I am convinced that no Christian can enjoy an authentic God fearing lifestyle if he does not exercise godliness. The flesh is always against the spirit. The old self has to be crucified or else we will have no joy, no integrity, no right to preach repentance to all sinners.
In morality, compromise is surrender to the devil. We must be pure in our private thought life so that we can have a public voice to preach God's holiness.
Just because I helped and smiled at someone, I believed I am a good person
Just because I don't believe in "sex before marriage", I thought I was more morally upright than others.
Just because I believe that there is God, I thought I was better than those who did not believe.
Just because I was close to achieving my own standards, I felt good about myself...
Until I came to understand and know who Jesus is, I realized that I cannot brag about anything.
My "goodness" is nothing compared to His goodness.
My morality is crap compared to His perfect holiness.
My faith in God is not worth comparing to His faith in God the Father.
My own standards in life is like building a sand castle by the seashore compared to a palace in a wonderful city.
I felt like a little kid who believes he is strong just because his muscles are sore from doing 10 push-ups for the first time in his life, until He met the Man who can lift up the weight of the world in His hands.
I pray that someday confessing that Jesus is Lord is not as controversial or as complicated as saying that the color of milk is white. Everyone agrees.
No one can tell the color except through the eyes. No one can tell the sound except through the ears. No one can tell the smell except through the nose.
No one can say that "Jesus is Lord" except by the Holy Spirit. I pray that we choose God and not sin.
I'd rather be aware that I am inadequate and ask for God's help in everything consistently than think I am strong by my own effort and not recognize it is God who enables me to do absolutely everything in my life.
For a man to know that he is only a man and God is God is the most humbling experience a man can have.
Attend a funeral once a year to pause and contemplate your own life.
If it's true that we only live once, then that is not an excuse for us to do stupid "fun" stuffs. If we really are only to live once, we might as well get it right so that when it's our time, we are ready.
Realize that in your own funeral, people will not be talking about how much you loved yourself but how much you loved the people around you.
Love. Be the reflection of the very nature of who created you. God is love.
Those who know me from high school and college days most likely know that I always loved numbers.
Here I'm using the help from the world of numbers to illustrate an exceeding amazing spiritual truth about our Lord Jesus Christ. Stay with me.
In the middle of the number line is 0. Moving to the right and to the top we count positive numbers 1, 2, 3, 4..1000..10, 000, 1 million, 1 billion, 1 trillion, 1 x 10 to the power of 7, 1 x 10 to the power of 1, 000, 1 x 10 to the power of 1 million. The numbers go on. It is literally infinite. Beyond our intellectual grasp.
Moving to the left and the bottom is going to the negative numbers, which is the same infinity as well. The pendulum swings equally on both directions.
Now, try measuring the length of that from point 0 to the infinity to the right. Can you? How about from the infinity left to the infinity right. Can you? From infinity below to the infinity above. Can you measure it? You can't.
No one can because our 6 pound complex brain is finite, it cannot be completely trusted. We are finite. We are humans.
Now, when you acknowledge that someone loves you and you love them back, don't we normally love them back the way they do to us? That is if we really love them.
How is it then that we live in a church culture where a Christian says he loves Jesus but with seemingly no joy or enthusiasm about it at all? Does he really know the love of Christ? Does he really understand who Jesus is? Is he able to comprehend the love of Christ?
And if he does love Jesus, what in the world can shut him up? Don't we all get stubborn when we are truly in love? We don't really care what people say, whether it is immoral or not to them. We just don't care. We love and it is when we love that we feel we are alive.
"For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height- to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God."
We love Him because He loved us first.
To the unbeliever, I am talking about spiritual things here. God is Spirit and so we need the Spirit to understand Him. Eyes to see, tongue to taste, ears to hear, nose to smell, Spirit to understand the Spirit of God.
You can only have His Spirit if you confess your sins and trust Jesus as your Lord and that He saved you from your sins. There is more to this earthly life and somewhere within you is looking for that. Jesus is that door to eternity.
Don't be afraid of acknowledging Him in public or else He will not acknowledge you before our God the Father. Love Him back because He loved us first. The cross is the proof.
It's like the zero point. Wherever you are in your life, no matter how far you are on the negative or positive side, you are still within His number line. No one is far from God's reach. Do not harden your heart. He is just waiting for you.
Don't be scared, I would love to help you with this new found faith my friend.
God increase and i decrease,
Gi
Is it intolerant of me if I say I hope everyone put their faith in Christ?
If we were all in a building and Someone tells you that it will collapse and everyone inside will die and the only way to live is to get out of the building, isn't it that warning people about what's about to happen is the most loving thing to do to save them?
If they don't believe the warning, then they did not only reject you but also the one who gave the warning in the first place. It's not ignorance that will destroy them but their unbelief.
“God overlooked people’s ignorance about these things in earlier times, but now he commands everyone everywhere to repent of their sins and turn to him. For he has set a day for judging the world with justice by the man he has appointed, and he proved to everyone who this is by raising him from the dead.” - Acts 17:30-31
If all we need is LOVE, I pray that everything be expressed out of love. Love expressed through forgiveness, wisdom, patience, gentleness, rebuke, correction, discipline, kindness, goodness, joy, peace, self-control, selflessness, giving, and all those nice things that we know; not because we want to feel good about our own goodness but because we choose to love one another.
I pray that of all people in this earth, the so-called "Christians" would be the ones to show what love is- in action, more than words. Since they proclaim that the GOD who created the heaven and earth IS LOVE.
If all we need is love and God is love, then God is all we need. We love God in return through our obedience to Him, not being forced but out of love. There is never a qualified excuse to disobey God and say that we love Him. God is not mocked. What we reap is what we sow.
