I have dieted a lot in my life. My wife and I once tried 'Maker's diet'. This was before we came to an understanding of grace. We both were all excited about it because after all it is a 'biblical diet'. As Christians we always looked for the word 'biblical' or 'Christian' in front of anything- Christian handy man, Christian hair cut, Christian mortgage, Biblical eating habits, biblical way of losing weight and anything under the sun which says biblical or Christian. I think we were so much excited about 'Christianity' than Christ himself. What a tragedy!
Anyways, we tried that diet for quite a period of time. And you know what? It worked! We both started losing weight, people started noticing it and started commenting about our 'new' looks. We thought those comments paid for the struggle what we were going through. We acted as if it is not a big deal. Certainly there were many type of food we were giving up and the truth is, it was a big deal!
We went for about 30-40 days and finally we reached at the end of our rope. We slowly started giving up and started eating the things we enjoy eating. What a relief! The moral of the story is, I now weigh more than I weighed before I started that diet!
The attractiveness of law among Christians (or among any religious people) is that it works for a while. It does. It can give some wonderful results. But the truth is that while it's working, it is gaining all its power to fail you miserably in the future. Even the people who claim to be 'law keeping' Christians knows this truth, but they don't admit it. They hide it.
The sin itself has no power. Sin is just lying there, dead and powerless. It can't do anything by itself unless and until it is connected to its power source- the law. Sin gets all its power from the law. One of the verse which gave me a lot of revelation about the power of sin is found at I Cor. 15:56
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.
Yes, the power of sin is the law. I do not need any explanation to agree to this point. My own life proves it to me over and over, even today. When we put a hole in the wall, no one really cares. But the moment we hang a sign there saying 'do not look through this hole', we all know what happens! Until I told my daughter 'do not touch the stove' she never bothered. But now that I told her and she wants to touch it.
Paul talks about 'the sinful passions aroused by the law' in Romans. Our sinful passions are aroused by the law. That very well is the purpose of the law, 'so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God' (Romans 3:19). This simple truth can save us from a lot of trouble. I praise God for law, without it, I would have never understood the significance of His grace.
The secret of not sinning is not the law, but unplugging it. Sin is always going to be with us till our last breath, but as long as it is unplugged from its power source, it will not take control over our life.
Monday, February 18, 2008
Thursday, February 14, 2008
The flu bug
Finally it bit me and the entire family. Hoping to reduce the 'down time' by taking some OTC medicines. Think this is time for a little 'Sabbath rest'.Rest & Peace,
Bino.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Rethinking 'Worship'
The comments on the What is Church? post by Nicole prompted me to write this post. It actually gave me an opportunity to do a little learning on the topic called - worship. I am going to ramble on my thoughts here and it is perfectly okay to disagree!
Have you heard statements such as ‘I was late and missed the worship today’, ‘for tomorrow’s meeting we have a special 15 minutes worship’, ‘the worship leader is on vacation so we canceled the worship’?
Jesus revealed one of the profound truths of the history to the Samaritan women at the well, ‘You must worship your God in truth and Spirit’. When we look at a little bit of background there, she was talking about doing the ‘worship’ in a particular mountain or place.
“Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem." (I wonder how people worship, if they can’t climb the mountain!)
But this was Jesus’ response:
"Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.” “The true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth."
In other words, there comes a time when you don't worship God this place or that place. Or worship is not tied to a particular place or a particular style. Jesus was revealing one of the revolutionary principle of New Covenant which is much better than the Old Covenant.
God is Spirit and you must worship Him in truth and spirit. Worship him in truth. I think it’s about being real. Just being real with Him for who you are. He imputed His righteousness to me and I have absolutely no righteousness to stand on. That realization within our heart generates the love required to worship Him. Worship Him in Spirit. I think it is the Spirit who lives in us prompts us or enables us to worship Him. It is a little outrageous to think that the Spirit will prompt us to worship in truth sharp at 10.00 every Sunday morning. It didn't really work for me when I was in the church. I remember standing there numb while the people around me 'worshiping' like crazy. I have also seen pastors and worship leaders struggling hard to stir the people up to bring an 'atmosphere of worship'.
If you have a church background similar to mine, you might have already seen some interesting definitions of worship in churches. For some people it is raising ‘holy’ hands and singing. For some it is speaking in tongues, for some it is dancing, for some it is screaming, for some it is laughing (holy laugh?), for some it is being ‘slain’ in the spirit. If you see all of these different styles of worshiping, you will see one thing in common. All of them have one or more physical components – hands, mouth, legs, body etc. It is something about me or us. Also, people come up statements such as 'there is power in corporate worship'. My only problem with that is, such concepts are not there in New Testament. New Testament do not have such an emphasis on the so called worship what we see in the churches today.
Some churches have dress codes for 'worship'. Does God really care whether I wear suit or jeans when I 'worship'? Does God really care what comes out of my mouth or does He care about the attitude of my heart? When it is a mere fact that using my mouth I can speak something totally contrary to what I have in my heart, why would God see the 'many words' and 'meaningless repetitions' coming out of my mouth? . I think God is more concerned about my heart than my mouth.
We often forget that we worship a God who lives in us. We often forget the union we have with Christ Jesus. We often forget that we are indwelled by the Spirit who is actually the object of our worship (or faith. I will get to that later). We often forget that we are seated in the heavenlies with Christ Jesus. Like Bob George says, so sometimes we have to look down, not look up. We have books on ‘how to worship’, we have sermons on tips to become a great worshiper. We (evangelicals) blame Catholics about their ritualistic worship, but what we do is replacing that ritual with another ritual. Yes, we have no priests, but we have pastors. Yes, we have no Cathedrals, but we have ‘house of the worship’s. Yes, we have no bowing to images, but we have raising of hands.
I checked the concordance portion of my Bible for the word ‘worship’ and found only 5 references (3 from New Testament where it is actually addressing the worship topic. There are many other passive references though.)
1. People coming to worship Jesus when He was born.
2. Jesus talking about worship to the Samatian woman.
3. Romans 12:1.
Here is Romans 12:1, which tells me a lot about the New Covenant way of worshiping:
Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship.
It is talking about offering our body (members of our body) as a living sacrifice. Oh… it’s about physical? No it is not! Offering the members of our body is an attitude of our heart. Offering our body for the very purpose of God so that His son can live His life through our body and accomplish His purposes! He can use our eyes, mouth, hands, legs etc. In effect, it is nothing but living by faith. Thats is the worship according to New Testament.
I checked the word ‘faith’ in my concordance and found more than 100 references to it and most of them from the New Testament. That tells me something, that the New Covenant life is all about walking by faith in the Son of God who lives in me. Bible says, without faith we cannot please God. That’s a huge principle to me. It didn’t say without worship we cannot please God. In fact, If we are walking by faith we are worshiping God.
I am not against to using our body to express our joy towards God. I think it is perfectly alright. But I can't call it an act of worship according to Romans 12:1. Act of worship is an attitude of our heart, totally surrendering the members of our body for the glorious work of Christ in and through us.
Have you heard statements such as ‘I was late and missed the worship today’, ‘for tomorrow’s meeting we have a special 15 minutes worship’, ‘the worship leader is on vacation so we canceled the worship’?
Jesus revealed one of the profound truths of the history to the Samaritan women at the well, ‘You must worship your God in truth and Spirit’. When we look at a little bit of background there, she was talking about doing the ‘worship’ in a particular mountain or place.
“Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem." (I wonder how people worship, if they can’t climb the mountain!)
But this was Jesus’ response:
"Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.” “The true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth."
In other words, there comes a time when you don't worship God this place or that place. Or worship is not tied to a particular place or a particular style. Jesus was revealing one of the revolutionary principle of New Covenant which is much better than the Old Covenant.
God is Spirit and you must worship Him in truth and spirit. Worship him in truth. I think it’s about being real. Just being real with Him for who you are. He imputed His righteousness to me and I have absolutely no righteousness to stand on. That realization within our heart generates the love required to worship Him. Worship Him in Spirit. I think it is the Spirit who lives in us prompts us or enables us to worship Him. It is a little outrageous to think that the Spirit will prompt us to worship in truth sharp at 10.00 every Sunday morning. It didn't really work for me when I was in the church. I remember standing there numb while the people around me 'worshiping' like crazy. I have also seen pastors and worship leaders struggling hard to stir the people up to bring an 'atmosphere of worship'.
If you have a church background similar to mine, you might have already seen some interesting definitions of worship in churches. For some people it is raising ‘holy’ hands and singing. For some it is speaking in tongues, for some it is dancing, for some it is screaming, for some it is laughing (holy laugh?), for some it is being ‘slain’ in the spirit. If you see all of these different styles of worshiping, you will see one thing in common. All of them have one or more physical components – hands, mouth, legs, body etc. It is something about me or us. Also, people come up statements such as 'there is power in corporate worship'. My only problem with that is, such concepts are not there in New Testament. New Testament do not have such an emphasis on the so called worship what we see in the churches today.
Some churches have dress codes for 'worship'. Does God really care whether I wear suit or jeans when I 'worship'? Does God really care what comes out of my mouth or does He care about the attitude of my heart? When it is a mere fact that using my mouth I can speak something totally contrary to what I have in my heart, why would God see the 'many words' and 'meaningless repetitions' coming out of my mouth? . I think God is more concerned about my heart than my mouth.
We often forget that we worship a God who lives in us. We often forget the union we have with Christ Jesus. We often forget that we are indwelled by the Spirit who is actually the object of our worship (or faith. I will get to that later). We often forget that we are seated in the heavenlies with Christ Jesus. Like Bob George says, so sometimes we have to look down, not look up. We have books on ‘how to worship’, we have sermons on tips to become a great worshiper. We (evangelicals) blame Catholics about their ritualistic worship, but what we do is replacing that ritual with another ritual. Yes, we have no priests, but we have pastors. Yes, we have no Cathedrals, but we have ‘house of the worship’s. Yes, we have no bowing to images, but we have raising of hands.
I checked the concordance portion of my Bible for the word ‘worship’ and found only 5 references (3 from New Testament where it is actually addressing the worship topic. There are many other passive references though.)
1. People coming to worship Jesus when He was born.
2. Jesus talking about worship to the Samatian woman.
3. Romans 12:1.
Here is Romans 12:1, which tells me a lot about the New Covenant way of worshiping:
Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship.
It is talking about offering our body (members of our body) as a living sacrifice. Oh… it’s about physical? No it is not! Offering the members of our body is an attitude of our heart. Offering our body for the very purpose of God so that His son can live His life through our body and accomplish His purposes! He can use our eyes, mouth, hands, legs etc. In effect, it is nothing but living by faith. Thats is the worship according to New Testament.
I checked the word ‘faith’ in my concordance and found more than 100 references to it and most of them from the New Testament. That tells me something, that the New Covenant life is all about walking by faith in the Son of God who lives in me. Bible says, without faith we cannot please God. That’s a huge principle to me. It didn’t say without worship we cannot please God. In fact, If we are walking by faith we are worshiping God.
I am not against to using our body to express our joy towards God. I think it is perfectly alright. But I can't call it an act of worship according to Romans 12:1. Act of worship is an attitude of our heart, totally surrendering the members of our body for the glorious work of Christ in and through us.
Monday, February 11, 2008
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