i’ll post my devotion for this week.

there’s this lyric from a song i’ve been hearing on the radio every morning:

“Hold me Jesus
cuz i’m shaking like a leaf.
you were then king of my glory.
will you be my prince of peace?”

i know you guys don’t really get to see my depressing side…my sad moods, but when i was younger, i used to get depressed a lot. i really considered myself as a loner although i did have close friends. and these days, i still have bouts of sadness, moments when i just feel helpless and tired of everything, but this song reminds us that it’s ok to feel like that sometimes because God steps in and takes us with His might and just holds us. just like 1 pet. 5:7, we can cast all our burdens to Him, not just because he CAN handle it, but because he truly cares for us. his affection for us assures us that He’s not just the king of glory, with the power to move obstacles gloriously, but he’s also the prince of peace, with the tenderness to heal and comfort, to give us peace when life throws us around…

i love that our God can be both. i love that He has all the might and power of a king, yet all the tenderness of a Father. His love encompasses all…and I REALLY love Him for that.

taken from march 16, 2006

i know i’ve blogged of this often, but this quote rightly says it so:J. C. RyleGod has married together justification and sanctification. They are distinct and different things beyond question, but one is never found without the other. All justified people are sanctified, and all sanctified are justified. What God has joined together let no man dare put asunder. Tell me not of your justification, unless you have also some marks of sanctification. Boast not of Christ’s work for you, unless you can show us the Spirit’s work in you. Think not that Christ and the Spirit can ever be divided.how powerful…

with so much emphasis on God the Father and God the Son, it’s no wonder we lose wonder on God the Spirit. what is this role?

triune deity means three equal faces of God, not one with more power over another. one cannot function in isolation, but everything that the father, son and spirit does is always intertwined, always with the intention and consideration of the other. it is not exercise, but it is the nature of God. and all that the Father does, the Son and the Spirit works to glorify Himself.

the problem is within us.

sometimes we try to isolate God’s distinct characteristics as if He was a heterogeneous mixture that we can easily pull apart for our own benefit. Like the quote, we easily claim Christ living in us yet not living in the Spirit. how does this work? how do we make peace with a lifestyle as this?

in personal experiences, my toughest struggle sometimes is to love. esp. loving those that may not reciprocate “love.” but i’m always reminded, how can i say and boast of being loved by Christ and yet not love others? I’m taking the Spirit out of the equation by refusing renovation in my heart, and in living my faith through love.

another example i’ll take from my husband’s great vault of funny stories, and which i hope he doesn’t get mad at me for “sharing.” In his youthful days in Japan, he would try to expand the Kingdom to his friends. Now this is all well and good that he would boast Christ, but he failed to show the Spirit’s work in him when he’d witness while being intoxicated with alcohol.

logic does not work when you pick and choose from the equation which is God.

we were justified when Christ died for us, sanctifed from our sins. Jesus said, i will take his/her place. Then He made us clean.

we cannot live saying we have accepted a life with christ having died for us, and still continue living a contradicting lifestyle without fruit of the spirit. we cannot say that Christ’s power is in us and fail to show how that power has manifested through our actions. it’s a mockery to tell the world one thing and then show them how inaffective the Spirit is.

if you find yourself calloused and indifferent, obstinate to the Spirit’s calling and molding, always go back to the cross. Those that genuinely seek and understand what Christ has done on the cross cannot be the same.

(taken from 2006)
i continued further in hebrews since 2 sundays ago, i taught on hebrews 5, spiritual maturity.  i wanted to finish hebrews since i only know it for that topic as well as its chapter on faith (ch.11).  those are the only two chapters i’m familiar with so i read ahead to chapters 6-10.

although the crux of the chapters led to Jesus being the ultimate High Priest and sacrifice, it alluded to a character in the old testament- Melchizedek, a king and priest of God who had blessed Abraham during his wars described in Genesis 14.  This was still before the tribe of Levi was called by God as the ordinated priesthood to be set apart as the holy bearers of the Arc of the Covenant, and who performed strict sacrificial duties in the Tabernacle.  Although i’ve heard of Melchizedek, this was the first time i researched who he was in the old testament and to what purpose he served as a mention and function to the New Testament.  Who knew that a minor character of the old testament would resurface as a type for Jesus?  i know there’s still debate going on as to whether he was a representation of Jesus or if he was the actual Jesus of the Old Testament since it was sited that he had no lineage or death, and he was named ‘king of peace’ as Jesus is the ‘prince of peace,’ but despite all the debates, his function was to show that the law made way and was therefore afterwards obsolete when Jesus came to earth. 

Jesus was not from the Levitical priesthood, because he was a decendant of Judah, yet he was the final and ultimate High Priest who made the final and ultimate sacrifice.  And since there is no remission of sins but through blood, Jesus made the old way of purification for all obsolete, and through his death, with his own blood became sacrifice.  The reason they brought up Melchizedek was because he himself, still at the time of Abraham, the father of all nations, who had still to father Isaac- to Jacob- to the tribes of Israel- was not a part of the Aaronic priesthood, yet he was still a high priest who gave such blessing to Abraham that Abraham and his tribe gave tithes to him.  Melchizedek was outside of the law, away from Judaic conventions, and therefore was a resounding figure of what was to come through Jesus, who himself was not from the line of Levite priests, yet He was the High Priest.  Through Jesus, God made the Judaic law inoperative.  what does this mean? why did he do it?  it was to stress that salvation was through Jesus and not by the law.  The law was fallable because its standards could not have been met by mere human deeds, and we continuously failed to measure up to the law.  i’m not saying that God was fallable, but humanity could not gain eternity through mere sacrifices as they’ve done in the old testament. 

Jesus paid that price and became the final sacrifice so that all could be forgiven and made holy.  Only through the blood of the Lamb.  Not by human priests, not by the law, but through Jesus. heb:10:10 “And what God wants is for us to be made holy by the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all time.”

this goes to show that it is not by good deeds, it is not by your merit or demerits, it’s not by regaining favor through regulatory offerings, and it is not even by the old law- salvation is through Jesus alone- the High Priest who is our advocate, who enters God’s Holy presence in behalf of us.  the old law was only a copy of the greater things to come, a shadow of what was genuine salvation.  the earthly tabernacle was only a likeness to the real presence of God, and when Jesus had finished God’s will for him on earth, the curtain to the Holy of Holies was torn, because all the old external regulations had no more function.

now i know the analagous relationship between old testament melchizedek to new testament jesus.

---

this is amazing: (hebrews 8:8-13, the remix of the prophetic paragraph taken from jeremaiah 31:31-34)

“The day will come, says the Lord,
       when I will make a new covenant
       with the people of Israel and Judah.

    9
    This covenant will not be like the one
       I made with their ancestors
    when I took them by the hand
       and led them out of the land of Egypt.
    They did not remain faithful to my covenant,
       so I turned my back on them, says the Lord.

    10
    But this is the new covenant I will make
       with the people of Israel on that day, says the Lord:
    I will put my laws in their minds
       so they will understand them,
    and I will write them on their hearts
       so they will obey them.
    I will be their God,
       and they will be my people.

    11
    And they will not need to teach their neighbors,
       nor will they need to teach their family,
       saying, `You should know the Lord.’
    For everyone, from the least to the greatest,
       will already know me.

    12
    And I will forgive their wrongdoings,
       and I will never again remember their sins.”^[b]

    13When God speaks of a new covenant, it means he has made the first one obsolete. It is now out of date and ready to be put aside.

(taken from 2003)
it’s funny these days that i’m teaching about John 15:5 to my sunday school class.  Sometimes i wonder if they see me in their shoes, that i too go through their struggles as well, to some different degree, but i hope they will acknowledge that those lessons are not quite just out of the Discipleship book, but also from my experiences.  I know sometimes they may look at me as if i don’t understand, but i do.

“Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches.  Those who remain in me, and i in them, will produce much fruit.  For apart from me you can do nothing.”

This reminds me most 02 202 when the FIC retreat based its theme on this passage.  I remember the whole time being there just so desperate for guidance to what God wants of me, from what path to take in what was going on with my life.  There was so much confusion in which direction i should take with so many aspects of my life and i was frustrated with where i was.  “I never seem to be content with my present surroundings, i always want more” someone once told me about myself, actually more than one pointed that out to me.

the issue was trust.

i needed to trust the great mathematician to reveal and unfold things in my life; things that i needed “now”.  i remember the last day of the retreat i went to take a walk to be alone and walked past through a field of young trees.  As i proceeded farther, the rows of trees seemed to be more mature than the batch prior to them.  Finally, i saw a row of mighty trees, fully mature.  Still, my mind didn’t get it.

Then it became weird. I then saw a bird with outstretched wings soar above me, above the trees, above what i normally saw.  Then i looked ahead of me and saw the path i was taking and it curved ahead with bushes on the side hiding the remaining direction of the path. 

That’s when it hit me. 

We don’t need to always know where that path is taking us.  Sometimes we plan and plan and it becomes futile because things may be so unstable with circumstances.  but our hope and our trust is in God because He alone has the bird’s eye view.  He sees over all, clearly and surely, freely and with majesty. 

And look at God’s promise after John 15:5 in John 15:7 —–> look…look…how great and awesome!

“But if you stay joined to me and my words remain in you, you may ask any request you life, and it will be granted!”

keep going!!

(v.9-11)”I have loved you even as the Father has loved me.  Remain in my love.  When you obey me, you remain in my love. just as i obey my Father and remain in his love.  I have told you this so that you will be filled with my joy.  Yes, your joy will overflow!!”

Let God have the bird’s eye view. 
Let us learn how to trust. i love you Lord.