Too much of this world

Movies. Television shows. Internet sites. Food. Hangouts. There are too much of these in my life. Before I thought these were harmless. They say too much of anything is not healthy. I always believe that. The problem is, the world lowers and lowers its standard of the concept of too much. So what is too much?

Too much of anything is when you get more than what you need. “Too much” is worse when that ‘anything’ is not something that you need. Later it can be an addiction. These change my perception of life over and over. I just realized how they blind my spiritual eyes to see the truth, and to deafen my ears to hear God’s voice. I lost the balance between seeing the Kingdom of God as of greater importance and the worldly perishable pleasures. Oh, no, I’m wrong. I mean, I lost the way to see the way to see that since I was, by default, blinded before. Real things, like my new life in Christ, death and resurrection, heaven and hell, God and such become more and more of an alien to me as I indulge myself to these seemingly harmless activities that fall into the category of ‘too much.’ Now I act like those people I watch in the movies. I feel like I am living in fiction. Whenever I am with my friends, life is as if it revolves around friendships, or delicious foods that my stomach idolizes. They ALL lead me away from living in the truth. They were not even obvious to me enemies. I usually avoid too much of anything, but I sock of defining what too much is, or when is something too much. So as I think that I am okay with doing these, little did I know I am already being led astray into the world again. Now I have forgotten my mission, my service for God, my destiny as a minister of God to the people of the world. I have to go back to my identity, to my purpose everyday and remind myself why I am here. I have to let go of these too much and allow God to help me and use me for His glory. I have to learn how to discipline myself and strive to be changed by God to the point that the world will be able to know that I am of God, and I am not of this world.

World, I forsake you!

The evil that is in me

Do I really have faith? Is my love for God real? have I really understood the reality of the gospel of grace, the gospel of Christ?

When I look at myself, I see an unbelieving individual. A man full of flaws, without love, filled with evil desires and a worshiper of numerous idols. When I see myself in the mirror, I see a reflection of the world - faithless, dirty, godless. I do not desire any of these, but they just don't go away easily.

I am evil.

When I sin, I am evil. When I do good, I am evil. How could I ever be able to save myself from all of the corruption that is in my flesh, from all of the darkness that devour my soul, from the hardness of my heart? Everything about me is darkness and death. I will never be numbered among the righteous by myself. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! (Romans 7:24,25).

Remembering the Savior of the world, I am encouraged. How impossible this Christian life can be apart from His divine work in me! Today I see the desperateness of my condition, and how much I need pure grace and mercy from the Living God who is enthroned in heaven forever.

I am never strong, unlike some people think. I am weak and needy of help. I may be a leader, and sometimes speak words of wisdom. I may look like I am okay but deep inside I am not. I have struggles, the same ones that you experience - struggles with sin (those sins that keep on coming back and seem hard to defeat), struggles with doubt, struggles with theological questions, and all the struggles concerning faith. I am tempted to fall back, to give up, to shrink back, so backslide, or whatever you call it, for so many times. 

But in all of these defeat and weaknesses, I just can't let go of my grip on the glorious work of Jesus Christ, who being God, made Himself a man so that He may experience death for me, take away all my sins, and be resurrected by the God of the universe. This truth is just so awesome that every failure, every shortcoming does not seem important anymore. There are fiery lies of the enemy that always pull me down. There are the struggles that discourage me to go on. Condemnation comes close in every failure. But this Christ always and always changes the situation. He is a full package. Everything that I need I find in Him. 

"Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved." Romans 10:13

I plead to God everyday to save me from myself, to keep my eyes open, and my heart able to understand His Truth, always willing to hear and believe and turn to Him and that the deceiving sins and the shouting world may not prevail in hardening my heart and make me lose my stability. I may be weak, but His Spirit is strong in me. My flesh may fail, but my God, He never will!

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I pray that in your own battles, you will always strive to gaze upon the glory of Christ, our God, on the cross, and that you will remember everyday that it is all done for your sake. Be strong, brother. You are not alone in this war. We will fight, clothed with the power from on High and we will come home victoriously in His Name!

Renewing our minds

We are told to renew our mind. It is an instruction from God. It is important because we are bombarded with, molded by, and exposed to different kinds of lies ever since we were born. Lies became truth to us. Our whole mind was under the influence of lies. Our perception of what love is, what life is, who God is, or what's good or not, and every thing else was grounded to a certain degree of lies. And our minds were darkened until the gospel of Christ was preached to us and the Holy Spirit enabled us to believe. We learned the truth for the first time. And every lie in our minds should be exposed to the Word of God so that it may be aligned to His truth, sparing us to live our lives blindedly and uninformed. 

But it is a process. It takes effort and initiative. And there are things that we need to be doing and making a habit to allow God to renew our minds. Here are some:

• Reading the Bible - It is the Word of God. The whole world always speculates about something they do not know or understand, just like how they speculated who God is, which birthed to false religions. But the Bible records the very words that came from the mouth of God. He revealed to us everything that we have to know so that we may not need to speculate or grope in the dark, unsure of what the truth is. 
• Praying -  We are not just thinking of God, we are actually talking to Him. Communicating with God is a very great thing to spend time, than use it for some other things. It is also making us attentive of God's presence, that He is alive at this moment and He hears us.
• Fellowshipping -  It is the way believers share their lives to one another. Like prayer, it helps us see the reality of God not only in our life but also in the lives of other believers. And it helps us influence each other in a very good and godly way.
• Listening to sermons, preaching - It is like we allow a leader to help us understand and apply God's truth in our lives.
• Filtering media -  We know that when we watch a movie or listen to songs or read a book, it means we are allowing them to influence our minds or even reprogram it.For example, after we watching horror movies, we noticed that we became easily scared of things we were not scared of before. So we should always ask ourselves if we are going to allow this movie, or series, songs, books to influence our mind and pollute it. Read godly books instead, more of Christian songs and movies that, you know, not as worldly as almost all the movies of this generation. 
• Renouncing sins - Definitely. We are already forgiven in Christ but  if we befriend our enemies (sins in these context), they will lure us away from following Him. If we continue sinning, it will come to a point that doing it doesn't seem wrong anymore. 

There are many other things, but I think these are some of the basics. Our mind is so important. I don't know if I read it in the Proverbs but It says that our thoughts direct the course of life. Let us desire to fill our minds with Godly thoughts and with the knowledge of His truth, not compromising any single area of our lives to worldliness and deceit. I think it is enough reason to exert effort in allowing God to renew our minds.

The Always Present Grace

This year of 2012 has not been really good to me (in my perspective). Yes. Actually it's kind of discouraging to see people posting on their dashboards about how blessed they are this year. I am blessed by my God, of course. I thank Him for all the things that He did in my life, because He did it out of His love for me. But in my limited and self-centered perspective, I see that the majority of happenings in my life this whole year were not okay. There were struggles where I deeply felt that God's grace was not present, and until now it still does not make sense to me why things happened in ways I did not expect. But in all of these, I do not nullify the the promise of God that His grace would be sufficient in all situation, so even though I do not understand, I accept the fact that grace is always present. Afterall, it is not about how good life is to me, but how my life brings glory to God. 

But it does not mean I won't ask God for more blessings this year of 2013. He wants me to expect for it and I am excited! I have so many things to pray for and our annual week-long fasting next week excites me so much. I am also making a list of my new year's resolutions in which the majority is all about spiritual disciplines. (Yes. Because I badly need to be disciplined Haha)

Struggles and problems will always come, but I look on God who is not intimidated by any of these. Grace and mercy always abound through Christ. I pray and claim for a deeper revelation of God in my life. Blessings upon blessings in my life! In Jesus' name. Amen.