The Season of Blessing.

This is a season of blessing, but as His people, we must not be unwise but instead move into a preparation for the things to come. We are not uninformed of the days ahead, where there will be dark and difficult times.

What lessons the Lord uses to shape our person, we must learn. We are meant to be complete in Christ.

So God's blessing on me is not complete - I may not break away from Him.

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Yesterday's fellowship was a good instance of how God gathers His people together. We had started out with 3 men who only looked to encourage and strengthen each other in our faith. The later additions were a pleasant surprise that greatly encouraged us. We did not anticipate having sisters in our group and were only looking to build the men up in faith.

Wei Qiang had heard of our gathering and was eager to join with fellow believers.

Phoebe grew aware of our gathering when I went late from our fellowship to a committee meeting and she later asked to join us. She brought 2 friends along afterward.

Terence was led to our group by the singing that we had only began to incorporate into our meeting on his way back from dinner yesterday. He shared that he realized he was led to a group of worshippers by God seeing that he was not walking so closely with Him. It was the first time everyone turned up, and although it was 8 people, bringing people together is not something a single person can do.

There are no coincidences because God is sovereign and God is powerful. While men act out of self-interest, He acts out of His love and His righteousness. So we were gathered to share, learn and pray.

When it came to sharing, I realized that my study of the Word this week was not in depth, because I was invested in the essays that occupied so much of my reading and writing.

I had only read Exodus 34, and I was wary that sharing on the character of God in the Old Testament could affect the understanding of God for believers younger in the faith.

But what I managed to share, I believe was not scripted or prepared, but prompted.

Why I shared from the Old Testament, because God is unchanging and he is the same. He was, He is, and He is to come. (NIV Bible, Revelations 4:8)

This was a point where Moses was leading the nation of Israel and in close relationship with God. And he had asked God to show him His glory.


Exodus 33

¹⁹ And the LORD said, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the LORD, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. ²⁰But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.”


Exodus 34
 ⁵ Then the LORD came down in the cloud and stood there with him and proclaimed his name, the LORD. ⁶ And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, ⁷ maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation.”

Moses' response was in verse 8.


Exodus 34

  ⁸ Moses bowed to the ground at once and worshiped.

He is the same God, yet unlike Moses we do not know to go to Him in meekness and humility - we miss out this reverence for God, and seeing His high standards of holiness and purity that we cannot meet. He is compassionate, desiring and delighting to give grace and show mercy, slow to anger, and abounding in love and faithfulness, loving and forgiving.

The use of the word 'yet', also means that at the same time, there is no compromise between His kindness shown to all men, as well as His righteousness. Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right? (NIV Bible, Genesis 18:25)

God will not leave the wicked unpunished, because He is a righteous Judge. While He loves and shows kindness, He will deal with wickedness and with wicked people. We were previously in this category.

His love motivated Him to work salvation with His right arm and Christ Jesus provided the full payment for us who now profess and live in faith and hope in Him. Therefore we must be careful to understand God's holiness and how much and how often we go the other way in sin.

So we must repent and confess so that we may be washed clean by Christ. He who conceals their sin does not prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them finds mercy. (NIV Bible, Proverbs 28:13)
Any small stain will not do, we must deal with our sin, bringing them before God.

My sharing point (thesis) was that, we often have an improper view of God, and thus we have an inaccurate view of our own standing in relation to Him. This affects our reverence and awe for Him, and causes us to feel comfortable that we are soon measuring up to His standards. We do not fear Him as we should. We must desire more, to be clean and like Him.

We need to know Him so we may love Him and live worthily to please Him.
Where we have a proper view of God and a view of ourselves, we may know how much we need Him.

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There is a need for me to understand what gifts do I have, so that I may function optimally where He has designed me to. It seems that whatever small gifts they may be, they are to do with learning and sharing His Word. However, I cannot be effective without having spent time in His presence.

We are a collection of different people who have been called by Him.
There are differences that only God can reconcile - He mediates between men. But Christ has mediated between us and the Father.

Can any man be fully right? And yet we do not follow men; we follow Christ.

May all believers love and protect one another. Will the sheep be in disunity? They are not, because they follow the same Shepherd, along the same way.


I am not the picture of spiritual health, but His Spirit is at work in me to clean and teach me.
I write, in addition to flaunt my depth in Scripture, also to note the events in this time that are important to me and also to edify others who may read. 


I am deeply entrenched in His Grace. This is a good place to be. 

Works Cited

Holy Bible, New International Version. East Brunswick NJ: International Bible Society, 1984. Print.

God's Love and Mercy; God's Righteousness

I don't know who reads my blog, but I feel really compelled to do this, and explain the nature of our God, and why there is a need for Jesus Christ, His person and also how did He save us.

The world is drawn to a God who loves and promises goodness, because the world is a rough place and we are tender deep down, longing for care and nurture. That's why it appeals to us when we hear that there is a person called Jesus, who loves us no matter the condition of our mind, body and heart, and we take likely to Him.

Jesus had great love for all of us, if not He would not have the strength and courage to walk to the cross and be crucified.
His whole life was gearing toward His death at Golgotha.
His foreknowledge that His death would bridge God and man and triumph over sin and His love for everyone enabled Him to carry on.

When Jesus was arrested, He said:
"Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels? But how then would the Scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen in this way?"

Matthew 26:53-54 (New International Version)

God loves us and He cares about our suffering, our distress.
But Jesus came not to make our lives better in the worldly sense or to give us riches and prestige.
The blessings that Jesus brought and promised through Abraham, through Israel were not material wealth, but the promise of closeness and intimacy with a God who is mighty and full of love and power.

Yet our God is also Holy. God is righteous and just. He loves justice and hates iniquity.
He does not condone sin; sin is opposite to Him. God's righteous anger, God's wrath is incurred by our wickedness and our falleness. All have sinned, and there is no exclusivity.

Proverbs 17:15
"Acquiting the guilty and condemning the innoccent-the Lord detests them both."

Because of His righteousness, sin is serious to God. Sin is an offense against an infinite God, and as a result, the punishment is rightly infinite. God cannot, despite His love for us, compromise His justice and holiness and pardon us without a price.

Out of His great love, God sent His only Son, Jesus Christ to take our place and suffer God's righteous anger on the Christ. Jesus who is divinity became man and lived a perfect life as the perfect man, pure and blameless. He came and taught us by example the perfect godly man that we were designed to be, and did not turn away from His intended course-to death on the cross.

Christ Jesus is the Son of God and having infinite worth; therefore He was fully qualified to take up all the sins of the world past and future and pay it all for us. When He died for us, He paid it in full, saying "It is finished" before He gave up his life.

He died for us and He offered us a way out of our brokenness and fallenness, and a way to God. If we believe in Him, we gain life because His blood has fully washed away our sin and He has redeemed us from our death by His own death.

Isaiah 53 is very clear in telling us what was God doing through Christ. God's own arm worked salvation for Him and for us all.

Isaiah 53

Who has believed our message
and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?
He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by men,
a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.
Like one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
Surely he took up our infirmities
and carried our sorrows,
yet we considered him stricken by God,
smitten by him, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to his own way;
and the LORD has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.
He was oppressed and afflicted,
yet he did not open his mouth;
he was led like a lamb to the slaughter,
and as a sheep before her shearers is silent,
so he did not open his mouth.
By oppression and judgment he was taken away.
And who can speak of his descendants?
For he was cut off from the land of the living;
for the transgression of my people he was stricken.
He was assigned a grave with the wicked,
and with the rich in his death,
though he had done no violence,
nor was any deceit in his mouth.
Yet it was the LORD's will to crush him and cause him to suffer,
and though the LORD makes his life a guilt offering,
he will see his offspring and prolong his days,
and the will of the LORD will prosper in his hand.
After the suffering of his soul,
he will see the light of life and be satisfied ;
by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many,
and he will bear their iniquities.
Therefore I will give him a portion among the great,
and he will divide the spoils with the strong, because he poured out his life unto death,
and was numbered with the transgressors.
For he bore the sin of many,
and made intercession for the transgressors.

Romans 3:23-26
"for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus."

With this, we are new creatures in Christ who have received life from the Spirit and must live by the Spirit and according to Christ's teachings in Scripture to imitate and take on the likeness of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

1 Peter 1:14-16
“As obedient children, do not be conformed to the former lusts which were yours in your ignorance, but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior; because it is written, "You shall be holy, for I am holy."

Finally, God says in Isaiah 44:22, "I have swept away your offenses like a cloud, your sins like the morning mist. Return to me, for I have redeemed you."

We are redeemed by Christ's sacrifice for us, and His resurrection authenticates the reality of God's grace. In this we must repent, believe and trust in Christ Jesus, submit to His Lordship and walk in love, obeying His commands and teachings and to bear fruit.

We should not only have passive faith, but active faith.