Morning Musings with the boys at breakfast...
Here we go talking about the apostle Paul again. He does feature greatly in the New Testament as he wrote so much of it. Here in the book of 1 Timothy we read of God's magnificent grace that He showed to Paul despite Paul's having been the "worst of sinners". God gave Paul eternal life through Jesus and then entrusted a commission to him to fulfill. Paul had been and continued to be faithful in that commission.
Paul passed this on to Timothy by giving him the commission to help lead and guide the church at Ephesus. We can read about this in 1 Timothy 1:12-20. This commission came with instructions to "fight the good fight"; "hold onto faith and a "good conscience". Timothy in turn had great integrity as he meted out his spiritual leadership.
By contrast we see the two men Hymenaeus and Alexander who "rejected the truth"; "shipwrecked their faith"; and "blasphemed" perhaps with false doctrine and/or slander (1:3-7). Timothy had no easy job to fight against these false teachings. In Revelation 2:1-7 we see a description of the church of Ephesus. In verses 2 and 3 it mentions that these two men tested the claims of the apostles. As we can see the real enemy would be Satan who is only out to "steal, kill and/or destroy" (John 10). But these two were found out.
The Ephesian church persevered and endured hardships for the Name of Jesus and did not grow weary. They also hated the false teachings of the Nicolaitans. However it is sad to see that they did lose their "first love" of Christ. Again this is not spelled out as to the exact reason but I know that many things in life can distract us and take us away from our following after God and building our relationship with Him.
My sons do continue to press on in your spiritual growth in Christ and keep your focus on Him. Do not be distracted by all the "fun and games" in life. Put your faith and hope and trust in God your Saviour; rely on Him. Turn any disappointments in life into times of learning from Him and what He wants you to know. Beware also of materialism. We can be greatly lured away from Jesus; making money and possessions our 'god' instead of God being their God.
Also be the spiritual leader God has ordained you to be. Learn from Paul and Timothy's example and be such among the people of God wherever God brings you to fellowship. Pass it on to the next generation. Lead, guide and mentor by example into all truth, forsaking the false doctrines; not getting involved in malice and slander and not being distracted by 'things'. May God get the glory and praise from your lives as you are faithful in the commission He gives you.
~ERC 2016~
Morning Musings with the boys at breakfast...
The following is based on 1 Timothy 1:1-11.
My father often told me that for every good plant there is a corresponding false plant; commonly known as a weed. Satan always has his counterfeits which he torques and tweaks in various angles for the benefit of any and all, per person's, or group of persons' bent of thinking. Thus many varieties of false teachings are concocted: Gnostics; Essences; Arianism; Zorastrianism; Mormans; Jehovah Witnesses; True Jesus Church and many more. You can google them to check them out; also look for comparison of cults.
Some of those actually look really good and respectable and indeed have elements of goodness, thus the deceitfulness that unfortunately blinds the minds of many. Deceitfully cunning Satan....that's not a compliment either.
However we who believe in Jesus Christ's deity as well as His humanity and in His perfect work of redemption and who have accepted God's gift of salvation through His Son Jesus, have His Holy Spirit within us to guide us into all God's truth and to help us discern the falsehoods.
In one of Jesus' parables He tells the servants to "Let both grow together until harvest" as this is the time the wheat and the weeds can be distinguished. The end of the weeds is to be burned. (Matthew 13:24-30 and 36-43). So too will God's truth overcome Satan's lies and be exposed for what they truly are.
There is a saying that says, "Many of the major religions are superficially the same but fundamentally different to the message of Jesus." Most are works religions whereas Jesus has done the work for us and God offers salvation through Jesus Christ as a free gift to whoever wants it.
So, my sons, be alert and aware of the wiles of the devil and remember we can have victory in Christ. The more we read God's Word and have a knowledge of God the more we will be able to detect the false. This can be illustrated with the story of the bank cashier who first trains with real notes and then eventually counterfeits are slipped into the stack to see if she can detect them. So too we need to saturate ourselves in God's Word so we will know the 'feel' of the right from the wrong.
~ERC 2016~
Morning Musings with the boys at breakfast...
There are warnings here in 2 Thessalonians 3:6-18 about being idle. Over the few years of your lives, my sons, you've heard me tell you if "you aren't going to work, you aren't going to eat". This has been in regard to the general household chores about the home that need to be done. Family members should not have to be paid in dollars and cents but as part of the family, tend to the various tasks that need to be done for the good and benefit of one and all: dishes; sweeping; mopping and the like. And all this whether you are a boy or a girl. One must learn that with privilege, responsibility also comes; there are two sides to a coin. You've heard me say that one too.
So we have here the exhortation to the Thessalonians, most of whom were likely adults, "to settle down and earn the bread they eat" and this in the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Do not "tire of doing what is right."
The Thessalonians were well aware that Paul, Silas and Timothy also earned their keep and did not ask them to provide for them. They worked hard and didn't take any 'freebies". This was the example Paul asked them to follow.
Paul "walked the talk". Let us each remember to be diligent and to earn our keep.
~ERC 2016~
Morning Musings with the boys at breakfast...
Once again we come upon Paul's urging his readers towards perseverance here in 2 Thessalonians 3:1-5. My favorite verse here is verse 5 which reads:
"May the Lord direct your hearts into God's love and Christ's perseverance."
You can see the loving 'father heart' of Paul as he hopes and prays his 'children' will go in the right way. There are almost always two directions, or choices, a person can make; the right way or the wrong way. Sons, this verse is my hope and prayer for you too!
Paul asks for the partnership of the Thessalonians in the line of prayer. They have reached a level of maturity in the right way and he can count on them; on having them on his team. So he asks them to pray that he (and Silas and Timothy--the 2 other senders of this epistle) will be able to spread the "message of the Lord" rapidly and that the message would be "honored" by the hearers in the same way in which the Thessalonians had honored it.
A second prayer was that the three be "delivered from wicked and evil men" as they proclaim the message. Satan and/or his minions will always be lurking to discredit the message and/or to dissuade the hearers from the truth.
Further to this is quite a list of things that Paul exhorts the Thessalonians to do; in fact, he "commands" them to them. Here's the list: "stand firm; spread the message of Jesus; strengthened in every good deed and word, and here's our word, "persevere' in holiness" and then a whole lot more; avoid every kind of evil; avoid sexual immorality; be holy as God is holy; let brotherly love continue; lead a quiet life; mind your own business; work with their own hands (as he who does not work should not eat); be alert and self-controlled; encourage and build each other up.
And that incentive again, to encourage each other with the hope of Jesus' return to bring them (and us) to glory. This we have seen a couple of days back in what is titled Morning Musings-Rapturous Hope. This sure hope of our being taken up to be with Jesus for all eternity.
This is what Christian living is characterized by and how the body of Christ can function. As we look out for one another and care for each other and together, in unity of Spirit, be in partnership with those who "go into all the world and preach the gospel" (Matthew 28:18-20). They need us for "back up" yet we also have to be thriving and doing our part on the home front living for Jesus. Overall, let us persevere in all God plans for and has commanded us to do; by God's grace
we can.
~ERC 2016~
Morning Musings with the boys at breakfast...
Authority! It's a big struggle to think well of those in authority over us. We want to oppose and frustrate them but in 1 Thessalonians 5:12-28 we are told to "Hold our spiritual leaders in highest regard in love". So guess that means we have to love them. Out of that love we then respect them and hold them in "highest regard". And it doesn't say to respect them only if we like them. We just have to do it. It's part of Christian living.
It's because they also "work hard" on our behalf and on the behalf of others. Just think how it came about. From Jesus to the disciples who became apostles and with the Holy Spirit's empowering they did many mighty works and were strong and courageous and stood firm in their faith enduring so much hardship and persecution. They worked hard in the Lord. There were also Paul, Silas, and Timothy and many, many more who were passing on the message of Jesus and God's word to their generation and the next.
They were loved by God, chosen by God and saved through Jesus Christ. They were sanctified by the Holy Spirit and called by God as were the Thessalonians to whom Paul was writing. They were also all going to share in the eternal glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. In this they were also called to stand firm, to hold on to the teachings passed on to them.
Some people say, "Oh, a little bit of sin won't hurt. Go ahead, never mind." But verse 22 tells us to "avoid every kind of evil" (NIV) and another version says it like this, "abstain from all appearance of evil" (KJV). Even the appearance of evil we need to be aware and beware of!
God's ultimate wish for us is to be "holy as He is holy" (1 Peter 1:15). Don't dabble in that which is not holy. Keep every part of you: spirit, soul and body, blameless til the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. There are so many reminders for being holy. Human being's nature is for the opposite thus the constant reminders and we don't have to strive to live holy, alone. We have God's Word, the Holy Spirit and the body of Christ to help us (vs 12 "those who work hard among you who are over you in the Lord and who admonish you"). Let us respect them and pray for them that they will be doing their job to please God and not to please themselves nor to be 'man pleasers'.
Another 'incentive' to be holy is this third mention of the coming of our Lord (verse 23). This encouragement to persevere in our holiness til that coming day. Don't give up. So let us be encouraged in our hearts, strengthened in every good deed and word (see also 2 Thessalonians 2:13-16). We can do all of this through God's grace towards us and which is with us.
~ERC 2016~
Morning Musings with the boys at breakfast...
Talking about that Morning Musings-Rapturous Hope from a previous blog entry, I've got this to say, "We just don't know when that will be. We don't know when Jesus will come on the clouds to call us up to be with Him forever. However, this is no excuse to live any old way we please. We need to be "alert and self-controlled" so says Paul in 1 Thessalonians 5:6-11. Let Jesus find us still living to please Him and not off engaging in worldly pleasures.
Yes, but how? We "belong to the children of the day" so when we are self-controlled, which I might add is one of the characteristics of the fruit of the Holy Spirit who indwells each believer in Jesus Christ; when we put on faith and love as a breastplate, and the hope of salvation as a helmet, we protect our heart and head.
The helmet signifies the protection of our minds and thoughts. The hope of salvation telling us we are children of God. We are of great value to God who loves us and cares about us. This helmet can ward off all those negative thoughts about ourselves being no-good or of thinking we can lose our salvation because we've just done something so terrible God won't forgive us. No, we are His for life and He will not reject His children. Satan tries to mess with our minds telling us lots of those negative things but when we arm ourselves with God's Word using our mind and let it become part of us as we obey it, that Word will travel to our hearts and so be a further protection for us to live life. This is being alert to Satan's wiles.
Those of us who are God's children have been appointed to receive salvation and NOT to suffer God's wrath. The knowledge of this will also dissolve what anxiousness we may have about it and so be part of that armor of protection on our minds and hearts. We are living in self-control, guarding our thoughts and guiding and molding them to His.
This is something we can rely on and rejoice in. Whether we are awake or asleep (dead in Christ), we'll live together with Him in a coming day. We can encourage and build one another up with these thoughts. Even though the Thessalonians were already making a practice of all this, Paul still reminds them to continue to do so. As we live in this "alert and self-controlled" manner we will continue that sanctified living and show that we are ever more and more living as "children of the light and day". May God bless you ever more and more, my sons, with His love, grace, mercy and truth as you live for Him. He's coming for us soon...perhaps today!
~ERC 2016~
Before I met Jesus, I wasn't born...of course, that may not be technically true as even while I was in utero they would still have been singing and praying and talking about Him and according to science, a wee one in the womb can hear stuff from the "outer world"... since birth I have known who Jesus was/is because my parents made sure I knew Him from Day 1 and that He loved me and wanted me for His own child. They taught me the way to be His child.
So saying, I realized at an early age that I needed Jesus in my life. All His sufferings He went through during His trial and afterwards on the cross were for me.. He did this out of His everlasting love so He could take the punishment for, and forgive me for, my sins thus granting me eternal life and to be with Him in heaven some day. He also wanted to make me His child. The alternative was and still is to end up in Hell separated from God for eternity and I knew I definitely did NOT want to go there!! That was too scary and I hated to think of the pain.
Given those two choices, I therefore committed my life to Jesus. I can't remember an exact time or place in which I specifically did this as growing up under the constant influence of the teachings of Jesus and how He lived and died, it was almost a natural acceptance thereof. Because of that there have been what I'll call "re-commitments" to living for Jesus along throughout my life (just to be sure I wasn't going to Hell) as I grew more independent in my thinking to the point where I could say, "I believe this, I want Jesus in my life, not because my parents want me to, not because they keep teaching me all this, BUT because of my own free will I accept it for myself--it's what I want."
As for the difference between the before and after of accepting salvation through Jesus Christ and knowing it to be the truth of life. It is difficult to say what that difference would be seeing as I grew up learning how to behave in a 'Jesus-like manner'. Therefore the before and after may not be as noticeable as it is in other people who did not have that advantage. However, I believe that without Jesus I don't think I'd be alive today; at least I wouldn't have a very good life.
The teen years, as for many other teens, were rather a struggle for me and I recall hating just about everything and everyone including myself. I remember one time when a group of students hung out n one corner of the high school while waiting for their respective school buses to arrive to whisk them home. They used to smoke what looked like 'regular' cigarettes but they had a very sweet, sweet aroma that got into my psychic until I could stand it no longer and determinedly said to myself, "Tomorrow, I'm going to ask to smoke with them."
The next afternoon dismissal time arrived and I rushed down to 'drug corner'. What do you expect I found!? Not a single sweet cigarette soul in sight!! I waited and waited, still none of them appeared. By the time my bus came I was hopping mad at God!! "Why did You do this to me!!??? I want to smoke that sweet stuff!" Temper tantrum!
The next day and the next, for many 'next' days that gang never showed up 'til the good Lord knocked some sense into me. I'm now very grateful to the Lord for His preservation of my health and life as they could have turned in a terribly, awful different direction...that I know now.
Living with Jesus in my life is to always have someone to talk to about the good and the bad. He also gives me direction for living life to please Him, through His Holy Spirit who indwells me,
There are various life lessons that He has helped me learn. Lessons about failure; lack of $$; pain and sorrow; having to wait; illness and disappointments.
There are times of many failures in 'connecting' with my own teenagers and even in the marital relationship. How does one bridge the gaps? They can be extremely distressing and tiring and one can have many thoughts of giving up. Relationships should be a two-way street but often seem only to be a one-way...what can one do? One adage my Mom, or was it my Dad?, often quoted was "if at first you don't succeed, try, try again". And so with the help of Jesus, the One who never fails us, we do just that: try, try again.
You could say another failure of mine is failure to fully adopt this region, that is, South East Asia (SEA) in which I've lived in since marriage. I don't say I have failed, rather there are many who see that I don't 'measure up' to their expectations of ..."what you've been here so long and you still can't blah, blah, blah?!!" Well, this is when a person can realize they are not in their own country and among ones' own countrymen. However, as a Christian, this whole world is not our 'real' home, Heaven is. So from this so-called 'failure', one can praise God, that 'hey, I don't have to measure up to this world's standards' but to God's! And God is gracious and merciful and He forgives again and again. What a mighty God, who never fails!
The lessons from lack of $$ to rub together. Well, one learns to be more frugal but where does God come into the equation? He says, He will supply all or needs (Philippians 4:19). In this one needs to learn to rely on Him and trust Him. Ask and wait and see how He does it. He's so creative.
Pain and sorrow can really teach a lot. But one of the biggest lessons learned at the time our firstborn child, a daughter, got sick with leukemia. The Lord's people, the body of Christ, came out of the 'wood-work' so to speak, and were very supportive and the Lord comforted us through them. I learned I could trust God even through these intense times and He will bring His people to help. What a privilege to belong to God's family! Again, I learned that "He faileth not." (Zephaniah 3:5)
How many people like to wait? Well, I don't. There seems to be so many times of having to wait for one thing or another even in mundane things of daily living. Those of us who have Jesus in their life and thus belong to God, have His Holy Spirit indwelling us. One of the fruit of the Holy Spirit is, you guessed it...'patience'. So when we have those frustrating waits, I try to see them as opportunities to hone a little more patience and become 'more like Christ'; this is part of Christian living and Biblical culture.
Lessons through illness, and this can be tied into the pain and sorrow category somewhat. However, I haven't been really very ill in my life before--thankfully. There was one time I was scared after a miscarriage and a nurse told me she had to take some blood samples to check for a type of cancer that she said was common among Asian women and the doc wanted to be sure I didn't have that. The test came out negative. However in those couple of days of waiting for the result I got really scared--not so much of dying but of having to go through chemo treatments and all that entails. The mind was very active. What would become of my very young family? I was upset yet didn't tell anyone what the nurse had said.
It's at times like these that it's a mercy to have Jesus as your friend and talk to Him, I did. A lot. He calmed my nerves. He told me to stay calm and wait for the results; they came out negative. So anxiety over the matter was needless..when we have times like these we need to "cast all your anxieties on Him because He cares for you." (1 Peter 5:7) Then in Psalm 55:22 the comfort is "Cast your cares on the Lord and He will sustain you; He will never let the righteous fall." So you see, we can trust Him as "He faileth not."
During our daughter's illness, we felt so helpless and like our hearts were being twisted out of our bodies, and I know that, for me, I couldn't breathe well. Heartache, indeed! As mentioned above, the Lord was gracious. He surrounded us with so many of His people to support us in prayer ( & finances) and with their physical provisions letting us know they care. The lesson to let others help us was impressed upon us. I learned what a great family God has who are ready and willing to reach out and help in a bond of love.
The Lord gave me peace that even if our Hannah was to go to be with Him---I could stand it. At her funeral I was feeling regrets--thinking to myself as I gazed at her--"She'll never become "sweet 16". She'll never graduate from high school. She'll never get married." The Lord spoke into my ear, "This IS her wedding day!" She was dressed in a lovely red and white dress and had flowers arranged in her hands. Jesus had received her to His home and called it equal to a joyous wedding day! I felt so happy then. My regret and despair lifted immediately at His spoken words.
So I learned that our Heavenly Father, God, can comfort, and comfort me personally--He didn't send an angel, but Himself! Praise be to His name! He didn't fail me, did He!
About disappointments in life...there have been many; some small, some a whole lot bigger. But one has to get up, dust oneself off, and go on ones' way. I'm currently in the process of reading one of Kay Arthur's books entitled, "As Silver Refined". She asserts that we can become stronger from them. One of the things she says, is to "change the 'd' into an 'h', making our 'disappointments His appointments'. God may allow the disappointments of life to compel you to look to Him for your everything; to put your faith and hope and trust in Him alone. This is a specific appointment with God to help you do this. Don't miss His appointment. The opposite of meeting your appointment with Him could be depression.
One of the lessons we learn from answered prayer is that there could be three different answers: Yes, No or Wait. Our disappointments often come with the No and the Wait. But God wants to give us "good and perfect gifts" and if what we desired was going to be bad for us, then a loving Father would not want us to have it. As God is our Heavenly Father and knows all, He is not afraid to disappoint us now and again as He does it out of His love and goodness. Let us reciprocate His love and show our gratitude to Him for I am certain that "He faileth not."
~ERC 2016~
Morning Musings with the boys at breakfast...
In the previous couple of blogs we have been talking about being blameless and holy in God's sight. When we live in such a way, even our fellow human beings we live with and come into contact with, will see it. We've learned that this is the spiritual process called 'sanctification' which is ongoing from the moment of salvation when we were born into God's family and goes on until the day we die; if we persist and persevere therein. There have been some things mentioned 'to do' and some 'not to do' which you can read about in my previous blog viewing
Morning Musings-Blameless and Useful.
Now we come to 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18. This makes mention of that happening we look eagerly forward to; the rapture. That day when Jesus comes on the clouds and gives us a shout and the archangel blasts on his trumpet to call us up to be with Him forever. OH! What a joyful day that will be!
This is the focus, the goal to live our lives by; that motivation to be blameless and pure for Him until that coming day. This is our incentive...He's coming soon. He's said so in Revelation 22:12, 13. Go have a read of it. This is encouragement! This is HOPE! A rapturous hope.
By God's grace, let us live for Him--it's His will and what we've been called to do and God has taught us and is teaching us to live that sanctified life. This pleases our Heavenly Father to no end.
~ERC 2016~
Morning Musings with the boys at breakfast...
The apostle Paul doesn't mince words in 1 Thessalonians 4:3-13! He goes right to it telling them (and us, incidentally) that sanctification is explicitly necessary to ones' Christian living if we are to please God with our life. Sanctification being that process of becoming more "holy as God is holy" (1 Peter 1:15). To be sanctified, blameless and to aim towards perfection which will make us useful to our Lord and Master and Savior Jesus Christ; this is the living that pleases God.
It's God's will for us His children to be holy and to continue in this process of spiritual growth and perfection. How are we to do this? Part of this process is as follows:
1. Avoid sexual immorality. Control your body, its urges, passions and lusts. Don't wrong yourself and certainly don't cause wrong to others in rape, molestation, incest, even with consenting unmarried to each other, persons and the like. We, God's children, have the Holy Spirit and one of the characteristics of the fruit of the Holy Spirit is self-control. Exercise that to the maximum degree needed and so you will grow in that area in a positive way.
2. Brotherly love features big for disciples of Jesus Christ. Jesus told His disciples that when we love each other "all men will know that you are My disciples..." John 13:35. God demonstrated to us just how much we are to love one another when He sent Jesus to die for our sins and gain us eternal life. Even while we were still sinners! He didn't expect us to reach a certain level of goodness or holiness first because He knew we could never measure up. So He loved us anyway. That is how we are to love others despite their shortcomings and/or those people we don't like very much. This kind of love will really get us cuz it won't be easy much of the time. "The fruit of the Spirit is...love." (Galatians 6:23) This will help us though to become more blameless and useful to God when we exercise it in this way.
3. Leading a quiet life, minding your own business and working with ones' own hands may sound like it doesn't belong here but I can assure you it does. The way we carry out our daily life can win respect from outsiders; others will notice. This will also help us not to be dependent on anyone and so free them to use their time, effort and $$ for others in real need. We also would not be stirring up trouble for others when we don't go poking into others' life in a nosy sort of way. Yes, we are supposed to care about and for others, that is part of brotherly love, but don't get so involved in their life that trouble is caused of one sort or another.
Being able to earn ones' own bread (or rice, as the case may be) is a good thing and even special needs people can be taught much to help themselves to their greatest potential and become even semi-independent when and where possible.
To recap, it should be stated that the sanctification process begins at the point of salvation. We have a problem and that problem is sin. We are responsible and accountable for our sin. We cannot do anything about that for ourselves in a satisfactory way for God: absolutely nothing of significance or in a sufficient way. Trying to "do better" doesn't work so we need help. That sin is hurting us and even possibly others.
Help comes in the form of acceptance of salvation through Jesus Christ; reading of God's Word and obeying it; and through the Holy Spirit, Who is given to each and every child of God upon salvation. When we keep close to God and build up our relationship with Him we will have personal growth and spiritual growth keeping stride making us fit and useful to Father, God our Master and His Son Jesus Christ.
~ERC 2016~
Paul passed this on to Timothy by giving him the commission to help lead and guide the church at Ephesus. We can read about this in 1 Timothy 1:12-20. This commission came with instructions to "fight the good fight"; "hold onto faith and a "good conscience". Timothy in turn had great integrity as he meted out his spiritual leadership. 
