Beautiful Old Songs | Saturday, May 28, 2005
I recently bought a Christian cd and found that I like it very much. When the worship leader sang "Turn Your eyes upon Jesus" and "I exalt Thee" my feelings stirred within me most powerfully.
You see, I have come to realise that there are a lot of things I want to do be it for the benefit for other people, God and mostly myself, I seldom factored God into my equation. I normally and often depend on myself and people whom I deemed are a potential of help to me and I seldom depended on God unless I have no way out. SO when I heard him singing "Turn Your eyes upon Jesus" I was hit most powerfully and that brought me to the first point.
Why is it so hard to focus our eyes upon Jesus? All the things we want to do to glorify His name and extend His kingdom here on earth and to please Him with our words and lifestyle which is very very difficult and yet the last Person we focus is HIm, Creator of Heaven and Earth. I think the reason is simply because the things in the world seek to dazzle us and we are dazzled, distract us and we are distracted, attract us to their way of living and philosophy and we are attracted and all these are temporal which is very true. Yet, we have this rationale that we ought to enjoy ourselves to the fullest for afterall life is also temporal and so we turn our attention to the things of what life has to offer us. We did not turn to Jesus Christ and built our house on the foundation of sand and Jesus said it most poignantly that the waves came and great is its destruction. James said it that we know the right things to do and not do it, it is sin (paraphrase mine).
"I Exalt Thee" is a song I often sing as a child and I would sing it at the top of my voice, often straining my vocal chords. I would sing it with gusto and believed that I would exlat God with my goodness, capabilities and strength, bringing people to Christ, worshipping Him, reading His word and going for prayer meetings without fail. I was thinking that maybe God would be most glorified not by our strengths but rather our weaknesses. God said to Paul, "My grace is sufficient for you for power is perfected in weaknesses." Paul replied that, "Most greatly then will I boast about my weaknesses that the power of Christ may dwell in me." I would then sing this song with a new attitude of heart probably a heart of gratitude and humility that "Lord, I exalt you not of what I can do but rather of what You can do through me." I exalt You in my weaknesses for only You have the power to show grace in me and to life up my head. I exalt You not because of what You have done in my life but for the simple reason that I love You because You love me first. You unfailingly love me even though I may grieve You and shamed Your Name and for this reason I exalt You. Listen to the rich hymns and old Christian songs and maybe your life would be impacted in such ways that you never expected. Like to use the words from the ex-Ceo of HP who gave a speech and she said it most beautifully, "Who You are is a gift From God and What You make yourself is a gift to God." I believe that those who read are a beautiful gift to God for He is our Potter and we are clay and He has the ability to make us into beautiful porcelain veses or vessels of gold, silver for honor. You are a gift to God and people who are your friends and so be a blessing to them just as God is a blessing to You.
May you be blessed when you read this blog. God bless
Shalom
Joseph
Created at 3:02 AM
My Impression of God | Tuesday, May 24, 2005
Since young, I have been thinking of what God looks like and wondering about His character and His personality. I have this impression from young that God must look like a benevolent grandfather who loves me very much and takes good care of me and that He would not allow me to suffer grief and things that would break my heart. My future, career, girlfriend, marriage and even the way I die or the time I die are all in His hands and that I do not need to worry anything for God will take care of me. I always visioned that He is there besides me, comforting when I need comforting, grieved when I am upset with my sister, parents and cousins. All these does sound spiritual or even biblical and yet I feel there is something wrong with my kind of thinking. I have no doubts that God does hold my future in my hand but I do not believe that He will teach me on how to live my life and in fact, as I grow older, I feel that God is not my nanny and that He allows me to get hurt or be burned in the process of Life. He will not tell me which girl or wife He has prepared for me or which career He wants me to choose but it is all in His hands.
We don''t expect manna falling from heaven feeding us when we asked God to supply us our daily bread but we do kind of expect God in the form of a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, leading us and guiding us in visible, tangible forms. We long for those exciting moments where God manifested His presence in powerful moments that we can declare that God is here among us and in that kind of services, nobody would want to go home though it may end very late at night. The problem arises when God speaks in a still small voice that we don''t ever equate God with for in our minds, we have this vision of Moses where God speaks in a thundering voice. When God speaks in a still small voice, we cannot hear Him for we cover it up with the other more attractive voices and color. We lose attention of God in the mundane things and believe that God is here in powerful moments but He sort of disappear in our day to day life. Jesus said that my sheep knows my voice and I believe that fervently. I believe that I do know His voice and I believe that you too but the problem is just that we expect the other kind of voice where volcanoes erupted, the red sea split in two and a mighty wind that we normally would equate God with and so, when we hear this small voice where we easily cover it up with our work, television, cds, radio or other media and so, we did not hear Him calling.
We expect God to breathe fire and brimstone when we deliberately sinned against Him and when that didn''t happen, we breathed a bit easier and committed the same or even worse sins, believeing that He is a loving God and that it doesn''t matter for our sins were all nailed at the cross through Jesus Christ our Savior and that even when the Day of Judgment comes, we can point our wrongdoings on Jesus and God would automatically forgive our sins. I was just thinking how well sin lies, comforting us so that we sinned even more and I was just thinking my theology is wrong in this one. Yes, God does forgive us when we confessed our sins but then, if we keep on sinning, where is the power of God in this matter over sin? Jesus has broken the sin''s stronghold over us that we have the liberty to love God and follow Him but if we still keep on sinning, isn''t sin then our master and the Apostle James said that once sin was conceived, it brought forth death and Paul concurred with him for the wages of sin is death.
Our impression of God cannot be one-sided that God is love and that He will condone our wrongs and sins. I don''t believe that is who God is but rather I believe that God is not only a God of love but also a God of Justice and Righteousness and that His grace is upon us and that we can come back to Him as long as we have the desire to come back and repent of our sins. The DAy of Judgment is real and that He will judge each of us according of what we have done be t good or bad and we cannot defend ourselves for He is a God of impartiality. He loves us I believe that is true but how can we grieve the heart of the One who loves us so much? How can we indeed and yet we do this almost without thinking every day of our lives?
All my life, i want to love God to the best of my ability and found out I can''t. I want to live like David, wom God said that he was a man after God''s own heart and I wanna be like him but I failed too often but I am not going to give up for no matter what happens, I would not trade God for something less for He is my everything, the Joy-Giver who gives us true joy and rest and I long for the day when He said to me the blessed words, "Well-done, my good and faithful servant." Isn''t this what we have been longing for? Even 16 years later, I am still discovering the joy of knowing who God really is.
Created at 5:27 PM
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Name: Joseph Chia
Age: 28
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