Loved Before Time

“So he ran on ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see him,
because Jesus was going to pass that way.” — Luke 19:4

Photo by Larry Koester

God’s love for us goes before the moment we realise the beauty of it. Like how He loves Zacchaeus, the Sycamore tree has already been there all along awaiting for Zachaeus’
“God moment”.

 

Timely

Time is a commodity we often times neglect. 

We thoughtlessly waste it when…

we fail to make time for our families, conveniently;
we fail to make time for the people whom we claimed we love and value, indifferently;
we fail to make time for people in need especially those around us, intentionally;
we fail to make time for ourselves, selflessly; and worse…
we fail to make time for the LORD who gave His all for us, nonchalantly. 

When we fail to make time, we fail to love; for love is spelled, T-I-M-E.

“Lord, remind me how brief my time on earth will be.
    Remind me that my days are numbered—
    how fleeting my life is.
 You have made my life no longer than the width of my hand.
    My entire lifetime is just a moment to you;
    at best, each of us is but a breath.”
Psalm 39:4-5

Make the most of your time by making time. 

 

Would you…?

The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: 
“If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?” 
But…the good Samaritan reversed the question: 
“If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?”  

— Martin Luther King, Jr.

The truth that people have their own lives to live explains why they wouldn’t care more for others.
Giving extra mile for those who badly need them seem impossible to exist.
If they do, then it must be grace…it must be Christlike love.

 

Sharing the Gospel

How should you share the Good News, you ask?
Be vulnerable; let them know you’re no better than them.
But most important of all, stay human: consider their pain; 
in fact, share it; carry it as if it were your own.
Stay human, a human being with a difference —
a hope that is more true and more real
than the world’s construct of happiness.

 

What Really Works

“When we only do whatever works, in the end it really doesn’t work. Life has to have that ontic referent of the eternal from which the temporal must find its relevance.

Eternity is like the anvil; time is like the hammer – it beats away at the anvil of eternity.
Ultimately, the hammer will be thrown away; the anvil will remain.

So we must build our lives upon things that are eternal.” — Ravi Zacharias

“What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?”
— Matthew 16:26 —

Profoundly true. Perfectly timely.

 

Beautiful Pain

It’s way different when we actually get a slap of truth about our realizations…
the ugly truth about how ugly one can be in all aspects and angles.
 
No wonder why one gets abandoned. 
No wonder why pain gets to dwell.
…No wonder.

Yet through this agony, one gets to cry out to the only One who truly listens.
No wonder why it’s a beautiful pain.
…No wonder.

“Hear my cry, O God; listen to my prayer.
From the end of the earth I call to you,
when my heart is faint.”
(Psalm 61:1,2)

“May your unfailing love be my comfort,
according to your promise to your servant.”
(Psalm 119:76)

 

 

Freed by Grace

And so the Lord says,
    “These people say they are mine.
They honor me with their lips,
    but their hearts are far from me.
And their worship of me
    is nothing but man-made rules learned by rote.
Isaiah 29:13

Legalistic people should stay in God’s church. 
For although they don’t own the church, though they behave as if they do,
it’s a hospital for dying sinners not a museum for living saints.

 

Antidote

I do not understand the things I do. I do not do what I want to do, and I do the things I hate.
I really love God in my heart but there is another power within me that is at war with my mind. This power makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me.

Oh, what a miserable person I am!
Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin and death?

— Romans 7:15,22-24 NLT

The Only answer will find you.

 

Live!

Still, it’s what GOD had in mind all along, to crush him with pain.

The plan was that he give himself as an offering for sin

so that he’d see life come from it—life, life, and more life.

And GOD’s plan will deeply prosper through him.

Isaiah 53:10 The Message

No matter who you are, no matter where you come from, no matter what you’ve done,

GOD bled his heart out for you because He loves you.

And He wants you to live.

 

Jesus Saves

“It is not faith that saves, but faith in Jesus Christ: faith in any other saviour, or in this or that philosophy or human conceit (Col. 2:16, 18, 1 Tim. 4:1), or in any other gospel than that of Jesus Christ and Him as crucified (Gal. 1:8, 9), brings not salvation but a curse. It is not, strictly speaking, even faith in Christ that saves, but Christ that saves through faith. The saving power resides exclusively, not in the act of faith or the attitude of faith or the nature of faith, but in the object of faith; and in this the whole biblical representation centres, so that we could not more radically misconceive it than by transferring to faith even the smallest fraction of that saving energy which is attributed in the Scriptures solely to Christ Himself.”

“Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.”

—Acts 4:12—

Biblical Doctrines, vol. 2 of The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield (New York: Oxford University Press, 1932; repr., Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000), 504.

 

BREAK GLASS

IN CASE OF EMERGENCIES

LIKE TEMPTATION, DOUBT, FEAR, OR SIN

LOOK TO THE CROSS

 

Who Do You Say I Am?

“Saying the words, “I received Jesus” means nothing until you answer the question, “As what?””

—John Piper—

Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” And they said, “Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”

He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.“

Matthew 16:13-16

 

No Difference

“I confess to you, that if I can but live and die serving and honouring the Lord Jesus Christ, it will make no difference to me whether I am eaten by Cannibals or by worms.”

—John Paton, a missionary to the cannibal people of New Hebrides—

“For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.”

—Philippians 1:21—

 

Every Morning

“‘His mercies … are new every morning’ (Lamentations 3:22–23). Why are they new every morning? Why does God do it that way? It’s not because yesterday’s mercies were bad or weak. It’s because they were yesterday’s. Yesterday’s mercies were for yesterday’s burdens. Today’s mercies are for today’s burdens. They are new every morning. They are like the manna in the wilderness: you can’t keep it overnight. Enough comes for each day. You live on God day by day, or you don’t live on God.”

—John Piper—

“The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”

—Lamentations 3:22-23—

 

Knowledge and Knowledge

There is, therefore, knowledge and knowledge —knowledge that resteth in the bare speculation of things, and knowledge that is accompanied with the grace of faith and love, which puts a man upon doing even the will of God from the heart: the first of these will serve the talker; but without the other, the true Christian is not content.

“Give me understanding, and I shall keep thy law; yea, I shall observe it with my whole heart”

Psalm 119:34

Taken from John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress. Faithful’s Discourse With Talkative.