Matthew

Easter 2014 Series: Why did Jesus have to die? (God’s Unconditional Love)

/ Henry Jiang / Leave a comment

What is God’s love? One of my sisters in Christ (in my Yumcha Fellowship) who recently decided to follow Him, solid in her faith, was trying to preach the good news to her parents when she was mocked and ridiculed. Her roommate who is a close friend of mine decided to tell me about it and see what I could say to her. Her parents mocked her, she was humiliated and her parents made false statements about Christ. She felt very discouraged and according to my friend, was crying throughout the night.

These cases are common in a Christian’s life, and this is the suffering that we Christians always talk about during our Christian lives. She later told me that she feels blessed with these friends who help her through her walk with Christ but she doesn’t feel God’s love at all. She doesn’t understand what this unconditional love is, that God has provided us with. As a brother in Christ, I stated the following:

First, this was exactly what happened to Jesus. It is very ironic in a sense that this whole chain of events happened just before Good Friday, which means that it is a really good reminder of what happened to Jesus as He was hung on that tree. The soldiers mocked and beat Jesus (Luke 22:63), which is really similar to her parents mocking her about her beliefs. Jesus’ ultimate humiliation was on the cross as it was only used on people who are guilty of a capital offence (Deuteronomy 21:22). Jesus was blameless yet people nailed Him to the cross, again inline with her parents making false statements about Christ. Yet Jesus asked God the Father to forgive these people when they were doing this to Him (Luke 23:34). That itself is unconditional love.

Next, I told her to meditate on Psalm 22, especially the first lines “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” She is probably feeling the same when she was trying to preach the good news to her parents, and we have to understand that our Lord God Jesus Himself said the same phrase in Matthew 27:46. This is the prime example of taking the cross and suffering for His name, and the Psalm itself is a wonderful prayer to meditate in terms of challenges as such.

I asked my sister in Christ in the meantime for advice and she mentioned that the Bible commands us to leave our families and follow Him (Luke 14:25-27). I was actually really confused about this passage until she explained it to me (and I will quote her word for word)

… just know that it may not be an easy path and it’s especially difficult coming from your loved ones but God calls us to follow Him and drop everything including family not that we forget or reject them but that we know that God is in control of the situation and that He will always be there with us and our family on our journey

Wow, never interpreted it this way but it is so true! Even when we haven’t turned to God, God already loves us and He will always be there.

Finally, I told her to open her eyes to God’s love around her, but I really apologize to her (as I only thought of it later) that I missed out on a really important point. Firstly, God is showing His love through support. Her roommate telling me, me telling another sister, we all come up with suggestions to help her out and pray for her. This means that we all love her, and where does this love come from? Our Creator God has created us and obviously created the perfect unconditional love for us. The most important point that I missed out was her zeal to step up to her non-believing parents and preach the good news to them! That is amazing unconditional love that God sends the Holy Spirit to inspire you to go ahead and preach the good news. You yourself inherited God’s love.

I am proud of you sister. And I am so thankful for God to love me so much and provide me with these wonderful brothers and sisters in Christ that I walk with. God Bless you all and have a beloved Easter weekend.

Praying for Your Community

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The beauty of prayer! As we focused on bringing everything to God in prayer, we haven’t touched on praying for our community, which essentially can mean praying for our family and friends but can extend to acquaintances and other people we know. Quite often, we come across the question of why we need to pray for others? Will God listen to our prayers for others? Why would God sometimes answer prayers from us even though the person receiving the changes is not praying?

Firstly, prayer is aligning our will with God’s will. All circumstances are defined as the will of God (1 Thessalonians 5:18). It also includes aligning other’s wills in God’s will and as we observe prayers being answered, we see God’s work.

Secondly, sometimes during prayer, we find out how insignificant our needs are and sometimes realize the wrongness of our motives and desires. We realize how our suffering compares to those who are having even more struggles, and allows us to stand even more to our faith.

Finally, praying for someone else displays your inheritance of God’s perfect love. As stated, the second greatest commandment is to love our neighbours (Matthew 22:39). We show this love by helping them physically and also spiritually through prayer as prayer for others is the most powerful source of love.

Therefore, my brothers and sisters, have you prayed for your neighbours recently? If you haven’t go ahead and pray for them!

God has a Plan

/ Henry Jiang / 1 Comment

Let’s discuss a bit more about Matthew 7:7-8 as it is an important and quite often, misinterpreted passage commonly used in false doctrines. I have had to clear this confusion with a few family members China over a multiple phone calls since they have heard this verse and misinterpreted it. Misunderstanding this passage can lead to being deceived and also decrease of faith due to “not seeing God do what we prayed for”. Let us look at this passage again:

“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. — Matthew 7:7-8 (NIV 1984)

Honestly, do you think that this will work for everything? Well, it can potentially work for everything as God is omnipotent; he has the power to do anything but this will not happen unless it is in God’s Will. For beginners, if God does not answer your prayer, it might not be a direct no, but rather God might be asking you to wait for His perfect timing. Moreover, why would God not answer some of our prayers? This is because we are asking God for the wrong motives (James 4:3). If our ultimate goal is to bring Glory to God and presenting ourselves as a living sacrifice (Romans 12:1-2), our prayers will be answered as we will be working hard to align our will with God’s will. This is the ultimate goal of prayer.

When you are praying to God, are you praying to God with confidence? The Holy Bible commands us to pray with confidence (Hebrews 4:16). How can we pray in confidence? We cannot do so unless we are aligning our will with God’s will and praying for God’s will to be done on us (Matthew 6:10).

Now, here are two misconception my family members had that I would like to share with you, my beloved brothers and sisters so that you may understand how prayer should be, and that God will bless you by answering your prayers.

Misinterpretation #1: We should have a goal, and pray for it.

Explanation: I agree that we should have a goal, and that goal is to glorify His name. One thing that I totally disagree about is that for decision making, we should make up our minds first and then ask God for it. What makes you think you have more wisdom than God? If it’s a decision such as a career after a university degree or something, you can never be absolutely sure that God’s will is for you to do that. You might even fail miserably! (I’m not saying you will or not.) Really, what does God want? You should ask God first to reveal His will to you (again Matthew 6:10) and you should always ask for wisdom as wisdom is promised to you (James 1:5). Always ask God first through prayer before coming to a decision, especially if it is some big life-changing decision. If you are trying to make a huge decision, and you’re just a child (we are children in God’s eyes), wouldn’t you ask your Father or at least consult Him before making a move?

Misinterpretation #2: If we ask like crazy, God can give us anything.

Explanation: This interpretation commonly comes from “The Parable of the Persistent Widow” (Luke 18:1-8) or The Parable of Friend who asks for Bread at Midnight (Luke 11:5-8). Let’s dig in on what is being misinterpreted in these two passages.

yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually come and attack me!’” —Luke 18:5 (NIV 1984)

Some claim that this means if we keep on bothering God, God will answer our prayers. They extend it to the point where they believe this can even cover our prayer requests. However, if we look deeply in Scripture, this is talking about justice. Asking for help when we are sure that we have been wronged. This passage only applies to asking for justice, and not for our own prayer requests that we ask God to fulfill. Moreover, the parable is about an unjust judge, our God is not an unjust judge so therefore, this passage is even more irrelevant to this issue.

Let’s now look at the Parable for Bread at Midnight:

I tell you, even though he will not get up and give you the bread because of friendship, yet because of your shameless audacity he will surely get up and give you as much as you need. —Luke 11:8 (NIV 1984)

Just taking this passage out of concept will yield the same results as the above parable. However, God is contrasting Himself from this friend. We need to read this passage in context, as God wants to say to us that he is not that kind of God, but a God that will answer when you ask, seek, and knock (Luke 11:9-10). Now why does God ask us to keep on praying for things? This is to overcome spiritual resistance. Pastor Keith Smith from Agincourt Pentecostal Church gave a parable in his sermon, stating that if he was trying to launch a canoe into a lake and he starts pulling on the canoe, which pull is the most important? The answer is all of them are important. Praying is just like pulling a canoe into water, sometimes you need to keep on pulling to overcome spiritual resistance so you become completely confident when you receive the answer.

God Bless you All!

What occasions do we pray?

/ Henry Jiang / 2 Comments

Now my brothers and sisters, since we have gone over how we should pray and what we should pray about, let’s talk about  what occasions do we pray more deeply. As stated in previous posts, self-reliance is a sin and we must bring everything to God, through prayer. A very good place to look for prayers to God is the Psalms, since God has commanded us to speak in Psalms (Ephesians 5:19). Psalm has a variety of prayers, anything ranging from lament (eg. Psalm 22), praise (eg. Psalm 30), confession (eg. Psalm 51), help and protection (eg. Psalm 60), etc. If you are all drained out and don’t know what to pray about, I would highly suggest meditating over one of these Psalms to see what God wants us to pray about.

However, let’s go back to the topic of what occasions do we pray. I would like to bring out a parable Dolas, my very good friend from Nigeria, who has trusted in the Lord for all her life and bore many fruits, told me. At the end of the parable, I would like to add a portion of the parable in which my brother in Christ, Jeremy Yeung came up with which in some way completes the picture. Let’s imagine that we are a car. If we want to know more about how to operate this car, we refer to its user manual, in which case we are pointing to the Holy Bible. But the car needs to be constantly maintained, before it breaks down, gets rusty, overheats, etc. This is when we take it back to its maker for maintenance (take it to the Lord in Prayer). It is vital that we constantly take our car back to maintenance as there are so many problems that occur, and we are 100% sure that the maker is omnipotent and that He can fix anything. This is how important prayer is.

Last but not least, what happens when we feel worn out and drained out. For example, in some cases when we have read the manual over and over again (for very mature Christians, I’d say more mature than me in Scripture), and feel dried out, what do we do? We take the car out for a drive! This means going out, making disciples of all nations and baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:19).

This is how Christian life should be in a nutshell. It’s that simple. No complications, no strings attached. What are we waiting for?

Your Will Be Done

/ Henry Jiang / Leave a comment

My lovely brothers and sisters, after meditating on The Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:9-13) from yesterday, have you learned anything new? Today, I would like to touch on a specific verse in the lord’s prayer, and talk about some misconceptions even some mature Christians have which lead to deception of Scripture. This is a very slippery slope as many have fallen into this trap, and this has generated false doctrines, such as the prosperity gospel. It is very upsetting that these brothers and sisters who begin with the will to follow Jesus but end up following worldly values, such as wealth or honour.

One of the most debated verses in the Bible is Matthew 7:7:

“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.

Christians have used this verse to argue against each other, some state that it should not be taken word for word as just stating this verse is taking it out of context as the audience of this passage has to be considered. This should not create any disunity in a church as it does not violate any primary doctrines. However, secondary doctrines may have different takes at this verse, in which I (I admit I am biased) believe that Scripture should be taken as is, and this verse is directed towards all of us. The condition that this verse must meet is that we are following how Jesus commanded us to pray in Matthew 6:9-13, especially Matthew 6:10

Your will be done

It is vital (and I cannot stress this any more further) that we are living to fulfill God’s will, and NOT our will. Any form of living for ourselves is self-idolatry and not bringing Glory to God, thus not living life to its sole purpose. Romans 4:7-8 states that

For none of us lives to himself alone and none of us dies to himself alone. If we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord.

Therefore, my brothers and sisters, be careful when you are praying for things. Always ask yourself if what you are praying lines up with Scripture, and if you are not sure, pray for wisdom as wisdom is promised to us through Scripture:

If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. James 1:5 (NIV 1984)

Only when we are praying for the right things (i.e. God’s Will), it will be given to you. This goes the same for passages such as Matthew 18:19. What we need to keep in mind is that God is always good (Psalm 136:1) and we must put our faith in Him as He knows the plans He has for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future (Jeremiah 29:11). So my brothers and sisters, ask yourself what you are praying for, are you praying the right way? If not, do you know what you should pray for? If not, ask God for wisdom as it is promised to you through the Lord.

God Bless You All! Amen!

P.S. Don’t get me started on the discussion of Jeremiah 29:11 taken out of context. I understand I am biased but again, I hold the point of view that Scripture is written for everyone and honestly, if someone was to use that portion of Scripture for means of prosperity gospel (stating that God has plans for us to prosper in this world), they honestly lack foresight. I am not saying that this will not happen, but it is not guaranteed. However, God will keep His promise and we are guaranteed to prosper in Heaven if we follow Him.

How do we pray?

/ Henry Jiang / Leave a comment

A common question I get asked from brothers and sisters who are new to their faith is: how do you pray? Some believe prayer is an every meal thing and people say prayers right before meals. Some people may believe prayer is a way to ask for things and receive blessings from God. Most of the answers actually lie right in the Bible, within a few verses.

“This, then, is how you should pray:  ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.’ — Matthew 6:9-11 (NIV 1984)

Now let us look closely at this passage. Should we read out this passage and only pray this passage word by word in our prayer? No! We need to be able to bring to God all things in our minds through prayer. However, we should keep in mind this passage during our prayers, and it doesn’t hurt to bring this passage out every now and then. However, if we are just uttering these blind words without knowing what they mean, that is a sin because we are lying to God.

My brothers and sisters, I challenge you to meditate on God’s way of prayer and see if you understand anything. Shoot me any questions again with the contact form below. I will attempt to explain this passage line by line as it is one of the most important passages in Scripture. See if this changes your perspective on prayer.

Stay Blessed!

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Testimony of Joseph M. Scriven

/ Henry Jiang / Leave a comment

My dear brothers and sisters, since this is the fourth post on the hymn “What a Friend We Have in Jesus”, let’s take a look behind this powerful testimony of a person who lived out his life as a Christian.

A picture is worth a thousand words, how about a video? Look at this simple, yet touching testimony. Are you turning to God for all of your struggles? Even though these two tragedies happened, Scriven still turned to God. Looking back at the Bible, read just the first chapter of Job. What did Job do when all those tragedies happened to him?

During the tragedies, Scriven turned to God in prayer. Job actually worshipped God and did not charge God with wrongdoing (Job 1:22). However, did these individuals have times where they thought that God has forsaken them? Though it is not recorded in Scripture nor in any accounts of Scriven, I would deduce yes, since God knows that we will feel that way. That is why the majority of the Psalms exhibit lament, in which Ephesians 1:19 commands us to speak to each other in Psalms. Even Jesus Christ spoke in Psalms, with “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Psalm 22:1, Matthew 27:46). If you are feeling the same at the moment, I suggest you to meditate on Psalm 22 and maybe even other Psalms as God expects us to feel those emotions. However, the conclusion is that God does not forsake us, and we have to turn to God in prayer as Matthew 11:29-30 states that God will take our yoke for us, if we come to Him.

So as a food for thought, reflect on yourself if there are any struggles that you have not taken to the God in prayer, and pray about them. He will not forsake you, as He is a faithful, loving and amazing God, King and friend.

#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 ❤

Lost

/ Henry Jiang / Leave a comment

When things turn for the worse, we often find ourselves lost physically and spiritually. Our self-dependent vision of the world deceives our foresight and forces us to take it upon ourselves. When we find ourselves in situations like this, we need to remember that we need to be committed to the Lord, as it is written:

For the eyes of the LORD range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him.  2 Chronicles 16:9

In times of destitute, many of us reach a point where it feels like we don’t time for anything. We want alone time for ourselves. Even knowing James 1:2-4, we often try to solve the problem by ourselves, and as a result, it may turn into so-called stress-relieving methods such as eating, drinking, gaming, taking drugs. Doing anything that is not sinful to a proper extent is alright but overdoing things such as over-eating, drinking alcohol until you are completely insane, gaming like crazy is a form of idolatry as you are allowing it to take over your life. After doing things that are not giving glory to God’s name, you would feel a sense of emptiness. Why? This is because the sole purpose of the creation of human beings is to bring Glory to God (Isaiah 43:7). Moreover, the Bible commands us to do everything for God’s glory (1 Corinthians 10:31). Failing to live for your purpose of life will thus bring you the feeling of emptiness when doing things that are useless.

Reading the Book of Ecclesiastes can be very depressing as it talks about how worthless our temporary life on the earth is, but we are reminded constantly in the New Testament of the everlasting eternal life we are to spend with God in heaven. Christ has commanded us to carry the cross with him (Luke 14:27, Matthew 16:24-26). Imagine what Jesus went through, how He was wrongly crucified though He lived a sinless life, the pain and suffering He went through to carry the cross. In addition, think of Jesus’ disciples and other Christians that were tortured and martyred for their faith. Now look back at yourselves. I challenge you, my lovely brothers and sisters, to compare the largest challenges you are currently experiencing with the experiences listed above.

Things that are neither Bright nor Beautiful

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Reflecting from yesterday’s hymn “All Things Bright and Beautiful”, it reminds me of the time I have stumbled upon the thought: What about things that I feel are not bright and beautiful? Are these not creations of God? Is this hymn just blaspheming about things that are Bright and Beautiful and completely ignoring the things that are not?

When we think of this, we have to keep in mind that God is good and fair. Scriptures such as  Matthew 7:11, Matthew 19:17, Romans 5:8, John 3:16 and John 15:12 describe the goodness of God and how He loves us. But why do we have people ranting on about how miserable their lives are? Why does God put these people in those situations.

Last Sunday, I was having lunch at Village by the Grange. There was this elderly black lady sitting in front of me, constantly talking. For a moment, I thought that she was calling someone on her phone but later, I realized she was ranting about living on community housing and how the world is messed up. I was eating my beef Pho when I felt a type of spiritual unrest for her. I felt like she needed God and peace, and I felt the urge to give her one of those ESV Economy Bibles I carry around. I finished my bowl of noodles and confronted her with the Bible, she thanked me and told me she already has one and asked me to give it to someone else on her behalf. Then I asked her if I could pray for her and she agreed.

These days, I often invite the Holy Spirit to lead me in prayer so that I pray for things that the Holy Spirit wants and not what I want in my life. During the prayer, I prayed for this lady to receive more foresight by looking into God to strengthen her soul. I thanked God for giving her these challenges as we understand that we should rejoice at times of trial as the testing of your faith produces perseverance and that perseverance must finish its work so that we may be mature and complete, not lacking anything (James 1:2-4). God wants the best of us and providing us with these challenges or things that are not bright and beautiful, He is setting us up to receive His everlasting fruits He will bless us after this short-termed life in this world (And it was actually from the prayer where I came up with the name of this site). After the prayer, the lady stopped ranting and was smiling until she left the area. Praise the Lord!

Now my lovely brothers and sisters, ask yourselves, “What is your attitude when you are faced with trials and temptations? Are you allowing God to make you perfect by developing your perseverance? Is your foresight perhaps blinded by the current situations that arise and in your mind act as a barrier between God and you?”