Vision of the Lord

You passionately worship the Lord. You pray to Him fervently. You serve Him diligently. And yet, you long to have just a glimpse of Him while still here on earth. You hear of people seeing visions of Jesus. A vision which isn’t a mere dream, not a mental vision but a real and tangible vision of the Lord seen with naked eyes wide open. And you long all the more to have even just once a vision of the Lord – even if its just for a second. Like Moses you cry, “Show me your glory”. Nothing happens. You wait for months, years with the hope that one day you will. And yet nothing happens. Then you remember what the Lord said, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God”. Then you wonder and question yourself, “Am I pure enough to see God?”, “Probably, I’m not, that’s why He doesn’t show Himself to me”. If you’re that person then remember what Jesus also said, “Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed” (Jn 20:29b). You never ever saw, not even once, but yet you always believed in Him. You are actually the “blessed” one. That’s what Jesus calls you.

So continue to worship Him passionately, pray fervently and serve Him diligently and faithfully as the “blessed” one of the Lord. Remember He’ll never leave you, nor forsake you and He’ll be with you even to the end of this age”. Right now even as you read this He is there beside you. He is there with you.

Reuben

(click to enlarge) WE'RE ALL THE SAME!

In JESUS' name!

Some time back some young people from a certain church here in town entered a pub and going around and shaking hands with people who were either drunk or drinking began to tell them, "God loves you, God loves you". A man seated on a chair, drinking, suddenly blurted out, "What 'God' loves you, 'God' loves you?” "Say 'JESUS' loves you". A backslider drinking in a bar had more guts to pronounce the name of Jesus than those sincere Christians.

In my country, India, it’s not unusual to come across Hindu devotees shouting and chanting the names of their gods and goddesses in the streets publicly. The Muslims proudly proclaims the name of Allah and their prophet, and the Buddhists outside their shops, with chanting beads circling in their hands, chants prayer intermittently even while talking to their customers. But when some Christians pray publicly they shun from mentioning the name of Jesus - the name which is above all names. In order not to "offend" the Non-Christians they speak of a "God" or at the most the "Almighty God". Hindu believes there is a God, Muslims all the more and so does Buddhist, Sikh and people of other religion. How convenient it is to accommodate all by shying and fearing to mention the name of Jesus. It’s an irony to learn that while people of other faith living in a foreign country belonging to people of some other faith do not hesitate to mention the names of the "God" they believe in, the "nice" and "good" Christians don’t utter the sweet and powerful name of Jesus in their own land (regarded as a Christian nation).

Watch and listen to the prayers uttered by so-called Christians during some political or public rally when they’re invited by their Government or its official to make either the opening or the "benediction" prayer. No mention of Jesus' name. In the name of "tolerance" and "freedom" we do away with what Jesus taught us, "Whatever you ask of the Father in MY name…" (Jn 15:16b). I see this as a sinister ploy – the ploy of the devil of course. He just cannot stand the mention of the name of "Jesus" and that’s exactly why he has no problem as long as people go on to say "God" or "God Almighty" but not "Jesus". Last time the popular American Idol show ended with Hillsong’s popular song, “My Jesus, My Savior”. However, instead of “My Jesus” they were made to sing, “My Shepherd, My Shelter”. In the secular world at times things which has a connotation of Christianity is still accepted. But mostly, as long as the name of Jesus is avoided.


Heed what the Savior said, in Mark 8:38 "For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will also be ashamed of him when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels." Again listen to what He says in Matt 10:22 "You will be hated by all because of My name, but it is the one who has endured to the end who will be saved.” Jesus clearly predicted that we would be hated because of His NAME. Not only because of our faith in Jesus but more so because of our proclaiming of His name. And that’s exactly why many Christians are content to simply sustain their faith but shirk from announcing that glorious name of Jesus. Of course, this isn't about taking His name in vain. It is about boldly and proudly proclaiming His name, "so that at the name of Jesus EVERY KNEE WILL BOW, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth" (Phil 2:10).

We cannot generalize the One and only True God so as to make Him a common commodity amongst all men. However, one can yet come to Him but only, and only through Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior (Jn 14:6). We know who our God is and the Lord Jesus Christ clearly taught us to address Him as, "Our Father" and to pray to Him in His name. In the name of JESUS that is!

The Name of Jesus is so sweet,
I love its music to repeat;
It makes my joys full and complete,
The precious Name of Jesus.

"Jesus," oh how sweet the Name!
"Jesus," ev'ry day the same;
"Jesus," let all saints proclaim
Its worthy praise for ever.

I love the Name of him whose heart
Knows all my griefs and bears a part;
Who bids all anxious fears depart—
I love the Name of Jesus.

No word of man can ever tell
How sweet the Name I love so well;
Oh, let its praises ever swell,
Oh, praise the Name of Jesus.

(Original Trinity Hymnal, #711)

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Like Father Like Son

There are times in our life, that without the least expectation, God suddenly comes and with one single action does amazing works of transformation. At times what we had been struggling for, for years together He solves it in just a wink of an eye. One example of this is the rare visitation of God upon some group of people, cities, villages or even the nation as a whole. The longed for visitation we call Revival.

But the question is this. Do we have to wait for such rare moments of revival to be transformed? My state of Meghalaya has experienced such revivals twice and they were a hundred years apart from each other. The first one was during 1905-06 and the second one was just two years ago i.e. 2006. Revival accounts that I used to read and hear from others I was privileged to witness it first hand. It’s so awesome and sacred to see God working at such times. However, initially I was frustrated during this time of revival. The reason was because I never saw a vision of either Jesus or the angels or other similar supernatural sightings that people everywhere were claiming to have seen. Even non-Christian people like Hindus and Muslims were seeing such visions. I had begun to wonder if I wasn’t worthy enough for such experiences. But the Lord comforted me by saying that the living does not need to be revived. It’s the dead who needs to be revived. In my opinion a Christian who’s alive spiritually is one who has an ongoing personal and intimate relationship with the Lord – one who breathes of His Spirit.

So to repeat the question again, do we have to wait for such rare moments of revival to be transformed or to simply experience the tangible presence of God? What we often fail to realize is that such visitation from God in our lives is not only possible but it’s something that can occur on a regular basis. Did I say regular basis? Yes, since individually as His children we can communicate with Him and experience His working in and through our lives daily. Simply put, it’s learning to live in His Presence 24x7. We ought to experience the “I’m in the Father and the Father is in me” experience of Jesus in our lives. Jesus also said that He and the Father would come and make their home in us. In short, we live together. We move and have our beings in Him.

I need the Scripture. It’s my daily bread. But I’m also beginning to see the fact that Scripture alone without a living relationship with the God of the Scripture is insufficient to live the life I’m called to live and to accomplishing the Father’s purpose in my life. How can I be like Him if I don’t see Him? It’s not sufficient for me to only read about Him. I need to see Him, hear Him, feel Him, and know Him. I ought to know the Father’s heart. I ought to see what the Father is doing and do likewise. “I do what I see my Father doing”, Jesus said. Whenever Jesus communicated to His disciples about His relationship with the Father, I guess, He was motivating and inviting them to experience it themselves. His goal was always to reconcile and to connect people to the Father.

Jesus lived and served in and through the revelation He had from and of the Father. “I do what I see My Father doing”. Every time I read this particular phrase I used to imagine the Father showing Jesus what He should do throughout the day by enacting the whole event that would take place. That’s probably possible. But I now realize more and more what Jesus meant when He said, “I do what I see my Father doing”. In His daily walk with the Father He saw how the Father dealt and related with Him. How and what the Father said to Him, how He strengthen and empowered Him, how He encouraged Him, how He loved Him. He saw what the Father was doing in His life and that’s exactly what He was doing in His relationship with His disciples and others.

Unless we are conscious about the Father’s dealing in our lives, unless we live in His presence and see how He relates to us and feel His heartbeat for us, it’ll not be possible for us to imitate Him and do likewise unto others. In fact, if I may say, adherence to Scripture alone without a living relationship with the God of the Scripture could birth a Pharisee in us. Weren’t they strictly following the Scripture of their day, striving to faithfully fulfill even the iota of the Scripture? And yet they were spiritually blind to such an extreme that they crucified the very Lord of the Scripture. But when such a Pharisee had a revelation of Christ and came into His living relationship, he turned the world upside down. We see that in apostle Paul whose revelation of Christ rendered everything else he had achieved but dung in its comparison.

To reiterate, that revelation of the Father in our lives is so vital – a reality in which the Son lived daily. We ought to experience the truth in our lives that the Scripture tells us about the Father. For instance, I can teach brilliantly on the agape love of God for us. But I’ll not be in a position to give others that same love if I haven’t received and experience it from the Father. “There’s joy in the presence of the Lord”. You see the Scripture tells me where to find joy. Not in the Scripture itself but in His presence. So when I live and have my beings in the Lord I’m living in His fullness. God never comes to us in portion. He doesn’t live behind a certain aspect or characteristics of Himself up there in Heaven and come to us with the rest. He comes with His fullness, with His entirety, with who He is and that’s what we have and experience in His presence. And that’s what we give unto others.

It’s this relationship that we’re privileged to enjoy daily which transforms us into His likeness. “But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit”. (NASB 2^nd Cor 3:18)

Phillip asked Jesus to show the Father. Jesus simply said, “If you’ve seen Me, you’ve seen the Father”. Jesus daily beheld the glory of the Father and He became like Him. Paul reminds us that this is what happens to us too as we live in His presence daily beholding His glory. We're transformed into His image, into His likeness.

Like Father like son!

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Right Chords For Right Songs!

I love music. At times I like to strum my guitar to some songs that I enjoy most. However, my guitar knowledge is very limited. Recently, I was searching on the internet for a tool that would help me find the right chords for any song I’d want to. To my joy I came across a freeware* called Easy Chords which is the first and only Winamp plugin that shows chords and guitar tabs to absolutely any song, right inside your Winamp.

Here’s the instruction to get this wonderful stuff working for you.

1. Download Easy Chords from here
2. Install it
3. Change Winamp’s skin to that of “Modern” (you should now see the “Easy Chords” window)
4. Click on a song from the Playlist window and follow the instruction on the Easy Chords window
5. All of the above instructions would be useless if you don't have Winamp in the first place. So get it from <http://www.winamp.com/>.

Have fun!

*Oops...it seems now they have started to charge some money. Probably, I shouldn't have publicised it so much, eh.

Please feel free to leave your comment on my blog. Thanks.

What God thinks of Obama...

Firstly, I'm not an American neither do I live in the USA and yet an irrefutable fact cannot be denied. Any major happenings in USA have its rippling effects across the globe. For instance, in my country India, there were discussions and debates in the media as to what the election of either John McCain or Barack Obama as the next President of USA could mean to us.

Secondly, I'm not much knowledgeable about politics and I don't like it anyway.

Along with the rest of the world, I was glued to CNN Live watching the result of the voting, every moment praying that God would somehow cause a miracle to happen for McCain. However, the inevitable happened. Barack Obama was declared the winner by more than 50% of the votes. I was very disappointed, but not at all because Obama is a black American. The color of the skin hardly bothers me. I myself have brown skin.

Beside the usual liberalism of the Democrats, the thing that was bothering me most was the Internet filled with stories that Obama was and still is a Muslim and that his confession of being a Christian was simply a lie. One website had pictures of bumper stickers one of which said, "Be insane, vote Hussein". I kept telling to myself that those who voted for Obama came under a great delusion. The hangover of my disappointment just wouldn't leave me the following days. It was until about four hours ago (and that's yesterday now as it's just past midnight here as I'm typing this)...

Last night, at around 8 pm (7th Nov '08), I entered a quiet room in my house to pray. After singing the song, "My Jesus, my Savior.... shout to the Lord", I began praying for some believers in the church. As I was doing that suddenly the image of Obama appeared before me. I simply tried to discard it away because every time I see him on TV, newspapers or even think about him, I simply couldn’t digest the fact that he was going to be the next President of USA. But this time however, I had no negative feelings about him anymore. I just felt a love in my heart for this man. I wondered why and how. Then the Holy Spirit began to reveal things about him to me.

The first thing He said was, "I've chosen him" and then quickly reminded me of the Scripture in Daniel 2:21, "he removes Kings and sets up kings" (ESV). Again, He brought a second verse to my mind and it was from Romans 9:21, "Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use?" (NASB). This time I felt the Lord saying, "I've chosen him not for honorable use but for common use". In essence, I felt that the Lord was saying that Obama wouldn’t be someone who’s kept for a display behind a window glass in a shelf, but rather like a vessel for everyday use, he would be a man whose hands are on the plough - willing to get them dirty. By now the Lord had my full attention. And as I continued to be in tune with what the Lord was showing me, I began to be led to pray for Obama over the following points: -

1.That Barack Obama would know not only the Jesus of Christian religion but that he would come to know Him in a personal way as his most dear and intimate Friend.

2.That he would have not only political advisors over him but that he would see as imperative the need to have a godly person over him for spiritual counseling and to help him in his faith in Christ Jesus.


3.That his wife and his children would similarly be strong in their faith in Christ and would grow closer to Him in all godliness.

As I finished praying these three points, I felt a sense of peace in me. And now I'm not at all worried that he's going to be sworn in as the next President of this great country. In fact, I'm sure I'll be praying for Barack Obama and his family regularly. After all, when Jesus taught us to love and pray even for our enemy how much more for someone who's not our enemy?

Is This Just a Dream?

This morning (29th Oct '08) I woke up with a dream that has made me not only to wonder but also to seriously ponder. The dream involves God’s audible voice.

In this dream, I saw myself standing outside a typical Indian grocery store. And although none of our church members own any shops as yet, a family from our church ran this store. As I stood there, I began to leisurely put my hand on the rice contained in a sack. Then I felt some rice had gotten inside the sleeve of my jacket on my right hand. The jacket I was wearing is thick and black in colour and was gifted to me by my father some time back for the winter. I pulled the opening of my sleeve to shake off the rice on a table. As I did that, truly indeed, rice fell off my sleeve. However, I felt there were some more left inside and again I repeated the process. More rice began to pour out of my sleeve. We began to wonder how this could be possible that simply touching the rice in a sack would gather so much inside the sleeve. The process was repeated twice thrice and even more. As I continued doing that now it was no longer only rice but even lentils (daal) of two different kinds (red and yellow in colour) pouring out of my sleeve. (Rice and lentils are the two very basic staple food of India). I remember there were few other believers too from our church present there. And we all stood there watching with great amazement and perplexity wondering what all this meant.

Suddenly, we heard God’s voice either directly or through a second person, that this was God’s supernatural provision for the orphans. Then He spoke again, but this time we heard Him directly. He spoke to us as a church saying that we should take in the orphans to our respective homes and shelter them and in essence, He would take care of the provision. The dream ends here.

I could argue with myself and consider this dream a probability or since my brother John in Nepal has recently taken in three little girls for adoption I could simply consider the whole issue to be a preconceived thought embedded in my subconscious mind. But honestly speaking, though I did briefly entertained a passing thought to follow my brother’s footsteps it wasn’t a serious or a recurring one. And yet, from time to time, I would either be reminded or find myself quoting to others the word in Isaiah 58 verses 6 & 7.

6 “Is not this the fast that I choose:

to loose the bonds of wickedness,

to undo the straps of the yoke,

to let the oppressed go free,

and to break every yoke?

7 Is it not to share your bread with the hungry

and bring the homeless poor into your house;

when you see the naked, to cover him,

and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?

Naturally speaking, I cannot see how this could be possible since most of our church members are limited or even under-limited when it comes to meeting their daily needs including myself at times. Indeed, it's quite a challenge. And yet, since the dream clearly speaks of God’s supernatural provision for this noble ministry I feel that I cannot just ignore it or even take it casually now but to consider it seriously and prayerfully as I wait for further confirmations from Him.

Please do consider seeking the mind of the Lord in this matter together with me/us. And should the Lord reveal anything to you I’d be more than glad to hear it. Thank you and God bless you.

Love,

Reuben