectrum of light. While commonly divided into seven colours from the longest spectrum (red) to the shortest (violet), the rainbow is actually a continuous spectrum with differing shades in between. However it differs from colour pigment with red, blue and yellow (RYB) as the primary colours while light’s primary colours are red, green and blue (RGB). For instance, the rainbow cannot create black, brown or magenta.

There are bound to be moments in life when we ask God, “where are You O Lord?” Some unexpected news or change in our situation. It could be like famine during ancient times when the populace relied on crops to survive, especially wheat, as recorded in the Old Testament. Even if they had livestock for milk and poultry for meat, these need water to live. In our modern world, few are privileged not to work and yet live. Thus our jobs are essential to our sustenance in the modern world. Few of us grow crops on our own. We need to earn so we have money to buy life necessities and continue living.

The LORD is saying He is there with and amongst us. Whether we are young and starting out in career or marriage or on the verge of retirement or retired, He is there with us. For us who are about to retire, we often ponder how would it be like in the days to come when we cease earning a fixed income. We need to start digging into our reserves. Life will certainly be different but the Lord is saying that He is with us until our last breath. Because of the work of Jesus Christ in Calvary, our after life is guaranteed (if we hold on to our faith). But not only that, our life on earth is also guaranteed as we fulfil His plans and purposes for our lives and respond to His calling. He will meet our needs as the rainbow 🌈 is testament to His everlasting promise to never destroy mankind again with water. Always remember Jesus’s teaching in Matthew 6:26-27: 26 “Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27 Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?”

Don’t misuse the name of the LORD

https://odb.org/2026/02/25/abusing-gods-name

Exodus 20:7–8 (NIV): 7 “You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.
8 “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.

All seem oblivious to the large banner hanging above the headquarters’ front door, half as long as the building. It reads, “By resisting the Jew, I fight for the work of the Lord.” This kind of treachery is what God had in mind when He commanded, “You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name” (Exodus 20:7). We shouldn’t assume we’re doing God’s work simply because others say we are. We must prayerfully check our work with what God reveals in the Bible. How can we know we’re serving Him? Psalm 119:9 says, “By living according to your word.” The God who commands us to “always give [ourselves] fully to the work of the Lord” has told us what that work is in His holy book (1 Corinthians 15:58). Let’s listen to Him. (Mike Wittmer, Our Daily Bread 25th February 2026 Condensed)

In these end days, we must pray for discernment when we come across videos or short clips that purportedly carry the name of God or appear to be Christian in nature but which may contain questionable teachings. Some do point to revelational truths and yet there are those who may present half truths like the whole truth. The point is that one of the methods Satan uses to draw us away from God is to deceive us into thinking we are on the right path while leading us on the wrong path. It may be very subtle but once we are drawn in, we may slowly be influenced little by little and after a few years, we may end up compromising our faith. The devil would have won.

Besides discernment, the principle we must hold on tightly is to always check the teachings against the Word of God and make sure they do not go against the fundamentals of our faith. Just because someone says he is doing God’s work doesn’t mean that he is actually doing so. There are many who could be wolves in sheep clothing deceiving the flock. Is he living a life in accordance to God’s Word? What are this person’s fruits? Granted everyone is not perfect and ill intention may be difficult to gauge but pray and ask God. He will surely guide us.

Humility in Christ

https://odb.org/2026/02/23/humble-leadership

John 1:19–28 (NIV): 19 Now this was John’s testimony when the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to ask him who he was. 20 He did not fail to confess, but confessed freely, “I am not the Messiah.”
21 They asked him, “Then who are you? Are you Elijah?” He said, “I am not.” “Are you the Prophet?” He answered, “No.”
22 Finally they said, “Who are you? Give us an answer to take back to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?”
23 John replied in the words of Isaiah the prophet, “I am the voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way for the Lord.’ ”
24 Now the Pharisees who had been sent 25 questioned him, “Why then do you baptize if you are not the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?”
26 “I baptize with water,” John replied, “but among you stands one you do not know. 27 He is the one who comes after me, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.”
28 This all happened at Bethany on the other side of the Jordan, where John was baptizing.

My friend Butch Briggs has been the beloved coach for the swim teams at a local high school for fifty-one years. Out of curiosity, I asked him how many state championships he’d won during his five decades. In his trademark, gentle tone he quipped, “I’ve not won a single championship because I’ve never swum in a single race.” Trying again, I asked him, “How many championships have your swimmers won?” He happily responded, “Thirty-nine.” Butch taught me a valuable lesson. A coach plays an important role, but he didn’t want to take credit for what his swimmers accomplished. (Lisa M. Samra, Our Daily Bread 23rd February 2026)

I had to travel from Seremban, where our main and permanent home is, back to Kelana Jaya, where our city condo is, early yesterday morning after the Chinese New Year week and weekend. I thus didn’t have time to prepare and post yesterday’s morning devotional writing.

Xin Nian Kuai Le! Happy Chinese New Year, everyone who’s celebrating! Hope you had a blast catching up with close friends and relatives as some of us would have taken a few more days off to just chill back at our hometowns. This year, we spent some time with relatives and close church friends and had a meaningful time catching up.

Yesterday’s ODB article (23rd Feb) caught my eye and I like to expand on the topic today (24th Feb). I think humility is something every Christian struggle with. For non-believers, I guess it doesn’t matter so much to them since humility is not a trait everyone in the world aspires to. But for us believers, it is essential that we get this right as the LORD our God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble (James 4:6, 1 Peter 5:5). It is an important principle to get right because if God is for us, who can be against us? Why would we want a life with God being against us? Also, it is often the grace of God that carries us through many difficult and tough situations in our life.

One aspect of humility that we need to guard against is the natural tendency to want to take credit for things we have done. Even well-known and established pastor preachers love to boast about “their” achievements in Christ. Sometimes they even inadvertently take credit for some things they didn’t actually do! Some use the Lord like a stepping stone to blow their own trumpets by praising God while actually boasting. That’s really false humility. Most often when we boast, we forget that it is the Lord that made us who we are in this world, whether in ministry or in our secular careers.

I think a good way to avoid this trap of pride is to keep quiet and let our work speak for itself. What we have done is for all to see. Much may be unseen but God knows and He sees. Let others praise us if they see the goodness of God in our lives. Let God Himself promote and publicise our good deeds. Ultimately, all that we do is for His glory and the less we boast, the more it is genuinely for His glory. These things, after all, are His achievements through us, not our achievements in Him!

Always remember, we want God on our side and we want our lives to be overflowing with His grace. We will surely run into all sorts of trouble and challenges in life. Such things are unavoidable even though we are Christians. But it is the grace of God working in our circumstances that will carry us through. We certainly do not want the LORD to oppose us – He opposes the proud!

Have a good week ahead! After this week, by this weekend, we’ll be travelling for about two weeks to see my elder son in the UK. I will try to continue my postings but it will be in the early mornings GMT time. Thus, if you are in Malaysia, you will receive them in early afternoon since MST is GMT+8.

Once again, Blessed Chinese New Year and may the Year of the Horse bring us heavenly blessings and most importantly, may this year be overflowing with God’s grace! Amen!

Submit to God and resist the devil

https://odb.org/2026/02/13/be-careful-2

James 4:7–10 (NIV): 7 Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.

After years of struggle and crying out in prayer, Frank quit drinking. He attributes his continued sobriety to God’s work in his life. But he also made some important changes. He no longer kept alcohol in the house, watched for warning signs in his thinking and moods, and was wary of certain situations. He leaned on God and knew not to leave an opening for temptation or sin. (Alyson Kieda, Our Daily Bread 12th February 2026)

I think the key to resisting temptation as per James’s exaltation in his book at chapter 4 verse 10 is to submit to God. Yes, we need to run away from temptation perhaps à la Joseph vis-a-vis Potiphar’s wife. But most pertinently is to submit ourselves to God. Allow the Lord to sanctify, cleanse and strengthen us.

Submitting to God is also necessary because we will then not be relying on our own strength when we resist temptation. We are asking the Lord to help us so we don’t fall back onto our old habits. Habits that will lead us to destruction – not only spiritually but even in the natural. For instance, if we are an alcoholic, we may end up spending a lot of money and harming our liver. We may die young with liver cancer and in the process fail to fulfil God’s plans and purposes for our lives. We may end up leaving the world of the living not meeting our calling in God. Not measuring up to the Lord’s aspirations for us.

We need to resist the devil and he will flee from us. Greater is He that is in us than he who is in the world. Remember to submit to God. Allow Him to come into our lives and mould us. Worship Him in our quiet time and invite His presence into our midst, into our homes and offices. Let Him reign amongst us and not the principalities of the air. Let the Holy Spirit take charge of our lives, our homes and our family and jobs.

Have a good weekend even as we close this week! To those celebrating Chinese New Year, Xin Nian Kuai Le! Have a joyous and Spirit-filled Chinese New Year!

Non anxious presence

https://odb.org/2026/02/12/a-non-anxious-presence

Psalm 4: 6-8 NIV: 6 Many, Lord, are asking, “Who will bring us prosperity?” Let the light of your face shine on us. 7 Fill my heart with joy when their grain and new wine abound. 8 In peace I will lie down and sleep, for you alone, Lord, make me dwell in safety.

In his 1985 book Generation to Generation, family therapist and Rabbi Edwin Friedman introduced the phrase “a nonanxious presence.” Friedman’s thesis, later articulated in A Failure of Nerve, is that “the climate of contemporary America has become so chronically anxious that our society has gone into an emotional regression that is toxic to well-defined leadership.” Friedman focused on how chronic anxiety spreads within a system—a family, a workplace, a congregation. Yet in the same way, a leader can offer a nonanxious presence that will spread through a system, becoming a person of peace in the middle of a storm. (John Blasé, Our Daily Bread 12th February 2026)

I think it is quite tough for anyone not to be anxious when they are anxious over something. Anxiety is a natural reaction even though you know you cannot change the outcome through your anxiety. So if you’re waiting for your exam results, you cannot but feel anxious. For example, you will roughly know how you did and you are anxious hoping to do better than your realistic expectations and you are also hopeful that it will not be your worse case scenario, turning iut to be far below your expectations. Things like that makes anxiety quite unavoidable.

But in Psalm 4, David felt he could sleep in peace because he trusted God to ensure his safety. But David was probably not a young lad then. In most of his struggles recorded in the Psalms, David was running away from his own son, Absalom. He had years of experience trusting God as he probably had many instances of the LORD preserving his life at the battlefield. Trust that comes from his relationship with God as well as his strong belief in his own destiny in God.

We are not likely to face life and death situations like David. But if there are things that bother us, that cause us to be anxious, we will need to rely on our past experiences of how God had delivered us before. Trusting also in His calling and plans and purposes for our lives. So the results turned out to be not what we had hoped for. It’s OK because we are assured of our future well-being. We know His calling for us. We know that as we respond, God will make those plans and purposes materialise through our lives. Our destiny in eternal life is also assured. So if things in the world are not going as planned, we are good knowing we are in good hands in the Lord. He knows what’s best for us!

A non anxious presence is not an impossibility. If we are grounded in our relationship with God and in our destiny in Him here on earth and in heaven, perhaps it is more achievable. For we know that His plans for us are not to destroy us but to prosper us. To give us a hope and a future. See Jeremiah 29:11.

Honouring Jesus

https://odb.org/2026/02/11/honoring-jesus

Matthew 26:6–13 (NIV): 6 While Jesus was in Bethany in the home of Simon the Leper, 7 a woman came to him with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, which she poured on his head as he was reclining at the table.
8 When the disciples saw this, they were indignant. “Why this waste?” they asked. 9 “This perfume could have been sold at a high price and the money given to the poor.”
10 Aware of this, Jesus said to them, “Why are you bothering this woman? She has done a beautiful thing to me. 11 The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me. 12 When she poured this perfume on my body, she did it to prepare me for burial. 13 Truly I tell you, wherever this gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.”

A twenty-dollar bill and two leaflets with messages about Jesus. That’s what was inside an envelope labeled “John Daniels Sr, Random Act of Kindness Day.” A woman gave it to me while I was on my walk at the community college campus. A year earlier, John had been fatally struck by a car after helping a homeless man and sharing words about Christ’s love with him. John’s legacy of witnessing through words and deeds lives on through the woman I met that day, along with John’s other family members. (Arthur Jackson, Our Daily Bread 11th February 2026)

The woman with the alabaster jar in Matthew 6 should be seen as distinct from Mary, the sister of Lazarus who was recorded doing a similar act elsewhere in Mark 14, Luke 7 or John 12. You may Google why it is a different woman in terms of the setting and context although there are commentaries who argue that she is the same woman on the basis that it is unlikely such an event would have occurred twice in Jesus’s short 3-year ministry on earth.

The point however remains the same. That notwithstanding the high cost of the perfume which women at that time kept as dowry for their future marriage (costing over 300 denarii or a labourer’s wages for one year), it was an act worthy to bestow upon Jesus. This is because it still pales in comparison to Jesus dying on the cross for the sins of mankind.

How we as individual believers honour Christ in our lives is something for each of us to respond individually. It is not a competition but a personal response and conviction. Certain basics are like our tithes and offerings, our attendance in church, our daily quiet time and our service in ministry. But do you travel 70km to go to church in another city or find a church closer to home? That depends on your calling and conviction. My view is church is an extension of our calling and less a matter of convenience, yet practicality also plays a part. We need to balance the considerations.

The famous story of Saul himself offering a sacrifice to God before going to battle without waiting for Samuel the prophet to do so illustrates the principle that obedience is better than sacrifice. Note that sacrifice here is ceremonial sacrifice and the rule then was only the prophet is authorised to offer that sacrifice to God. To apply the principle in context, honouring God may or may not involve sacrifice but obedience to His voice calling or prompting us is key. We obey His call, rather than do things to show others our dedication or how sacrificial is our service or commitment. Don’t fall into the trap to force a sacrifice to please men or even God. For the latter, always respond to His calling.

Honour Jesus in the things we do. He is worthy of all our honour, exaltation and praise. He is the author and finisher of our faith after all! He is our Lord and Saviour!Amen!