Nothing is beyond God’s Control

Matthew 11: 29-30

“All of you, take up My yoke and learn from Me, because I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for yourselves. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light”

Every day we are dealing with people and making daily decisions in our “instant” world society whether in our work, business, relationships, family or even in the church. Sometimes, we tend to forget our identity in Christ due to constant pressure and influence from the society. We plan our daily checklist or set up a time frame for everything including our leisure activities. Why? Because we do not want to lose out in the worldly race and compete with other people’s achievements. “What have you achieved lately? Or simply, we do everything whichever we can to gain society’s acknowledgement? It is not wrong to have our ambitions and goals in our life. God did not ask us to be slacking with our time or throw our dreams away and just wait on God to give us blessings. But we do need to understand that our talents, gifts and blessing (material possession or spiritual) are from God’s grace and mercy. When our plan does not go smoothly according to our will, we start the blame game and get frustrated. Then we became own “god” to try to solve problem when we are in the midst of confusion and frustration. We became impatient and forget to lean on God for support and guidance.  

 

Joyce Meyer’s sermon “Nothing is beyond God’s control” is quite relevant to our daily lives. Our God, whom is our Father of all nation, be it Western continental or Asian or Jew or Gentiles. The word All refers to us who is believers of Jesus Christ our Saviour. I am amazed at the omniscience of God who knows everything before us. God is not surprised by the things we do because of His foreknowledge. God already has the problem solved before we even come into the problem. However, we all think that we are capable of being independent and try to fix things that can’t be solved at that time.

So what can we do during the hard times?

We pray and ask for God’s mercy and guidance. Engage God in our battle, for he is so much powerful. Just as how David defeated Goliath without heavy armour and sword but just God’s word and stone.

We need to believe and trust on God that he is working on it. We need to learn to step down being our own god and lean on God. Surrender our will.

At the same time, we take this opportunity to exercise our spiritual maturity and our faith.  People will see if we are really living in Christ by example. Having faith with joy even through suffering.

We change our mindset that all things can be solve through God. We can continue to run our work, our business, our family, our daily life in a vacation mindset.

Matthew 19:26 – With men, it is impossible, to God all things are possible.

It may not be easy and takes time for us to keep calm during bad times, but we just need to stretch out our hand to God first. This is our first step of faith to God and we will find rest in Him.

By God's Lover
 

Grandpa's Departure Day

I never fully understood how a Chinese funeral ceremony was when I was a young girl. All I know was mourning, chanting, procession session, burning paper idols such as paper made mansions, cars, Astro satellite, servants and chauffer, gold, hell notes $, kneeling on the ground and crossing bridge (sending the souls to the other world). Usually it takes few days for the ceremony to complete.

Now as I have grown up I began to realize the story behind the Chinese funeral procession. My Grandpa passed away on 4^th July 2013, morning 5am. My whole family had to rush back to hometown to pay our last respects to our beloved Grandpa.  As soon as we reached there, we had to change into white and black uniform and pay our respect to our Grandpa. First time seeing my dad crying at Grandpa’s coffin broke my heart, realizing that Grandpa has left this world for real. Grandpa suffered from relapsed cancer which spread from lung to the rest of the internal organs.

As the evening went by, the chanting ceremony began with heavy accent Hokkien which I barely understand. Chanting took few hours including kneeling on the ground, putting joss stick, mourning session, calling Grandpa to cross the bridge etc. So many rules need to adhere which I believe is man made laws. At the end of the day, I found the ceremony so depressing. It does not make sense as they were preparing for Grandpa’s walk to hell and life in hell with luxury?  Burning those paper idols seems weird to me. Why they cannot have the mindset that Grandpa is with God and in heaven now? Heaven is a wonderful place to be at. No pain and sorrow. There is no need for us to bring our worldly treasure as everything is provided in heaven. Our treasure (eternal life) is already in heaven as written in John 14:1-4.

“Dont be troubled. You trust God, now trust in me. There are many rooms in my Father’s home and I am going to prepare a place for you. If this were not so, I would tell you plainly. When everything is ready, I will come and get you, so that you will always be with me where I am. And you know where I am going and how to get there.”

As I sat there waiting for the time to pass, I noticed that the altar has some drawings of stages of hell. I was literally shocked for the first time.  Why would you want to send your love one to hell? Why we believe that all souls go to hell? The priest kept praying that “god” will bring our Grandpa safe back to spiritual realm. Does that mean that he is lead to hell? I do not feel sad right now compared to others because they do not know where Grandpa is going after death. Now I understand why Chinese funeral has so many ceremonies and customs. It is so that they will have reassurance that the dead one will die peacefully. I believe it is a way of deceiving themselves.

My role as granddaughter has ended. I did not get to see him before he passed away. Even I am not sure if my grandpa is saved by Lord Jesus though prayers had been done with my boss and church friends. But I choose to believe God has taken care of everything whether we understand or not.  Our God is God of love, hope and peace. He provides us an assurance that we have eternal life after death. This I called, Our God, Lord Jesus who is willing to die for us so that our sins may be redeemed and we can have eternal life after death.

Now is my turn as a daughter/siblings role to pray for my family members. I pray that Lord Jesus have mercy towards my family members to open up their eyes and soften their hearts to receive Jesus.

Amen.

XOXO

God’s lover

Jesus a Gospel

From Henri Nouwen's

Thomas A Kempis helps give a shift in paradigm

It is good that sometimes:

A.      We have trouble and crosses;

B.      We are contradicted, men think ill of us even though we intend and do well;

C.      A good man is afflicted, tempted or troubled with evil thoughts;

D.      A good man has sorrows lament and prays by reason of his miseries. 

Why?

A.      The man realizes he is here on earth in banishment;

B.      It helps him build his humility;

C.      It helps us seek God to be our chief witness – not others. To seek His opinion only for our inward witness and for credit and praises;

D.      It helps us rest so fully on God that we need not seek comfort in men;

E.       He is able to perceive his great need of God without whom He can do no thing good;

F.       He longs for Christ not this world. He knows security and peace comes from God not from this world.