This awesome picture reminds me of the words written by the Apostle Paul in his epistle to the Colossians in 1:13-14, “He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, 

in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” The cross is a symbol of His love for you and for me, by His death upon the cursed tree, He bore the punishments meant for us, every stripes on His battered body were signs of our healing, the sweat and tears on His body and face were there so that one day there will be no more tears, no more pain, no more suffering and there will be no more darkness. Jesus didn’t only die, but also on the third day He rose so that we will rise with Him into eternal life. One day all the darkness of this world will be lifted with His glorious light that’s brighter than the sun. Charlie Hall in his song “Marvelous Light” put it this way, “Into His marvelous light I’m running, out of darkness out of shame, by the cross You’re the truth, You’re the life, You’re the way”. God is our victory.

Ps: Many other stunning images from the National Geography magazine can be found here http://om.ly/cSfD. Enjoy the pictures, good night and God bless.

On the final leg of a six-week United States of America road trip, I was driving east across Interstate 40 when a spot storm with golf ball-sized hail struck. A sign near Groom, Texas, announcing the “largest cross in the western hemisphere” explained the large crucifix I’d been wondering about for miles on the highway; it seemed like an OK place to wait out the storm. On my way to getting stuck in the mud and a giant double rainbow, I saw this silhouetted view of the cross, splitting the sunny sky from the stormy plains. (Photo and caption by Brad Maule) 

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5 observations on how to be better at having conversations with people to avoid monologues when we want to have dialogues.

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When You Don’t Feel Like It, Take Heart

November 12, 2009  |  By: Jon Bloom  |  Category: Commentary

Did you wake up not feeling like reading your Bible and praying? How many times today have you had to battle not feeling like doing things you know would be good for you?

While it’s true that this is our indwelling sin that we must repent of and fight against, there’s more going on.

Think about this strange pattern that occurs over and over in just about every area of life:

• Good food requires discipline to prepare and eat while junk food tends to be the most tasty, addictive, and convenient.
• Keeping the body healthy and strong requires frequent deliberate discomfort while it only takes constant comfort to go to pot.
• You have to make yourself pick up that nourishing theological book while watching a movie can feel so inviting.
• You frequently have to force yourself to get to devotions and prayer while sleeping, reading the sports, and checking Facebook seems effortless.
• To play beautiful music requires thousands of hours of tedious practice.
• To excel in sports requires monotonous drills ad nauseum.
• It takes years and years of schooling just to make certain opportunities possible.
• This goes on and on.

The pattern is this: the greater joys are obtained through struggle and pain, while brief, unsatisfying, and often destructive joys are right at our fingertips. Why is this?

Because, in great mercy, God is showing us everywhere, in things that are just shadows of heavenly things, that there is a great reward for those who struggle through (Hebrews 10:32-35). He is reminding us repeatedly each day to walk by faith and not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:7).

Each struggle is an invitation by God to follow in the footsteps of his Son, “who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrews 12:2).

Those who are spiritually blind only see futility in these things. But for those who have eyes to see, God has woven hope (faith in future grace) right into the futility of creation (Romans 8:20-21). Each struggle is a pointer saying, “Look! Look to the real Joy set before you!”

So when you don’t feel like doing what you know is best for you, take heart and don’t give in. Your Father is pointing you to the reward he has planned for all who endure to the end (Matthew 24:13).

For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. (1 Corinthians 4:17-18)

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2 Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him, and he sat down and taught them. 

3 The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, and placing her in the midst 

4 they said to him, “Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. 

5 Now in the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?” 

6 This they said to test him, that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground.

7 And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.”

8 And once more he bent down and wrote on the ground. 

9 But when they heard it, they went away one by one, beginning with the older ones, and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him.

10 Jesus stood up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”

11 She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.”  

(John 8:2-11)

Have you ever had an idea popped up in your mind which you just cannot shake off? Maybe it’s that song you’ve always wanted to write, dance you’ve been dreaming to choreograph, business you’ve been drafting for? It’s just like that for me with the passage above from John 8. We all know what the story is and I’ve read this probably tens if not hundreds of times and truly I learnt that Jesus’ masterful defence of this woman is incomparable that none of them dared to come near that woman. However, to borrow Ko Daniel’s phrase that – grace is like a lens – something wonderfully revealing appears from the words that I never quite noticed before. Let’s unpack this, the shamed woman was probably half-naked when they brought her to Jesus as it’s said that she was caught in the act, she was desperately grappling for any sheds of garments on her body trying to cover whatever was left of her dignity. Under the searing heat of the day, much like Melbourne’s this week, the glaring eyes of her accusers seemed to be more piercing than the heat. 

The increasingly hostile crowd bayed for her blood,  the cries grew louder, “Death, death to this unclean woman! Let us stone her! Send her to the pits of hell where she will drink from her tears!” The Pharisees and teachers of the law stood over her, finally victory was theirs, they were afraid that they’ve run out of ideas to bring down Jesus and his band of uneducated followers, oh how business has been slow in the temple ever since Jesus, the ordinary carpenter turned rabbi, burst on the scene with His astounding teachings and works of miracles. The Law does indeed prescribe death as the punishment for adultery, do you see Jesus never approved of her actions but neither did He condemn her? The enemies of Jesus meanwhile were joyously hoping that Jesus would not allow the woman to be stoned to death and therefore going against the Law of Moses. 

But, Jesus would not speak, while the proponents of the Law stood up and judged, but Jesus, the Person of Grace reached down, stood up and then bent down again (v. 6). The contrast is startling in the Word and while debates rage among scholars for centuries on what Jesus had written on the ground I want you to look past that and see the rich meaning of Jesus’ actions. The Law reflects the character of God and therefore it’s amazing (Psalm 119 is about how beautiful the law is) and Jesus Himself said that He had not come to abolish, but rather to fulfill the Law. Without saying much, Jesus exposed the hypocrisy of the accusers whose hearts and actions were as wicked as the woman’s and desires that they also repent from their sins and turn back to God. In short, the accusers also needed a Saviour as much as the woman. What a moving picture of our Jesus! The Saviour Jesus, reached down (“Jesus bent down”) to the Pharisees and scribes whose hearts were evil, pretentious and wily revealing that they were also violators of the Law, they needed Jesus, they needed grace and there He was bent down before them, the King of Kings on His knees while His creation were attacking Him. They left the scene, probably more amazed at Jesus and oh how “amazing grace how sweet the sound” that saved the adulterous woman, forgiven and will “sin no more”. Hallelujah!

For Jesus’ Fame,

Paulus C. Tomas

 

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Two thousand years ago a teenage girl named Mary was engaged to a young man named Joseph from Nazareth in the city of Galilee. Joseph and Mary had probably known each other from a very early age since Nazareth was only a little town of not more than 400 people and I imagine that Mary would have been very excited as her wedding day drew closer just as any women will today. Mary did not have the numerous wedding magazines to pore over for hours finding that perfect plan for her wedding, countless visits to the bridal shops to find THE dress with THE right fit, and seemingly endless phone calls and meetings with the wedding organiser. Weddings were simple affairs back in the first century and her husband, Joseph, was chosen for her by her parents, no anxieties whether he is “the one”, no risk of heart wrenching breakups, crying over girlfriends’ shoulders in cafes if the worst should happen and they certainly did not meet each other on a Christian singles matchmaking website. In first century Nazareth, the laidback one donkey town, life was simple; weddings were not the contemporary circus of today in the whirlwind of involvements by relatives, aunties, uncles, cousins, brothers, sisters and especially fathers and mothers.

The scenario was set in motion; a simple village family life was where Joseph and Mary were steadily heading towards as quickly as a camel was travelling on the deserts of the Middle East, just like their moms and dads and their grandmas and granddads had lived they were planning to have perhaps a few kids, a donkey for transportation, maybe a goat and a small family business as their livelihood. What could possibly stand in the way of this couple from having the life that many before them had lived? The question is false though as It’s not “what”, but rather “who”, and it’s not Mary’s jealous ex-boyfriends or Joseph’s past romantic adventures who was about to throw their life into a tailspin, it’s God himself, the One whom their former Egyptian slave ancestors worshipped for thousands of years before they even stepped on the dusty roads of Nazareth. The biblical account of Mary’s encounter with a holy version of ET (extra-terrestrial being for non-nerds out there) was told in the first chapter of the gospel of Luke:

26 In the sixth month the angel x Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named y Nazareth, 27 z to a virgin betrothed [2] to a man whose name was Joseph, a of the house of David. And the virgin’s name was Mary. 28 And he came to her and said, “Greetings, b O favored one, c the Lord is with you!” [3] 29 But d she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. 30 And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, fore you have found favor with God. 31 And behold, f you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and g you shall call his name Jesus.32 He will be great and will be called the Son of h the Most High. And the Lord God i will give to him the throne of j his father David, 33 and he will reign over the house of Jacob k forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”

Before I proceed unpacking the rest of the story I really love Mary’s response to this amazing news brought by the holy ET (whom we shall now call Gabriel), she may have been an illiterate, uneducated village girl but she was not stupid, now ladies without turning to your bible can you guess what her next words were? Did you think of the obvious answer like Mary did which was recorded by Luke in the following words? 34 And Mary said to the angel, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?” [4] As I have labored over earlier on, Mary was a virgin, soon to be married to Joseph who was probably looking forward to the night he would consummate his marriage with the woman he loved. What about their plan for the wedding? The simple laid back small town life? What of the smooth transition into enjoying playing with little Marys and Josephs? What’s worse, did you catch the third word Gabriel use in greeting Mary? The word is “favoured one” or grace. Please say the following words together with me, “Mary, the recipient of grace” Grace? Yes, the same grace given to us who are saved in Jesus Christ! As a sidenote I do sympathise with Joseph bro to bro, it was understandable that he was aggrieved when he heard about the news that Mary was pregnant, what would the people of Nazareth think? Did they sleep with each other before their marriage? Did Mary commit adultery and fabricate a lie to avoid being stoned to death? Joseph even thought of divorcing Mary for the sake of his family’s name and only changed his mind when an angel appeared in his dream telling him not to carry out his plan.

Let us now focus our attention back to Mary and I would like to invite the ladies to place your selves in her shoes (or sandals), what would you do/feel/think if Gabriel had shown up before you? “But, Lord the wedding? What about the wedding? The cake, restaurant, hotel, photographer, and the wedding gown, o my THE gown, Lord! How could you do this to me?” I will not blame you if those were your thoughts, but let us see Mary’s response, 46 And Mary said, y “My z soul a magnifies the Lord, 47 b and my z spirit rejoices in c God my Savior, 48 for d he has looked on the humble estate of his servant. For behold, from now on all generations e will call me blessed; 49 for f he who is mighty g has done great things for me, and h holy is his name. 50 And i his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. 51 j He has shown strength with his arm; k he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts; 52 j he has brought down the mighty from their thrones l and exalted those of humble estate; 53 he has filled m the hungry with good things, and the rich n he has sent away empty. 54 He has o helped p his servant Israel, q in remembrance of his mercy, 55 r as he spoke to our fathers, q to Abraham and to his offspring forever.” Honestly, how many of us would feel that we have received grace when our life plan suddenly takes a different turn altogether? When our plan to buy that house, grow that business, marry that man/woman do not materialise? Would we burst into a song of praise to God like Mary? There is nothing special about the mother of our Lord, she is just like one of us, not worthy to be worshipped or idolised, and she is also a recipient of the grace of God. What is admirable is her heart that submits and surrenders to God’s decision in turning her life upside down by choosing her to raise Jesus Christ, her Lord and Saviour so great the He created the heavens and the earth and made virgin birth possible but also small enough that she could hold Him and His tiny little baby fingers in her hands, finally bloodied and bruised beyond recognition in her arms as He was brought down from the cross as the ultimate payment for our sin.

Humanity fell into sin and chaos when a woman named Eve rebelled against God’s word; humanity is saved and redeemed through Jesus Christ when a woman named Mary surrendered and allowed her life to be used by God, hallelujah! Not letting her personal life’s goals, ambitions and questions of God’s decision that has seemingly interrupted her life to stand in the way of the grand salvation plan, Jesus the Saviour has come, born of a virgin who trusted God that He is good and that He means everything for good, life is good not when things happened the way she planned them to be but when God’s favour was upon her, in grace that she could fully trust,

10 “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for allz the people. 11 For a unto you is born this day in b the city of David c a Savior, who is d Christ e the Lord. 12 And f this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby g wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.” 13 And suddenly there was with the angel h a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying,

14 i “Glory to God j in the highest,
j and on earth k peace l among those with whom he is pleased!” [3]

Luke 2:10-14

 

 

 

 

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What My Wife Taught Me about Glory and Power

— Wednesday, November 4th, 2009 —

I still remember the first time I heard my now wife’s name, “Maria Hanna,” mentioned in conversation.

I had no idea how she would live up to her name.

Hannah, after all, was a weeping, trusting woman, who longed for the blessing of children…and who longed to see her children bless the Lord. Her faith brought about the prophetic voice (Samuel) through whom God would give us the house of David, the line of our Lord Jesus.

And “Maria,” of course, is the most renowned woman’s name in history, the name of our Christ’s mother. And I see much of the quiet, fearsome beauty the Lord praised in her also in the face of my bride.

Today is Maria, my Maria’s, birthday. I can’t help but think today about the first time I ever saw her. My cousins wanted me to meet her and so they took me to the local mall for a kind of fashion show put on by the local department store. Maria and my cousin, both seniors in high school and both of whom worked at the store, were modeling some of the clothes that winter for the store’s spring line.

I really liked her, but I wasn’t sure. After all, Maria was a high school girl and, though I was only three years older, I was in college, and in the middle of a frenetic job with a congressional campaign. I was too old for her. But, still, for weeks after that show, I’d find myself walking into that department store and looking at her picture, with those of the other employee/scholarship recipients, hanging on the wall. I’d look at that picture and wonder what she was like.

Sixteen years, fourteen wedding anniversaries, and four children later, now I know.

Even after I agreed to let my cousin introduce us, I almost stopped it. On our first date, I almost turned around in her driveway when I saw the “Bush/Quayle ‘92″ sign in the yard. I was campaigning all over south Mississippi for a Democratic congressman, and I was going out with a Republican?

More than that, I worried she was “too quiet,” as I explained it to my cousin, too gentle, for the rough world of politics where I planned to live my life and career. I had illusions that I was going to be governor of Mississippi one day, and I needed a wife who had the “fire in the belly” to speak on the campaign stump, pressure donors into giving more, and attack back at political opponents. I needed a partner who was a Mississippi version of (at least the 1990s version of) Hillary Rodham Clinton, I guess I was thinking.

Maria didn’t seem to pursue me back, and that bothered me. Even though she knew from my cousins what was going on in their deliberations, she didn’t call. She didn’t drop hints. She didn’t flirt. She didn’t loudly fight for attention. She didn’t seem like she was anxiously waiting for me to pursue her. She just seemed quiet.

I didn’t like that.

But I couldn’t help but love her. I thought I would just toughen her up one campaign at a time. I might have been tempted to turn the car around on that first date night, but as we drove down the beach on the way to the restaurant I knew I would marry her, if she’d have me.

Things didn’t turn out the way I planned my life then. The Lord pulled me out of politics and rekindled a call to ministry. We’ve lived together through some unbelievably happy (and one miserable) ministry experiences. We were together through infertility, miscarriages, adoptions, births, and a lot more.

We’re not a “power couple.” That’s because I don’t know how to get anywhere close to the power she has.

Hannah’s power in Scripture is not in horses or chariots or in plans or in schemes. Her strength, she sings, “is exalted in the Lord” as her heart “exults in the Lord” (1 Sam. 2:1).

Our Lord’s mother first shows up in the story of Scripture as a picture of submission, “Let it be according to your word.” Mary doesn’t summon the angel to her well in Nazareth. She doesn’t, like Saul, “kick against the goads.” She, with almost preternatural calm, believes what Eve (and Eve’s mate) didn’t believe before: that God’s will is for her good. And when Mary cries out against injustice and evil, she sings. She sings, in fact, a song that echoes the song of Hannah long before (compare 1 Sam. 2:1-10 with Lk. 1:46-55).

Is it any wonder God’s messenger and God’s Spirit pronounce the Virgin to be a “favored one” (Lk. 1:27) and as “blessed among women” (Lk. 1:42)? She exhibits exactly what the Spirit tells us through the Apostle Peter is that “imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious” (1 Pet. 3:4).

That quietness and gentleness our Father loves in our Lord’s mother is not a mousiness; it’s not being muzzled by her culture or certainly by any man. The quiet spirit comes from the fact that she “does not fear anything that is frightening” (1 Pet. 3:6).

My Maria’s quietness, I have recognized in retrospect, was peace. She trusted the Lord to provide her with a husband, with a family, or with whatever else he had for her. The quietness was also submission. She was submissive to her future husband, whoever he was to be, and not to any other man. She guarded her affections, her attachments, and her expectations.

That kind of fearless quietness is the joyful reason that, while I’ve worried about all kinds of things in my life, I’ve never (not once!) worried about Maria divorcing me or mistreating the children or flying into a hot rage or a cold war. It’s the reason she was able to grieve the loss of children through miscarriage even as she planned baby showers for women who had gotten pregnant around the same time she did, and why she’d be there at her friends’ baby delivery wards with flowers and genuine happiness.

And her gentle power is what I hope is seen clearly by the four young men we’re raising together. They’ll grow up in a culture of women pictured as having value based simply on what men think of them, for their sexual attractiveness or sexual availability or their earning power or the sheer force of their wills. Even in the so-called “conservative” subculture in America, the exact same phenomenon persists in the culture warrior princesses on the talking-head argument shows on television.

Every day, though, my sons see a peaceful woman who submits to the Lord and to a man…but only to one man.

And through it all, she’s shown me what it means that the woman is “the glory of man” (1 Cor. 11:7). I find her glorious, and through her I’ve seen what Christic glory is, for men and women, not self-seeking assertion but Father-trusting humility (Phil. 2:5-11).

On her birthday, I am thankful to God for giving me this gentle, mysterious, life-affirming, powerful woman as my wife. Blessed is she among women, and blessed is the One who gave her life.

Tags: Biblical Womanhood, Birthday, Godliness, marriage, Wives

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Semalam timbullah suatu pertanyaan selesai diskusi tentang “tapi gimana donk kalo seorang hamba Tuhan katanya mendengar dari Tuhan sendiri kalo dia disuruh berbuat sesuatu?” tapi “sesuatu” ini tidak sesuai dengan Firman Tuhan? kemudian dia tanya lagi, “gimana kaya Hosea? dia kan dengar dari Tuhan kalo dia disuruh menikahi seorang pelacur? padahal dari hukumnya Musa tidak boleh menikahi pelacur?” dan jujur sih aku langsung blank iya jg yah… jadi aku melakukan apa yang sering aku lakukan kalo mendapat pertanyaan sulit “aku cari tau dulu yah?” hahahaha…. jadi siang2 ini (iya, siang, baru bangun dari food poisoning dan sakit kepala bukan mainnn T___T) aku langsung membuka my study bible dan mendapatkan jawaban dibawah ini, selamat membaca… (:

Ternyata gak ada specific mention kalo Gomer itu seorang “prostitute”, but that inside of her being akan ada tendency to be one who lives an adulterous & unfaithful life. Awal pernikahan mereka itu indah (seperti Allah dengan Israel awalnya baik2) tp kemudian berubah setelah Gomer menjadi seorang yang tidak setia. Once again it doesn’t mean Gomer was a prostitute. 

Another clue:

1st child = Hosea’s. 2nd & 3rd children = no mention that they were Hosea’s. Artinya pernikahan mereka awalnya baik2, tp kemudian Gomer berubah menjadi “adulterous” dan anak kedua & ketiga gak jelas anaknya sapa krn tidak disebut anak2nya Hosea yg dr namanya mrk artinya “No Mercy” and “Not My People”, what kind of father doesn’t acknowledge his own children and have no mercy unless they’re not his?

Hos. 1:2 Command to Marry.

 God instructs Hosea to marry, but foretells that his wife’s unfaithfulness will be an image for Israel’s unfaithfulness. take to yourself a wife of whoredom. Some have supposed that God commands Hosea to marry a prostitute, but this does not suit the words. The word translated “whoredom” throughout the book is a broad term for various kinds of sexual misconduct, and only in certain contexts does it refer to prostitution. In Hosea it generally refers to a married woman being unfaithful to her husband, which is why it serves as a metaphor for Israel’s unfaithfulness to the Lord, her husband (for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the Lord; cf. 2:5). Further, one should not think that Gomer was already promiscuous when Hosea married her. As the notes below will show, she seems to have been faithful to Hosea in the begetting of her first child (1:3), and under suspicion in the begetting of her second and third (vv. 6, 8). Thus the second and third children will be children of whoredom (the word and in “and have children” is taken in the sense, “that is”). This helps explain the legal proceedings in ch. 2, and the specific word “adulteress” in 3:1. Hosea uses marriage and unfaithfulness as a prominent metaphor (cf. Ezekiel 16 and 23 for the extended version of the metaphor; elsewhere the idea is important, but not given extended treatment, e.g., Isa. 1:21). The tragedy of Hosea is the tragedy of a marriage that began well but went bad. And so it was with the Lord and Israel: a good beginning went awry. The book of Hosea refers to Israel’s cherished beginnings (e.g., Hos. 2:14–15).

High five to the non-contradiction of the written commands of God and His spoken instructions! hahahaha….. 

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