Finding love, peace and joy in Christ!

Here are testimonials on cardboard from Hillside Christian Church members of Amarillo, Texas.

Ephesians 5:8-10
For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) and find out what pleases the Lord.

Courtesy of YouTube

1 Peter 2:9
But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.

-- from Jonseb, 20 June 2008.

Desiderata for Christians

Go placidly and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amid the noise of war drums and rumors of war and the haste in which people conduct themselves in this world as they run to and fro. And remember the type of peace that peacemakers sow while they raise a harvest of righteousness.
As far as possible surrender all your cares and worries to God and He will give you rest, for His yoke is easy and His burden is light.
Be on good terms with all persons including the down and out of the society. Remember that Jesus did not come to call the righteous, but the sinners, to repentance.
Preach the gospel of truth quietly and clearly —not with words of human wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. Listen to the testimonies of others, even the seemingly dull and the ignorant; they too have their stories to tell on how they personally encountered Christ.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons who would preach a gospel other than the one that was preached to you, they are vexations to the spirit.

If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be people who are better or lesser gifted than yourself, both materially and spiritually.

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans, even though you would not be the one who would reap the soul harvest. It is still for God’s greater glory.

Keep interested in your own effort to witness to God’s power in transforming lives through His love and grace, however humble it is since you will receive power from the Holy Spirit; it is a real possession in these changing times as we come near the end of this age.

Exercise caution in your ministry and your personal life; be self-controlled and alert and always pray for guidance and deliverance, for the world is full of trickery, and your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.

But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; for wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many persons enter through it; but everywhere life is full of heroism. Therefore, nurture your faith which comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ.

Be led by the Holy Spirit. Especially, return God’s affection. Never ever doubt God’s love and faithfulness; for in the face of occasional bouts with spiritual aridity and disenchantment, He is good and His love endures forever.

Take delight in God’s statutes since these are your counselors; flee the evil desires and surrender the things of youth, and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace.

Nurture strength through the Holy Spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune, for He will teach you all things and what you should say. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings: the advent of the four horsemen of Apocalypse; natural disasters; man-made calamities; and the triumph of evil. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.

Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as His own child. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.

You are a child of God, no less than God’s one and only Son gave His life for you so that you’ll have eternal life. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the creation waits in eager expectation for you to be revealed.

Therefore, be thankful for being at peace with God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; in the noisy confusion of life, may your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

With all its sham, drudgery, bondage to sin, the fall and decay of creation, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. All the days of the oppressed are wretched, but the cheerful heart has a continual feast.

Strive to finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given to you—the task of testifying to the gospel of God's grace. Remember that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.


(Based on Desiderata by Max Ehrmann and various Scriptural verses)

Notes:


1. “make disciples”: Matthew 28:19
2. “rumors of war”: Matthew 24:6
3. “run to and fro”: Daniel 12:4
4. “ peacemakers who sow”: James 3:18
5. “will give you rest…yoke is easy”: Matthew 11:28-30
6. “not come”: Mark 2:17
7. “preach the gospel”: 1 Corinthians 1:17
8. “preach a gospel other”: Galatians 1:8
9. “enemy the devil”: 1 Peter 5:8
10. “for wide”: Matthew 7:13
11. “faith comes”: Romans 10:17
12. “He is good”: 1 Chronicles 16:34
13. “statutes”: Psalm 119:24
14. “flee the evil”: 2 Timothy 2:22
15. “teach you”:John 14:26
16. “what you”: Luke 12:12
17. “but those”: Isaiah 40:31
18. “endure hardship”: Hebrews 12:7
19. “be completely”: Ephesians 4:2
20. “one and only”: John 3:16
21. “the creation”: Romans 8:19
22. “who reconciled”: 2 Corinthians 5:18
23. “may your”” 1 Thessalonians 5:23
24. “all the days”: Proverbs 15:15
25. “finish the race”: Acts 20:24
26. “He who began”” Philippians 1:6

To GOD Be All Glory!

Beloved Dad, Most Glorious, Most Holy in Heaven!
Thank You for the miracle with which You favored me on the morning of April 1, 2007. You are truly faithful and steadfast in showing Your grace in big things and in little things alike! In the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

- § -

The Praise and Worship tape would not eject from the cassette player of my car [a 2003 KIA Pride model] this morning: it was working just fine two hours before. The Sunday worship service had just finished. I was delighted after having listened to a businessman’s testimony: he was bankrupt, he owed the bank an 8 figure debt [that’s 10 million pesos or more], and it would take him 12 years to pay -- even if the new investment he was counting on paid off [with the help of his financial acumen]. He confessed that God dealt with his pride and confidence in his own skill. In fact, contracts he was counting on were cancelled one after another. He had a perfect attendance record in church, fauthfully bringing his tithes, reading the Bible daily: so why were his prayers seemingly unanswered? God informed him it was his pride, his confidence in his own abilities. After he humbled himself before God, acknowledging that without God he could not accomplish anything, the investment earned enough profits to enable him to pay the bank in one year, fulfill his pledge to the church’s building fund and provide comfortably for his family. He credits God for all the success of the investment, nothing of his own doing. The Pastor’s sermon was a great blessing too: how to know God more intimately and imitate Jesus as the perfection of truth and grace [which, for most humans, are not always feasible or compatible].

Then I was extremely annoyed because no matter what I did the tape wouldn’t function. No repair shop could be found open on a Sunday; I tried speeding on road bumps to jar the eject mechanism; I tried to dislodge the tape manually, prying it with my plastic cards. I even sought help from my sister’s driver, [she lives nearby]. I tried for almost two hours. Nothing worked.
There must be something wrong with the circuitry, or the tape got all tangled up inside and jammed the mechanism: I will lose my favorite Praise tape. [irreplaceable! Cassette tapes like this are no longer on sale! I bought it in the 80’s] It probably will have to be cut, reduced to shreds. Who knows how many days I shall have to drive through the horrendous Manila traffic without the calming comfort of Christian music! I resigned myself to spending the better part of a day having the car radio repaired. “O Lord, please help me,” I sighed.

As I was parking the car in my garage, the tape ejected, it was intact, and the cassette player functioned just fine.

Praise the Lord! He is faithful in great and little things.

- § -

Wes Hampton sings with the Gaither Choir this famous 1923 Baptist hymn by Thomas Chisholm and composer William M. Runyan: it became internationally popular since the Billy Graham Crusades in 1954. The lyrics spring from Lamentations 3:22-23.

"Because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail."

Courtesy of YouTube.

Super Messiah

I’ve been hooked on comics and graphic novels since the Death of Superman saga, arguably the best-selling comics series of all time. The plot is simple: an alien creature called Doomsday, an apt name for an intergalactic killing machine, wakes up one day from his long hibernation in the bowels of planet Earth. He soon leaves a swath of mindless destruction and spiked body counts in his wake as he travels toward Metropolis, the adopted city of Superman a.k.a. Clark Kent. Even the collective efforts of the Justice League, a group of superheroes, fail to stop the rampaging creature. A broken and bloodied Superman makes his last stand in Metropolis. His strength dwindling, the Man of Steel, with his last remaining breath, attempts one final blow to bring down Doomsday. The antagonist, however, slips in his own lethal punch which proved disastrous to Superman. And the world saw the death of the world’s best-loved super hero. For the love of Metropolis and its people. For the love of Lois Lane and Superman’s friends, or so goes the seemingly endless cliches. In the follow-up series uninspiringly titled Funeral for a Friend, one could read how the world mourned Superman’s passing, including the mushy paeans and eulogies that were uttered: Superman the brave, the all-American hero, the greatest superhero, ad infinitum.

Despite the pedestrian plot and trite dialogues, the series rescued DC Comics from ignominy and dire financial straits. It even got extensive coverage from the mainstream media. Clearly, the death of an iconic figure like Superman captured the imagination of millions. But on another level, this “Death” saga is a hollow echo of an event that happened 2,000 years ago, not in a major city like Metropolis but in the backwater of the Roman Empire called Golgotha. And come to think of it, two thousand years ago the world never took notice of the death of its Creator and Redeemer, except maybe those that were in the immediate environs during the sixth hour of Jesus’ crucifixion when, as the Gospels record, darkness came over the whole land.

Going further back by thirty years around 4 B.C., a rescue mission was initiated from the heavens, beyond the bounds of Superman’s Planet Krypton and outside the confines of space-time, parallel universes and their infinite earths, to save helpless human beings who have become slaves to sin and to the powers of the air. The Scriptures say: “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life (John 3:16). Jesus Christ, the Messiah, is more than a superhero. He is our “Lord and our God” (John 20:28). 2 Peter 1:1 speaks of “our God and Savior Jesus Christ while Titus 2:13 refers to our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.

The prophet Isaiah refers to him as “Mighty God” as he foretells his rescue mission or coming: “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders, and he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God...” (Isaiah 9:6). Surprisingly, the story of Superman’s origin −a baby in a capsule crib who cruised the cold, deep space from an advanced civilization and crashed down into a farm in Kansas − bears similarity to the incarnation of Jesus who was born in a manger at an obscure town.

Since everyone has sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23), we are like dead men walking, so to speak, since the penalty for sin is death (Romans 6:23). Divine justice requires that the penalty due for our sins would have to be paid. God abhors sin and therefore, we could not be reconciled and have fellowship with Him unless the punishment was meted out. In fact, as dead men walking, we are not only within the throes of physical death but we are facing eternal damnation or spiritual death as well.

Without Jesus’ atoning death, we are doomed to spend eternity with our worst nightmares in the lake of fire where there is gnashing of the teeth. Think about spending just a few minutes with creepy beings more menacing than the comic books’ sociopaths and villains like Joker, Two-Face, and Scarecrow; in a place worse than asylum for the criminally insane. Surely, an eternal torment with the hordes from hell would make Freddie Kruger, Jason, Anton Chigurh, and Hannibal Lecter look like altar boys.

Jesus was arrayed against the most powerful empire at that time; against the high priests; against the devil who tempted him in a showdown at the desert; and against all the principalities and powers who probably descended to Jerusalem and incited the mob to crucify Jesus. At the hour of need, his friends and disciples abandoned him (one of them even betrayed him). At the cross, Jesus not only suffered physical pain (aside from the beatings and torture he received from the Roman sadists) and death but also the pain of bearing sin. Wayne Grudem in his book Systematic Theology wrote that “in obedience to the Father, and out of love for us, Jesus took on himself all the sins of those who would someday be saved. Taking on himself all the evil against which his soul rebelled created deep revulsion in the center of his being. All that he hated most deeply was poured out fully upon him”. Compared to what Jesus fought on behalf of us sinners, Superman’s fight with Doomsday would be like a stroll in a mall.

I realized that my continuous fascination with comic books and super heroes is borne out of growing frustration in this world and the state of humankind. This world needs a Superman to set things right and defeat evil. Superman’s exploits resonate within me and reveal a deeper yearning for the Hero (not of the comic book kind) to come again and who would one day “…preach good news to the poor… bind up the brokenhearted,…proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners,…proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God…” (Isaiah 61:1-2).

The day of vengeance of God! This will be the long-awaited payback time for all the aborted babies, the martyrs of the Christian faith, the poor and the infirm who were rejected by the society, the innocent, and all victims of evil and man’s depravity. The Super Messiah is coming and we expect His arrival any moment from now. Jesus’ return will be that of a warrior in a white horse. He will be coming in full glory; as a conqueror and a king: “…His eyes are blazing fire and on his head are many crowns…He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood…Out of his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. He will rule them with an iron scepter. He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has this name written: KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS (Revelation 19: 11-16).

He will put an end once and for all to Satan, the sin and evil in this world. Satan would be thrown into the lake of burning sulfur. Even death would be swallowed up in victory. “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting? The sting of death is sin...But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”(1 Corinthians 15:55-57). Julia Ward Howe must have thought Jesus as the ultimate Superhero when she penned the lyrics of The Battle Hymn of the Republic:

Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with His heel/
Since God is marching on.

Indeed, I could only repeat what the apostle John wrote in the island of Patmos: “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus” (Revelation 22:20).