Pure Joy

Lord Jesus, forgive me for not declaring your glory as much as I should.

In James 1:2, it says "Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds,…"

How many of us Christians do that? Probably not much, at least in the Western World. We're too spoilt, too selfish, too well fed and clothed to appreciate what it means to truly have a "trial".

I was reading a book today called "Tortured for Christ" by Richard Wurmbrand, a Romanian pastor who witnessed the terrible atrocities committed by the Russian Communists as they took over Romania in the 1940's. And there, I had a glimpse of what real suffering looked like.

I would like to share with you one particularly touching story:

A pastor by the name of Florescu was tortured with red hot iron pokers and with knives. He was beaten very badly. Then starving rats were driven into his cell through a large pipe. He could not sleep, but had to defend himself all the time. If he rested a moment, the rats would attack him.

He was forced to stand for two weeks, day and night. The communists wished to compel him to betray his brethren, but he resisted steadfastly. In the end, they brought his fourteen-year-old son and began to whip the boy in front of the father, saying that they would continue to beat him until the pastor said what they wished him to say. The poor man was half mad. He bore it as long as he could. When he could not stand it any more, he cried to his son: "Alexander, I must say what they want! I can't bear your beating any more!"

The son answered: "Father, don't do to me the injustice to have a traitor as a parent. Withstand! If they kill me, I will die with the words, 'Jesus and my fatherland'." The communists, enraged, fell upon the child and beat him to death, with blood spattered over the walls of the cell. He died praising God. Our dear brother Florescu was never the same after seeing this.

Puts things into perspective doesn't it? When I first read this, I wanted to cry. For me, my greatest "burdens" were things like "What would my future career be like?", "Oh, I feel so lonely, I need my friends.", "Oh I wonder if I can balance my budget so that I can still save a little bit to buy a house". What petty, stupid, cares and concerns! These people, who still suffer in the same way today, are daily faced with the concerns of whether they will die, whether their children will be tortured in front of them, whether their friends and family will be harmed because of being associated with a Christian. How petty are the concerns of us Christians living in this luxurious Western world.

And yet, their response is amazing; they have so much more joy than we do with all our comforts.

When I look back on the fourteen years of prison, it was sometimes a very happy time. Other prisoners and even the guards very often wondered at how happy Christians could be under most terrible circumstances. We could not be prevented from singing, although we were beaten for this. I imagine that nightingales too would sing, even if they knew that after finishing the song they would be killed for it. Christians in prison danced for joy. How could they be so happy under such tragic conditions?

Earlier in the book, Richard recounted this :

The following scene happened more times than I can remember: A brother was preaching to the other prisoners when the guards suddenly burst in surprising him half way through a phrase. They hauled him down the corridor to the "beating room". After what seemed an endless beating, they brought him back and threw him - bloody and bruised - on to the prison floor. Slowly, he picked his battered body up, painfully straightened his clothing and said, "Now, brethren, where did I leave off when I was interrupted?" He continued his Gospel message!

Ah!  If only we can learn to be as faithful as they are, so that we can truly consider it PURE JOY when we come through all sorts of trials and afflictions for the cause of Christ.

May the Love of Christ overwhelm and overfill you, so that you will bring glory to God in all occasions.

Btw if you're interested in reading this book, let me know :)

Suffering and God's Love (for Em)

[This was written in response to Em's post on May 3rd about God's faithfulness (or lack thereof). You can see the original on http://embluekirby.blogspot.com/2011/05/being-faithful.html]

Hey Em :)

Heh, thanks for a thoughtful post :P And I thought I'd come with a reply. I hope it helps you, rather than causes more problems.

Firstly, I would like to draw your attention to John 9:1-3:

 As he [Jesus] went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”

   “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life. 

And also to Luke 13:1-5:

 Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. Jesus answered, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.”

Em, you say that God did not give you an answer as to what you had done that was so sinful that He would smite you with a brain tumour. But the fact of the matter is that there is NOTHING that you have done that would have changed that fact. And that is why there was no answer. Whether you sin more or sin less would not have changed whether you had a brain tumour or not.

The problem is that you think that whether God loves you or not is dependant upon whether he blesses you with physical health or not. If He gives you health, you think that means He loves you; If He gives you ill-health, you think that means that He hates you.

And that cannot be further from the truth.

God's love for us never changes. From Psalm 103 we read:

 The LORD is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love… For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him; for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust… But from everlasting to everlasting the LORD’s love is with those who fear him, and his righteousness with their children’s children— with those who keep his covenant and remember to obey his precepts.

And again from Jeremiah 31:3 :

 “I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with loving-kindness. "

God loves us with a height, width, depth and breadth that we cannot imagine or comprehend. Yet, even those He loved most dearly, those He caused to return to Him in love, were not spared from suffering. Abraham and Sarah were barren until a very old age; Jacob endured 20 years of oppression under his evil uncle Laban; the Israelites were oppressed for 400 years under Egyption Rule; Job lost ALL his health, wealth and prosperity in the blink of an eye; David was persecuted by Saul for many, many years. The list goes on. And ultimately, God sent His very own beloved Son Jesus to die on the Cross for us, so that our sins may be forgiven. If God did not spare His only son that suffering, how can we expect Him to spare us from our smaller problems?

So why do we suffer? There are many, many reasons. But ultimately, they all come back to the same root: Because sin has entered the world. It's not that you have sinned in a particular way that causes God to frown on you in particular (Although you, like all of us, are a sinner as well). It is that once the corruption of sin has entered the world, the world just goes WRONG. Earthquakes, tsunamis, plagues, famine, and brain tumours start to happen. Sin corrupts God's perfect world, and brings forth suffering. No one is spared the effects of sin in this world. And so we all suffer.

The good news is, one day, God will tear down this corrupted world and bring us a new world where sin and suffering no longer exists. Those of us who accepts His gift of Jesus will live in a realm of Eternal Joy and Peace. And our former life of suffering will soon be forgotten.

Em, what is a lifetime of suffering compared to an ETERNITY of joy? Even if we suffer terribly for EVERY second of a hundred-year lifespan, by the time we get to year 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, we will think "huh? What was that time back then? It really isn't that much isn't it?"

Em, you say you have trouble hearing from God, but I have a message direct from Him to you: HE LOVES YOU. I know it is hard to understand and accept, but that is the Truth. You can read it for yourself in His love letter to you in the Bible. Yes, life is incredibly tough for you, and I cannot hope to truly understand the suffering that you are going through. But He does. And rest assured that it does not please Him that you are going through such pain and suffering. But even through such pain and suffering, He can bring about His glory and your joy if you let Him. Give Him a chance, let Jesus into your heart, and see what He can do to comfort you.

If you think that your suffering is hard, I would encourage you to look to the Witness of other great Christian Sufferers before you. Just read about the lives of any of the Christian Martyrs. But in particular, read about the more modern story of Joni Eareckson Tada. She is a wonderful Christian woman, who despite losing the use of ALL her limbs because she became a quadriplegic after a horseriding accident, ended up loving God sooo much instead of hating Him, because she saw that He still loved her despite all that suffering.

Anyway, I've written a long enough reply to your post :P hahaha.

But "I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being,  so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love,  may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ,  and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

 Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us,  to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.

Your loving brother in Christ

Vincent

Unyielding despair

Don't worry, I'm not being emo :P

I have been reading this AWESOME book by Mark Driscoll and Gerry Breshears called "Doctrine: What Christians should believe". It basically lays down the foundations of our faith.

In its discussion about the Doctrine of Creation, the authors make some very sobering comments about how much your worldview is impacted by whether you believe there is a loving Creator or not.

In page 104 to 105, it says:
The Bible teaches that creation in general and human life in particular were made by God, belong to God, exist for God, are restless apart from God, and will return to God. If you do not believe in the doctrine of creation, you likely believe that you came from no one, you are alive on the earth for nothing, and that when you die you will go nowhere. The renowned atheistic philosopher Bertrand Russell summarizes this worldview:


"That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and the whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins - all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of the unyielding despair, can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built."


Indeed, the only logical option apart from the biblical doctrine of creation is "the firm foundation of the unyielding despair." Similarly, when Richard Dawkins was asked if his view of reality made him depressed, he replied, "I don't feel depressed about it. But if somebody does, that' s their problem. Maybe the logic is deeply pessimistic, the universe is bleak, cold and empty. But so what?"


Thank GOD that as Christians we have such a vibrant hope that is much more powerful than the atheists' unyielding despair. The thought that there are people out there who actually hold and cling to such dim views of life "shocks" me with a deep sadness.

What is even worse though are the atheists who have not travelled to the full extent of their atheistic conclusions to this end, or those who pretend that there's nothing wrong with it and do not face up with the tragic truth and the ultimate reality of an atheistic worldview: In a world without God, there is no purpose, there is no meaning, there is no life. There is only a "firm foundation of unyielding despair".

For me?! Awww thanks!...

From Joshua 5:13: Now when Joshua was near Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went up to him and asked, “Are you for us or for our enemies?”

“Neither,” he replied, “but as commander of the army of the LORD I have now come.” Then Joshua fell facedown to the ground in reverence, and asked him, “What message does my Lord have for his servant?”

A colleague was talking to me yesterday about what she was going to do for the New Year. She was a Catholic, and said she was going to participate in the Catholic rituals in the New Year. Among these, she mentioned that they “ask for the blessings” from God for the new year.

That brought to my mind the “me me me” mentality of all people, including Christians. They participate in this or that so that they themselves will be blessed personally by God, as if God is their personal manservant, or fairy godmother. As Mark Driscoll puts it, we think that God is the piñata, prayer is the stick, and if you whack God hard enough all the goodies will come out. Too often we demand God to bless US in our selfish glory, and forget that the world is much bigger than us.

And then this morning I read this passage. And it really hit me.

Joshua was asking the angel (he didn’t know at the time that he was an angel) whether he was for the Israelites or against them, whether he was someone fighting for them or against them. And the very interesting thing was that he said he was NEITHER. At first, one might be puzzled, because if you consider that the angel was God’s servant, and if God was fighting for the Israelites, then wouldn’t the angel be fighting FOR the Israelites?

But you need to understand that God isn’t fighting FOR the Israelites. He is not under the Israelites jurisdiction. God is fighting for His glory alone. Through His power shown through the Israelites, He would be glorified; but it’s not as if the Israelites have “summoned” God as one would summon a demon to fight for oneself in a fantasy RPG. GOD makes the terms, not the Israelites.

So the angel is not there to serve the Israelites, but to serve God. Yes, the Israelites will be blessed by the angel’s actions. But ultimately, it is all for the purpose of God’s glory ALONE.

When you pray, how do you pray? Do you pray that God will bless you and the ones you love? Do you ask him to pick up your mess for you and to make everything go alright for you so that life will be smooth for you? If that is you, then you need to rethink how you pray. You are not God; He is. To God ALONE be all the glory.

  “Blessed be your glorious name, and may it be exalted above all blessing and praise. You ALONE are the LORD. “ (Nehemiah 9:5b-6a)

Moving on...

Microsoft is closing down Spaces :(

And shifting it all to Wordpress....

And Wordpress is AWFULLY difficult to use (for me :P)

Plus anyway, if I use Wordpress I'd rather use the one Matt made for me :)

So... while I'm still figuring out what to do with all this, I'm going to move here for at least the time being :)