Paulson Post

Thus, those who follow Christ have two awesome responsibilities as the Chosen People of God: to live their lives as acceptable to God and also to bring glory to God. God does not take delight in mediocrity and those who are watching our lives also does not appreciate mediocre lives. I live among believers. In my city of five million people (Pune, India) every one considers himself or herself to belong to one or other religion. Majority of them belong to one of the Hindu denominations, there are Muslims, a couple of thousand are Jews and we have Christians and Zoroastrians too. All have their own ways of explaining their relationship with their deities or spiritual leaders. Most of them may describe themselves as believers of their respective faiths; some may call themselves devotees or followers. This makes me take a look at what the Bible says about the believers in Jesus Christ. There are a number of images the Book of Ephesians use to describe those who are believers in Christ Jesus

The corruption in our churches and in our communities deserves punishment severe than that of the ancient Israelites of Eli's time received. However, let us pray that God will be compassionate to us and hear our intercessions for our people. We may be people who fear God and honor God. However, there may be stages in our lives when we may be so helpless but just watch the judgment that falls on his people, unable to do something in the matter. Noah was a righteous man. God allowed him to do something in the situation of gross sinfulness. He could at least save his family and few animals. Abraham could save his nephew Lot and his daughters. However, Eli did not have that favor from God. Eli was not bad. He was a priest who served more than 40 years in the sanctuary of God in Shiloh. Though he did not have any revelations from God (at least in the near past) he knew how to respond when God speaks to his people. Young priest Samuel did not know how God speaks and did not know the form

To have a mind of Jesus is to see the needs of the people and meet them, but not to ponder on their weaknesses and looking for ways to correct them. Last week in Pune a six-year-old girl over run by a car bled to death on the busy street of the city. She lay there for two hours bleeding while the mob gathered at the accident site was engaged in assaulting the driver. Nobody cared about taking the girl to the hospital because they were busy punishing the "sinner" driver. By the time the girls parents arrived at the scene, she was lying there dead in a pool of blood. The mob typifies the behavior of the contemporary world. Love and compassion are over taken by hatred and a false sense of justice. The crowd is more interested meting out justice by punishing the offender while the great need for that helpless girl was not justice but compassion. She needed a Good Samaritan who will rush her to the hospital and save her life. The crowd was keen on taking one more life than saving

Trusting in God, and delighting in God's work we overcome the possible fretting over the enemy. We need to commit our ways to god and just be still; leave it to God to do the rest. In sum, turn our attention from the enemy to God! Do not fret but focus on God! There are hundreds of reasons that make us fret. People whom we are dependent for our own performance and effectiveness fail us causing frustration and discouragement. There are people who are keen on frustrating us every turn of the road. These are people who are carriers of disappointments, anxiety, worries, discouragement, etc. They themselves may not be anxious, worried or discouraged. They carry it to others or cause others to be tormented. They are like mosquitoes that carry parasites that cause Malaria, but the mosquitoes themselves do not catch Malaria! A child of God may waste a lot of time unnecessarily fretting over things that these people do. The advise of the psalmist is not to fret! "Do not fret because

Can anyone sing when surrounded by hungry lions? We may have situations like this when we are surrounded by enemies and there is no time to sing or to think of singing. However, the psalmists will sing in such situations. In Psalm 57:7-8, the psalmist says, "My heart is steadfast, O God, my heart is steadfast; I will sing and make music. Awake, my soul! Awake, harp and lyre! I will awaken the dawn." Here we see the psalmist excited to sing for the Lord. He resolves that he will make music for God. Then he goes on to invite his own soul to get up from the slumber it has fallen into so that a new song can issue forth from his inner being. His instruments that have been put aside for a while is also exhorted to wake up from their sleep and join him in the singing. Most amazing is the resolve to awaken the dawn! Usually dawn comes in its own time. People and animals awake at the dawn. It is the dawn that awakens world not the other way round. However, the psalmist who would l

Jesus showed the "full extent of his love" by becoming a servant for his disciples. Sometimes out of false humility we refuse to be loved by Jesus. Life could be full of small and big things where Jesus shows his love for us. To love Jesus is one thing, but it is equally important to accept Jesus' love showed on the cross and also the love he shows everyday in our life. It is wonderful to have a loving relationship with Jesus. The act of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples is considered as part of his teaching on serving each other. I would not contend on that. however, there is still another side that we ignore in that incident. The Gospel of John chapter 13 verse 1 says, "having loved his own who were in the world, he now showed them the full extent of his love" (NIV). This sentence is the introduction to the feetwashing that follows. The act of washing the feet of his disciples was act of his love. If we go by the NIV translation "the full extent o

For a believer in Christ the relationship with God is a living relationship because it is a relationship with a living God. This living relationship is possible because God and the worshipper are always in talking terms. The worshipper talks to God in worship, prayer and meditation. And God responds in various ways: sometimes by giving them great joy in his presence, sometimes by answering prayers and sometimes by endowing them with the "peace that transcends all understanding" (Phil 4:4) in order to pass through difficult patches in their life. NOW READ ON... God's word creates! That's what we learn from the first chapter of Genesis. Peter summarized the whole thing in just one verse: "But they deliberately forget that long ago by God's word the heavens existed and the earth was formed out of water and by water" (2 Peter 3:5). God speaks because he is the living God. He speaks to guide his people, to tell that what is going to happen, etc. False God

"For a brief moment I abandoned you, but with deep compassion I will bring you back. In a surge of anger I hid my face from you for a moment, but with everlasting kindness I will have compassion on you," says the LORD your Redeemer" (Isa 54:7-8) God is a holy God. The earlier chapters of the Book of Isaiah present the awesome holiness of God (chapter 6). Since God is a God of wrath and justice he punishes sin and wickedness. God sometimes may use ungodly people to punish his own people who are disobedient. That was the role of Assyria, Israel's political enemy who brought the Northern Kingdom of Israel to destruction. God described Assyria as the rod of His anger (Isa 10:5). That's only one side of God. The other side is that of a merciful God. Years later, after he inflicted punishment upon his people at the hands of the pagans, he raised up another pagan emperor to show kindness to them. That is Cyrus the Persian Emperor whom God describes as His anointe

To be led by God, first of all we must be willing to follow, or let God take the lead in our lives. Christian life is trekking on the wildest side, the thickest wood and scorching desert. God is willing to take the risk of being the leader in all such situations and making the way for us through the most difficult conditions and we just need to follow him. It is our hurry and impatience that gets us into trouble. Let 's wait for God and his time. The two accounts of David's victory over the Philistines found in 2 Samuel 5:22-25 and 1 Chron. 14:13-17 describe a decisive event in his life. This was his first victory over the Philistine as the King of Israel. The Philistines had come to battle determined to overthrow the newly elected king of Israel. Thus it was a battle that was decisive not only for David as an individual but for Israel as a nation. A defeat in this battle would mean a different course of history for the people of God. However, the day was David's and he re

Let the wicked prosper but instead of getting frustrated at their prosperity let us leave it to God to deal with them. Let the righteous conserve their energies to do what is right and not expend it on dealing with the wickedness of the wicked! The presence of the wicked person in the society is destructive. The psalmist in Psalm 37 knows well that these are people who borrow but never pay back (Verse 21). The wicked are those who oppress the weak and the innocent (Verse 14). For reasons that we may never know it is true that the wicked has outnumbered the righteous in every generation. To expect to create a world where there is no wickedness could be a mere Utopia. The wickedness is there to stay. One wicked man goes but two will come in his place and the wickedness will always continue. By nature the righteous person cannot tolerate wrong. They burn with righteous anger. Especially when we see the wicked persons succeed in their wicked ways we become frustrated and sometimes may ques

Jesus is available to be explored. A Christian's life of faith with Jesus involves this constant exploration of Jesus, getting to know him closer, and enriching ourselves with that knowledge of him. The Hymn writer is right is saying THE LONGER I SERVE HIM, THE SWEETER HE GROWS! We celebrate Easter because two thousand years ago, on the third morning of Jesus' crucifixion the tomb in which he was buried was found open. It was Mary who first found that the tomb was open (John 20:1). She was not sure if she will find someone to help her to roll the stone away so that she can visit the tomb of her dear Lord. To her relief she finds that the tomb was already open.* The stone was not rolled away so that the body can escape from the tomb. The resurrected body did not need an open door to pass through. John 20:19 tells us that the resurrected body could enter through closed doors. Jesus appeared to his scared disciples behind the closed doors. John 20.6ff also tells us that the resurr