The Law & The Spirit

"How foolish can you be? After starting your new lives in the Spirit, why are you now trying to become perfect by your own human effort?" Galatians 3:3 NLT

It is our human nature to try to be in control of our lives. We want to be gods instead of being godlike in our relationships. We need the light of God's Word to reveal the darkness that is deep within our hearts. The spiritual condition of our human hearts is diagnosed by the prophet Jeremiah as follows:

“The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is?" Jeremiah 17:9 NLT

One of the important objectives of reading and reflecting on the bible is to open our hearts and minds to the Holy Spirit. We need to pray for the Holy Spirit to search our hearts and to reveal our unconscious sinful desires to our conscious minds. We need to be aware of our imperfections and weaknesses so that we can draw close to God to seek His grace to overcome them.

Unlike Adam and Eve, we need not be ashamed of our naked imperfect selves and hide from God for "Christ has rescued us from the curse pronounced by the law. When he was hung on the cross, he took upon himself the curse for our wrongdoing. For it is written in the Scriptures, “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.” Galatians 3:13 NLT

Jesus came to set us free from guilt, the fear of death and the wrath of God so that we can live new transformed lives in the Spirit. This will change our attitude towards the bible. Instead of looking for facts to bolster our faith, we read and listen to God's Word for the Holy Spirit to reveal truths that we need to put into practice in our lives so that our faith in God's love will grow:

"No one can know a person’s thoughts except that person’s own spirit, and no one can know God’s thoughts except God’s own Spirit. And we have received God’s Spirit (not the world’s spirit), so we can know the wonderful things God has freely given us." 1 Corinthians 2:11-12 NLT

The apostle Paul drew the attention of the Galatian Christians to the following truths from the Old Testament:

1. The way of the law:

If you obey my decrees and my regulations, you will find life through them. I am the Lord. Leviticus 18:5 NLT

2. The curse of depending on the law to be made right with God:

‘Cursed is anyone who does not affirm and obey the terms of these instructions.’ And all the people will reply, ‘Amen.’ Deuteronomy 27:26 NLT
3. Abraham's faith:

And Abram believed the Lord , and the Lord counted him as righteous because of his faith. Genesis 15:6 NLT

4. God's promise to Abraham:

I will bless those who bless you and curse those who treat you with contempt. All the families on earth will be blessed through you.” Genesis 12:3 NLT

“For Abraham will certainly become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth will be blessed through him. Genesis 18:18 NLT

And through your descendants all the nations of the earth will be blessed—all because you have obeyed me.” Genesis 22:18 NLT

5. The need to live by faith:

“Look at the proud! They trust in themselves, and their lives are crooked. But the righteous will live by their faithfulness to God. Habakkuk 2:4 NLT

6. Christ's rescue from the curse of the law:

“If someone has committed a crime worthy of death and is executed and hung on a tree,  the body must not remain hanging from the tree overnight. You must bury the body that same day, for anyone who is hung is cursed in the sight of God." Deuteronomy 21:22-23 NLT

It is our faith in what Jesus Christ has done for us on the cross that will set us free from trying to please God by trying to obey rules instead of having a relationship with Him. When we receive the promise of God's gift of the Holy Spirit we become God's new creations. The life of Abraham gives us a glimpse of how God is at work in our lives when we live by faith. We will not live for worldly blessings but we will live to be spiritually fruitful by being a blessing to others.

We may not live perfect lives but we can trust that God will use even our imperfections for His glory. May we live by faith and grow in faith. May we live with heaven in our hearts so that we can face whatever hells we may face here on earth.

Hide & Seek - When God Seems Absent

“You hide Your face, and they are terrified. You take away their breath, and they die and return to dust.” - Psalm 104:27-29

All of us, sooner or later, will experience a time when we feel that God has abandoned us  - times when our prayers are not unanswered; times when  we can find no comfort in our grief and suffering. In such times we need to lament of recall the heart-breaking lament of Jesus on the cross - “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me” - the cry of despair in Psalm 22:1.

How we feel and react when God seems absent depends on how we see ourselves and our relationship with God  -am I a slave of sin or a child of God?  Do we see ourselves in the hands of an angry God or a loving Heavenly Father?  The good news is that Jesus came to set us free from our slavery to sin and to redeem us to be the children of God. Jesus did not promise us a life free from struggles but to show us that we can overcome our struggles because God’s power is greatest when we are weak.

 In times when we are experiencing the absence of God’s love and grace, we need to first ask ourselves if we are the ones hiding from God just as Adam did when he and Eve disobeyed God. We read in Genesis 3:8-9:

“And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. Then the Lord  God called to Adam and said to him, “Where are you?”

Are we fearful of God and hiding from Him? If so, we need the spirit of repentance so that we can pray with the psalmist:

“Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!”  - Psalm 139:23-24

We can  confess that we have wandered away from God and acknowledge that we are the lost sheep waiting for our Shepherd of Love to find us. For Jesus came to seek and save those who are lost (Luke 19:10)

God may seem to be absent because we need to grow in our understanding of God’s amazing grace and love. These are the times when God needs to move us out of our comfort zones so that we can become His partners rather than His servants.  In John 15:14-15, Jesus told his disciples:

“You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.” (ESV)

Perhaps we can learn to see such times as a time of God playing hide and seek with us - a time when God wants us to seek Him because He is drawing us into a closer and deeper  intimacy with Him as our Heavenly Father. In life, we will face the mountains of pain, sorrow and suffering. We have the choice of facing such mountains with helplessness and despair or to look beyond the mountains to seek God who can remove the mountains. We can stand on the promise of God recorded in Jeremiah 29:11-14:

“For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. In those days when you pray, I will listen. If you look for me wholeheartedly, you will find me. I will be found by you,” says the Lord.

When God seems absent, it is time to change our thoughts and beliefs - a time to renew our minds so that our hearts will be in tune with God’s heartbeat. In times when we face the storms of life, we will find peace when we seek the Presence of God and remember His Promises of Providence, Power and Protection as we pray the Lord’s Prayer:

Give us today our daily bread.

Forgive us our trespasses so that we can forgive those who trespass against us.

And lead us out of temptation and deliver us from evil.

BTO Souls

Vesak Day is the commemoration of the birth, enlightenment and death of Buddha by the Buddhists. Buddha taught the Four Noble Truths - the first truth is that all life is suffering, pain and misery. The second truth is that suffering is caused by selfish craving and personal desire. The third truth is that this suffering can be overcomed. The fourth truth is that the way to overcome this misery through the Eightfold Path.

In his first epistle, 1 Peter 4:12-13, the apostle Peter gives us another perspective of suffering:

“Dear friends, don’t be surprised at the fiery trials you are going through, as if something strange were happening to you. Instead, be very glad - for these trials make you partners with Christ in his suffering, so that will have the wonderful joy of seeing his glory when it is revealed to all the world.”(NLT)

Bishop Fulton Sheen that there are fractions of truth to be found in all religions. Instead of pointing out the errors of non believers, we can affirm the truths that can be found in them. For example, instead of judging the Confucians about their failure to accept Christ, we can affirm that they are right to emphasize the brotherhood of men. However, to achieve the brotherhood of men, we need the Fatherhood of God. And we can share how Christ died so that we can become the children of God and brothers and sisters in Christ.

Likewise, we can affirm the first three truths that Buddha taught - that life is suffering, suffering is caused by our selfish desires and that we can overcome suffering by getting rid of our selfish desires. To get rid of our selfish desires, Buddha prescribed the Eightfold Path comprising of the eight practices of right view, right resolve, right speech, right conduct, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right samadhi.

However, Christ died on the Cross to provide us with a simpler and better way by identifying ourselves with his death so that we can have BTO (Broken To Obey) souls. So often God needs to break our hardened hearts so that our minds will be open to see His perfect will for our lives. Only then will we be able to obey God’s commandment to love Him and to love others as ourselves.

Matthew 5:3 reminded me of the first step of Surrender in the Twelve Steps programme:

“You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and His rule.” MSG

Another author, Lysa Terkeust, shares the following insights in her book, “Unglued’. These are the fruit of a surrendered life to God:

“We can’t always fix our circumstances, but we can fix our minds on God.”

“I can face things that are out of my control and not act out of control.”

“Renewing our minds with new thoughts is crucial. New thoughts come from new perspectives.”

We need to understand that there is a spiritual warfare that is raging in and around us. Richard Parrott draws attention to the truth that we are living in the world of the unholy trinity - sin, death and the devil and hence our families are dysfunctional. The devil and his world system tempts us to be a chameleon who needs everyone to agree with us, or a bully, forcing everyone to agree with us, or a rebel, proving that nobody agrees with us.

The good news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is that He has already won the battle. As a child of God who is secure in God’s love for us, we will not need everyone to agree with us or to force them to do so and it will not matter when nobody agrees with us.

But we will live as BTO (Broken To Obey) souls who find our greatest joy in obeying what God commands us to do. We will fear God because we love Him rather than trying to love God because we fear Him. So let us learn to see our times of trouble as opportunities to hand over our lives to God so that He can turn us into His masterpieces of love:

“For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.”

Hell, Purgatory and Heaven on earth

“What joy for those whose strength comes from the Lord, who have set their minds on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. When they walk through the Valley of Weeping, it will become a place of refreshing springs. The autumn rains will clothe it with blessings."  Psalm 84:5-6

Fulton Sheen, a well known Catholic bishop n the 20^th century was of the view that modern man deny hell because they deny sin. Furthermore he noted that the denial of punishment is a denial of the sovereignty of law. Likewise the denial of hell is a denial of the sovereignty of God. He observed that saints fear hell but never deny it and that great sinners deny hell but never fear it. He described three possible destinations that await us at death:

1. Hell - Pain without Love

2. Purgatory - Pain with Love

3. Heaven - Love without Pain

Bishop Sheen felt that the modern man is accommodating a creed to the way he lives, rather than the way he lives to a creed. He also reminded us that the Devil is never so strong as when he gets man to deny there is a devil.

Our beliefs determine how we live, what we do with our lives and how we face death. It is therefore of critical importance to have a right perspective of hell, purgatory and heaven. Bishop Sheen shared the following truth:

“Remember that in God there is no future. God knows all, not in the succession of time, but in the “now standing still” of eternity, that is, all at once.”

Quantum physics can help us to understand the above observation of Bishop Sheen. God is beyond time. Perhaps we need to understand hell, purgatory and heaven not as something we will experience only after we die but as experiences that we have in the here and now. In this regard, the parable of the prodigal son gives us some valuable insights.

Hell is separation from God and a godless life is hell on earth. When the prodigal son chose to leave his father, he was actually going to hell even though he thought he was enjoying life with wine, women and song. Without God, our hearts are empty and we will seek to fill it with our addictions - to alcohol, gambling, sex and so on. We become slaves of our desires and pleasures and we suffer pain without love.

By God’s grace, He draws us back to Himself through times of suffering - pain with love. Such times are to purify our hearts and to help us to come to our senses like the prodigal son. We see our need for God’s mercy and grace. Through repentance, we turn back to God and we are born again as children of God through our faith in Jesus Christ. And so we can enjoy the heavenly banquet with our Heavenly Father through the ritual of the Holy Communion in the here and now. We will experience love without pain and perfect love casts out all fear.

How we see God determines how we respond to what happens to us in life. If we see God as an angry Judge, we will live graceless lives. We will turn away from God like the prodigal son or we will serve God with a fearful and grudging heart like the elder brother. Jesus came to show us that God is our Heavenly Father who wants us to be the best that we can be. And to do so, He will have to prune away the unproductive areas of our lives so that we can bear the fruit of love more abundantly.

We can live as human beings seeking spiritual experiences - crawling through life like a caterpillar. This is hell on earth. When we receive the gospel of Jesus Christ, we go into the stage of the pupa - to be regenerated and transformed. This may be a time of suffering - physical, emotional, social or spiritual - a time of loss and pain. It is purgatory here on earth.

As our minds are renewed and our hearts regenerated, we will live transformed lives. When we see life from the perspective of a butterfly rather than a caterpillar, we will be in heaven on earth. It is a futile exercise to try to understand what heaven is like. It is more fruitful to be God’s answer as we pray, “Your Kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

Hell, purgatory and heaven are not the places we go to when we die. They are the states of being that are determined by our relationship with God. When we live our lives without God we are already in hell even when we have health, wealth and power. When God is first and foremost in our lives, we are in heaven even when we are suffering, in poverty and powerless. When we have faith that God is calling us back to him, our valleys of weeping are our purgatory where God is purifying us for life in heaven.

When we live with the fear of death, we are slaves of Satan. When we are possessed by the love of money, we are slaves of the world. When our egos are on the throne of our hearts, we will be controlled by the fear of men. But when Jesus is enthroned in our hearts, the perfect love of God casts out our fear of death. We will be filled with God’s love so that we will love people instead of things. And the fear of God will keep us from the fear of men so that we can become the persons that God has created us to be.

So let us learn to live with the fear of God, to be filled with the love of God and to love others in the power of the Holy Spirit during this season of Pentecost. 

Dancing With Christ

“I was dancing before the Lord, who chose me above your father and all his family! He appointed me as the leader of Israel, the people of the Lord, so I celebrate before the Lord. Yes, I am willing to look even more foolish than this, even to be humiliated in your own eyes! But those servant girls you mentioned will indeed think I am distinguished.” 2 Samuel 6:21-22

A dancer who was at her peak of her career was devastated when she was diagnosed with cancer. The treatment had left her weak and breathless and she was unable to continue her dancing career. The story of king David dancing before the Lord gave me the insight that when we are unable to dance physically, we can learn to dance spiritually with God. Stacy Hawkins Adams in her book, Who Speaks to Your Heart, shares the view that living in ways that reflect God's goodness, graciousness and unconditional love is dancing to God's rhythm.

To do so, we need to choose to live a joyful life that is God centered and care free rather than a life that is burdened by the cares of the world and status symbols. We dance, according to Stacy, because it is a form of praise to God for his unconditional love and for the blessings we do not deserve.

We don't dance because we are without sin or that we are perfect. She also makes the point that dancing means loving God without self-consciousness. When we do so we will not attack others for their lack of faith or impose legalistic practices to earn God's love.

Stacy gives us a timely reminder that no one wants to be preached to or force fed the message of Christianity or the Word of God. The best way to share the messages of salvation and faith is by how we live, talk and treat others. She quoted St Francis of Assisi, “Preach the gospel at all times and when necessary, use words.”

It dawned on me that meeting in small groups is learning to dance to the rhythm of God's heart beat with Jesus as Lord of our lives.  It has been noted that God designed our relationships with one another to be a diagnostic tool as well as the cure.  Our relationships are to expose the deceitfulness that lies deep in our hearts.  As we become aware of our negative thoughts and unhealthy feelings, we can bring them to the Cross of Christ in prayer so that they may be changed  and our lives transformed. As we do so, the Holy Spirit will bind us together as the Body of Christ. 

When Jesus is not Lord in our meetings, our egos will lead us into fruitless and futile discussions about the bible instead of feeding on the Living Word of God to nurture our souls. So let us learn to dance with Christ with hearts filled with gratitude instead of guilt. Let us rejoice in Christ our Lord so that our lives will be shining beacons of light that draws others from this dark and sorrowful world into God's Kingdom of Love. 

A New Year, A New Identity, A New Commandment

A new year is a time for reflection on our lives and how we have lived our lives. It is a time to live out the Christmas truth that Christ has been born in our hearts. In Christ we have the good news of great joy that we can live as new creations with our new identity as a child of God. We read in 1 John 3:1

“See how much our Father loves us for He calls us His children and that is what we are!"

But first we need to face the bad news. God has created us in His image but our hearts have been corrupted by evil and we have lost our relationship with our Heavenly Father. We live our lives with our egos on the throne of our hearts. We seek pleasure and try to escape from pain,  suffering and death. We seek to live significant lives in a broken and fallen world.  But the real problem is our need to belong to God. In Genesis 8:21 we are reminded that God knows that everything we think or imagine is bent toward evil from childhood.

But Jesus came so that we can be reborn again. Our new identity as a child of God is the mystery that God has revealed to us in Jesus Christ as we read in Colossians 1:26-27:

“This message was kept secret for centuries and generations past, but now it has been revealed to God's people. For God wanted them to know that the riches and glory of Christ are for you Gentiles too. And this is the secret: Christ lives in you. This gives you assurance of sharing his glory.”

Understanding that we are a child of God does not mean that we will live the perfect life.  We are still imperfect but as a child of God, we will have the desire to seek the perfect will of God.  We have the role model of Jesus who came to show us what it means to be a child of God in submission, obedience, communion and service.

We will also seek to obey the new commandment that Jesus gave us: “Love one another as I have loved you.” When we have experienced the wonder of God's love, we will be empowered to love one another.

The challenge for me in this New Year is therefore to learn to surrender all of my life to God so that I will be totally dependent on His grace. I need to cultivate the discipline of repentance so that I will be freed for obedience. I need the discipline of confession as I seek communion with God. Only then will I do good works for His glory and not for mine. My calling is to be a witness of His compassion and righteousness. I can only share what I have experienced. I can only love when I have experienced God’s love.

When we live our lives as a story of God’s love, the truth of Psalm 145:7 will be fulfilled.

"Everyone will share the story of your wonderful goodness; they will sing with joy about your righteousness."

May God be glorified in our lives in the new year of 2016.

Medical Care is not healthcare

In his commentary "How S'prore can ride the coming healthcare revolution (Today 14^th May 2015). Dr. Jeremy Lim has rightly highlighted the problem of healthcare that is marketed  with a fee-for-service payment model.  We do indeed need a healthcare revolution if we want our citizens to enjoy good health to a ripe old age.

Dr. Lim had also pointed out that insurers are becoming more concerned about improving health and health promotion than about only sickness cure. Unfortunately, if the incomes of medical care providers are dependent on the sickness behavior of the patients, such providers will tend to pay lip service to health promotion. In fact, the training of doctors is directed towards diagnosing and treating diseases rather than health promotion.

We need to recognize that medical care does not lead to health - it is a misrepresentation to see our medical services as health care.  Our increasing need for medical care means that we are an unhealthy nation.  

True health does not lie in the hands of doctors. Indeed, the present Ministry of Health should be renamed the Ministry of Medical Services. 

The real Ministry of Health lies in the Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources, Health Promotion Board, the family service centres and all the other agencies involved in promoting ahealthy lifestyle.

The healthcare revolution must also change Singaporeans attitude towards suffering, death and dying. We must overcome our fear of suffering and death, which will come to each of us sooner or later, by learning to love ourselves and our fellow human beings. Perfect love casts out fear.

We must make hospice and palliative care the cornerstone of our medical education and imbue our healthcare providers with the spirit of hospice care enunciated by the founder, Dame Cicely Saunders:

“You matter because you are you, and you matter to the end of your life. We will do all we can not only to help you die peacefully, but also to live until you die.”

Unless we learn how to die, we cannot truly live. When we live fully, we will not be afraid of death or suffering and will not seek to add years to our lives, but rather to add life to our years. 

In doing so,  we will bring down the cost of medical care and enjoy good health in our old age.

(Published in Voices, Today, 23 May 2015)