Seize the Kairos! - LOST in Jesus

LOST (Love-Oriented Slave Trait) in Jesus

Luke 15:29New International Version (NIV)

²⁹ But he answered his father, ‘Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends.

We have been taught countless times as Christian to serve Jesus and have a servanthood mentality to serve God and others. In fact, knowing how much God love us even He sacrificed His Only begotten Son so that we can be saved (John 3:18), shows the level of commitment for us to love Him back. The level of commitment where we also give our entire life back to Him. Realizing that it is not about us and our agenda, but it is all about God and His agenda. It’s about being God’s slave where our rights are no longer applicable, but His rights are. For we know, that Jesus has lost his rights in order to save us. This is the true image of unconditional love. For when we love someone wholeheartedly, we are more than willing to lost our rights and become slave to the other person’s needs.

However, the Bible reminds us that this entire “being slave for Jesus” can be easily misunderstood without we even realizing it. There are 2 kinds of slave with different traits here: Love-Oriented Slave Trait and Reward-Oriented Slave Trait.  Many of us are actually practicing our selfless life in order to live for Jesus, but the pure underlying motives to do so is because we are still chasing God’s rewards and blessings. The oldest son in the story of the prodigal son is actually the heaviest case of the prodigal son. The oldest son is truly are the one who actually lost…really lost. He has been serving God by becoming a slave for Him and willing to lose all of his rewards and demonstrated total obedience to Him. Yet, he missed the whole point.

What God really wants for us is to have the right trait of being a slave, the Love-Oriented Slave Trait (LOST).  A selfless life dedicated to God with total obedience out of love to God, not because of the rewards and blessings, but because we truly love Him wholeheartedly.

Have we become slave to God in a proper trait? We might have been living a selfless life with an egoistic motive all this time without realizing it. Let us examine our hearts and ask God to search our heart so that we can truly become LOST (Love-Oriented Slave Trait) in Jesus.

-JH-

Seize the Kairos - Do You Truly Love Me?

Do You Truly Love Me?

John 21:15-19

All of us have different perceptions about love. Our perception about love is heavily influenced with the culture and the norms that we are raised with and sadly to say, media.

It means that when a couple say that they love each other, it does not necessary means that they truly love each other according to their own standards and expectations. Because “love” for one person does not necessary means “love” for the other person. Some might categorize love as the tingling feeling or butterfly inside of your stomach, but for some might be a serious commitment that goes beyond feeling, and some might have a completely different ideas about love. That is why it is so important to truly understand each other’s definition of love before we say that we love that person.

Same thing with God. Do we really understand what God means with love? Because if our version of love is different with God’s version of love, then it means that either we have been loving God in such a low standard or worse, we have been loving Him in a wrong way because of the mislead paradigms.

Jesus truly questions Simon Peter in His appearances to His disciples after the resurrection. Jesus asked Simon Peter 3 times in a row with very similar questions but not the same. The questions translated in English will be all the same, “Simon son of John, Do you truly love me?”. But notice that the first two questions and the last question were actually different based on the Greek translation.

There are 2 Greek words of “love” is used here. For the first two questions, the word “love” that is used is agapao – which speaks of an intelligent, thoughtful, and purposeful love involving the entire personality, but primarily a decision of the mind and the will.

For the third question, the word “love” that is used is phileo – which speaks of a warm, natural and more spontaneous sense of feeling and affection – a more emotional love.

From this verses, we learn that God has 2 expectations when we say that we truly love Him. The first expectations , or God’s paradigm of love, is that we love Him wholeheartedly based on our minds’ decisions and our constant will and action to prove it. It means that loving God is a conscious commitments that we have to make, conscious decisions everyday that we love Him by doing His commandments. To like what He likes and to hate what He hates.

However, making these conscious decision and commitment to love Him is only halfway right. Notice that Jesus asked Peter, whether Peter truly love Jesus in a more emotional love (phileo). A love that is full of tingling sensation, butterflies in our stomach. A love that is full of passion and warm feelings.

A complete understanding of love according to God is a love that consist of agapao and phileo. Many God’s children stuck in the zone where they say that they love God, they make the conscious decisions to follow Him, but hardly, or even never felt a passionate kind of love with God. Or perhaps, some of us might have the burning passion to love God, but hardly ever have the unshakeable commitments to follow and obey His commandments. God wants us to have and experience both kind of love – agapao and phileo EVERYTIME.  

This is our journey in loving God wholeheartedly. Knowing that these two kinds of love (agapeo and phileo) must exist in our love to God then, it is our job and duty as God’s children to pursue God not only with our conscious decisions but with passionate love as well, so that we can truly say, God I do truly love you!    -JH-

Seize the Kairos! - Formula for a Satisfied Life

The Formula for a Satisfied Life

Proverbs 13:12 - "Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life."

The Bible teaches us the simple, yet powerful formula for Satisfaction and Unsatisfaction in life. 

Everyone has what its called hope or longing. Hope or longing in a general term is Expectation.

According to the verse above, we can conclude that the formula for having a satisfied life in general is Expectation equals to Reality (E=R).

When "hope deferred", which means that, the reality of life does not equal to the hope (expectation) that we have, thus the Bible says that "it makes the heart sick". Heart is the source of life. When our heart sick, it means that we are in great distress.

However, when "a longing fulfilled", which means that, the reality of life equals to the expectation that we have, the Bible says that it "is a tree of life". A tree of life portrays comfort, certainty, growth, fruitful, and life, which all leads to great satisfaction.

By understanding this formula of a satisfied life from the Bible, we can learn some important things.

When we feel that we are unsatisfied with our lifes, we have 2 options. First, we change our reality by being proactive in repenting to God and ask for His help to be committed in making real changes in life, or we change our ultimate expectation about our life. 

Many of us have expectations in life built based on our dreams, goals, values, beliefs that have been in our mind for sometime. In fact, the Bible teaches us that the ways we live and think have been inherited from our ancestors. That is why the second option is to renew our minds daily with the Word of God, so that eventually, with time and process, we start to adopt the new expectation that is not from this world, but from His perspectives - the Word of God.

Because if we think about it, it is as simple as what the Word of God teaches us: the Formula of a Satisfied Life is Expectations equal Reality (E=R).

-JH-

Seize the Kairos! - Did You Get It?

Seize the Kairos! - Did You Get it?

Matthew 13 talks about the 7 parables: the Sower, the Weeds, the Mustard Seed, the Yeast, the Hidden Treasure, the Pearl, and the Net.

These parables were shared by Jesus in sequence by purpose starts from the parable of the Sower, all the way to the parable of the Net.

These parables are connected to one another to give the complete picture, explaining the essence of the Kingdom of God that only those whose eyes and ears have been touched, will be able to fully understand and grasp the significance of these secrets of the Kingdom of God.  "But blesses are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear" ( Mat 13:16)

These parables seems pretty straight forward, however, the Bible strongly remind us, "...many prophets and righteous men longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it. " (Mat 13:17)

How come the teachings (the essence of the Kingdom of God) implied from the parables were not being able to be grasp, even by prophets and righteous men? Prophets and righteous men means that these are the people that live for Christ and in fact, shows commitment to live righteous for Him, but at the end, they are not able to truly grasp the essence of the Kingdom of God.

The above dilemma showed that we have to be very serious about our commitment and our faith to Jesus. Many might have shown great level of commitments, but in the end, they still can not see the essence of the Kingdom of God. It means that we have to really ask God to truly search our hearts, to help us understand what we need to do, what we need to change from our ways of thoughts and life. Because committed itself is not enough. We have to be truly prepared to really give up everything and live for Jesus and His Kingdom only (Mat 13: 44-46).

Can we truly say that we love Jesus wholeheartedly when everything in our life is being stripped down? Let's Be Ready and Be Prepared for 2015. It is no longer about us and our needs...but It is about Jesus and His Kingdom. Let us have the mentality of Job, when everything else fails us and we no longer have any reason to trust Jesus, we would still love Him wholeheartedly. And when we have this kind of intimacy level, the essence of the Kingdom of God will be embedded in our life and we will thoroughly understand the death and the rise of Christ. 

-JH-