Being Kids!
“Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these” (Matthew 19:14) So often have we heard people quoting this verse when they are sharing the gospel with the children. But, do we reflect upon what this verse really mean to us? Or does it only imply that Jesus is a loving Father who loves little children?
For the word of God is alive and active and definitely apply to all of us. Personally, I believe that when Jesus said “let the little children come to me”, he is referring to the adults too. As we grow older, we tend to think that we have come to the age whereby we already knew everything and hence, pride began to creep into us so silently that we did not realize how much it had changed us. Compare to the ways we handle our wrongs with the little children: One will start to fight and stand up for himself/herself while the latter (though may be mischievous) will accept the mistake and learned from it. Else, how would the children ever learn how to walk, how to talk and how to study? It was the humbleness within them and the willingness to learn that helped them through all this.
May we become like the children once again, humble in accepting our wrongs and in growing, May we be able to encourage one another in our walk with Christ with love.
hp
It’s A Sacrifice…
Well, this week I’d like to share a bit on sacrifice. I was just thinking about something Uncle James said today: “When you start to get very busy, the first things you’ll drop are God’s things.” He was referring to the occasions when people pull out of ministry work/service (e.g. playing in the worship team) because they have exams. This led me to think about the whole concept of sacrifice.
Worship is sacrifice (Rom 12:1). We cannot say “For me, to live is Christ and to die is gain” (Phil 1:21) unless we are willing to sacrifice our desires, our time and our comfort in order to serve God. Living for Christ means completely letting go of your personal agenda and ambitions. It doesn’t mean putting God first and you second. It means putting God in total, complete control. There isn’t any space for selfish desires if we want to truly serve Christ and live for him.
What does this mean in real life? It means coming to worship practice on Saturday afternoons rather than going to a friend’s birthday party. It means helping your parents wash the dishes and hang up the laundry when you’d prefer to be stalking people on Facebook. It means writing an overdue prayer letter on a Sunday afternoon when you’d much rather be catching up on that huge homework project you still haven’t finished.
Worship is sacrifice. Please don’t get me wrong – it doesn’t mean that if you’re not sacrificing anything, you’re not worshipping God. But what I’m saying is that, just as the test of true courage comes when we are facing our greatest fear, the test of how much we truly love God is how willing we are to give up what we want the most when it hurts the most, in order that we might serve him more wholeheartedly.
JW
God Given Giftings
Each of us had been blessed with one or more gifts from our Father in Heaven. But the way we want to use our gifts is our choice. I was reminded again of the parable of the talents where 3 servants were given 5 talents, 2 talents and 1 talent respectively. As we know, the first two servants invested the talents while the third servant buried in the ground and thus when his master came back, he was very displeased with the third servant. Though in this parable the talents represented ‘money’ but it is important that this story applies to us too in terms of gifts and abilities from God to us.
All of us in JH had been so gifted, either in the music ministry, in encouraging each other through prayers, through sharing, or even through asking questions that incite us to think deeper J that at times we took those gifts from God for granted. When put in a situation, we chose to let go of the greater things God has prepared for us because we are scared or because we are worried about what others may think of us more than what God think of us or because we had a small quarrel. Just like the third servant, one day we may find the gift that God has given to us be snatched away from us.
Instead, may we be like the 2 servants whose master said to them “Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness.”
At the end of the day, let us remember that we are not serving men or church literally, but instead, we are serving the One True God who sees all and would want us to use the talents he has given to us to bring glory and honour to His name and to build His kingdom. May we be humble and realize that we need each other to grow. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep our spiritual fervor, serving the Lord (Romans 12:11).
hp
And My HEART Will Sing…
When we worship, we sing with our mouths. But, true worship is not only merely singing with our mouths, it’s about meaning what we say to God with all our HEART and worshipping with our HEARTS. Remember the song, How Great Is Our God? one part it goes:
Name above all names,
Worthy of all praise,
And my HEART will sing,
How great, is our God!
I want to stress on this, because singing with our mouths but not with our HEARTS has no meaning. In Ephesians 5:19b-20 it says: Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, 20 always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. it also says in Psalms 30:12: that my heart may sing your praises and not be silent. LORD my God, I will praise you forever. We as people of God not only should worship God with singing but with our daily lives as well! To Glorify Him, and magnify His name! All power, praise and honour be unto Him, forever!
I’m writing this because i have been facing the problem lately of singing with my mouth and not with my heart. It feels empty, it feels meaningless, it feels really bad. To just stand there sometimes and not sing with my whole heart to God. It feels like being separated from something you treasure a lot. Imagine being separated from your loved ones, not being able to talk to them, to feel their love. That’s almost how it feels to be separated from God but being separated from God is worse. It is a feeling i cannot fully describe, but it hits so hard deep in that it cuts the soul leaving a hole for emptiness to come in. Till God comes and fills it up again. Then God brought me to talk to Kim Beng about it, he told me its the Holy Spirit that’s inside me telling me something’s wrong and i should pray about it and spend time with God.
I encourage you all to really seek God and worship Him with all your heart. It is an amazing experience worshipping with our hearts, because it makes more sense when we worship with our hearts than just our mouths wording the texts on the screen. We should mean what we sing to God.
C=
Examine Your Motives!
How’s everyone? Hope you’re all enjoying getting angpows (even better if you have lots of siblings; your family’s net profit is greater). It’s funny how, even in the midst of such a traditional and family-oriented holiday, we can still introduce commercialism and money. But then I guess it’s cus we’re Chinese, and money is part of our culture =P
Anyway, what I wanted to share about today is why, sometimes, our prayers may not be answered. There is a story that tries to illustrate God’s three main responses to prayer:
“There was once a man with three children, two boys and a girl. One day, they saw him shaving and thought it was really cool. So they each asked him, in turn, if they could borrow his razor. To the eldest, a boy, he said YES, because he was old enough to use it. To the second, a girl, he said NO, because it was unsuitable for her (we’re ignoring shaving armpits, legs, etc. now). And to the youngest, a boy, he said WAIT, because he was not yet old enough to use it, but could later on do so.”
So basically, the story tries to tell us that the reason God may not answer our prayers is that: i) what we’re asking for is not suitable or beneficial to us, or ii) we need to wait before he will answer. But I think there’s a third reason why God doesn’t answer prayer. James 4:3 tells us: ‘You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.’ Don’t forget that the reason God answers prayer is to bring himself glory – so if the ultimate motive of your prayer is to glorify yourself, then don’t get your hopes up.
For example, I may ask God to give me pro drumming skills “so that I can serve You better”. But what I’m subconsciously thinking in my heart is, “so I can impress others and make it seem like I’m pro”. So even though what I ask for will allow me to serve God better, he may not answer my prayers because my underlying motive is a selfish one.
The next time you ask God for stuff, and you don’t get it, examine your motives!
JW
Joshua House 