Be Careful What You Wish For

you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men." matthew 16:23

i'm very sorry that this blog is off-topic from mr. stott's message for today, but i was compelled by il's blog on monday to post the following comments.

the passage in question is matthew 16:21-28, where peter passionately states that he will not stand for Jesus being killed at the hands of the elders, chief priests and the teachers of the law.

peter is immediately rebuked and "brought down to size" by the Lord, who tells him, "you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men".

it is a hard passage to understand at first. peter's protest against Jesus's dying makes so much sense and is so completely understandable from the human perspective.

but what if peter's request had been granted? a failed insurrection with jesus as a political or military leader? no cross, no forgiveness, no hope of salvation.

we are reminded again that God's ways are not our ways; and His thoughts are far above our own.

as in the case of peter, even the best of our motives are often tainted by self-deceit and self-pride when we really examine them!

although we may not see it at the time, we should be very thankful that there are occasions that God does NOT grant the prayers we ask of Him.

many times we don't know what we're asking for. and most times, we lack wisdom as to when to ask for the things we desire.

i can think of examples in the bible and in real life, where people have stubbornly insisted on doing things "their" way, instead of God's way, have insisted on "their" own timing, instead of God's timing etc.

God appears to grant them their request, but does it really bring them the happiness they thought it would?

one example from the bible is in the first book of samuel, when israel insists on having a king, like the "other nations" do.

God is very displeased with this request, knowing that it is a rejection of Him. He warns them repeatedly that they will be ill-treated and led astray by their future rulers.

israel ignores these warnings and clamors for a king, anyway. God answers this request.

how grievously israel sins under the rulership of her kings, and how far she falls into apostasy and idolatry, is faithfully recorded in 1st and 2nd kings and in 1st and 2nd chronicles.

the extent of the suffering both the northern and southern kingdoms of israel eventually endure, especially in their respective declines, is unimagineable.

at the lowest point of judah's (the southern kingdom) torment, during the siege of jerusalem by the babylonians, mothers were reduced to eating their own children.

we should honestly present our requests to God in prayer. but when we insist on requests that we know are displeasing to Him, watch out.

it just goes to show that with God, be very, very, very careful what you ask for . . . you might just get it.

Thursday, February 14, 2008: The Transfiguration

This is one of the events in the life of Jesus that is written in multiple books of the New Testament and mentioned in other passages (Mark 9:1-13, Matthew 17: 1-13, Luke 9: 28-36 and 2 Peter 1: 16-18). It was a nice exercise to look them up and see how one passage supports the other.

John Stott offers four aspects of interpretation: worth further meditation.

I’m just blown away by the visual: as Jesus is praying, his appearance starts to change. His face shines like the sun, his clothes become as bright as a flash of lightning, Moses and Elijah appear out of nowhere and they are all enveloped by a cloud that speaks to them! So many artists have tried to capture this image. When I get to heaven, I would like to ask Jesus to show me what it really looked like.

The cloud reminded me of the exodus of Israel when God’s presence was seen as a pillar of cloud. This too is a kind of exodus—Jesus is preparing to lead us out of the bondage to sin.

Peter, James and John got a peek into the future. They got to see Jesus in his transfigured body - the way he might look after he is resurrected. And even though Jesus has been telling them about the suffering that is to come, and that he will rise from the dead but how could they really know and understand all these things. They were so frightened and the scripture says they didn’t know what they were talking about. But, this is the part I can identify with… being scared and talking too much!

Someday, we will all see Jesus in all His Glory. Will we be frightened? What will we say?

Finding Ourselves

For whoever wants to save his life will lose it,
but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it.

Mark 8:35

Through our simple minds, we already know that gaining is better than losing. What Jesus showed us is little more complex than that. He was telling us that if we try to gain, we will lose, but if we try to lose, we will gain. So in summary, we need to lose in order to gain something greater. Sounds familiar? Everyday, we make purchases. We pay our money to buy products or services. We know we make the purchase because we think it’s worth our money. So you give up the money to benefit something greater. It’s the same with God except it’s not money this time but our selves. We give up our lives, and He will provide something MUCH greater. Hmm Our lives? Too much to give up? If you think about it, He owns that too! You are NOT the owner. He just simply wants you to let it go. That just means you are just admitting to God and believing that He is the owner of your life. It’s funny…because whether you admit and believe or not, He already is.

John Stott gave us three ways people try to gain in this world. Wealth, Power, and Fame. Some might say, ‘one comes after another’.
We often hear people say “Money is evil”. It’s quite interesting because samonim and I were talking about this very subject on Sunday. I never believed that the money was evil. Money does not have mind of its own. In fact, it’s our hearts that are wicked and evil that makes us use the money in wicked ways. Money is just a tool that God gave us to use. If you think about it, they are just measurements of our wealth. Even if we didn’t have paper money or metallic coins, as long as we have some sort of measurements, it’d be okay. If you think in that sense, how worthless is it? Yet, the world lives and dies for this. Just simply to better its measurements. For what? They mean nothing in heaven because God uses different measurements. But it’s not like He’s using some sort of secretive measurements. He tells you exactly what it is. Then, shouldn’t we all live and die for this since this is for eternity?

Concern for God’s Glory

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Matthew 6: 9-10

As the daily reflections state, I often live my life for my name, my own kingdom, and my will, instead of God’s. I tend to think, it is not fair for me, if I’m living a hard life for God, and not having piece of the reward for myself. I’m not some kind of robot that is programmed to recognize who my master is and to do whatever He tells me to do. I have feelings too. But some of you might think that He is God and being a “robot” is a pretty fair deal for us.
So I began to think about how fair and loving God is, keeping in mind the concern we are supposed to have for giving full sincere glory to God. I guess one of my concerns is how is glorifying God going to benefit me. I know that some of you might think that I sound really self-centered, but I believe we are programmed like that (part of being born in sin).
Now what do I know about being fair, and love? I had to throw me a question that how much do I know about anything at all? And even if I know something about any thing at all, it’s probably based on my own limited imagination. So I come up with conclusion that things that I think benefit to me is only limited, and I’m only limiting what God can do for my benefit. I guess if my God is fair and loving, than I just trust that He will be fair and loving to my benefits. Just like trusting Jesus Christ as my savior from the eternal death, and that’s only a start.

The Necessity of the Cross

Without knowing the real motive of Peter’s action, we might believe that Peter was a good and faithful follower of Jesus. We might innocently think that he loved Jesus so much that he couldn’t allow such think to happen to him. However, we know that his outcry was not due to his love for Jesus but because it went against his own plan. He wanted to restore the pride of the Israelites, the chosen one, by destroying the enemies, the lowly gentiles, who have been their oppressor. Don’t we do the same things? I do. I pray earnestly for something for my own pride to be restored or enforced. When God throws His plan which many times go against my plan, I’m tested and cry out complaining. However, God knows what’s best for us and I’m thankful for even the curve ball that God sometimes throws in my life. It shows me my real motive. When I feel that my faith is strong enough and become self dependent, he throws another curve ball that I never seen before to let me know that my faith is weak. I still need and depend on God each day. So to answer the question, is the cross necessary? Absolutely! No matter how mature you think you might be in faith, you will always need Jesus on your side.

This made me think a little bit about the prayers we lift up to God. Should we be discouraged from lifting up prayer regards to our needs and wants? I don’t believe so. Long as we are not praying for malice and out right evil things, we should continue to lift up those prayers. Like the sermon from two weeks ago. God is much bigger than you think. He can make a wrong plan to a perfect plan. Peter became the disciple of Jesus with a wrong plan. His plan was to set Jesus as the king of Israelite and destroy the enemies of Israel. God transformed Peter’s wrong plan to a perfect plan which was to set Jesus as King of all and destroy all enemies of God. So don’t worry about your prayer or action not being perfect because God will humble you by revealing them to you and demonstrate His power by making it into a good and perfect one.