How deep the Father’s love for us

How deep the Father’s love for us,
How vast beyond all measure
That He should give His only Son
To make a wretch His treasure

How great the pain of searing loss,
The Father turns His face away
As wounds which mar the chosen One,
Bring many sons to glory

Behold the Man upon a cross,
My sin upon His shoulders
Ashamed I hear my mocking voice,
Call out among the scoffers

It was my sin that held Him there
Until it was accomplished
His dying breath has brought me life
I know that it is finished

I will not boast in anything
No gifts, no power, no wisdom
But I will boast in Jesus Christ
His death and resurrection

Why should I gain from His reward?
I cannot give an answer
But this I know with all my heart
His wounds have paid my ransom

The Story of Christmas

[11] For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. [12] And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.”

(Luke 2:11-12 ESV)

What is Christmas without Christ?

It is heart breaking to see that Christmas has been tarnished, polluted and destroyed by the world today, where is the Christ in Christmas? Santa Claus? Presents? Parties? Blasphemy against the Holy name of the Lord!

We fail to comprehend the astounding act of Christ becoming man. That the King of Kings cast down His crown; took off His robes of majesty; left His throne in the heavens above and came down to earth! The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Christ Jesus came not as a King to be served, but He came to serve, that His life would be a ransom for many. Not as a king, but as a baby, a baby born in a lowly manger.

Imagine that! The Saviour had no choice but to lay His precious head upon a manger. Our world had no room for its saviour!

Can you grasp the magnitude of an act like that? No we cannot.  Look at your God! Look at that innocent baby conceived of the Spirit lying in that humble manger! Look at His humility!

[5] Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, [6] who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, [7] but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. [8] And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

(Philippians 2:5-8 ESV)

In all our fun this Christmas, will our hearts be like that little town of Bethlehem 2000 years, not having a room for the Christ? Will we conveniently forget what this whole occasion is about? I plead with you, remember Christ this Christmas, Christmas is all about Christ, it should be all about Christ!

And this is the story of Christmas, not some stupid fantasy of Santa Claus, it is the story of God becoming man, it is the story of the birth of my Saviour. Who so humbled Himself.

The sweet little head of Christ Jesus that lay in the manger was the same scared head that a crown of thorns were put upon. The same blood that flowed through the veins of that innocent babe on Christmas day 2000 years ago, is the same blood that was shed for my sin upon the Cross.

On Christmas day, Christ gave up His Crown of glory in heaven, and put on a Crown of thorns, He drank to the very last drop the cup of wrath that was reserved for me, He was sacrificed upon that gruesome and beautiful Cross so that I may be saved.

And this is the story of Christmas.

[16] For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.
(Romans 1:16 ESV)

As the music dies down and one by one, my friends stream out of the room, i wonder will i ever get to speak to them again?

indeed the biggest regret i have had in my 2 years in the VIP is that the gospel has not been preached enough. sure, i joke around with my friends, at times i mention Christ but seldom do i share the Gospel of Jesus Christ. the only thing that has the power the save, the only thing that will pull the souls of my friends out of hell is the Gospel, not my jokes, not my worthless conversations. Time and time again i say, i push aside this task, i make excuses for myself, but now time is up. if any of these friends were to perish right now, the guilt on me would be indescribable. i had 2 years to preach the gospel to them , at times i did, but at other times i ignored that tugging in my heart.

All is not lost, i will still see my class again soon enough, and Lord would You make me preach Your gospel. would You give me a burden for the lost that will not be lifted until Your gospel is preached. even as i go to india tomorrow, Lord help me to see Your world. To see Your people in need. To have a heart of compassion for a world without vision. that You would use me as Your light in this dark world. Use me to stand in the gap between the living and the dead.

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Thank You Lord

i thank you Lord “For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.”

(Psalm 139:13-14 ESV)

even as my birthday comes and goes, my heart is filled with thanksgiving that over the past year the Lord has been working in my life, changing me by His sovereign grace and power. and though i still stumble, i know my Lord is there to uphold me and He will lead me to greater sanctification. His good work in me will be brought to completion untill the day of my Lord Jesus (Phil 1:6)

I thank you Lord that You knitted me in my mother’s womb, that before the foundations of the earth were set You had called me Yours’. i know i am Yours’ Lord, thank you.

The Sovereignty of my Lord

[14] What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God’s part? By no means! [15] For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” [16] So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy. [17] For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” [18] So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills.
[19] You will say to me then, “Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?” [20] But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?” [21] Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? [22] What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, [23] in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory
(Romans 9:14-23 ESV)

The sovereignty of my Lord. It brings me to my knees in thankfulness that He did not raise me up  to become a vessel of wrath, but a vessel of His mercy. That indeed, if God had allowed me to continue in my sin, to harden my heart what can my argument be? Cry out that God is unjust?No way, if i want justice than what i deserve is the wrath of God and to be thrown into hell this instant! Who am i, the one created, to challenge and question the work of my Creator? But thanks be to God! that he captured my heart and made me His own, that He had chosen to raise up to be a vessel of mercy, that He would show a wretch like me mercy, O I thank my Lord for His Sovereignty. That He had chose to show mercy onto me. That murderer could have so easily been me, but God called me to be His. Thanks be to God!

Looking at the above scriptures, i would humbly think that the Lord shows mercy to some and to others, He hardens.

[3] But I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and though I multiply my signs and wonders in the land of Egypt, [4] Pharaoh will not listen to you. Then I will lay my hand on Egypt and bring my hosts, my people the children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt by great acts of judgment.
(Exodus 7:3-4 ESV)

Do not get me wrong, God  isn’t the cause of sin, He is a perfect and Holy God and far be it for Him to cause people to sin. But there is a degree of permitting on God’s part that allows sin. I believe the Lord hardens the heart of whose heart has already turned from Him. Jesus promises in John 6:37 that “whoever comes to me I will never cast out”, so here we see that God does not harden the heart of those that earnestly seek Him, He says “seek and you shall find”. We see that Pharaoh was already a wicked man,

[15] But when Pharaoh saw that there was a respite, he hardened his heart and would not listen to them, as the LORD had said.
(Exodus 8:15 ESV)

He had hardened his own heart from the Lord and the Lord had permitted him to do so and He had also done a work of hardening. Such is the sovereignty of God that it is not by human will or effort but by the mercies of God. We can be sure that what he does, He does for the purpose that His will might be done, to glorify Himself as seen in Romans 9- that His power would be shown and His name proclaimed in all the earth.

This humbles me greatly, think about it: God had choose to a wretch like me! now the lyrics ring true in my heart, “amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me”

Worship

“Christians don’t tell lies, they go to church and sing lies”

i was thinking about this today, on the songs we sing so loudly in church during worship, where suddenly everyone seems so holy, lifting their hands, jumping up and down, doing all kinds of things- but worship. When the music fades, the lights come back on, the band stops playing, do the lives we live reflect the things we sing?or do we just “worship” in that moment and the rest of the time we spend living like the world. Paul defines true worship as this in Romans 12:1-2:

” I appeal to you therefore brothers, by the mercies of G0d, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”

what is the worship that God desires?that our bodies be presented as living sacrifices. Our bodies. Not 30 minutes of our singing, but our lives, our every breath be presented to God as a living sacrifice, for His glory. do you realize the kind of promises that we make to our God each time we sing a song?! a simple line sung so quickly like “i lay my life down at your feet” just come out of our mouth like that, but do we really mean it? to lay our lives down at the feet of Jesus, to surrender our crowns and just be broken down at the feet of our Lord. we sing lines like these so hastily and so often.

i guess the quote right at the start holds some truth doesn’t it?

Lets come back to the heart of worship

Child of weakness

Child of weakness watch and pray, find in Me thine all in all

“But alas! How soon do i decay! O how weak, how infirm, how unable to do anything of myself! What poor inconsistent being! What miserable wretch, without the assistance of the Spirit of God. How weak do I find myself! O LORD teach me to depend less on myself to be more humble.”- Jonathan Edwards

Indeed, a Christian has to be constantly plugged into Christ. Like a fruit that falls to the ground without the support of the tree, I soon decay and am useless in this world without the strength of my Living Lord. No matter how hard I try, I find it impossible to rely on my own strength to overcome sin. I see and am still seeing my inability, seeing my wretched body of sin pulling me down dragging me away from the cross. But it is only through the sovereign and amazing grace of my Lord that will lead me to me knees in repentance, to lead me to greater sanctification and to seek and yearn for holiness.

All our promises and resolutions to God will end in denial simply because we have no power to accomplish them. When we come to the end of ourselves, not just mentally but to the point of complete realization that apart from Christ I am nothing, and totally give ourselves up, give up on relying on our own strength, for if we do, we will fall and fall again; then the Holy Spirit will take control.

Only by self denial is divine grace multiplied in one’s life

Not by might, not by power, but by the Spirit

the world behind me, the Cross before me

The Gospel

The gospel is the good news of God and it is the power of God for the salvation for to everyone who believes (Romans 1:16).

For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23) and we cannot stand before a Holy God on the Day of Judgment for we will surely be thrown into the lake of fire (Revelations 22:8). We are wretched men and even our righteous deeds are nothing but filthy rags in the presence of God (Isaiah 64:6), we are undeserving of God’s love and fully deserving for His wrath to be poured out on us. For we are sinful man unable to save ourselves and surely we will go to hell. But the gospel and the good news is this, that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8). He not only gave mercy by not giving us what we deserve, but he showed grace by giving us what we do not deserve at all!

God so loved us that He gave His only begotten son that whoever believes will not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16), His love was manifested upon that cross where Jesus hung. That this is love, not that we loved God but that He fist loved us and sent his Son as a propitiation for our sins (1 John 4:10). God crushed His Son for our transgressions (Isaiah 53:10) and Christ was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquity (Isaiah 53:5). Surely we were deserving of death, surely that place upon that cross was meant for a sinner like me but Jesus took my place. My sin was put on His shoulders and He paid the price for me. His body was torn (Hebrews 10:20) that I may now enter boldly into God’s presence and indeed this is the gospel, that Christ died for me and He saved my life! It is not only the death of Jesus, but it is His resurrection also that has saved us. By His resurrection He has overcame death and sin no longer has a grip on us as children of God.

The gospel is the message of God’s Holiness that He cannot tolerate sin, it is the message of God’s justice that Jesus had to bear the brunt of and it is the message of love, that He saved a vile sinner like me. This is the gospel.

For a sinner to be saved, he must believe in His heart and confess with His mouth that Jesus is Lord (Romans 10:9). But it does not stop there, salvation requires repentance. Not all who call upon the name of the Lord will enter the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 7:21-23). It is not only the declaration that Jesus is Lord; it is the change in heart and change in life that will lead us to heaven. Do oyu really believe that a mumbled prayer is enough to get you to heaven?

If i were to ask you how do you know you are saved, would you say “oh i wrote down the time and date which said the sinner’s prayer, oh look here it is! well i guess i am saved” you say that and the next moment we return to the ways of the world, enjoying things the world enjoys, laughing at the things the world laughs at, watching things that the world watches, talking like the world, behaving like the world, than what difference is there between a Christian and a non Christian?!

My friends, a simple prayer alone is not enough to get us to heaven at all! Only those who does the will of the Father will enter the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 7:21). It is only through genuine repentance and life change that we will be able to be saved. Salvation is by faith alone, but it is not by a faith that stands alone. If we truly believe in our heart that Christ is Lord, then naturally life change and repentance will come as God has called us to be Holy as He is Holy (Leviticus 20:26).

Are you truly saved?

Not everyone who says to me Lord, Lord will enter the kingdom of heaven(Matthew 7:21)…