Friday, May 25, 2007

When God Seems Distant

How is it that God awares of all things and yet there are still people in suffering?

We don't always experience the goods in our life. Everyone goes through pain, fear, sadness, and suffering. Where is God? We might wonder. Well.. He is always present. As Rick Warren has put it, "The situations that will stretch your faith most will be those times when life falls apart and God is nowhere to be found."

He wants us to trust Him. To trust Him even in difficult moments. Pray to Him and tell Him how we feel and be truthful to our heart. Being able to still worship Him when it seems imposible and to be grateful of all that has been given to us despite our feelings, is to trust Him and our faith renewed.

"The deepest level of worship is praising God in spite of pain, thanking God during a trial, trusting him when tempted, surrendering while suffering, and loving him when he seems distant." - Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Life

Saturday, May 12, 2007

What "Mother" Means

"Mother" is such a simple word,
But to me there’s meaning seldom heard.
For everything I am today,
My mother’s love showed me the way.

I’ll love my mother all my days,
For enriching my life in so many ways.
She set me straight and then set me free,
And that’s what the word "mother" means to me.

Thanks for being a wonderful mother.
(By Karl Fuchs)
"No gift to your mother can ever equal her gift to you - life" - Anonymous
Happy Mother's Day, Mami!
10:15 AM Sunday, May 12 (Jakarta, Indonesia)

Monday, April 30, 2007

Don't Let the Devil Put One Over on You

"When he [the devil] speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it." (John 8:44)

Some people find it difficult to believe God's promises because they've seen so many things in the natural world that seem to contradict them. They've seen faithful tithers go broke. They've seen sick Christians fail to receive their healing.

In reality, it would be more accurate to say that they think they've seen those things. Because, you see, there's a deceiver at work in the world. A deceiver who's busily doing the same thing he's been doing ever since the Garden of Eden: tricking mankind into believing God's Word isn't true.

And, after working on it for thousands of years, he's a master at it. Think about that the next time he tries to make things look as though God's Word is not going to work for you, when he makes it look like all hope is lost. Say, "I don't care about appearances. I believe the Word and I refuse to doubt it."

Let me show you what I mean. Have you ever seen a magic show where someone crawls inside a box and then is sawn in half? You can see it with your own two eyes. The guy's feet are sticking out one end of the box and his head is poking out the other, and the box is plainly cut in two. Then the magician slides the two halves back together and the sawed-apart fellow jumps out of the box in one piece.

Now tell me, did you really believe, even for a moment, that fellow was truly cut in half? Of course not! You knew that you'd seen a trick, a deception, something that appeared one way when, in reality, it was a different way altogether. You may not have known how it was done. You may not have been able to explain it. But you knew a person couldn't be sawn in half, then put back together, so you refused to believe your eyes.

That's exactly the way you need to be where the Word of God is concerned. You need to learn to trust it and rely on it to such an extent that when Satan shows you something in the natural world that appears to contradict it, you just say, "Well, I saw that, but I'm not going to be gullible enough to believe it. I'm just going to stick with the Word."

If you'll do that, the father of lies will never be able to put one over on you.


(Psalm 119:89-104 )

-This message is received from Arthur Luke. Thanks Arthur!-

We have our difficult moments in life. Hardship, misery, suffering and loneliness... but life is also full of possibility. The beauty of it all is to be able to go through all that, and come out from the other end as a stronger individual with a renewed faith in God.