Spiritual Growth

  Freedom is the precious thing in the lost world, where wisdom-less people live their lives without wisdom and die without wisdom in a life of vanity because they reject the wisdom of God. Wisdom has been knocking on their door to collect them under his wings and he did shout in the high places to lead them to light, but they lack wisdom to know wisdom. They lack the light of the heavenly father to know that the Lord Jesus is the wisdom of God who is calling everyone to salvation. Without the wisdom of God, therefore, they live in vanity and die in vanity, working 24/7 for food that never lasts, and running after the unsustainable happiness of this illusionary world.   We are not slaves of freedom, but slaves of wisdom and his name is Jesus Christ. As a donkey knows his owner, and an ox his master, we know the hand which feeds us and his name is the Lord Jesus Christ. As we don’t pay our bills, we don’t live in vanity of human freedom, as fools of this world. Besides, as the ...

Why do we care to remind people that once they are reborn in spirit, unless they follow and obey the will of the Holy Spirit to transform them into new creations in the image of the lord through the spiritual growth process, they can lose their salvation? It is not that we forget that salvation is our helmet against the arrows and the spears of the devil. We do know the fact that even if we sin, we can wash it with the blood of the lord to be saved by grace. This will make the war of the devil void and will protect us from the devil’s plan to entrap us in sin. For faithful, there is no wrong time to do the right thing, after all.   There are almost 2 months of fasting from animal products, in the other religions which are not part of the body of Christ. The problem is after fasting for 46 days, if you eat animal products by mistake, say you chew gum with milk, you just lose it and the fasting is void. With grace, however, you wash your mouth, you pray for mercy, and you can fas...

When Peter and John were beaten by the temple leaders for proclaiming the name of the lord, they were joyful as they were counted worthy enough to be prosecuted for the Lord’s sake. As it is written and preached by the Lord himself, those who are prosecuted for the lord’s sake should be joyful as their reward is abundant in heaven. Following in the feet steps of the lord, whom they idealize as a measure of perfection, they did not cry about the prosecution but remembered that they are counted worthy enough to share the suffering of the lord for his namesake.     The faith idol of those giants was Jesus himself. For us, Jesus is not a very close person as his history on earth is more than 2000 years old and we are too lost from Jesus’s perfection. As a result, though our goal is to imitate Jesus in every way, we often need intermediate and operational targets to aim at as our temporary idols. In this process, if we idolize rich and successful persons of God, we will de...

The first and last love of every faithful is love toward the lord Jesus Christ. As the assembly of the lord is built on the rock that proclaims that Jesus is lord and God, the identity of the faithful is the faith that Jesus is lord. Our foundational love is the love of the Lord Jesus Christ. Then after, we know every faithful by Jesus. We do not know people by their human identity or personality but by Jesus. They know us by Jesus, too.   If you know Jesus, you can sense him in people. The things you love about Jesus will be seen in those faithful who belong to Jesus. You can sense them, and they can sense you too. We do not want them as human beings and they neither want us as human beings, as nothing is interesting about the human us, yet we all want the Jesus we see in every faithful. There is Jesus thing that glues us to one another. There is a powerful gravity known as Jesus Christ which holds us together. It is like we are connected as one body of Christ. That is why we ...

  If you do not know where you are going, any road can take you there. If you do not know what you and your fellow faithful have to go through, the devil's road can take you there too. Yet, if you do not want to be lost in the middle of nowhere, neither knowing how to go forward nor backward - as a lost infant, you need to have a clear understanding of where you are going.   Yet knowing that the Promised Land is north of the Sinai Desert of Egypt, however, does not also mean that you have to take that shortcut. Besides knowing your destination, which will keep you in check and can give you guidance on how to self-correct yourself, you also need to know your current position. If the people with you are wrongly built, for example, you need to have a long detour around the Red Sea to build them up before you can march toward the Promised Land.   In general when you plan your ways: know your starting state (A), know your destination (B), and then find the best path th...