Curses for Disobedience

In this funny picture from ReverendFun.com, Jonah and the other small fish with him all disobeyed God's will and found themselves in the same predicament. Disobedience to God does not pay. Jonah learned that the hard way in the fish's belly.

In Deuteronomy 28:1-14 we love to read the blessings for obedience. But verse 15-68 (that's 54 verses!) talks about the curses for disobedience!! We should not skip verse 15 to 68 in our Bible reading. They serve as a great warning to us.

A life in disobedience and rebellion to God is a cursed life. Running away from God and rejecting Him will surely lead to destruction.

Therefore we must understand God's will that we may obey Him always.

The prerequisite to understanding God's will is offering ourselves as a living sacrifice in view of God's mercy for us, and by not conforming to the world and by being transformed by the Holy Spirit through the renewing of our minds by the word of God.

Romans 12:1-2
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. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is-- his good, pleasing and perfect will.

On Ghost Stories

Many people like to believe that ghosts are real. there are books on ghost stories that are selling like hotcakes .

Well if you believe ghosts are real, well they are real, but they are not ghosts, but demons. In the Bible, when one dies, one faces God and no one is able to cross from death to the earth. Demons masquerade as dead people to deceive people.

If you believe in ghosts, well, God is infinitely more powerful than demons. God also manifests supernaturally in the natural realm. The problem with us is that we believe in demons and are scared of them, thinking that they are some sort of super-being as powerful as God. Well one thing for sure, they want to make people believe that. They want to instill fear in people in order to manipulate people to do evil. But no one is equal with God. He is the Creator, demons are created beings. Satan is not God's equal. There is no one like God.

Actually, if you do not know Jesus as your Lord and Savior, you are a slave to sin. you are a slave to evil. You are fair game to demons. BUT, the Lord Jesus gave himself as an atonement for our sins by His blood. Like the Passover of the Israelites wherein they painted the blood of the Passover lamb on their doorposts so that the angel of death would not strike the Israelites dead, in the same way when we turn away from our sins and receive God's free gift of salvation (NO ONE CAN EARN SALVATION!) , the blood of Jesus covers the doorposts of our life so that we are made righteous (acceptable) in God's eyes. And by Jesus's blood we are reconciled to God. If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, the old is gone and the new has come. We are spiritually born again. We were once dead but are now alive in Jesus. We were once in the kingdom of darkness but are now in God's kingdom of light.

The Bible says, submit yourselves to God. resist the devil and he will flee from you. You are no longer a slave to sin and to evil when you are in Christ and He is in you.

Are you afraid of ghosts? Fear God instead. To fear God is to reverentially fear and worship Him in awe, and believe in Him and what He says is true. Demons want to harm you and keep you a slave to fear of them. Fear God and obey His word. Don't try to live your life YOUR way. God's word will never pass away and even if you disobey Him, it won't make God's word less true. But His Word judges you, because God's word is unchangeable.

Are you afraid of ghosts? Receive God's free gift of salvation. Turn away from sin and turn to Jesus, whose blood covers your sin. His blood over your life enables you to resist the devil so he will flee from you.

Sunset Pictures at Terrazas de Punta Fuego, Nasugbu, Batangas

These are pics I took watching the sun go down at the beach we went to last December 28, 2007:

When God gets your attention after disobeying

This is how God got the attention of the whale. :)

In the Bible, God got the attention of Jonah through his belly of the whale experience.

This reminds me of this verse:

Deut 30:1-3
1 When all these blessings and curses I have set before you come upon you and you take them to heart wherever the LORD your God disperses you among the nations,
2 and when you and your children return to the LORD your God and obey him with all your heart and with all your soul according to everything I command you today,
3 then the LORD your God will restore your fortunes and have compassion on you and gather you again from all the nations where he scattered you.

Sometimes the curses of disobedience and the consequences of our actions have to come upon us, or fall on us, before we are knocked back into our senses and we realize how much we have sinned before God.

It is when we take them to heart and return to God and obey Him with all our heart and soul that we can ever start anew under God's blessing. As long as we are disobedient we will remain in the bottom of the pit.

The Father's Love Letter

The pictures and text are from fathersloveletter.com. It can be viewed as a flash video with sound at that site. But I made this particular slide show on slide.com. To post my slideshow on your blog or profile, copy the code at this link.

When I Think About the Lord

This is a worship song. It is one of my favorites. This is how we gather "touchstones"- we think about the Lord and how He saved us. This song fills me with gratefulness to God, for God's grace and goodness. What a friend we have in Jesus!

_____________________

When I Think About the Lord by Shane Barnard

when I think about the Lord
how He saved me, how He raised me
how He filled me, with the Holy Ghost
how He healed me to the uttermost

when I think about the Lord
how He picked me up, and turned me around
how He set my feet.. on solid ground

(that) makes me wanna shout
Hallelujah,
thank You Jesus,
Lord You are worthy, of all the glory
and all the honor,
and all the praise

_____________

This is from this CD, released 2003:

I think you can buy it at this link.

Touchstones for 2007

What is a touchstone?

I learned about the "touchstone" from Al and Hattie Hollingsworth of Boss the Movement.
I attended and finished their Vertical Leap training in 2005, here in the Philippines.

A "touchstone" is a memory stone or a stone of remembrance. This is seen in the Bible when the Israelites crossed the Jordan River at floodstage through the parting of the river. The people got stones from the middle of the Jordan riverbed,one for each tribe, and they made it into a memorial. The stones were to remind them of how God parted the Jordan for them at its floodstage.

1 When the whole nation had finished crossing the Jordan, the LORD said to Joshua, 2 "Choose twelve men from among the people, one from each tribe, 3 and tell them to take up twelve stones from the middle of the Jordan from right where the priests stood and to carry them over with you and put them down at the place where you stay tonight."

4 So Joshua called together the twelve men he had appointed from the Israelites, one from each tribe, 5 and said to them, "Go over before the ark of the LORD your God into the middle of the Jordan. Each of you is to take up a stone on his shoulder, according to the number of the tribes of the Israelites, 6 to serve as a sign among you. In the future, when your children ask you, 'What do these stones mean?' 7 tell them that the flow of the Jordan was cut off before the ark of the covenant of the LORD. When it crossed the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. These stones are to be a memorial to the people of Israel forever."(Joshua 4:1-7)

For the past years, I have been writing down every New Year's Day my "touchstones". They may not be actual "stones", but they are memories of how God saved, helped, guided, or directed me, or memories of experiences of God's presence, memories of His faithfulness and His deliverance in the midst of my troubles and difficulties in the past year. They are my "stones of remembrance", taken in the middle of the "Jordan" the Lord let me pass through that year.

Instead of remembering "miseries" and heartaches and then getting depressed, we should remember how the Lord blessed us, helped us and delivered us in the midst of those heartaches. In that way we are filled with gratefulness, and our faith in the Lord is built up. We remember how God rescued and helped us, and when we look back at these touchstones, we will see how God has guided our life through all the seasons we have passed through. When we pass through new trials and troubles and face new challenges, we remember the touchstones again and we know that God will never leave us or forsake us as He has shown us so many times in the past.

What are your touchstones? Write them down, together with your New Year's Goals!