When He Comes

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What will you do when the president of the Philippines tells you he is visiting your home? No matter who you voted for president last election, you would most likely clean up your house, use the best curtains and doormats you have and prepare the best food you can think of. 

Jesus, however, who is the the King of kings and Lord of lords does not require such effort - for hardly do we even recognize his coming. When he was born on earth as a baby, He did not ask the world to make him a mansion or prepare him the best food. He was even born in a manger!

This is still true today. Afraid that Jesus will feel dishonored if we invite Him into our messed up lives, we'd rather not let Him in at all. Feeling dirty and unworthy, we hide from His gaze and we resent His every effort to reach out. This is what happened to Peter when he told Jesus to stay away because he's a sinner. 

Jesus can come anytime - in the midst of a divorce, while fighting against an addiction, while you are flunking all your subjects, while he family is on the edge of falling apart.

Accept Him as you are. He is God. He will not feel threatened. He is God - it's His job to help you get up and live an abundant life.

"I came that they might have life and have it abundantly." (John 10:10)

"Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come into him." (Revelation 3:10)

Words

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When God created the world, he did it with WORDS. So that spared him from coming down and doing all the dirty job of making the ocean, forests, animals, humans, etc.

There is power in words - especially if they come from the creator of the universe. God did not create us only to bask in His power and splendor; He created us to have fellowship with Him. We are a projection of His very being. "So God created human beings in his own image..." (Genesis 1:27)

Because God wants a relationship with us, He wants to do so with WORDS. God's message for you and me lurks everywhere - especially in the Bible. Some of us have listened; some don't want to listen; some are getting there. 

Some don't want to listen because they think it's not going to help; they think it's not relevant to them. They think He does not really understand their circumstance. Some fear that if they listen and believe, He will turn their lives upside down, send them to Africa to feed the homeless or give up their evil ways. 

Some, however, like the disciples have laid aside their concerns and chose to listen intently to what God has to say.

The world has become so noisy today. Your facebook newsfeed alone will tell you this. There are messages everywhere. But in your 24 hours every day, can you still spare a single minute to hear what God has to say to you?

If you believe there is power in the word of God; if you believe it was His words that created the universe, then listen to His word to you today.Take heed because His word is out to give you a life beyond your wildest dreams and imagination. 

Hope Above Hopes

We have hopes in life: hope to finish college, to bag the job we've always wanted, marry the man of our dreams, catch the earliest bus, save enough money for travel and the list goes on.

All of these comprise the dash between the day we were born and the day we will die. 

In my case, it's 1985 - only God knows when. 

See that dash? The hopes I mentioned above are found there. There is however a bigger kind of hope that goes beyond that. And God revealed this to me in a fresh way. It is this one hope that can faithfully hold you even when you're hoping against hope about any of those things above or when all hope is seemingly gone.

While I was reading 1 Thessalonians 1, I came across this phrase: "enduring hope you have because of our Lord Jesus Christ.."

And it struck me that despite all our struggles in this life, all our victories, happiness, both good and bad times, it'll all boil down to whether we have something to hope for in the end.

And this is the kind of hope that matters after all. If you believe that there is life after death and you're sure that you're spending eternity with God, then you're on the right track. 

Let your hope be enduring - one that will not end after the dash of your life is over. If you're not yet sure, it's never too late. Click here to find out.

Fighting Battles

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There are situations in life that are out to get the best of us, that shake our hearts to the core and make us feel like we have lost control. To lose control is one of man’s greatest enemies. We hate it when we are left at the backstage in the play of our lives or on the passenger’s seat instead of behind the driver’s wheel. We feel small when we are unrecognized, when people have empowered our weaknesses and have forgotten our strengths. We feel angry when people can’t seem to read our minds and make us feel that others’ feelings are more important than ours. We get pressured when people start unreasonably demanding things from us and have enumerated the reasons why we are a failure. Such are the things that drive us to cram for resolution, to change the status quo, to save ourselves from becoming smaller and smaller and less and less significant. We crave for stability because we don’t like to drown. When we have been tipped off our comfort boats, we swim hard and wonder why our unsinkable boat sank in the first place. We scream ; we whistle; we swim against the current because we have to survive – better yet, win. We attempt to figure things out and feel disappointed when none of our schemes worked. Yet we try harder. We silence the lambs by doing the extremes: good and bad. We appease our demons by giving money to the poor. We read a self-help book to make us feel learned. We clean the house or finish a project fast to make us feel productive. We scold our kids/nephews/nieces for not making their homework to make us feel responsible. We paint, write, dance, sing all of it off. Perhaps, art has the answer. If not, the pain reliever. We seek affirmation from relationships. If so and so does so and so, we should be fine. Otherwise, our hearts sing the song, “Why does the sun go on shining? Don’t they know it’s the end of the world?”

We run; we paddle; we grope; we struggle. We are restless, helpless, hopeless, tired. Some of us don’t even know it.The truth is, we can never be in control. We may have the paddle in our hands or the driver’s wheel but storms and earthquakes come and dogs cross streets from nowhere. We are oftentimes caught unprepared. But sometimes the best solution is to simply be still.

“The LORD will fight for you; you need only to be still." (Exodus 14:14) When Jesus died on the cross, he did not only die for OUR sins but for OTHER PEOPLE’S sins and shortcomings against us – so that when we feel hurt/angered by them, we can always look to the cross and lift our burdens to Him. Life will always be messy and at times, we will never figure things out completely.  “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:9) 

Our not knowing is a part of God’s sovereign will in accomplishing His purposes in our lives. When we are left helpless and we fight our battles on our own, we are telling God that He is not fighting enough for us. Oftentimes, God only allows rejections, hurts, disappointments so we are left with no choice but to cling to Him. Sometimes, He will break our hearts into pieces – if that’s the only way to make it whole. He will turn our lives upside down for awhile – if that’s what it takes to keep it downside up.

Restless Senses

September 21, 2009

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One of the most common things men have in common is the need for resolution. In watching a movie, it irks us when in heading towards the climax, for some reason, suddenly the player breaks down or the disc crashes. In reading a piece of literature, the theme is very important. It is whereby the point of reading the whole thing all boils down. Whatever it is, at least we know the author has a point.

The need for a resolution is rooted in man’s innate sense of restlessness. We are forever searching for something, that one sense of completion that will appease that part of ourselves that pushes us to keep searching. And so we spend our lives pursuing a lot of things. And the average, not –lazy person becomes uncomfortable with not becoming a contribution to the world, by possibly whatever it is that he is able to do. He has simply got to do something and keep doing it. And he later becomes identified with it, with his work that later in life, when he is 70 or 80 and is expected to stop, he starts feeling useless, worthless, not only and mainly because his skin is shabbier or his eye bags bigger, but because he is now coming to terms with reality that having to stop working someday is true of himself today.

If we feed our restlessness this way, then life will just be a bunch of things we ought to do and accomplish. The question is, “is that all there is to life?” If “doing” is the source and the center of our identity then all our identities are doomed to fail one day.

There is more to us and this life than simply ‘doing’.



Going for the Less Wild Lovers

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At some point in our lives, we find ourselves simply tired of being a Christian. We drag ourselves to church, refuse to talk about God and do not allow scripture to meddle in our lives. However, the thought of completely losing religion seems scary so we let God stay at the porch - near enough for emergencies but far enough for convenience. He has now become a mere Bible character, a painting on the wall or just a statue at the altar. 

The Jesus we have accepted into our lives some time ago is a stranger once again. But who could blame us? Life with Jesus is an adventure - a wild one. He does not allow that we are simply kept warm in our homes for a long time and merely get by. He takes us to wild oceans - storms and all, to rain forests and rocky mountains. We'll get wet in the rain, stumble on slippery roads, fall in pits - but for sure, He is in his sneakers walking with us - laughing with us at our slips, carrying our load when we're exhausted, letting down a rope so we could climb up from a pit - at times, he will make us stop and simply sit with him to marvel at the sunset or look at the fog or listen to the birds sing.

This is not the kind of life many people want, though. They prefer less wild lovers - those who appear stable and less surprising, those who seem to love too much, they won't ever cause pain, those who abhor changes specially those that shake the heart to the core. They hate adventure - they prefer safety. They prefer comfort. They hate intimacy.