Paulson Post

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...

In contrast to his own vulnerability and the nothingness of his enemies, stands the tall, strong, stable rock: God himself. That vision of God, the source of our strength should be what keeps us moving forward. Life can be sometimes very cruel. The psalmists who penned the 150 psalms of the Old Testament expressed their pain and anguish in metaphorical language. How does one express the vulnerability and instability of ones life in times of opposition? The psalmist who composed Psalm 62 compares it with a leaning wall and a tottering fence. His life is like a wall that is about to collapse or a fence that is about to fall (Ps 62:3). He is unable to stand the winds and currents that are against his life. To add to his misery he has enemies who are trying to take advantage of his vulnerability. These are people who are trying to usurp him. Probably, the psalmist could be a ruler who is loosing popular support among his own people. His position is too vulnerable. The people close to him ...

None of us can promise those who are requesting prayers for them that we are praying for them constantly. In fact, people may not expect us to pray for them forever. However, the intercessory ministry of Jesus is very different. He is a priest for ever, thus he intercedes for us continually. His intercession is something that I can count on. For this I am grateful to him! In an earlier blog ( What happened to my unanswered prayers? ), we were talking about our prayers being carried to the presence of God and offered in golden bowls. God does not consider any of our prayers as spam; he has no spam filter. Even those prayers of us that do not make sense to us, God considers them valuable. In this devotion, I would like to focus another aspect of prayer: the continuing intercessory ministry of Jesus. The Book of Hebrews presents Jesus as an eternal high priest who continues his work beyond the cross in the heavenly realms. Chapter 7 verse 25 particularly focuses on the intercessory min...

Some time back, I sent an email to my friend’s Gmail account. However, for many weeks there was no response from my friend. Then I wrote another email to him to the other email ID of his that I had. He promptly replied. Later we discovered that the mail I sent was sitting in the Spam folder of his Gmail account. My mail was automatically filtered to the spam folder! This made me contemplate on the prayers. I have been praying ever since my childhood. From short bed-time prayers to long intercessory prayers, pastoral prayers, prayers for the sick, in desperate need, etc. God answered some prayers but many are yet to be answered. What is happening to those prayers of mine that are not answered? God did not get it, or are they sitting in his spam folder? I wish I could just visit heaven and see what is happening to those prayers of mine that are not ever attended to. For that, I will have to wait. However, God has specially favored John the Apostle with some special privileges. One such...

God expects us to be fully submitted to his will. Sometimes, we will have to go through difficult times. We cannot get out of this before God's time and by our own means. This is what we learn from the life of Zedekiah, the last king of Judah. Babylonians who defeated Judah in 597 BC had made him king. In fact he was their puppet king. Usually the reign of kings in the Bible mentions their achievements and failures, in the case of Zedekiah, there is no mention of anything that he did. The account in 2 Kings (Chapter 24-25) only mentions only one thing he did. "Now Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon" (2 Kings 24:20). Then there is a long description of how the Babylonians retaliated to this rebellion by their vassal kingdom, how they besieged the city of Jerusalem, Zedekiah's flight, capture, punishment, imprisonment, the destruction of the temple of Jerusalem and the city, second exile. This king could not anything for his people. Only complete the destru...