Random

Random weekly posts related to hot-topics or news and how they fit with the context of the Bible.

Recharging

/ Henry Jiang / Leave a comment

My fellow brothers and sisters, I apologize for not updating my blog for the past few days. I am in exams at the moment and I am constantly working at my physical maxima as I feel drained this period of time. Our physical body is connected to our spiritual body and therefore, I may become spiritually drained if I keep on not resting.

This blog is a huge commitment for me and I hate to put it on hold until the exams are over but it is for God’s goodness that I have to. As 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 states:

Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honour God with your bodies. (NIV 1984)

Not taking any rest and recharging myself will result in a reduction of my abilities to perform in exams, reduction of the effectiveness and message conveyed in this blog which will ultimately decrease the Glory to God. Moreover, Scripture commands us to take rest.

Then, because so many people were coming and going that they did not even have a chance to eat, he said to them, “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.” — Mark 6:31 (NIV 1984)

Therefore, my brothers and sisters, if you ever stumble across this blog, take time to read previous posts I wrote (I’m pretty sure most of you haven’t seen some of the posts as I posted everyday). I you are struggling with exams, I highly recommend the post about my testimony during an exam. God Bless you all and will continue after these exams!

Noah

/ Henry Jiang / Leave a comment

My lovely brothers and sisters, I have heard many thoughts of how the current Noah movie is ridiculing Noah. I have yet to see the movie but I would like to talk about what I believe the significance of Noah is in our Bible and what we all should keep in mind when talking about Noah.

At the time of Noah, the world’s moral state was coming down to its knees. Scripture tells us that the Lord saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth has become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time (Genesis 6:5). Man, that is something really bad. Imagine that every single inclination of your thoughts are evil all the time, this must be a very messed up world. This was way before Jesus and in the fair and just God’s eyes, He decided to wipe mankind from the face of the earth, along with the man and animals, birds, creatures as God was grieving (Genesis 6:7). Imagine the wrath of God at that time, but Noah found favour in God’s eyes (Genesis 6:8).

If you were a Noah of that society, imagine what would be happening to you. Everyone is corrupt and, you’d probably feel like you are left out or even ridiculed and punished for being right in this society of destitute. Yet, Noah stands up to righteousness and God finds favour in him. Moreover, he was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and walked with God (Genesis 6:9). Here, we must notice that he was found blameless among the people, don’t have the misconception that he is God because God is blameless among all, but Noah was blameless relative to those in his surroundings. Through the rest of Genesis 6, God gives commands to Noah on how to build an ark and plan for the loading of the ark, in which Noah, who is walking with God obeys obediently.

Later in Scripture, we are told the common story of Noah’s ark where 2 of each specie (female and male), along with Noah’s family are all brought on the boat and the earth is flooded for 44 days and 44 nights after 7 days of being on the ark. With Noah’s obedience, God guides his ark to safe waters after the dove gives signs and Noah receives the call from God to disembark. Right after they disembark, Noah pleases God by burning offerings to HIm, in which God declares:

“As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease” Genesis 8:22 (NIV 1984)

Then God blesses Noah’s family and commands Noah and his sons to “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth.” (Genesis 9:1). He then presents Noah with the Noahic Covenant. Now, as Christians, we all respect Noah because as long as the Bible is concerned, we are all descendants of Noah. The Tower of Babel that scattered people around the world was after Noah, and as we could tell, everything on this earth was gone except Noah. What a righteous man and a servant of God he is!

This is a summary of the story of Noah for those who haven’t read it in the Bible yet, and I strongly encourage you to read it if you haven’t. Other than serving as history that we should know about mankind, I believe we should read the story of Noah to understand how God favours righteous men and follow his example in this upside-down valued world.

God Bless You All! 😀

#yolo

/ Henry Jiang / 3 Comments

My beloved brothers and sisters, as you may have seen, most of my posts during the week surround the same theme. Though this site is only 1 week old, we have started with the theme of Spiritual Blindness and have moved on to the theme of prayer. I thought that it would be nice to spend a day each week (which would be Sunday) to share interesting things that come up in our lives that makes me ponder.

A member of our Yumcha Fellowship introduced the term yolo to me. To those who do not understand, it means “You Only Live Once”. Sometimes the term is combined with swag, forming the term yoloswag. One of the ways he would use this phrase would be:

Yolo! I gamed the entire night and did not study for the exam. GG

For your information, GG means Good Game, in which gamers say when they loose a game. I never really came to understand the concept of You Only Live Once here. Is it because you only live once that you should game? A few weeks after hearing this term, I rebuked him with the following verse:

The sluggard craves and gets nothing, but the desires of the diligent are fully satisfied. — Proverbs 13:4 (NIV 1984)

Honestly, gaming to an extent where it takes over your priorities in life is a form of idolatry, as you are worshipping games. Are you bringing any Glory to God? The Holy Bible commands us to do everything for the Glory of God. If you are a non-believer, do you feel emptiness after gaming for extended hours? If so, why? What do you feel when you log out or turn off your game? Imagine everything being taken away from you tomorrow including your laptop, what would you think of gaming now?

My perception of the concept Yolo. I personally believe that it should not be seen as a term with negative connotations. You Only Live Once? So what? We only live once, so we need to treasure this time of only living once in this world. What do we do? First we must obey the Ten Commandments. Next, we must execute the Great Commission which is “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” (Matthew 28:19) We only live once and during this short time of living in this world, we have to bring as much Glory to God as possible and obey His commandments in order to be saved (which also means we have to declare our faith and prove our faith).

What are you waiting for my brothers and sisters? You’ve all heard the Great Commission, go out and do it! #yolo

Have a very, very blessed week! Love ya ❤