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Showing posts from May, 2017

The Art of Listening to God

God is contantly speaking. He hasn’t stopped when the canon of the Bible is completed as some people wrongly think. God continues to speak through his Word—through its reading and proclamation. Moreover, God is speaking to us through nature, history and all that happens around us. To hear God we just need to listen to him. Listening to God is an art. A.W. Tozer wrote many years ago: ‘The Voice of God is a friendly Voice. No one need fear to listen to it unless he has already made up his mind to resist it.’ How do we hear that friendly voice speaking to us? There are lessons to be learned in this regard from Samuel’s encounter with God. We read of this in 1 Samuel 3. The first thing is to tell God that we are willing to hear. God called Samuel by name before he told him what he wanted to tell him. Young Samuel was not used to the voice of God, so he ran to the only other person in the sanctuary where he slept. It happened three times. On the third time, Eli realised th...

The Lonely Apostle

Mark 5:1-20 is the story of Jesus healing a demoniac. This man had withdrawn from the society. He was living in a graveyard. Graveyards are always away from where people live, usually outside the village or the town. Under the demonic oppression he ‘was always crying out and bruising himself with stones.’ The story goes on to say how Jesus healed him. Jesus commanded the multitude of demons that has possessed him to come out. The came out and entered the pigs and perished as the pigs frantically ran to the lake and drowned. According to popular beliefs of the day, the demons would perish if they touch the water. So, Jesus cleansed the land of the multitude of demons. A legion is a unit of Roman soldiers. We are not sure how many people are there in a legion of Roman soldiers. But according to some scholars, five to six thousand members formed a legion. However, it is not the number that matters here. The demoniac says, ‘My name is Legion, for we are many.’ The word ‘legion’ is symbolic...