Abundance in Suffering

After almost 2 to 3 months of lock down around the world, everyone is just getting adjusted with the pandemic Covid19. At this time the saddest news to hear is about the leaders and priests of religious organizations asking governments to allow them to open their worship places. In fact some governments, have given orders to open the worship places in the midst of this horrible situation, just to get popularity and support from the people which then can be transferred as votes in the future elections.

Book of Acts is considered as one of the most important book in New Testament churches, because you can see the history of first church and more about Christian worship. In the same book (Acts 17: 22-31), Spirit of God tells never to use an image and worship. Especially the book tells that God who made the world and everything does not live in temples. The Lord who created everything does not need anything from human hands. Rather, He Himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else.

God sees everyone and know about the intentions of everybody’s heart (Psalm 66). There are people who act like believers, go to worship places, but live a worldly life. For those people, now its difficult time, because they can’t act and show their spirituality. But a true believer worships God every moment in his life. It doesn’t matter whether there is a worship place, or whether he is in his house, bus stop or anywhere. For true believers, this lock down does not affect their spiritual life. In Acts 16 we read about Paul and Silas worshiping God in prison

When people who live a faithful Christ centred life are being questioned for not raising voice against governments about the shutdown of worship place, they need to act according to your clear conscience and word of God. You can worship God wherever you want, so think about whether you want to risk people’s life and spread the virus, if there is. 1 Peter 3, tells it is better to suffer for doing good than for doing evil.

Money is a problem for the head of worship places. But people who are faithful give their tithes and offering through electronic means.

The real concern of the heads is not about money. It’s about the head count. Charismatic churches are competing each other about the count of memberships and people attending the services. It is a sad truth. Now at this time, they are worried that their count might go down.

According to the book of Acts 17, everyone should accept wisdom from God and use common sense in life in worshiping and praising God. If a calamity is waiting to happen when people gather together, use common sense and wisdom from God and avoid it.

May The Lord enable you to be close with him and help you not to create any panic or danger that may affect the society and people around you

Repent and Call

As the world is going through lockdown to stop the spread of Covid19, Repent is the word that is often mentioned by religious and spiritual leaders.

Peter, one of the disciples of Jesus tells about the salvation through Christ. In 1 Peter 1, he testifies that God saved his children not through any gold or silver, but by the precious blood of Jesus Christ. So if anyone wants to know God, it can be only through Jesus because he is the only mediator between men and God. Once when you start accepting Jesus Christ as your saviour, you are born again and your faith and hope will be in God rather than any man/woman on the world.

When you are born again, Christ will live in your life. Without your knowledge he will guide you, teach you and help you in all your deeds through His Spirit. It does not mean that you will not have sorrows or distress in life. But when these problems come, you will call upon the Lord who saved you with salvation (Psalm 116).

As mentioned above, salvation is been provided through the blood of Christ Jesus. You cannot be close with God without salvation.

Getting saved is a very easy process. But many fail in that. People believe that if they have a Christian name, they are saved. Sorry, they are not.

How much sinner you are, other than you and God, no one knows. So according to Acts 2, Peter tells to the people to repent upon their sins to God, not man. Repent and accept the fact that Jesus died for these sins you have done, and through accepting Jesus as your personal saviour, you are saved, your sins are forgiven and forgotten by God.

May The Lord help you who read this to take this bold step to repent and accept Christ as their saviour and be saved and have a blessed life in Jesus name.

Palm Sunday - Holy Week

 

Today, Palm Sunday marks the beginning of the Holy Week. This week the believers should be meditating and thinking about the humble nature of Christ, who left the Heavenly place and came to earth, lived a poor life and died on the cross for our sins.

The Holy week starts with Palm Sunday (Mathew 21: 1-11), with Jesus entering Jerusalem in a donkey. Usually Kings will travel in horse, but Jesus, even though being the King of Kings; he humbled most and came in a donkey. People were praising him, some placing their cloaks on road and others cut branches from trees and spread on the road.

Jesus did not considered equality with God, but humbled himself by taking nature of a servant and came to humans. This week is considered as Holy one, because this week Jesus was crucified and because of His crucifixion, the ones who believe in him are free from their sins (Philippians 2)

Some people fast and pray this week to show their humbleness towards God and His love.

At this time, it is very important to know about the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Why, because when Jesus ascended to Heaven, He gave us the Holy Spirit as our comforter and we should obey the Spirit to live a life pleasing to God.

Speaking in tongues is one gift of the Spirit. Some people consider only this gift and without any botheration join together and pray. Knowledge and Wisdom are also gifts of the Spirit. At this point of a time where social distancing is much needed, everyone should use that knowledge and wisdom and isolate themselves and pray to God and meditate upon the humility of Christ.

When you look at the fruits of Holy Spirit, self-control is one among them. Whatever gifts you possess, if you are not having this self-control, you are going to be a curse to the people and the world, where you are to be a blessing.

“When you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you” – Mathew 6:6

In these days of lockdown, it is better to be isolated and be in the presence of God this Holy week. Last 2 months was very horrible throughout the world, and even though many countries declared social distancing, some irresponsible uncontrolled people broke everything and because of them the virus got spread to a large extent.

May The Lord help fill you with His fruits and gifts as you read and meditate His word this week to stay Holy and safe and be a blessing to everyone.

Remain Faithful

There are times in your life when you go through tough situations and you might not see your prayers getting answered. This is the situation around the world now. Believers are praying and the total number of covid19 cases and deaths are increasing. At this time the atheists are making fun of believers about the presence of God

In the Gospel of John, it mentions if you remain faithful to the teachings of Christ, you will know the truth. There will be tough times in life, to change your life, not the situation. Sometimes the toughest situation which you go through may not change, but in trusting God and remaining faithful to him, changes your life.  The truth shall set you free (John 8:31-42). There are people who do sin and does bad against the people of God. When the child of God pray to stop these problems, the problems might not stop, the evil people might not stop evil, but the child of God will see the glory of God in his life. The peace God that is provided in a bad situation is more than the situation.

In the book of Daniel, Nebuchadnezzar gave an order to everyone to bow down before a statue. But 3 children of God did not obey (Daniel 3: 14-28). Nebuchadnezzar told them he will put them into a blazing furnace if they don’t. They told him, if he throws them into the blazing furnace, the God whom they serve is able to deliver them from it. But if not, still they will bow down to the true God. That is powerful faith that the 3 men had even after knowing that they might die. But God protected them.

Always remember that we are not in this world to enjoy it, but to enjoy God and His presence. When tough things like this comes in life, obey the laws of the land, keep your faith in God, strengthen your hope, enlighten your understanding and increase your faith.

May The Lord help you to stay calm, obey the laws of land, stay home, keep faith and stay strong in Jesus name

Clean and Free

As the world is temporary shutdown due to covid19, let this remind us how difficult it is to come out of a sin physically, spiritually and mentally.

In the book of John 4 we see a Samaritan woman who lived a sinful life. She met Jesus and He told her about her life and revealed He is the Messiah and those who come to him will be provided with living water, that they will never be thirsty again. She understood the savior and through faith in Christ salvation came to her life and she evangelized and brought the villagers to him. They also saw him and believed in him.

The bottom line is – sin comes to your life and gets stuck with your lifestyle. It may spread to others and from others to many. Only way to cleanse that sin which got stuck is through the blood of Jesus Christ. Once you believe in Jesus that He came to the world and died for the sins you did, His blood will wash and cleanse all your sins and you will be sin free and will restore your friendship with God, which was taken away by your sins.

Once you are in Christ, you will be hungry to lead others also towards Him. Your hunger will be met when you faithfully introduce Christ to others so that their sins could be washed by the same blood of Christ.

You may have to face problems and troubles more than what you have faced before. But as Paul writes in Romans 5, peace will fill your heart. Like a long distance runner, endurance will be developed and it leads to a faithful character in your life, which will shine for the glory of God. The hope and confidence will be your strength to move forward in life, in which your main goal will be to introduce this Jesus to others.

Be careful not to do evil which not only spoil your physical body, but your soul and your spiritual oneness in Jesus who died for your sins.

May The Spirit of God help you to live a life in God’s word and overcome the world to be a faithful servant.

May The Lord help you to have patience in this situation of Corona virus outbreak. Let us pray to God to save us physically as he did spiritually.