Learning Not To Despise People

Read Luke 18

This article is written by Zac Poonen

There are various reasons why people view others with contempt. They may have been taught by their parents from childhood to look down on others who are inferior in social status, or wealth, or education, etc. Or, if you are very intelligent and top your class in school, you can begin to view others in your class with contempt. If, in addition, you are unfortunate enough to have foolish parents who make you imagine that you are a genius, then matters could be even worse. 

Let me plead with all parents:

If your children are intelligent, please don’t ruin them by boasting about them. I made it a rule in my house that my sons were never to tell anyone about their rank in class or the prizes they got anywhere. I knew that if they became proud, they would lose the grace of God immediately. Then they would fall into sin, and never be able to fellowship with ordinary brothers. I fear that many parents have ruined their children thus. 

It is a common habit among children to make fun of someone who cannot speak English (or whatever their mother-tongue is) with a good accent. Beware of encouraging that in your home. Did any of us come out of our mother’s wombs speaking with a good accent? We should thank God for any ability that we have. But we should never be proud of it. Do you know what accent they speak with in heaven? The accents of humility and love. Let us learn those accents clearly.

Perhaps you are a woman who keeps your house spotlessly clean, with everything in its proper place. Then you see someone else’s home untidy and slipshod – and you despise her.

You are then a Pharisee; while the person whose house is untidy may be a godly person.

Some brothers have very poor music sense, and if they start singing a chorus in an open time of praise in the church, they will invariably sing totally off tune. Don’t despise them, because God doesn’t listen to the music; he listens to the words.And that brother singing the wrong tune may be more sincere than you, who can sing the right tune. Personally, I have thanked God for such brothers, because they humble all the clever musicians in the church.  It is Pharisee musicians who destroy the church, not the non-musical brothers. God loves non-musical brothers just as much as anyone else - but He rejects Pharisees. Many a surprise awaits such Pharisees when the Lord returns. 

I am not saying that you shouldn’t come first in your class, or that you shouldn’t keep your house tidy, or that you shouldn’t sing in tune-Not at all. By all means let us do all these. But let us be humble about them – and not despise anyone else who cannot do what we can. There are many areas like this where we can despise others quite easily. It says in Job 36:5 that “God is almighty, but He doesn’t despise anyone”.  The more we become like God, the more we will value people and never despise anyone – for anything. 

So let us cleanse ourselves and learn to look at people as God looks at them.

“What do you have that you did not receive from God? How can you boast then about anything or despise anyone else?” (1 Cor.4:7).

http://www.cfcindia.com/wftw

They Missed Him!

They were looking for A Lion,
He came as a Lamb,
And they missed Him.

They were looking for a Warrior,
He came as a Peace maker,
and they missed Him.

They were looking for a King,
He came as a Servant,
and they missed Him.

They were looking for Liberation from Rome,
He submitted to the Roman cross,
and they missed Him.

They were looking for a fit to their mold,
He was the mold maker,
and they missed Him.

What are you looking for?

Lion? Warrior? King? Liberator?
What are you looking for?

They were looking for their temporal needs to be met,
He came to meet their eternal need,
and they missed Him.

He came as a Lamb to be sacrificed for your sin.
Will you miss Him?

He came to make peace between God and man.
Will you miss Him?

He came to model servanthood for all mankind.
Will you miss Him?

He came that we might have true Liberty.
Will you miss Him?

He came to give you eternal life.
Will you miss Him?

When we submit to the lamb we will meet the Lion.
Join with the Peacemaker and we will meet the Warrior.
Work with the Servant and we will meet the King.
Walk with the Submitted and we will meet the Liberator.
Concern ourselves with the Eternal and we will have the temporal.

If Jesus is not fitting into the mold you have then come to the mold maker and get a new one.

Submit to His plan for your life and you will see the eternal need met first then all the other things you have need of will be  taken care of as well.

Matthew 6:33, Ephesians 3:20, Proverbs 3:6, Isaiah 61:1, Romans 8:21, John 3:16

Will you miss Him?

The History of St. Thomas Mount, Madras, India

(Jayakaran Israel http://www.bukisa.com/articles/128007_the-history-of-st-thomas-mount-madras-india)

Madras, India

After the resurrection of Lord Jesus and in obedience to His command to preach the Gospel to the ends of the world, all His disciples spread out in the middle east for preaching.

Only one disciple came out of the Palestine area to a distant land, India. Apostle Thomas was that person.

Read his story.

 

One of the important landmarks in Madras city, India,  is,  “St. Thomas Mount” at the southern most end of the city, near the  airport.  It is  a small hill feature about 300 feet high (91 meters).  It  was on this hill that Thomas Didymus, one of the disciples of Lord Jesus Christ, was killed in the year 72 A.D. and this hill had been named  after the Apostle.

Resurrection of Lord Jesus Christ

According to the Bible, Lord Jesus rose physically  from the dead on the third day after His crucifixion.  A week later, He  appeared to 10 out of the 12 disciples. [Judas Iscariot, who betrayed Jesus,  had hanged himself, leaving only 11 alive]

 

The eleventh disciple by the name Thomas Didymus, was not in the house when Lord Jesus appeared. He had perhaps gone out somewhere.  When he returned, the 10 told him that Lord Jesus was very much alive and He materialized before them even when they were inside a closed room.

Thomas wouldn’t believe the news at all.   “A dead person coming to life?” he debated and asked, “Are you sure? Was it Lord Jesus or someone else?” Then, he made his mind known to his colleagues. 

 “Unless I  see the nail marks in his hands and  put my hand into his side, I will not believe ,” he had declared.

Hence the title “Doubting Thomas” for the disciple.

After another week, when all the 11 disciples were huddled inside their room, Lord Jesus came in view to them once again.  He told Thomas,

“Come over. Put  your finger here, see my hands.  Reach out your hand and put it into my side.  Stop doubting and believe.”

Thomas did go near him and  did touch the wounds with his fingers.  He was immediately convinced and  cried out, “My Lord and My God.”

Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed;  blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”  [John 16: 24-28]

This event was possibly engineered by Jesus Christ Himself, not only to bring home a truth to all His disciples but also to the entire humanity that would follow.  It was also to set at rest any doubt about the physical resurrection of the Son of God.

Preaching Jesus Gospel

Before finally ascending to Heaven, His original abode, some 40 days after resurrection, Lord Jesus  commanded the disciples to stretch out and preach  the Good News to the ends of the Earth.  Accordingly, the disciples (later named Apostles) branched out in different directions from Jerusalem but seem to have restricted their missionary work to the areas in Syria, Lebanon, Greece, Turkey, Yugoslavia, Italy and Malta.  None of them went to Africa or the Northern part of Europe or Russia or Asia.

Thomas’s journey to India

Possibly it was Lord Jesus’s desire that the Gospel must be propagated  in India and He had chosen Thomas for the role.  But Thomas was reported  to have declined the proposal. 

 ”Lord, why me?  Send someone else to India.  Of all places…….?”

But the Lord wanted only Thomas to evangelize  in India.

About this time, an emissary of an Indian king happened to visit Jerusalem for the purpose of finding an architect who could build a super palace for the king.  He had heard that good architects were available in Jerusalem.

Pointing at Thomas, a Jew said that he was a renowned architect.  The emissary approached the Apostle for negotiations.

At this moment,  Lord Jesus Himself  joined the twosome in physical form and said showing a finger at Thomas,

“He is my slave.  I am giving him to you.  Take him to India.”  Thomas  Didymus was stunned.

The emissary turned to the ‘architect’ and demanded, “Is this man your master?”  Thomas hesitated for an instant even as the risen Lord kept gazing at him.  He could  not deny that Jesus was his Master. Simon Peter’s denial of the Lord  at the palace of Pontius Pilate, prior to Jesus’s  crucifixion,  was fresh in his mind.

 “Yes”, he confirmed loudly and positively.

Jesus Christ told Thomas briefly “Go” by way of farewell and walked out of sight.  Knowing that his Master wanted him to go to India at any cost, Apostle Thomas landed  at Cranganore  in Kerala, in the western coast of Southern India, during the year 52 A.D.

As regards the king’s palace, Thomas withdrew  large sums of money from time to time from the king’s treasury but spent it all on the poor along with his evangelism. Whenever the king asked the architect for a progress report, Thomas would say,

“The palace is coming up beautifully oh my king – in Heaven.”   The king didn’t understand the statement at all. In course of time, the king came to know that instead of a palace, Thomas was building churches on the western coast and was also feeding the poor. Getting wild, the king had decided to punish the Apostle with death.

But, that night he had a dream.  He found himself  in a magnificent country, alike of which he did not imagine ever existed. A guide was showing him around.  On seeing an exquisite building structure that was just about  half complete, the king enquired, “Whose mansion  is this?”   The guide raised his head in surprise and answered,  “Of  course, it’s yours, your majesty. You had ordered it.  Don’t you remember?”

The king woke up and realized that Thomas was a godly man who knew that his palace was coming up in some other world.  He then began to revere Thomas and asked to know everything about the Gospel of Lord Jesus Christ.

After completing 7 churches in Kerala, St. Thomas crossed over to the Coromondal coast and landed in Madras.  He lived for some years here.  His home was a cave on a small hillock.  This cave is preserved till date at a place called Little Mount which is about 3 KM from St. Thomas Mount.

 

Besides evangelism to thousands of people, St. Thomas also built a chapel with his own hands in Mylapore, which is about 6 KM from Little Mount.

 

After  his martyrdom,  the Apostle’s body was buried here.  And today stands on St Thomas’s tomb, a big church of Gothic architecture called, “San Thome Cathedral”.

Some records say that the Apostle made a brief visit (possibly for some months only) to China and returned to Madras.  The Apostle’s evangelism perhaps was confined only to the Madras city region. People flocked to hear him. He performed several miracles through the power of Lord Jesus Christ such as, healing the sick, the lame, the blind and other varieties of handicapped persons.

One summer when multitude of people  had come to listen to his sermon, the Apostle noticed that they were thirsty and were looking around for some water to quench themselves.  Little Mount is an area known for its water scarcity and was so in the first century as well. Taking pity on the audience, the Saint struck at a particular point on the hillock with his staff. And water gushed out at once.  This was reminiscent of what prophet Moses did to provide water for the Israelites in the desert between Palestine and Egypt about the year 1430 B.C.

The existence of a small spring almost at the top of a hillock and water being available round the year would sound truly remarkable.  This is known as the fountain of St. Thomas,  which exists even today. Some miraculous power is attributed to this water.

Martyrdom and thereafter

The spread of Christianity in a Hindu dominated society of Madras was indeed a matter of jealousy for many of  St.Thomas’s  persecutors.  The flash point came when  one day a Hindu Brahmin chased the Saint from his Little Mount cave-home along the road and pierced him to death with his lance when the Saint ran the distance of 3 KM to the hill feature.  And thus came the name  “St. Thomas Mount”, the spot where St. Thomas was murdered.

His body was taken to Mylapore and buried in the chapel built by him.

Thomas Mount remained a simple hill feature for several centuries.  One Diego Fernandez, a Portuguese, built a small chapel on it in the year 1523 A.D   By then  St. Thomas Mount had become a place of pilgrimage and as the  number of pilgrims increased, one Father Gasper Goelho converted the chapel into a big church in 1548 A.D.

This ancient  church on top of the 300 feet high  Mount, had been a sign post  for mariners for some 400 years.  In the 16th and 17th centuries, when the Portuguese and Armenian ships sighted the church, the sailors used to offer prayer of thanksgiving for a safe voyage  ahead and then fire a gunshot as salute.

May the living Lord  Jesus Christ bless you richly.

Power to Tell Others About Christ

By Robert Cunville

The same Holy Spirit who empowered the Apostle Peter to preach [on the day of Pentecost] is available to us as we reach out to people who don't know Christ. When we witness, we have to rely completely on the Holy Spirit. Jesus said, "No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him" (John 6:44).

God the Holy Spirit can take the feeblest words of our witness to Christ and transform them by His power into a convicting word in the lives of others. That is the mystery to the working of the Holy Spirit. We cannot hope to win anyone to Christ by our own words or actions. But the Holy Spirit can choose to work through us if we are yielded to Him.

Prayer:

Lord, thank You that we can rely on the Holy Spirit to use us as instruments to reveal the Gospel to those who are far from Christ. Help us to not rely on our own strength when we have opportunities to talk to others about Jesus. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

Japan’s Earthquake and The Bible

-Browsed and pasted by Mohan.G

Source: http://thecrazypastor.wordpress.com/2011/03/11/japans-earthquake-and-the-bible/

March 11, 2011

The 8.9 – 9.1 magnitude earthquake that hit Japan on Friday at 2:46 (their time) and the subsequent tsunami, left such wide-spread destruction that it is natural to question whether such an event is a “sign”.

We humans often ask ourselves those type of questions after any major disaster. We might wonder if it’s a sign of global warming, a sign of geological upheaval, a sign of God’s displeasure, or a sign of the end of the world.

From Jesus until now, Christianity has talked about earthquakes as a sign of the end.

 Revelation speaks of a great earthquake and Jesus mentioned that earthquakes, famines and conflict would be like “birth pains” leading to the end.

For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and in various places there will be famines and earthquakes. But all these things are merely the beginning of birth pangs.
-(Jesus) Matthew 24:7-8 [NASB]

Birth pangs are characterized as increasing in frequency and intensity the closer they get to the final event.

Because of that, many have explained that these events mentioned by Jesus will also become worse, and happen with greater frequency the closer we get to the end.

Some teach it has always been getting worse, but with earthquakes at least, that is not conclusively proven by the evidence. Others teach that Jesus was simply speaking about what would happen as we approached the end.

They explain that these events would begin to increase in frequency and intensity as the end approached. After all, most pregnancies do not include birth pangs for all nine months, but just as the end draws near.

If you’re wondering, USGS statistics for big quakes over the last 10 years go like this:

Year – Number of Earthquakes 7.0 or higher

2000 – 15
2001 – 16
2002 – 13
2003 – 15
2004 – 16
2005 – 11
2006 – 11
2007 – 18
2008 – 12
2009 – 17
2010 – 22

2011 – ?? (so far 8, on pace for about 25-30)

It does appear that there have been a few more quakes recently. Three of the last four years have had the most big earthquakes for the decade. Last year was THE most in at least thirty years, and this year we are on pace to beat it again.

What does that mean?

By itself, nothing. If we had 50 such quakes in one year, I think geologists might start asking questions, but for now, we’re still in the normal range. 2010 might have had the most in the past thirty years or more, but it only beat 1995 by 2.

Biblically speaking, there are things for us to consider. Yes, there might be some prophetic significance given the state of the world. What Jesus said above, has some parallels with what Revelation 6 describes with the seven seals which are unleashed on the earth, especially the four horsemen.

Take three of the horsemen for example: the second rider takes peace from the earth, the third brings famine and economic distress, and the fourth brings death in various ways which could include natural disasters.

(I say it could include natural disasters because the word used in Revelation 6:8 does not mean MERELY “plague” or “pestilence” as most translations write it. There are words that specifically refer to plagues and pestilence and disease, but those words aren’t used here. The word in Revelation 6:8 literally says the Rider called Death will kill by “death.” That can mean any cause of death, not just disease and pestilence.)

Jesus likewise mentioned famines and conflict and certain natural disasters called earthquakes. The similarities in the description of the end by Jesus and the book of Revelation makes one wonder if both places in the Bible are referring to the same period of time? My guess is they are.

It is POSSIBLE that such a time is starting, but for now, that’s all we can say. Jesus also mentioned signs like these are “merely the beginning of birth pangs.” No need to freak out over them immediately. If the revolutions, resulting conflicts, possible economic meltdowns, and resulting death combined with natural disasters do actually arrive in Biblical proportions, well then we’ll find out soon enough.

For now, though, I think there is a more important Biblical principle to glean from the earthquake in Japan. Watching the scenes of destruction as they happened, I was reminded of the sobering truth that fulfillment of end-time Bible Prophecy would be horrifying. As the prophet Amos once said:

Alas, you who are longing for the day of the LORD, For what purpose will the day of the LORD be to you? It will be darkness and not light; As when a man flees from a lion And a bear meets him, Or goes home, leans his hand against the wall And a snake bites him.-Amos 5:18-19 [NASB]

If you are one of those folks who loves to study and/or debate Bible prophecy, someone who loves to try and figure things out, or just someone that is beginning to wonder what it all may mean, let the words of God through Amos be a wakeup call. Darkness and suffering will not be exciting and fun, but it will be a call to work.

It will be a call to help those in need, to give and to sacrifice as Christians have done throughout the ages to relieve suffering and bring comfort.

Don’t rejoice at an increase in earthquakes, instead figure out ways to help and bring assistance.

And don’t just read this blog (

 http://thecrazypastor.wordpress.com/2011/03/11/japans-earthquake-and-the-bible/) 

to see if the quake in Japan has anything to do with the Bible. Pray for the people, send some aid their way if you can, and remember that God called you to be a light that shines during a day of darkness.

Whether those dark days are close to the end or not.

Regards,

Samuel Machado