What is time? Can we manage time? By managing time, can we make time really expand or contract? Time is at best described in terms of measurements of the calendar or the clock. By itself it’s mysterious and has no form.
“Kronos” is clock time or measured time. It’s a bit mechanical and very human.
“Kairos” is God’s opportune time. It’s bit more mysterious and very divine.
I think we cannot really manage time, we can only manage ourselves. So I recommend that we spend more time leading ourselves than to put in all this effort to be efficient and gain time only to lose it.
Someone once said “Is it time that comes and go? No, time doesn’t do that, it is us that come and go”.
God made us. He is an artiste.
He made us in His image. We are artistes too.
Be serious about your art and being an artiste.
Do you know your art in the first place. It’s important to find out because you cannot be serious about something you do not know.
If you do, you can develop yourself like an artiste with every work you do salted with your personality/giftings and lighted with the signature of Jesus.
Mag bought me a packet of Cadbury Chocettes this morning. For no reason..or maybe for being a very good boy. Anyway I had it after lunch this afternoon and boy, isnt it just one of the nicest thing I have consumed for quite a long time. So nice that I heartily recommend it to all chocolate lovers. Now Chocettes is basically….hmm.. chocolate coated chocolate on top of chocolate?…. You know sometimes things are so good that words can’t describe it. So we just want to get people to try it*. So guys, go out there and buy yourselves some. And well done Cadbury.
Incidently I’m struggling to do a message this Saturday about something that words can’t describe. So i think I’ll just encourage people to simply try it.
Jesus was dead but he came back to life to tell his disciples these 3 things (amongst others of course)….
“Receive the Holy Spirit.
If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven;
if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven“.
Being in so many moments of darkness (ok way more than I want to admit), I come to learn how easy I go through it depends on how clearly I see in such a situation. If I completely cannot see, then I will end up really messed. But if I can see clearly then, I’ll make something significant out of it. It’ll also sift out whether are we leaders or followers because people follow those who can see and knows where to go in times of darkness.
So reality check. How much do we see in the darkness of our ministry and purpose and in the darkness of the lives of people around us? If we can see it, can we put a name to it? If we can name it and tell it, we’ll be on our way out of it.
For a pretty serious example…
Dark Situation : We haven’t grown for the last 2 years
Naming it: We suck .. and we are stuck (although we are loved)
Way Out: Let’s not suck and go out there to talk to others and ask them why we suck.
I’m dressed a bit nicer today, because the outside reflects the inside and its my secret hope to be a bit nicer today.
I was going through my bookshelves and checking all the books I have, I go through listing of churches we have in Singapore and all over the world. I look at the different editions of bible translation and think about all the missionaries that are in the world. I consider the work we do week after week. I reflect upon God’s plan from Genesis to Revelations. I learned that God goes through a lot of trouble to reach us, so that he can show us that he loves us and accepts us.
If then, when we become Christians, convinced that God loves and accepts us but yet we are unable to love and accept ourselves, then aren’t we rejecting the very intention and mind of God. Aren’t we then moving with the knowledge of Him and yet not Him in our car? Isn’t the hand break in our car on while we drive off?
Self rejection is the root of many problems in our christian life. It results in the chase of popularity, paper and success. It promotes hypocrisy, insecurity and pride. Our true self will never do things to gain self acceptance. Our true self is secure how God sees us and who we are. It only knows to love. Loving God, others and ourselves.
Being authentic is not an easy thing to do, yet it is by authenticity that display our readiness to accept our ourselves in whatever state of brokenness as Jesus had done on the cross. Authenticity is not a license to sin as we fear it to be but it is the necessary first step to start our movement into a true spiritual life. To understand that God loves us passionately and then loving God personally is excellent but we should not forget to love and accept ourselves regardless of how broken we are. No falsity, clever pretense and mask wearing prevails in your spiritual life in the long run. Only truth sets us free and the truth is that we can accept ourselves in whatever state we are in, not as what we should be but as who we are!
Only when there’s self acceptance, that God can work healing upon our lives, otherwise we are doing all the work by ourselves without him. And we all know, how much we suck at healing ourselves. Let God do those messy hard work.
I posted my perfect score for my ‘Know that McDonald’s product’ questionaire. It’s not always that I get 100% in anything, so I was so proud, until a friend said …”surely not a mc donald expert?” to burst my bubble.
It has always been my philosophy that if there’s nothing significant to be proud of, go and think of something that can make us proud. It could be that your children smiled at you or you actually knew the answer to a friend’s problem or you didn’t lost your temper the whole week or your reach your 10th anniversary without breaking down.Then I remember a quote which goes something like this. “Don’t think about shinning without first filling your lamp”. I just cannot remember who said this but yes, there’s really something more important than shinning. And that is to fill our lamp first. We need to work on the fuel and nothing fuels us more than the discipline to eat, drink, think, ask and do the right things regularly.
There’s always something more worthy to pay attention to than the glory of being an expert or a genius.
Starting our It’s Alive Easter Series as followup to our Easter special.
Can’t wait! It’ll be exciting.
For those interested in the series, Lifechurch.tv offers them FOC. They are a very sharing ministry which have a lot of amazing video curriculum to use in your children’s ministry. Just sign up and bless your children with a different spiritual experience.
I’m listening to U2’s ”No Line On The Horizon”…. Wow.
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