Quick Update

(personal blog post) 

Yes, I know I haven’t been posting.

Life used to be ups and downs. Ever since I last posted it has been a lot of downs, to the point when I often can’t think straight. Whenever I see all that happening, I hunker down and go into crisis prayer mode. That means – no Scripture reading plan, and if I don’t think of any new Scripture passages to look at today I relook at whatever I meditated and prayed on yesterday. 
Actually, I will usually try to relook at the previous day’s verses also, to further ram them into my mind!

The pain of this season is more acute because of how well things went last year.

Psalm 30:6-7 (NIV) - When I felt secure, I said, "I will never be shaken."1 O LORD, when you favored me, you made my mountain stand firm; but when you hid your face, I was dismayed.

Anyway, I am thinking of just sharing in a small way the verses that are on my mind this season. Bear in mind, there is no plan, so don’t expect things to build one day on top of another. Here goes:

1 Peter 1:3-5 - Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade--kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God's power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. 

One thing I have to put in effort into – keeping my mind on things above, especially when things below are going badly. Earthly problems have this way to shout loud in your mind in the voices of fear, anger and despair. And that makes it hard to remember the living hope I now have.

1 Peter 1:6-7 In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith--of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire--may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. 

This is the part that grabbed my attention – suffer grief in all kinds of trials. During the time of writing, the trials the believers faced were various forms of persecution for their faith. And let’s face it, no matter how bad things are at my side, I am still not persecuted for my faith in Christ yet. 

But the passage said “all kinds of trials”. Does that include many disappointments and let-downs in my teaching? Does that include my son’s injury and all the stress and hassle that follow? 

“All kinds of trials”.  

I am very much a Word-of-Faith person, and I believe that God prospers and heals his people. So I do get tired of people who say that they bearing with sickness glorifies God. Nope, it doesn’t. It makes people wonder if the Jesus you believe in, who healed multitudes of people during his ministry on earth, is unreal, misrepresented or uncaring. Who gets the praise, honour and glory, then?

I believe we do. I believe God is the one who will lavish on us praise, glory and honour at his chosen time.  

1 Peter 1:8-9 (NIV) - Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

The salvation of our souls – if we take an expanded definition based on the Greek word sozo (Strong’s #4982, “make whole, to heal”, as in Mark 5:34), this also includes the healing and making whole of our souls. This ties in with Romans 5.

Romans 5:3-5 (NIV) - Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.

In the midst of my trials, as light as they seem to my logical mind, my true character comes out. Eeewwwww, I don’t like what I see! And the only way to fix the character flaws and faults I see in myself right now, according to Romans 5, is to rejoice in my sufferings. Peter does not tell me just to rejoice, he says I can be filled with “an inexpressible and glorious joy”. How unreasonable! How ridiculous! How unbelieveable!

But it is just so like God, isn’t it, to ask of me what I cannot reasonably accept or do, so that I have to trust wholly in his wisdom and empowering to do what he wants of me? OK, enough of this for now. Will post again soon, hopefully. See you then!