Following Jesus

We are living in a very uncertain,  unpredictable and confusing time - a time when we are bombarded with instant as well as changing information through the world of the Internet. On Pentecost Sunday on 27th May 2012, I was reminded of the need of our world to see what sacrificial love can do. Jesus came to show us through the cross the agape love of God as our Heavenly Father. Christians are called to be his witnesses by following him in the way of the cross. The central discipline of Christianity is to follow Jesus.

The only road map that Jesus had was the voice of God. The safest and surest way to move with God is by following Jesus. Laurie Hall draws attention to the truth that it is not knowing how our lives are going to turn out that is important but Who is going to turn it out. When we face the storms in our lives we need to hold fast to the truth that Jesus never fails. As we do so our lives will be transformed just as the disciples were.

However, following Jesus is not a picnic trip but a journey filled with pitfalls and dangers. It is a time when we will be confronted with the evil within ourselves and our need for God's healing grace. It is a time when our hearts will be purified by being broken. Laurie Hall, in her book, An Affair of the Heart, shared how God raised her dead marriage by breaking her heart. She found that when her heart was broken, the first thing that came out was fear with all its hatred and anger - the "fear that is the slave master of dead souls." At the same time, she realized that anger and hatred don't belong just to fear. She wrote:

"Love also had its anger and hatred. God is love and in that love, His wrath burns like fire against the things that destroy those He loves. God is love and in that love, He hates it when things are wrong. As we learn how to love, we will discover that some things make us ferociously angry and some things arouse a depth of hatred we never knew was possible. But because our hearts are not pure like God's heart, we are often disappointed to discover that the anger and hatred that flow from love are frequently mingled with the anger and hatred that comes from fear."

Rico Tice, the preacher at All Soul’s Church on Pentecost Sunday reminded us that the grace of God is the key to understanding the New Testament during the service on Pentecost Sunday. It was Martin Luther’s encounter with God through the Book of Romans that gave him the life changing insight into the truth that “the just shall live by his faith.”  The whole Scripture took on a new meaning and the “justice of God” which had filled him with hate became “inexpressibly sweet in greater love. The Book of Romans became a gate to heaven for him. Martin Luther shared the following important truth about God’s grace:

“If you have a truth faith that Christ is your Saviour, then at once you have a gracious God, for faith leads you in and opens up God’s heart and will, that you should see pure grace and overflowing love. Thus it is to behold God in faith that you should look upon his fatherly, friendly heart, in which there is no anger nor ungraciousness. He who sees God as angry does not see him rightly but looks only on a curtain, as if dark cloud had been drawn across his face.”

Henry Blackaby noted that God is known for using ordinary men to advance his kingdom in extraordinary ways. Our lives must be, to quote Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the "audible song of praise of God and Jesus Christ." This is the fruit of the invisible work of the Holy Spirit in obedient hearts.

To follow Jesus is therefore the secret to a life of sacrificial love, joy and peace. Let us encourage one another to follow Jesus so that our lives will be filled with the chorus:

“How marvellous! How wonderful, and my song shall ever be:

How marvelous! How wonderful! Is my Saviour’s love for me!

Our Freedom From Sin

“Did the law, which is good, cause my death? Of course not! Sin used what was good to bring about my condemnation to death. So we can see how terrible sin really is. It uses God’s good commands for its own evil purposes.”  - Romans 7:13:

We are living in an increasing selfish and individualistic society. There are news reports of “profoundly ungrateful” billionaires running away from their tax obligations to their own home country. We are living in what Karl Menninger has described as a rampant triumphant epoch of technology. It is an era of inventions, innovations and gadgets. It is a time when “rugged individualism, acquisition, thrift, boldness and shrewdness” are acclaimed as national virtues.

However, the troubles of our current times should wake us up to the truth that something is very wrong. Karl Menniger rightly described our current situation as a time when “the new gods seem to have failed us, while the old God is said (by some) to be dead. Things are all wrong.”

We need to understand the truth and reality of sin in our lives. Sin is the evil part of our human nature that seek to draw us away from the agape love of God. Until we face and acknowledge the sinful nature in us, we are, in a sense, spiritually dead and separated from God.

But it is not easy to face the truth about ourselves. Ruth Haley Barton, in her book, Invitation to Solitude and Silence” makes the following perceptive observation:

“It does no good to try and fix what we see. It is useless to make excuses for what we see. It is cowardly to blame others for what we see. And denying what we see just puts us right back in the mess. The only thing we can do is to keep our whole selves turned toward God even as we endure the grief and unsettledness that the seeing brings.”

We can undergo the painful process of seeing ourselves as we are when we believe the good news that God “loves us as we are and yet loved us too much to let us stay as we are.”  God loves us not because we are good but because He is good. When we learn to accept and receive God’s love through faith in Jesus Christ we will be set free from our sinful self. Paul reminds us of the misery of a person struggling to obey letter of the law instead of living by the Spirit:

“I know that nothing good lives in me; that is, nothing good lives in my corrupt nature. Although I have the desire to do what is right, I don’t do it. I don’t do the good I want to do. Instead I do the evil that I don’t want to do. Now, when I do what I don’t want to do, I am no longer the one who is doing it. Sin that lives in me is doing it.” (Romans 7:18-20)

Paul discovered the truth that evil is present with him even when he wanted to do what God’s standards say is good. He took pleasure in God’s standards in his inner being. However, he saw a different standard at work throughout his body. (Romans 7:21-23)

Like Paul, we try so hard to obey the written word through our human spirit instead of seeking to obey the Living Word who is the Risen Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. On Sunday at Queenstown Lutheran Church, Mrs Persis Lim reminded us that we remain in Christ’s love by obeying God’s commandments. However, our obedience is not a the fearful obedience of a slave but the obedience of desire of a friend. 

As we seek to love God, His commandments become the desire of our hearts and not burdensome laws to curb our lifestyles. We will see and understand that God’s commandments are to set us free from our slavery to sin so that we will truly be able to enjoy the spiritual wealth of God’s Kingdom. We will be saved from being spiritually dead and become more fully alive in God through Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit.

The Faith That Will Not Fail

In his sermon on Sunday, 6^th May 2012, Rev Lim Kim Hock, posed the question as to whether we can be sure of our faith in 5 years time or when we face adverse circumstances in life. I was reminded of a Christian patient who was struggling with cancer. She had shared with me the fear that she may lose her faith in God as her physical condition deteriorated each day. 

Rev Lim drew attention to a very important truth – our faith does not depend on our feelings or our circumstances. When we are truly abiding in Christ as the true vine, our faith is rooted in the truth that Christ is in us and we are in Christ. When we have such an abiding faith, we can be sure that we will not lose our faith in God.

A faith that is abiding in Christ will not be an empty faith. It will bear the fruit of the Spirit – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control. Bearing such fruit is impossible by our human efforts – it is only by the Holy Spirit in a life that is totally surrendered to Christ.

With such faith comes the power to serve our fellow human beings. The writer of the Upper Room devotional on Sunday 6^th May 2012 noted that “we live in a world where might is worshipped and weakness is despised.” Nations all over the world spend so much money on weapons of war instead of building up institutions of love.

In Deuteronomy 17:14-17, we read of God’s warnings to the future kings of Israel not to acquire many horses or many wives – the trappings associated with wealth. Sadly, we see David and Solomon failing to take heed of these warnings to the detriment of the people of God. Richard Foster lamented that likewise many contemporary leaders who take office with good intentions had their service compromised by money. When we are connected to the false vine of Mammon we will bear the fruit of pride, greed, lust, envy and all the other manifestations of our corrupt human nature.

It is therefore so important to cultivate a faith that is abiding in Christ, the true vine. When we do so, we will be able to discern God’s hand in removing the dead branches of faith in our lives as well as pruning the leafy branches so that we will be more fruitful. Only then can we face the storms in our lives with great joy as we see such times as opportunities for our lives to bear more fruit and bring glory to God.

To abide in Christ is to put our love and energies to living a life that is focused on God rather than the pursuit of material goods or social status. The good news is that all we need to do is simply to trust in the resurrection power of Jesus:

“Yes, ‘tis sweet to trust in Jesus,

Just from sin and self to cease;

Just from Jesus simply taking

Life and rest, and joy and peace.

Jesus, Jesus, how I trust him!

How I’ve proved him o’er and o’er!

Jesus, Jesus, precious Jesus!

O for grace to trust him more!”

When we are abiding in Christ, we will have the assurance that we have a faith that will not fail.