Devotional Time with God

It’s easy to do whatever I want.  Everything is permissible.  God gave us free will.

But, is it beneficial?  Is it right?  Is it according to God’s laws and commands?

Raising a child with a sense of personal integrity is a tough thing to do nowadays.  This world has turned sarcastic and cynical.  The world is teaching kids to speak with a double meanings.  The society doesn’t have a clear standard on what’s right and what’s wrong.  The world teaches there’s really no one to trust – not even God!

I must teach my child to speak carefully.  Listen more, speak less.  When she does speak, she must choose her words carefully.  Always to build.  Always in kindness.  Always thinking.

From a wise mind comes wise speech; the words of the wise are persuasive. Kind words are like honey — sweet to the soul and healthy for the body.

Proverbs 16:23-24

God gave us an instruction manual to follow: the Bible.  We can live our lives with God’s integrity, if I just read it constantly and abide by it.  I have to plant His words in my heart so my private life reflects my public life.

I have to run back to God.  The same goes for child.

This world is blessed by God when I have two of the most famous figures of God’s army, Greg Laurie and Steven Curtis Chapman to help minister me and find my way around this world.   I listen to Steven’s wonderful music, and have enjoyed his tunes and lyrics.  I also listened to Pastor Greg’s messages through his Harvest church in Riverside and on-line.  I regularly listen to them on my long commute to/from work.  They’re both wonderful witnesses of God.  They have touched my heart and ministered to me several times.  God spoke to me through them.

This year, God has called two of their children back to heaven.  Maria Sue Chapman and Christopher Laurie have died, both in car accidents. The loss is devastating for both parents, family, and others.  My heart sank when I heard the news.  I can’t imagine the grief they’ve gone through.  Maybe one day I’ll understand, but right now I can only try to reflect on why this is happening.

Both Greg and Steven are loyal servants of God.  My natural human reaction is to cry out to God and ask why is it happening to them?   Why them?  Haven’t they done a lot of good for you?  Haven’t they been faithful to you?  Why bring this catastrophe upon them?

While listening to Pastor Don McClure’s preaching on The Necessity of Trials, the answer came to me.  Both Greg and Steven are still human. They’re still the same in God’s eyes.  They will still be tested, just like the rest of us.  God has blessed them tremendously.  God created their children.  Now, God wanted them back.   God pulls and shakes us, sometimes violently, to help us grow and learn of His reality.  God has a plan for all of this.   Glory will come out of all this because God is about all that, and more.  It’s much too easy to glorify God when we’re happy and in abundance.   It’s up to us to show His glory, especially during the times of pains and trouble.

Life is precious.  Life is beautiful.  Life is worth living when God is with me. I can only imagine what life is like with God in heaven!  No more pain, no more suffering, no more evil.  Just pure goodness and glory of God.  It’s a better life up there in heaven.  It is just the beginning of eternity, and that is so comforting.

This song “With Hope” by Steven Curtis Chapman says it all.

This is not at all how
We thought it was supposed to be
We had so many plans for you
We had so many dreams
And now you’ve gone away
And left us with the memories of your smile
And nothing we can say
And nothing we can do
Can take away the pain
The pain of losing you, but …

We can cry with hope
We can say goodbye with hope
‘Cause we know our goodbye is not the end, oh no
And we can grieve with hope
‘Cause we believe with hope
(There’s a place by God’s grace)
There’s a place where we’ll see your face again
We’ll see your face again

And never have I known
Anything so hard to understand
And never have I questioned more
The wisdom of God’s plan
But through the cloud of tears
I see the Father’s smile and say well done
And I imagine you
Where you wanted most to be
Seeing all your dreams come true
‘Cause now you’re home
And now you’re free, and …

We have this hope as an anchor
‘Cause we believe that everything
God promised us is true, so …

So we can cry with hope
And say goodbye with hope

We wait with hope
And we ache with hope
We hold on with hope
We let go with hope

This short interview has been passed around in emails, and I just got it recently from a friend in Toronto.  I know this story very well and Pastor Rick had told it to the congregation several times before.  It’s still an inspirational message and it’s worth forwarding to everyone. 

Love & Blessings to you all. You will enjoy the new insights that Rick Warren has, with his wife now having cancer and him having ‘wealth’ from the book sales. This is an absolutely incredible short interview with Rick Warren, ‘Purpose Driven Life ‘ author and pastor of Saddleback Church in California.

In the interview by Paul Bradshaw with Rick Warren, Rick said:

People ask me, What is the purpose of life? And I respond: In a nutshell, life is preparation for eternity. We were made to last forever, and God wants us to be with Him in Heaven. One day my heart is going to stop, and that will be the end of my body– but not the end of me. I may live 60 to 100 years on earth, but I am going to spend trillions of years in eternity. This is the warm-up act – the dress rehearsal. God wants us to practice on earth what we will do forever in eternity. We were made by God and for God, and until you figure that out, life isn’t going to make sense.

Life is a series of problems: Either you are in one now, you’re just coming out of one, or you’re getting ready to go into another one. The reason for this is that God is more interested in your character than your comfort. God is more interested in making your life holy than He is in making your life happy. We can be reasonably happy here on earth, but that’s not the goal of life. The goal is to grow in character, in Christ likeness.

This past year has been the greatest year of my life but also the toughest, with my wife, Kay, getting cancer. I used to think that life was hills and valleys – you go through a dark time, then you go to the mountaintop, back and forth. I don’t believe that anymore. Rather than life being hills and valleys, I believe that it’s kind of like two rails on a railroad track, and at all times you have something good and something bad in your life. No matter how good things are in your life, there is always something bad that needs to be worked on. And no matter how bad things are in your life, there is always something good you can thank God for.

You can focus on your purposes, or you can focus on your problems. If you focus on your problems, you’re going into self-centeredness,’which is my problem, my issues, my pain.’ But one of the easiest ways to get rid of pain is to get your focus off yourself and onto God and others. We discovered quickly that in spite of the prayers of hundreds of thousands of people, God was not going to heal Kay or make it easy for her. It has been very difficult for her, and yet God has strengthened her character, given her a ministry of helping other people, given her a testimony, drawn her closer to Him and to people. You have to learn to deal with both the good and the bad of life.

Actually, sometimes learning to deal with the good is harder. For instance, this past year, all of a sudden, when the book sold 15 million copies, it made me instantly very wealthy. It also brought a lot of notoriety that I had never had to deal with before. I don’t think God gives you money or notoriety for your own ego or for you to live a life of ease. So I began to ask God what He wanted me to do with this money, notoriety and influence. He gave me two different passages that helped me decide what to do, II Corinthians 9 and Psalm 72.

1. First, in spite of all the money coming in, we would not change our lifestyle one bit. We made no major purchases.
2. Second, about midway through last year, I stopped taking a salary from the church.
3. Third, we set up foundations to fund an initiative we call The Peace Plan to plant churches, equip leaders, assist the poor, care for the sick, and educate the next generation.
4. Fourth, I added up all that the church had paid me in the 24 years since I started the church, and I gave it all back. It was liberating to be able to serve God for free.

We need to ask ourselves: Am I going to live for possessions? Popularity? Am I going to be driven by pressures? Guilt? Bitterness? Materialism? Or am I going to be driven by God’s purposes (for my life)?

When I get up in the morning, I sit on the side of my bed and say, God, if I don’t get anything else done today, I want to know You more and love You better. God didn’t put me on earth just to fulfill a to-do list. He’s more interested in what I am than what I do.

That’s why we’re called human beings, not human doings.

Happy moments, PRAISE GOD.

Difficult moments, SEEK GOD.

Quiet moments, WORSHIP GOD.

Painful moments, TRUST GOD.

Every moment, THANK GOD.

What has happened to me recently that I now realize was a test from God? What are the greatest matters God has entrusted to me?

The Purpose Driven Life, P.46

As I blogged earlier, God’s test for me, that made a major impact on my life, was about money during my unemployment months. I was worried what was going to happen to Yantie and I. We were also uncertain about staying in the US because we did not have a green card yet. God certainly made it a long and agonizing few months. However, my God is a good God. He promised as written in 1 Corinthian 10:13 (NIV):

And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.

God eased the burden by giving Yantie a job that supplemented the unemployment checks. Later, God provided me with a job that enabled us to continue our green card process — and finally obtained our US Permanent Resident status! He had tested us and we endured it as best as we could. My God is a fair and loving God. From this lesson, I am also striving to step out of my comfort zone and expand my horizons. Jesus said, as written in Luke 12:48b (NIV):

From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.

I have now been given a daughter to raise, a bigger house to maintain, and more responsibilities at the office, just to name a few. God has taught me to endure the troubles in my life. God wants me to pass because He wants to entrust more stuff to me. He wants me to grow here, preparing me for the eternal life in heaven.