Wow, this has been a long two weeks away from blogging. We had to thoroughly clean this site as those who were logging on were getting virus warnings. Thank you to the web managers who have helped us throughout the past weeks. The two weeks pass quickly in Sydney with overnight prayer and various meetings, and here again, I am about to leave for a ten day trip to Singapore. God has been good and increasing His presence of love and joy as time is spent in His presence. Many people have asked what it is like to meet Jesus in vision or in the Spiritual realm. It is like meeting perfection, like meeting perfect light, perfect love, perfect wisdom. There is nothing which He does not know. He knows us better than we know ourselves. In Him, there is no shadow of turning, no condemnation, only perfect love and perfect acceptance. Imagine, the most perfect love possible in your life and it would pale in shadow to the love of Jesus. Imagine the most brightest light and it would be darkness in comparison to His light. As we behold Him, so are we transformed (2 Corinthians 3:18). Many people do not really know God or Jesus for who He is. We are the reflection of the God we really know. Who we are is the sum of who we see God to be. Society, cultures, traditions have coloured our picture of God and all His attributes. We need to be able to see God for who He is. And that is easier said than done. For by human nature, we tend to limit God and made of objects and things around us into the gods we worship. Christians might not worship physical idols today but we are warned not to have idolatry in our hearts (1 John 5:21). Anything within our belief system that replace with the Truth of who God really is, is an idol in our hearts. Our concepts of God can be the very limiting factor to us truly knowing God especially if we are unwilling to give them up in place of the God that the Bible reveals Himself to be. Take a simple example of love: our understanding of what love is and can be is shaped by our experiences, family, culture, traditions and eduation. It takes the love of Jesus at the cross to break down all these barriers. By default, humans always walk in conditional love, rare are those who have set their hearts to love others unconditionally. In fact, many Christians even love God conditional, let alone telling them to love others unconditionally. We all have so much more to grow into God and to know God for who He is, that God is love, and he that abideth in love abides in God, and God in Him (1 John 4:16).
Papa God, we pray that you would continue to reveal Your unconditional love to us. We pray that this love would be powerfully revealed to all our loved ones, friends and partners in the ministry, students and members of Your church. In Jesus Name.
Thank you again dear pastor,
Yes, I know what you mean about our cultures being so different and how that makes us love less others who do not share our values and even our way of doing things, the skin of our color, our nationalities. I see that kind of “rejection” everywhere, but no doubt I’m part of that, too, but given that I’m bi-cultural it is less of an issue in my life and stress to be open to all. I’m white but have dark hair and somewhat dark eyes and that sort of gives me free access to all places but it’s funny how when Americans know I’m acutally Mexican, their attitude changes, though they wouldn’t tell by my accent because I’m fully bi-lingual.
Anyhow, just wanted to dig deeper into your thoughts and provoke you a little more into being more open to us non-asian and non-caucasian folks. You have spiritual children of all races and cultures.
I don’t know any minister who works as hard as you do, Pastor, and still keep a fresh attitude in life and make jokes in your studies. To me you are somebody to really look up to and thank God for your life. The 1st thing I do when I turn on my computer is go into COG website to check if there are any new sermons and it is always a joy when I get new MP3s, I feed on them all the time.
Like somebody else said, keep raising the bar, Pator,
martin from Mexico