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Showing posts from 2020

Job: The Purpose of God in Dealing with His People

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I am overwhelmed by a renewed vision of the relationship between God and us, human beings. I always benefit from the in-depth study that Living Stream Ministry conducts semi-annually. This time the topic is on Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes, tackling the great question that consists of two parts: what is God's purpose in creating man and what is God's purpose in dealing with His chosen people? This question arises when we read the Book of Job, a perfect man in his integrity, morality, uprightness, and material blessings yet suffered immensely and stripped to only his bare existence.  Job and his friends had multiple rounds of discourse attempting to provide some kind of logic to his sufferings. However, the underlying concept of their back-and-forth was a misconstrued thought concerning God's relationship with His people. I can't blame Job and his friends because I frequently find myself trapped in the same fallacy. That is, if we do good, God would reward us and if we

The Cross of Christ: Prayer for Our Nation

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It's time to pray. Pray for our country. Pray for our nation. There was a short prayer that impacted me greatly in these recent days: “O God, forgive our country. The immorality and chaos are offenses to You, the righteous God. We ask You to remember the cross on which Your Son, our Lord Jesus, died.” The prayer was in the outline of a recent Christian conference that I virtually attended and was actually a quote from the first chapter of a book entitled "The Satanic Chaos in the Old Creation and the Divine Economy for the New Creation" by Witness Lee. It was based on Genesis 8:20-22 when Noah built an altar and offered burnt offerings to please God concerning the keeping of the earth, which had just passed through the deluge, God's judgment. The significance of the altar and the burnt offerings is for us to come to the cross (signified by the altar) and offer Christ (signified by the offerings) to God. In the context of Noah's building an altar and offering burn

Return to Me

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I am in the middle of a training on the in-depth crystallization study of the books of Jeremiah and Lamentations. We just got done with the first two messages. I have to admit that I have not adequately prepared for this study. I only began reading Jeremiah this week and indeed the chapters were lengthy. But I was overwhelmed with how moving and emotional the beginning chapters of Jeremiah were. Jeremiah 2:13 - For My people have committed two evils: They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, to hew out for themselves cisterns, broken cisterns, which hold no water. Jeremiah 2:19b - ...Know therefore and see that it is an evil and bitter thing, that you have forsaken Jehovah your God and that My fear is not in you, declares the Lord Jehovah of hosts. Jeremiah 2:37 - For Jehovah has rejected those in whom you trust, and you will not prosper by them. Jeremiah 3:1b - ...But you have committed fornication with many lovers. Yet return to Me, declares Jehovah. Jeremiah 3:12 - Go an

The Cry of Humanity

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To many it may be easier to respond to the developing Black Lives Matter movement, especially when the experience has been engrained and subjective to their personal lives. Honestly I can never say that I truly fathom the importance of this movement to the African-American community because of the simple reason that I am not part of the same community. I can only empathize to some extent. Back in my hometown I did go through an episode of ethnic cleansing in the late 90s where our family had to hide and pray for our lives. I remember the overwhelming feeling of insecurity that caused me to surrender to whatever was next. I lived in and witnessed the social reform that took place in the aftermath. Things got better but the solution had never been thorough because two decades later—it became world news—a local politician was incarcerated mainly due to his ethnicity and his faith. Soon I realized inherently things had not changed much. That was just the fact. This cry for justice, for

Take Comfort in the Sovereign God

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I just participated in a virtual, international Christian conference with over 80,000 attendees. The general subject of the conference was "A Timely Word concerning the World Situation and the Lord's Recovery." The messages spoken were indeed timely and sobering, especially with the timing of the current world crisis. I'm enlightened concerning where I am now and what I should be doing because God is here. He is invisible but He is right in the center of the world situation, sitting on the throne, administrating the whole universe to accomplish His purpose. It is easy to be stumbled and to ask, "Where is God? What is He doing? Why is He letting all these innocent people suffer?" This is why we truly need a spiritual vision to see the throne of God, the spiritual scene behind the world situation that we see with plain eyes, and Christ as the center of God's administration. To be honest, when I heard the consolation to be comforted because God is on the th

A Prayer in this Pandemic: "Lord, Have Mercy"

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I recently read one of Watchman Nee's books. It was written in January 1923 on the first issue of a publication called "The Present Testimony." The issue itself is entitled "What is Prayer." Through some of the gatherings I had via video conference, the burden to pray began to increase within all of us. However, we soon realized that we took prayer for granted. Often I pray due to a need, to ask for things, but really, what is prayer? There's a particular paragraph in Watchman Nee's writing that deeply edifies my being. Allow me to quote: "To pray does not mean to change the mind of heaven. It is the greatest mistake to think that God is hard and stubborn and that we must use prayer to battle with Him until He yields to us and changes what He has predetermined. Actually, any prayer that is not according to God's will is useless. Because God's will has suffered a hindrance from either men or demons, we come before God (as if we are wrest

In the Midst of a Pandemic: Anxiety, Assembling, Built Up Together

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Different lines of thoughts run through my mind during this COVID-19 outbreak. What is truly happening? Is this just the beginning? Anxiety, panic, fear mixed in with some utter ignorance and recklessness. Then the actual pestilence itself swiping through nations. The world is shaken. As a Christian, I know that I have to participate in prayers and caring for those in need. I also acknowledge that God has a specific need in this time, although I am not yet clear what He needs except for the unchanging fact that I must seek Him in prayers and in His word. He also obviously desires to spread the gospel of the kingdom to all the nations. But there's this great torpidity that drags me into a spiritual inertia. I have more idle time in my hands. It makes me restless and anxious wanting to fill my day with other stimulating excitements at this time. I can easily enjoy activities that do not necessitate the presence of many others. (I am an introvert by natural makeup so general soci

Reading Bible Stories to a Seven-Year-Old

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These days I have been pondering on the Book of Deuteronomy. I was deeply impressed with a recent Living Stream Ministry's training on the crystallization study of this book. I knew Deuteronomy meant second law, or a respeaking of the divine law. Moses was rehashing God's commandments with all the statutes and ordinances to the younger generation of the Israelites, to prepare them to enter into the good land. But little did I know the sentiment and the pressing burden that Moses had, just like an old grandfather admonishing the young ones. Moses knew what were about to happen, how the children of Israel would turn away from God. Moses was almost pleading to the children of Israel to not forget Jehovah, to remember all He had done, and to obey all His commandments, truly for their own good. There were too many crystals brought forth during that Deuteronomy training. But one thing that I had been considering in recent days was the importance of the next generation - our chi