Righteousness

I promised a while back to write more about righteousness. As little and shallow as these thoughts are, I hope they are edifying and can help you to think and benefit from understanding God's word.

• Faith makes a person righteous. Abraham was righteous in the eyes of God and also lived righteously in real life.
• Righteousness is not a state of sinlessness, neither are the wicked incapable of good deeds. But what distinguishes these two are the object of their trust.
• There are countless ways to be wicked, you just have to trust in something other than Christ. There is only one way to be righteous, that is through faith in Christ alone.
• If a righteous person trusts in his or her righteousness, it will become wickedness. If a wicked person turns from wickedness and trusts in God, it will become righteousness. (Ezekiel 33:12-16)
• There is a lie that we can become righteous in the eyes of God through self reformation without faith, there is another lie that we can have faith without righteous deeds. Both stem from not fixing one's gaze upon Christ. (Luke 11:37-41, Ezekiel 18:5-9, Matthew 3:8, 1 John 3:7)
• We are insane in our view of ourselves. By nature we view ourselves too highly, it is true since childhood.  This pride is manifested when children refuse to share, use words to abuse, when adults fight over promotion and fame, when men say God does not exist and do not tremble/marvel/give thanks/rejoice at the name of God. It is a great obstacle towards righteousness.
• True wisdom from knowing God leads to righteousness. (Proverbs 1:7, 3:7, 8:1-8)

I'm done with theories

But I fear, lest somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. - Paul

Watching atheists argue against God online is saddening, frustrating, and encouraging at the same time. Frustrating because I cannot make them believe in the gospel, saddening because their hearts are hardened so they use intellects to deny God, encouraging because their existence makes the Bible's truthfulness more evident.

When I was a nonbeliever I did the same. Philosophizing and theorizing, the atheists are better than me in that they were honest about their unbelief, I wasn't. I pretended to believe. But now I am done with theories.

Thank God I found Christ, or that Christ found me.
In whom simplicity dwells with wisdom.
Simple because whatever he says is true, because of faith there is rest from producing theories and demanding proofs.
Wisdom because truths from the one who is unchanging teaches us to discern and adapt to all situations with righteousness.
Life because from him are all things, he is the author of life.

Knowing God's will vs quick and lazy spirituality

Here are some thoughts on God's will.
There is a phenomenon which knowing God's will becomes a cliche.
What does it actually encompass?

• Easy to know God's will, hard to obey
• Knowing God's will becomes a cliche when people lose the patience and the humility to seek God and instead seek instant results without the Holy Spirit
• Having the heart and character and desire to obey God's will is impossible by the flesh
• Quick spirituality mentality is wrong and deadly, thinking God's will only applies to what he wants us to do and trying to do it by our own plans and agendas is wrong. need to seek God and draw close to him by reading the Bible and seeking understanding, by prayer, humility and submission before God. This is what we have to do, God gives us the grace by empowering us with the Holy Spirit, this is what he does, we have to ask, we have to believe he will give us, we have to wait.
• God's will also talks about our character and being. example: John 15:1-17, Galatians 5:16-26, Ephesians 4:31-32, 1 Thess 5:16-18 without these transformations God's will regarding our actions cannot be done.
• Quick and easy spirituality mentality can lead people to search for so called God's direct speech outside of scripture, this is dangerous without first understanding what the scripture says about God's will, the irony is scripture is the most direct means of finding out God's will.
• The difficulty is scripture is not systematized, but each thought is broken up and sprinkled throughout all the books, one part of one book gives insight into another. So it is necessary to labour in order to understand God's will and grow in wisdom. Be like the man in psalm 1 who meditates on it day and night!
• Believe God loves you as much as he says in the Bible, it is the remedy to shame from failure and bondage to performance.
• Press on to know Christ, do not seek directly to do God's will, or doing God's will will become your god. Bearing fruit is a natural result of abiding in Christ.

The normal Christian life

Faith before intellects, scripture before human philosophy and wisdom in evangelism

Recently I've been spending a lot of time studying with a friend. I prayed for opportunities to share the gospel, and it's been a really humbling experience.

It started off badly when somehow we started talking about philosophical concepts on how human interpret truth, our conversation became more and more heated and we talked until 1 or 2 am when the next day he has to work and I have school. Basically it was brutal when I tried to play the intellectual game. I felt really sad and stupid that night, and I realized I did not trust in God during the conversation with my friend.

Thankfully, God listened to my prayers and more opportunities came up the following few days. I was able to tell him Christianity is not about being a good person, how we are all accountable and sinful before God, how there will be judgment after death, and how Jesus is our only hope. I've learned that it is joyful when I faithfully speak truth from the Bible instead of trying to be sneaky and all intellectual, the fight is not with the intellects of the unsaved, but heart and spirit, and Satan's lies and control over this world.

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

This fight is not ours to win, but God's, he is the author of faith, and he is able to save to the uttermost.

Power to live

Your word is a lamp to my feet and light to my path. - Psalm 119:105
I am the true vine...Apart from me you can do nothing - Jesus

Understanding the Bible and knowing God's character and his will is a wonderful thing. But when it comes to living our lives, it is not enough.

In the past week there was so much struggle with fear, bitterness, and ugly thoughts in my mind all day. I know and understand sometimes what the correct way a Christian is supposed to think and act, but the power to do so isn't in me.

A good analogy I stole from Paul Washer is iron man. His suit of armour is very powerful, but he can't make it move with his body of flesh and blood. In the same way I can't live according to God's will without Christ.

This is a very hopeful truth. I long to be like saints of old such as Paul, not afraid of men, being able to boldly proclaim the gospel, and live rejoicing in Christ, counting all as loss, this seems very difficult, but not impossible. Paul is a man just like me, but he relied on Christ as the vine and source of power.

This is a great reminder to me that Christianity is not about knowledge, understanding, wisdom, although these things are good. But a person, man and God Jesus Christ.

History of the modern gospel

This is a good 7 part series addressing the root of what has happened and is happening in the North America church

Pt1 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzEy4QZJMuA&feature=relmfu
Pt2 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yEArSGFyH0&feature=relmfu
Pt3 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRzXZ1lU5dQ&feature=relmfu
Pt4 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ly15dPJPQ5M&feature=relmfu
Pt5 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUze_WQngIk&feature=relmfu
Pt6 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2x2DQ09-8U&feature=relmfu
Pt7 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVbPCqYsUmU&feature=relmfu

Frustration at secular religious studies: or how Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil and became dumb

I've been taking a religious studies course on woman in the biblical tradition. It is nice to hear what others pickup from reading the old testament, they point out a lot of things I have missed reading by myself.

But there are a lot of disturbing undertones and assumptions made in the course, and it frustrates me to read the textbook and a lot of the articles, and realizing the course was not at all what I had in mind at first.

An example of which is an article on the book of Luke from the text book Women's Bible Commentary.  Basically the summary of the article is Luke is using beautiful language to paint a picture of pious woman, thus being a manipulative jerk who is an enemy of woman's freedom to choose who they want to be.

Not getting into the foolishness of the author injecting so much speculation and imaginative attacks on Luke's character, she missed the whole point of the Gospel that talks about humanity's fallen nature, need for salvation, and hope and redemption in Christ. One of the irony is the Bible speaks against the author's human centered viewpoint, guess she conveniently chose to ignore those portions of the Bible.

Some scholars from the SBL(Society of Biblical Literature, who published some articles that are used by the course) would make statements like "for the purpose of an objective stance on the academic study of the Bible as literature, we should not adopt a religious viewpoint" why can't they just come out and say "we can't adopt a religious viewpoint on the Bible because we don't believe it's true?" If they want to do an objective, academic study of the Bible then what's the point of not looking at both secular and religious view points? But the irony is that when they do this are they not acting like Adam and Eve after eating the fruit? Not really wanting to admit their own bias and unbelief so they hide behind "the purpose of academics", and walking off into whatever seems right in their own eyes.

Anyway, that's enough rant, don't waste your time reading Women's Bible Commentary or most of the articles published in the Journal of Biblical Literature, their language might sound fancy but there is no flavour or substance.

Love the bible, because we love Christ

God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son - Hebrews 1:1-2a

One cannot know God except through his son Jesus Christ. It is impossible for sinners to approach God without a mediator. Creation reveals God's glory, but we cannot perceive it. The best man can get is a fuzzy notion of an unknown God, but whoever has seen the Son has seen the Father, whoever believes the Son sees the glory of God (John 11:40, 12:45)

That's why scripture is so important. Without scripture we don't know Christ, without Christ we don't know God, and not knowing God means we are eternally damned, because eternal life is to know God and his Son Jesus Christ. 

Where else can we find Christ revealed truly? The world? The best the world can give us is some moral teacher, some prophet, some liar, because the world does not believe. Historians might agree Christ was a real man, but think of his deity as foolishness, or they might have some notion of him as a doer of wonderous works but never be clear that he is God in the flesh, came to save sinners.(look up Josephus) Only scripture bears witness of Christ truly and fully for us. Therefore understanding what the bible says is important, doctrine is important. There is an error of mystifying the bible, and there is also an error in thinking eternal life is in the scripture, thus stopping at doctrine and knowledge.

O God, let us be wise in reading your word, help us to understand and love your Word.

Certainly this was a righteous man

This morning I read Luke 23 again, with the account of a centurion who came to the conclusion that Jesus was indeed a righteous man.

I thought very hard about how he came to the conclusion. Did he know Jesus before Him dying on the cross? Or was this just a spur of the moment thing?

When I thought about forming logical conclusions as to Jesus being righteous, I realized everything I came up with can be reasoned away, and I was scared.

Then after dinner more thoughts came, and it made me burst with joy.

Jesus never mocked others.
Jesus spoke truth to people, no matter how ugly it might sound.
Jesus talked with authority, instead of the prophets saying thus says the Lord, He said truly truly I say to you.

I might make fun of people, and withhold the truth to save my face, but He never did. He loved us to tell us about His kingdom and how we might posses it, finally laying down His life to make it possible.

Even though reason can explain everything away, but our hearts know what is righteous and what is not, our hearts and conscious tells us what is love. It didn't matter whether the centurion knew Jesus well or He just saw Him. God opened His heart to see the truth and he believed. How blessed it is to have the righteous die for the unrighteous?

Experience!

Experience is so important in the Christian life!

The trend is to downplay experience and exalt knowledge. But then we can just get a whole bunch of pagans who know how to quote the Bible.

It is like thirsty travelers in a desert who find a watermelon. Instead of cutting it open and drinking from the melony nectar inside, they start discussing whether the melon will be red or yellow on the inside, whether it will be sweet or sour, and in the end they die of thirst.

Experience is important because Christ is alive today, the covenant God makes with people in Jeremiah 32 and Ezekiel 37 is not a farse, it can be experienced in real life!! All that good heavenly blessing and deep peace, righteousness and joy from the Holy Spirit can be experienced!

But that makes knowledge so important doesn't it? It is important because without so, our experience will be just superstition, and we will worship a false god.

So dive into the Bible, make sure what you find is the true vine, then drink my dear friends! drink deeply until you are satisfied fully!

Very short summary of Ecclesiastes

This is taken from a preacher's blog.

Human wisdom cannot solve the deep rooted issues of this world.
Trying to defeat sin with morality is like hiding nakedness with a leaf,
trying to defeat death with medicine is like putting paint on a casket.


On this stage of sin and death, We can put on all kinds of drama and comedy,
but in the end it is only a tragedy.

Only the God who created and nurtured us, have taken care of sin and death in Christ, for those who believe in Him.

Is it ok to be good?

I've often struggled with laziness. When I learned about God's sovereignty, that fed my laziness.

In my thinking I thought "If God is in control of everything, what's the point of me doing anything? I can just do nothing!" and I thought I had no choice in anything regarding my life either.

But that is a big lie.

It is true that God is in control of every circumstances that happen in everyone's lives, but we are moral beings who can make and ought to make choices.

God elected people unto salvation, but we ought to consider the cost of following Christ, and actually choose and be committed to following Him.
God woos us and helps us in our weaknesses during our life on earth so we will finally be saved in the end, but we have to draw near to Him, we have to fight our sins.

How that works in detail is a great mystery. But we shouldn't concern ourselves with trying to know the details of how God does things, living believing these truths and acting on them is more beneficial for our souls.

Then I thought about the desire of wanting to be good.

There's a lot of confusion about being good.

Arn't we totally depraved?
Arn't we utterly sinful?
Isn't there no good in me?
Doesn't all our goodness and righteousness come from Christ?
Then what's the point of being good?
Is it even ok to try to be good?

these were a lot of questions that haunted me, and probably a lot of my friends too.

After much thinking, reading the Bible, and listening to what some pastors had to say, I came up with the following conclusions:

• We are sinful because our nature is tainted by sin, that nature produces desires and thoughts that manifest into sinful actions. [Genesis 3, Romans 5:12, James 1:13-15]
• Yet we still retain the image of God with the desire of wanting to be good(Normally)[Genesis 1:26-27, James 3:9]
• God does want us to be good and righteous, the imputation of Christ's righteousness and life in salvation will result in real, tangeble changes towards righteousness in real life(!other wise we might not have obtained Christ at all!) [John 8:11, Matthew 5:20, 1 John 3:7]
• Living a righteous life matters, it makes us good representatives of Christ, thus helps our presentation of the gospel. A bad, morally corrupt Christian taints the name of God.
• Therefore it is a noble desire to want to be good and righteous person, Christians ought to pursue righteousness, but we can't force our self into it.

Now I need to know what righteousness is...... back to more head scratching goodness.

The rugged narrow road

I have been struggling with lust and laziness, trying to remember and remind my self of the cross brings much comfort, but I felt there was more I needed to do, something was not right. I am starting to see the value of knowing and understanding and thinking through the Bible on my own.

Often we are told an over simplified version of the truths regarding salvation.

"Jesus died for our sins"
"We are justified by faith alone, we just need to believe in Jesus and what he has done on the cross"
"God is sovereign and we need to rely on Him to overcome our sin"
"When we sin, He is merciful to forgive us"
"The devil condemns us and we need to remember our sins are atoned for by Christ's death on the cross."

These are good summaries, but when we don't read through the Bible and change our thinking, but only know these vague understandings, we can get in trouble.

The reality of sin
I think the biggest trap is abusing God's grace. Paul warns against this in Romans 6. "Should I sin so that grace may abound? Absolutely not!" Sin is not just some vague theory, but a very serous matter and it is very real.

When I examine myself, I can agree with Paul's writing in Romans 7. There is are thoughts of lust, anger, hatred against others that come up in my head.  The Jews have the law to guide them and reveal to them the reality of sin, we as gentiles have our conscious(But now also the law). For when I outburst against someone in anger, my conscious tells me it's wrong and I feel guilty, and I should apologize.

This is the reality of the law of flesh Paul wrote about, for some reason, we are indeed free from sin's power and our desire for sin if we believe in Christ and His work on the cross, but it is still present in us, constantly waging war against us as long as we live in this world.

The consequences of sin, and a covenant
And it would be bad for our souls if we don't wage war against it, as Paul then writes in Romans 8 "If you live by the flesh, then you will surely die." and again and again in his letters he encourages us to set our minds on things above, to put aside envy, malice, jealousy etc, to work out our salvation with fear and trembling, to put out brothers who are sexually immoral for the sake of repentance.

Why would he say this? Isn't it true that God has forgiven us through Christ? Isn't our salvation through faith in Christ alone?

When I read 1 and 2 Samuel recently, I am starting to see dire consequences of disobedience. The blood of Christ is not just the blood that cleanses our sins, but the blood of a new covenant, there are standards and rules we have to obey. When the old kings of Israel sinned, there were still consequences in this life. (Saul lost his favour with God, rebellion and unrest during the later years of David's reign, Israel's destruction in the future due to Solomon's idolatry etc.) God is merciful and will forgive us, yes, but He is just. He chastens those whom He loves when they disobey and sin, so they may return to Him and live(many times through painful suffering in this life). So when we are condemned, it is not always Satan. We have to forsake our sins and return to God. Because God will not lower the standards revealed through His laws and commandments.

Our choice, weakness, and strength to obey
It would be dangerous to think God is sovereign and wait on Him to take away our sins and temptations in this life, then we will make shipwreck of our faith (eg. parable of the talents in Matthew 25, although He promises to do so on the Day of the Lord.)

God is sovereign but we are responsible for our actions and need to make a choice to follow the Spirit or our flesh(See above on Paul's urging to battle sin), it is a sorrowful and hard battle against ourselves, because God will not relent by lowering His standards, even Jesus said "unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the pharisees, you will not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven." and again he says "be perfect, as your Father in Heaven is perfect," and again to the adulteress woman, "Go and sin no longer."

But we are weak. Our efforts fall so short of these standards. Even Paul couldn't keep this standard through the law. That's why Jesus says it is a narrow road that leads to life, traveling with our cross in self denial. It is a road marked with pain and suffering. But also joy and delight. Because Christ travels this road with us.  He became human and suffered, so He understands our weakness.

If we are willing to go to Him, honestly, openly, with our weakness, with our sin, and brokeness, if we let Him love us and wash our feet, we will find the strength to obey out of a love for Him.

I am a novice who just started to travel this road, let us encourage each other to love and good deeds.

The worth of worthless sinners

"We love God centered theology!"
"Well me too, but that always involves people."

Let us love and sing and wonder

Been humming this way too much D= =D

Some thoughts on theological study

For the past while I was struggling a lot with what to do with theology. The thought of theology makes me feel disgusted because of bad experience. I hurt others out of pride and arrogance, using knowledge to judge and condemn, in turn being hurt by other arrogant people. Some brothers and sisters around me were also hurt, and thinking about these things made me very sad and disappointed.

I then realized my struggle is God's grace. By struggling and making mistakes God was teaching me the importance of having good character and being kind and patient with others. We can choose to use what we know to feed our ego, or we can choose to use it for self control and loving others.

Although tempted to do it many times, I realized throwing out knowledge is not an option. Peter tells us to add to our faith goodness and knowledge. But the chain doesn't end there. Love is at the end of the chain and we are to grow in everything described by Peter(Faith, virtue, knowledge, self control, perseverance, godliness, brotherly kindness and love). If we do not grow in these then we have forgotten that Christ has cleansed our sin and will not be good for works. But there are several things to keep in mind:

• The object of faith is the person of Jesus, not Calvinism or any other doctrine.
• Doctrine and truth help us to know who Jesus is and what he has done for humanity.
• Don't be too quick to believe in doctrines and systems people tell us, read the Bible and meditate on it, the Bereans were noble for doing so.
• Any good doctrine and truths can be abused. Paul warns us about this many times, (using freedom in Christ for evil; knowledge puffs up; if I understand mysteries of the faith but have not love, then I have nothing; the issue in 1 Corinthians of being considerate towards brothers who believe eating food from idol is a sin etc)
• Character and Christ-likeness is to be the goal of studying the Bible. Knowledge is important in being a footstool for self control, and ultimately, love.
• If we are kind with our words, and if our lives testify to the truth we proclaim to people, they are more likely to listen to what we say.
• If we meet God and drink deeper from His love for us in our learning process, we have done well.

Let your yeses be yes, your noes be no

Everything else is from the devil. Why is it from the devil? Did he not tell Eve, "The day you eat of the fruit, you will not surely die?" Neither yes, or no. Neither letting Eve know she will die, or she will not die. So she may be confused, the seed of doubt planted inside of her.

He is still at work today, planting deceit into people's hearts. Is there a God? No one can be sure, there could be a God, there could not be a God. Is there eternity after death? We don't know. Is there an absolute authority? we don't know. Is there real love and forgiveness? maybe, maybe not.

Thus is the schemes of the adversary. The middle ground. Therefore let us consider the words of God, words leading us to Christ, where all of God's promises are yes.

Grandma ministers to a robber

Her natural and genuine faith is so encouraging! I want to be more like her.

Shrewdly innocent people

Jesus said"I am sending you out as sheep among wolves, therefore be shrewd as the serpent and innocent as doves"

Innocence without wisdom sees no snare.
Wisdom without innocence does much evil.

Shrewd and innocent, dove and serpent, truthful and loving.

A pastor said wisely "We are to be people with Baptist minds, Pentacostal hearts, and the feet of an Evangelist."

I want be like that.

How to make milkshake?

Milkshakes are tasty, especially during the summer.

But they can be expensive at stores such as McDonald's.
Not if you make them yourself though!

What you'll need:

• A blender, a magic bullet works even better
• Your favourite flavour of icecream
• Milk

Instructions:
Put about 2 scoops of ice cream into the blender.
Pour in about 1.5 cups of milk
Blend for 30 seconds

enjoy!