GPS - God's Positioning Service

While on a home visit to a hospice patient with a nurse last week, I found that I had lost my iPhone. A feeling of panic gripped me for an instant and I realized I must have dropped my phone in the taxi which we had taken earlier. By God's grace we were able to contact the taxi driver and he sent the phone to my home as he was in that vicinity.

This experience led me to look into the Find My iPhone App in case I lose my phone again. It made me appreciate the wonder of the GPS - Global Positioning System - technology. With the GPS we can locate an object as small as a phone!

During Christmas many would have been overjoyed if they had received a smart phone for a present. But we are reminded at Christmas that the greatest gift that God has given us is His Son, Jesus Christ. In Christ we have the blessed assurance that nothing can separate us from the love of God. Through Christ, we have the Holy Spirit as our Heavenly Father's GPS (God's Positioning Service) so that we will be able to follow and do His will.

But like the Find my iPhone App, I need to first download the GPS of our Heavenly Father just as I needed to download the App. We have to "download" the Holy Spirit by inviting Jesus Christ into our lives. Unfortunately, having done so, we fail to live by the Holy Spirit and be guided by our Lord’s GPS. With modern technology we may be more connected with one another but we are becoming more distracted and disconnected from God.

We have not been taught the value and importance of solitude and silence to listen to the voice of God. This is not only for our own person growth. Solitude and silence is to lead us to community - to become a part of the body of Christ. Henri Nouwen found that it is in solitude that we come to know our fellow human beings not as partners who can satisfy our deepest needs, but as brothers and sisters with whom we are called to give visibility to God's embracing love. He made the point that in solitude we discover that community is not a common ideology, but a response to a common call. How true it is that it is in solitude that we realize that community is not made but given.

This is the second lesson I learnt from the Find My iPhone App. To find the smartphones that we have lost, we need another smartphone to locate it. This is why God gives us the gift of the church community for we need the support and encouragement of our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ to fulfill God’s will for our lives.

The wonderful news of the gospel is that in Christ, God will never lose track of us even though we may stray away from His love and His will for our lives. Our problem is that we have a tendency to stray from God. We need to realise that we are lost so that we take the necessary step to be found by God. All we need to do is simply to understand the wonderful truth that Christ is in us so that we can activate our Lord's GPS.

Let us encourage one another to make full use of the GPS of our loving Heavenly Father in the New Year. My warmest wishes for a New Year filled with the love, joy and peace of our Lord.

Rejoice With Heart, Soul and Voice

In the merrymaking of the Christmas holidays it is so easy to miss the true meaning of the birth of Jesus Christ expressed in the Christmas carols we sing and the advent stories we read in our bibles. We forget that it must have been a very difficult time for Mary and Joseph. There was no room in the inn and the young couple had to cope with the birth of their first born in a manger. One can only imagine the fears and anxieties they had to face.

The humble and difficult circumstances of the birth of Jesus Christ provide encouragement and hope to those of us facing the pains and struggles of daily life. Some of us are facing life threatening illnesses, the emotional storms of interpersonal conflicts, or the sorrow of loss. Such struggles are especially difficult to face in a season of merrymaking especially when God seems silent and distant.

The good news of Christmas is that Jesus came to share our pain, fears and burdens. For Jesus is Emmanuel - God With Us. Christopher Maricle noted that “God did not send Jesus to solve all our problems; Jesus came to teach us how to live with our problems. This human life is difficult, full of hardships and disappointments interlaced with occasional joys and successes.”

Jesus came to set us free from our bondage to the evil in the spiritual dimension, the evil philosophies of the world and the evil within ourselves. Jesus is God's wonderful gift to help us know and experience God’s unfailing love for each one of us.

But first we need to receive the gift. We need to come to our senses like the prodigal son and see how far we are from our Father's Love. The darkness in our lives is but a reflection of far we have turned away from the love of God. We need the spirit of repentance to turn back to our Heavenly Father.

Secondly, after receiving God's gift of salvation, we need to make full use of the gift. It may be easy to receive Jesus as our Saviour but the real problem for many of us, if not all, is to make Jesus the Lord of all our lives. It is so easy to be caught up with all the spiritual blessings of our new life in Christ and use it for our personal gain instead of using them to do God's will. We need to remember Jesus' warning in Matthew 7:21:

"Not everyone who calls out to me, 'Lord! Lord!' will enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Only those who actually do the will of my Father in heaven will enter."

We need to remember that the will of God is for us rejoice always and to give thanks in all circumstances (1 Thess 5:16-18).

The Upper Room devotional today reminded me that the best gift we can give is the news of God's love shown in Jesus Christ. So let us rejoice and sing:

"Good Christian men, rejoice

With heart and soul and voice;

Now ye need not fear the grave:

Jesus was born to save!

Calls you one and calls you all,

To gain his everlasting hall.

Christ was born to save,

Christ was born to save!

May the humble and simple obedience of Joseph and Mary inspire us to experience the birth of the living Christ in our hearts this Christmas.

May you have a Blessed and Joyful Christmas!

BE IT UNTO ME

One of the stories at Christmas is that of Mary, the mother of Jesus, being given the news by an angel that she is going to be pregnant. Such news must have struck Mary with a sense of fear and trepidation of any unmarried woman who is told that she is pregnant.

How will Joseph take the news? Will he believe her? Will he break their engagement? Will she be stoned to death? It is a story of absolute trust and obedience. Her response, "Be it unto me, according to Your word" is both an inspiration as well as a challenge for all of us who seek to delight in the will of God.

Seeking and doing God's will is no simple or easy task. It is a choice that will take us right into the heart of a spiritual warfare. Richard Foster draws attention to the high cost of being faithful to God for the blessing of divine vocation can also be a great burden. He noted that those "who work for God, who dare to say yes to the divine summons, who dare to speak up for God, are often persecuted, victimized, and made lonely. Divine vocation does not always lead to earthly happiness.”

The prophet Jeremiah found it a joy and his heart's delight when he discovered God's Word and devoured them. And yet, he too was led to question why he was suffering from an incurable wound. He felt that God's help seemed as uncertain as a seasonal brook and like a spring that has gone dry. He then received the following response from God:

"If you return to me, I will restore you so you can continue to serve me. If you speak good words rather than worthless ones, you will be my spokesman. You must influence them; do not let them influence you! They will fight against you like an attacking army, but I will make you as secure as a fortified wall of bronze. They will not conquer you, for I am with you to protect and rescue you. I, the Lord, have spoken! Yes, I will certainly keep you safe from these wicked men. I will rescue you from their cruel hands." (Jeremiah 15:16-21).

God’s assurance to Jeremiah that He will be with him is the secret of how we can find joy in delighting in God’s will for our lives. Our joy does not depend on what happens to us – on our success or prosperity - but on the glorious riches of the mystery that Christ is living in us giving us the hope of glory (Colossians 1:27). It is this mystery that empowers us to find joy in our sorrows, pain, grief and tribulations. Brian McLaren makes the point that "our yes counts most when we receive mistreatments rather than praise for our effort. That's why the theme of suffering for doing good is so central to all our spiritual traditions."

The real message of Advent is that Love came down at Christmas. We are not called to celebrate a “Merry Christmas” but to proclaim the wonderful mystery that Christ has come and is in us so that there will be love, joy and peace in a world that is infected by greed and lust. The season of Advent is a time when we spring clean our hearts so that there will be room for the Christ child to be born in our hearts. It is a time to prepare our hearts so that we can truly sing with our hearts and souls on Christmas Day:

"Yea, Lord, we greet thee, born this happy morning,

Jesus, to thee be all glory given;

Word of the Father, now in flesh appearing;

O come, let us adore him

O come, let us adore him,

O come, let us adore him, Christ, the Lord!

Scanning Our Hearts

One of my email accounts was hacked last week. It was an unsettling experience as it reminded me of my vulnerabilities. It also triggered off feelings of guilt that I had not taken adequate protective measures. I installed a new antiviral software and scanned my computer for any worm virus but did not find any.

This experience drew my attention to the reality of evil and spiritual warfare and the critical need for self examination and the discipline of confession. The act of confession is not just to reflect on the things I have done or not done. It is an exercise of “scanning my heart” for the “sin virus” which keeps me from loving the Lord with all my heart and being a child of God. The sin virus drives me to be a G.O.A.T. (Greatest Of All Time) in the things I am doing to fulfill my ego needs.

The Word of God teaches us to search our hearts so that we can stand firm against the infection of sin. The truth is that all of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. (Romans 3:10) The prophet Jeremiah warns us of our tendency to turn away from God when we seek to fulfill our selfish human desires:

“This is what the Lord says: I am planning disaster for you instead of good. So turn from your evil ways, each of you, and do what is right.”

Such words sound harsh and contrary to our image of God as our loving Heavenly Father. However, we must be careful that our response to such warnings is not like the Jews in the time of Jeremiah:

“Don’t waste your breath. We will continue to live as we want to, stubbornly following our own evil desires.” (Jeremiah 18:11-12 NLT)

Our egocentric desires tend to draw us towards evil and we will then have to face God’s judgment against evil. When we turn away from God, the spiritual darkness will blind us to the evil in the good that we do. In the past, the teaching on the seven deadly sins - pride, anger, lust, greed, gluttony, sloth and envy was taken seriously. But modern society has trivialized these sins. It is therefore not surprising that we are facing doom and gloom in the coming years. The words of the apostle Paul to the Romans still hold true in our times:

“Yes, they knew God, but they wouldn't worship him as God or even give him thanks. And they began to think up foolish ideas of what God was like. As a result, their minds became dark and confused. Claiming to be wise, they instead became utter fools. Instead of worshiping the glorious, ever-living God, they worshiped idols made to look like mere people and birds and animals and reptiles.

So God abandoned them to do whatever shameful things their hearts desired. As a result, they did vile and degrading things with each other’s bodies. They traded the truth about God for a lie.“ (Romans 1:21-25)

In Greek mythology, there is the story of Orpheus who overcame the lure of the beauty and seductive voices of the “sirens” who would draw experienced sailors to their deaths by sailing into the dangerous waters and rocks. Orpheus sang more beautifully to drown out the seductive voices of the “sirens.” Drawing a lesson from this story, Alex Tylee made the point that to overcome our bondage to sin and our evil desires, we need to seek God even more strongly. For “if we sing God’s song, then even the most beautiful song of the world will pale into insignificance.”

In this season of Advent, let us practice the discipline of confession so that we can make room in our hearts for God’s song of Love. Self examination and confession is not to feel sorry for our sins to win God's blessings - it is to free our souls from guilt so that we can sing God's song of Love in our lives. Instead of singing, "I did it my way," let us sing, "All The Way My Saviour Leads Me."

The act of confession is to scan our hearts for the sin virus, especially pride, so as to clear our hearts of the virus through God's forgiveness. We will then be empowered to forgive others. Jesus told Simon the Pharisee that those who have been forgiven little show only little love. But those who have experienced forgiveness of their many sins will have greater love in their hearts. (Luke 7:36-50) The good news which Paul shared in his letter to the Romans is that as people sinned more and more, God’s wonderful grace became more abundant. (Romans 5:20)

The reality is that as we seek to love God more we will experience more temptations to keep us from experiencing God's love in deeper ways. But we can use such temptations and tribulations to see that we are spiritually out of shape and to ask God to reshape us. The good news is that God is the Potter and we are only the clay. All we need to do is to turn our eyes upon Jesus so that we will be able to see more clearly how God is transforming the suffering and evil in our lives for His glory.

Let us remember that we have a song to be sung to the nations – a song of love that will lift the hearts of the people to the Lord, a song that will conquer evil and shatter the spear and sword. The good news of Christmas is that God is with us. The challenge before us is to live out this wonderful truth in our moments, days and years so that we can truly sing:

“Joy to the world, the Lord has come!”