Ash Wednesday

Glory of God

In the book of Mathew 17 we see, Jesus Christ, with his three disciples, called them and went to the mountain. When he was there, his appearance changed and his face shone like the sun and clothes became as white as light. With him Moses and Elijah appeared. The glory of God was shown and a voice came that Jesus is Fathers dearly son. When the glory of God and His sound came, disciples fell face down on the ground. The glory of God reveals his children and destroys the evil.

In Exodus 24, when The Lord called up Moses to the mountain, the glory of God came to Sinai and covered it for 6 days. For the people who were down the mountain, it was looking like a consuming fire. We can see Moses communicated with God face to face and his face was radiating God’s glory. God’s glory will not only destroy the enemies, but also will radiate through His faithful servants.

Rulers of the earth are preparing battles against Lord and his beloved people. But the scripture says, God is laughing at them. There is always a warning when persecution against his children happens. God rebukes the one who fight against his children (Psalms 2)

In the history of Israel, we see, whenever they cried, the Lord helped, Even though he is a forgiving God, he rebukes the one who are against his children. When he reveals his glory, the enemy flees.

The nation of Israel survived these years with the help of God’s glory. A small nation, but a super powerful nation has the glory of God. As the New Testament Israel, the believers of Christ Jesus will be protected the same way when the glory of God comes. How can you attain this glory?

When the Spirit of God touches you and anoints you, the glory of God will be revealed through your life. It is like a fire which burns down all the worldly powers against your soul and you will be attached with God, like Moses (Acts 2).

To be filled with the Spirit, you need to accept Christ as your saviour and walk in His ways. It is God’s timing when to fill you and according to your walk with Him, you are going to be filled and more power and glory will surround you (Acts 11: 24). May The Lord help you to walk His ways and fill you with His glory to be a testimony for Him.

Growing in Christ

There are people who are born and brought up in a Christ centered family. Even for those people, there will be a point in life when they need to analyse themselves, repent and accept Christ as their personal saviour.

When you are saved, you will have peace and joy in your heart and your spiritual life will be very joyful. You’ll read the word of God, study it, meditate upon it, pray and have a great communion with God.

As the days goes, God wants to provide you with new knowledge and wisdom about him. So you have to go through tests and He will help you to go through it. With each and every test you pass, you gain new spiritual meanings about the word of God and will get closer with Him.

A student who is in 10^th grade will not study 2^nd grade subjects because he/she had already gone through that grade. Same way when you are developed in Christ, you will no longer be that same born again believer, but will get more meaningful life with respect to the scriptures.

Apostle Paul talks about it as for a baby you cannot give solid food, but only milk. When the baby grows you can give solid food. When you are new to Christ, the evil behaviour inside you may not change. Only your spiritual thought will change, but your character changes as you develop in Christ. For a person to develop in Christ, he/she needs help from other mature believers, same way a plant grows. One person sow the seeds, another water it. In spiritual world, one evangelise about Christ, another teaches you and another may show you to live a life worth as a believer. Even if all these things happen, it’s God’s responsibility to make you grow with respect to the choices he gives you (1 Corinthians 3).

Once you start growing in Christ, accepting tests and overcome it by the help of Jesus, more spiritual maturity and wisdom comes in life. Jesus taught how the commandments given to Israel can be taken serious in a believer’s life.

When you are angry with someone, according to the Bible, you are violating the commandment “You must not murder”. (Mathew 5). In the same way you are violating this commandment when you call someone idiot or curse anyone. Christ teaches us not to burden our heart with anger or jealousy, but to have peace within and out.

When Jesus taught the commandment about adultery, when a man/woman looks at other with lust in their eyes/heart, they have already committed adultery. He even strongly warned them to take off that part, whether your eyes and throw it instead of poisoning the whole body to hell.

People say lies. But some take vows. But when you are a believer of Jesus, you will say “yes I will” or “no I won’t” instead of taking any vow. Christ teaches that any beyond this is evil (Mathew 5: 21-37)

Once you come to Christ, it’s only about salvation. As you grow in Christ, it will be about life and death, blessings and curses and so on.

In short, when you live according to the word of God and in Integrity, without your knowledge God will lift you high and provide you peace, joy and happiness in all situations of life to be an example. May the Lord provide you wisdom to understand this process of growing in Christ and help you to be a part of it and live a testimonial life.

Powerful Faith

The person who goes to gym to build a muscular body will never get it in a day or two. They have to work on the workouts given to them by the instructor and should have patience, by not stopping in between, but to work on it.

Same way an endurance runner is not made in one day. The runner has to practice and run small distance first and increase the distance patiently. It takes some time before the runner can become a full marathoner and then an ultra-runner.

Same way, to have a powerful faith, one should have patience and should go through trials and temptations in life.

If someone goes to a bible college or seminary, study full theology, read the bible 100 times, even by heart it, his faith is not going to become strong unless he goes through small tests in his life to the big ones.

In the Bible Abraham is called the Father of Faith. He was called by God in Genesis 11-12. He had to go through lots of tests. When God calls, it doesn’t mean you are free from any trials. But God provides you tests to make your faith strong. God was testing Abraham and was promising him blessing also. Finally God blessed him with a son, Isaac.

In Genesis 22, we see an ultimate test of faith in Abraham’s life. He was asked by God to sacrifice his own son. Even though he was sad and broken, he listened to God. God tested Abraham’s faith and Abraham passed it and God saved Isaac and also blessed Abraham more powerfully.

Strengthening faith is a day to day process. When the world comes against you and you are living according to the promise of God, your faith will be tested badly. As a spiritual child of Abraham, may The Lord be with you and provide you the same faith in you to listen to the Holy voice and live accordingly in the midst of severe trials, to strengthen your faith and be a testimony to the creator.

Why Conversion?

“Conversion” is the process of changing or causing something to change from one form to another. From long time this word has being used to create tension between two sets of people who possess different religious faith. People are getting murdered because of being accused of religious conversion.

There is a term called “Forced Conversion”, which they term as someone getting converted to another religion/faith forcefully, through money or any worldly gift. Even changing religion for the reason of getting married is added to this term. Yes, this is being happening in lots of places.

There is a lot of misinterpretation going around about a person who is a believer of Jesus Christ. The world calls him/her as a Christian.

When you read and meditate upon the word of God, a Christian, or a follower of Christ is

·        Not the one who has a name mentioned in Bible

·        Not the one who attends church regularly

·        Not the one who takes part in all the activities of the church

·        Not the one whose personal certificate mentions his religion as Christian

The Bible teaches us that you are children of God through faith in Christ Jesus (Galatians 3: 26). So when you are a child of God, the Spirit of God guides your life. You won’t be doing what your sinful nature carves (Galatians 5: 16, 17). That means when you are forced to do evil, like the worldly people, you will get a guilty feeling that this is wrong. So there will be a constant war inside you between the sinful nature and Spirit who is guiding you. So you are a person in Christ not by your works or because of your forefathers, nor is your name mentioned in a church register, but just because of your faith. And if you are in Christ, you will obviously do good works.

Once you are in Christ you will have the peace and joy in your heart in all situations of your life. Your love and care for others will increase and you will have a compassionate heart to help others to have that same peace and joy in their heart. More than that, God wants everyone to have that peace to fight against the evil because devil always does things in your life to see that you are defeated and depressed. So God wants his children to have a smile in every situation and praise him and have his guidance in their life and see the nations being blessed and yield blessed harvest (Psalms 67).

According to the bible even though a person does have a Christian name, there will be a point in his life when he decides to follow Jesus. Charismatic believers term it as “born again” experience. So actual conversion happens, even when a so called Christian who accepts Christ as his saviour and follow Jesus. The same happens to people from other religion also when they accept Christ, even in their home.

The greatest example we can find is a Jew called Saul. He was a hard-core Jew that he did everything to oppose the name of Jesus. He got authorized by the Jewish priest to persecute the people who follow Jesus. While going to persecute people, of course he would have heard about this Jesus. But one day he got stuck by this same Jesus. That changed his life and he became Paul, the one who wrote majority of epistles in the bible (Acts 26)

Another example, from India, is a man called Sadhu Sunder Singh. He was a core believer of another religion, even burnt bibles at young age, who was about to take his own life, got a dramatic vision of Jesus Christ. Immediately he got inner peace and took the decision to follow Christ and share about the one who gave him peace.

The word persecution comes along with the word conversion. Conversion happens only by God, not by people. But the people who share God are being persecuted. When Jesus lived in this world, he told about how it’s going to be. God is going to send you among wolves. But you need to be aware that you are going to get persecuted. You will be judged by the world. But in all these, walk with God and He will guide you what to tell. Everyone around might hate you because you follow Christ, but stay still and don’t go away from the Lord as you have seen his glory in your life (Mathew 10).

Apostle Paul went to places to destroy the people who followed Christ. Once Jesus Christ came to his life he went everywhere he can to preach Jesus Christ (Galatians 1). Once you know this salvation, you will understand the real believers in Christ are just a small percentage from among the so called Christians. The burden inside you to introduce this Jesus Christ to others will increase and you will find different means to reach the world with the good news.

May The Lord help you to understand Jesus Christ and the peace he gives and guide you to go ahead in life.