Killing Pride

If there's one thing that an infinitely loving God detests, that is pride. No sin and human tendency since the creation (and even before it) has caused so much of the trouble in the world than the sin of pride, arrogance, and rebellion.

Way into the second chapter of Isaiah, God again issues the same invitation He offered in the first chapter. He invites us to come, and go with Him and experience Him. We who are a bunch of prideful creatures are still loved by God with an everlasting love that He still wants us to come.

But I must first be willing to meet the standards of His holiness. How can I come to the Lord and be able to experience Him?

I should get rid of any pride in me. God is never pleased with the proud--He detests and destroys them (v12-17). Pride only makes me trust in my own ability and resources. In order to come to the Lord, I must go before Him with humility and total abandon of myself and say, "God, you're all that I need..."

I must get rid of my idolatry (v7-9, 8, 20). Anything that distract my focus on God must be shattered. Anything that gets attention in my life more that God must be severed. There's only one focus and that is the Lord my God.

I must determine to exalt Christ in my life (v11). I must realize that the sole purpose of my life is to please God and exalt Him always. Anything less than the glory of God in my life must go. I must desire to achieve greater faith and obedience for the praise of His glory.

Pride and arrogance have no place in the heart of a servant of the Lord!

Scarlet, Crimson, and the Blood

Personal holiness and purity in today's culture is no more than a thing of the past, an idealized virtue that broken people like you and me try to pursue and yet willingly ignores. Here's a fact that I know of: morality is mocked, purity is laughed at, and the people who try to stand for these are labelled as bigoted and intolerant and Dark Age prophets.

But here's the truth that remains today: God still demands holiness and purity. It has not changed over the course of generations when God issued the decree which commands His people to pursue purity. The call to be holy and separated from the world is ever more resounding today.

God through the prophet Isaiah proclaimed that same message many generations ago: "wash yourselves, make yourselves clean; put away the evil of your doings from before my eyes. Cease to do evil." (Isa 1:16)

God desires our purity and holiness. He is a holy God. No sin and transgression can ever stand before Him. For without holiness no one will be able to see Him. (Hebrews 12:14)

God desires repentance. He wants our turning away from evil. Physical offerings and works are never sufficient to obtain God's forgiveness and grace. What matters to the Lord is a repentant heart that is willing to yield to God's heart.

God desires my utmost devotion and obedience. A direct result of repentance is obedience to God and His word.God desires our obedience because with it comes the essential process where we can experience His awesome power. It is in obedience to His commands that I will be able to experience God fully in my life.

Today, He still invites people to come to Him and reason with Him (Isa 1:18). God is daring us to settle the matter before Him, with the promise that if we repent, even our darkest deed and sins as deep as crimson and red will be forgiven and forgotten. Will you come to Him today?

The best time

God is the God of perfect timing. His purposes is neither affected by the earth's rotation nor its revolution. He is not contained in any man-made idea of space and time--He holds space and time altogether. I must realize that God's timing is always right and that I can trust Him every passing minute and every step of the way because what I see at the moment is nothing compared to what He sees in view of eternity.

He is neither dependent on any circumstance nor on human limitation. God is God no matter the circumstance and no matter the trial. He has been there before and He is always before us. God was, God is, and God always will be.

*Reflections on Genesis 21

God of the Extremes

God specializes in going to the extremes. He did not wait that long to fulfill His promises just because He can't; but He waited for the perfect time when Abraham and Sarah could depend on nothing and no one else but God. 

God waited for the time when all chances were over for the promise to be fulfilled. God waited until all logical possibilities were eliminated. God waited until what remained were only hope and faith. 

And God has to remove first what was humanly possible so that we won't be mistaken about which is truly the work of God when it happens. God has to remove first our confidence to man-made strategies so we can really say that He is the God of miracles. God has to remove first our confidence in the things that we try to hold on to so that we would lay hold on the grace of God alone. God has to take away all our possibilities so that we can believe in Him as the God who can do the impossible.

Faith is oftentimes like that. It is going to the extremes. It is going to what is illogical. It is going against the tide of human reason. It is defying all common sense because faith now becomes the new definition of reality and everything I know about faith in God has now become the only truth.

The point of waiting in faith is that we're not waiting in vain. But we're waiting for a God who has never fail ever since He authored the beginning of time. In case He fails today, it will be the first time ever in the history of eternity. But that won't happen. Because God will come through. As He always has.

*Reflections on Genesis 18. I am doing a daily devotional on the Book of Genesis, and it really pays to again go back to the beginning to see God's wonderful work throughout all eternity past.

Live like you mean it! (Photo from the net)

The non-negotiable of God's Will

Do it God's way! (Photo from the net)

If you want God's perfect WILL, you have to do it God's WAY. God's will and God's ways are not mutually exclusive. They must always go together. Anything done outside the ways and strategies of God is just human work and can not stand in eternity. Anything done outside the truth of God's Word and God's timing is not only crazy but dangerous.

Oftentimes, we have the tendency to insist on doing things our own way because we think we already figured this out and that this is how it should be done because it appeals to our logic and common sense. Because this is the reasonable way to do it. I do not say that logic and faith don't go together very well. They actually complement one another; or better yet, in the eternal view of things, faith and reason actually mean the same thing! Because to a believer faith is reasonable, faith is logical, faith is as good as common sense. When we start to live our lives in faith, we now recognize that faith really is as solid as common sense.

So I must learn to live out in faith, because it will make me trust in God's ways. And God's ways are not burdensome, they are not there to keep me from enjoying life--they are there to make me enjoy life in the way that it should be. I must control my tendency to trust in my own ways until following God's way will be as natural to me as breathing.

*My reflections on Genesis 17. I am currently doing a daily devotional on the Book of Genesis, and it really pays to again go back to the beginning to see God's wonderful work since eternity past.

This is how we do

We read chapter four of the book of Philippians today for our early morning devotion, and these are some of my reflections:

Suffering is real

That is a plain fact. Everyone of us experience sufferings of many kinds. Sufferings in the form of the physical, emotional, material, and spiritual. We experience lack, we experience frustrations, we experience testings, we experience hunger. Since every one is living in this unpredictable world, no one is exempted. Not even the apostle Paul was spared from the sufferings of his day. After encountering Jesus on the way to Damascus one day and after he has surrendered all claim to himself and gave all to his God, he realized that it was not actually easy. Life in Christ doesn't mean we go through life scot-free. But we are expected to live a life worry-free, and every step of the way, to live by faith and not by sight.

Our response

We should stand firmly on God's promises. In times of suffering, trusting and being confident that something good will turn-out can actually be harder than is imagined. But the Word of God repeatedly assures us that our confidence is in Him who is before all things and who holds all things together. So that no matter how and what happens, we can expect God to come through. Because He is able. That's why for Paul, in verse 13, has this singular conclusion: that in anything and everything, no matter the situation, no matter how hard the journey, no matter how troublesome life can get, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." He can say that with credibility because he is a person who's been there in the worst of his life, yet never failed to see Christ coming through it all. How about you? Where do you see Christ in all this?

Our source

It's Jesus alone. Not our own declining strength, not our own limited understanding, not our own temporal resources. It's Jesus alone who can supply us with the necessary faith and strength to go through with life. It's Jesus alone who can turn our worst sufferings into celebration! As a warrior, my journey with the King is the most fulfilling. All else are shadows compare to this. When we live for the King... He will meet all our needs according to the riches of His glory in Christ Jesus. (v.19)

A Royal Scandal of Grace

Today in our early morning devotion we read and meditated on the first two chapters of the book of Ephesians. Just want to share some of the personal insights I learned from them.

Grace versus Moral Law and works

One of the critical issues in the bible that seekers like myself continue to be fascinated about is the argument of grace and works, whether Christian salvation results from the law and good works or by absolute grace. Conflicting arguments regarding this issue actually offers more intrigue than answers. But Ephesians 2:8-9 gives a resounding clarification and admonition: it is by grace alone through the working of faith which result to salvation; not works or by the operation of the law. Jesus' last words on the cross hammered in the last nail to this deadlock by publicly declaring "it is finished". 

The redemptive work of Christ on the cross and His blood which is offered as ransom, have broken the shackles of the law and liberated the people through the dispensation of God's grace.

Grace redefined

For some people, the idea of "only by grace" is rather absurd because it might make people complacent about their position in God by invoking this grace theology; abstaining from good works because as the bible says, “it is not by works”. But it must not be viewed as such. Good works does not produce righteousness and therefore leads to salvation; rather good works result from salvation we obtained from grace.

Christ’s solution defies conventional and mathematical logic. It is not Grace + Faith + Good Works = Salvation. It is Grace + Faith = Salvation = Good Works. If a person is truly saved, it will result to good works…it will result to a changed life. Salvation is not bought with our good works; Christ did that for us once and for all by giving Himself as an offering—“so that no one can boast”.

Faith with benefits

 But it doesn’t simply end there. Our salvation in Christ is not only a one time experience but a constant and daily journey—with an assured victory in the end. The Christian journey does not promise itself to be easy. Like other journeys, there will be obstacles along the way. But we are not without help. Our help comes from the Lord. Our victory has been won!

There are two words that I underscored in Ephesians chapters 1 and 2: Access and Inheritance. These two words for me characterize the exciting life in Christ.

Access: Through the redemptive work of Christ, the walls that separated us from God was torn-down (Ephesians 2:14). We are therefore brought back into God’s Kingdom, as citizens and children of the King. Through our faith in Jesus we became God’s children—that’s why the bible taught us to pray “our Father”. We were given full access as citizens of the Kingdom, with full privileges and titles.

Inheritance: As God’s children, we have an inheritance: eternal life that has been given freely to those who believe. We are partakers of a treasure that this world may never fully come to grasp. Through God’s grace we have been made “to sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:6). This is too incomprehensible even for me, but God’s love leads me to believe that this is all possible. And I am more than amazed!

******

Grace, what have You done?

Murdered for me on that cross

Accused in absence of wrong

My sin washed away in Your blood

Too much to make sense of it all

I know that Your love breaks my fall

The scandal of grace, You died in my place

So my soul will live

Oh to be like You

Give all I have just to know You

Jesus, there's no one besides You

Forever the hope in my heart

Death, where is your sting?

Your power is as dead as my sin

The cross has taught me to live

And mercy, my heart now to sing

The day and its trouble shall come

I know that Your strength is enough

The scandal of grace, You died in my place

So my soul will live

Oh to be like You

Give all I have just to know You

Jesus, there's no one besides You

Forever the hope in my heart

And it's all, because of You, Jesus

It's all, because of You, Jesus

It's all, because of Your love

And my soul will live

-Scandal of Grace, Hillsong United-