To have full belief in Him

By -
This is a series of reflections that I sent to my fiancee from my own Bible readings. I have posted them in this blog so that it is easier to keep track for future reflections. 
23 “ ‘If you can’?” said Jesus. “Everything is possible for one who believes.”
24 Immediately the boy’s father exclaimed, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!” - Mk 9:23–24.
There was this episode where the disciples were unable to exorcise a spirit from a boy in Mark 9. The father had to turn to Jesus in the end and the above conversation occurred. The interesting thing about the father is that he claimed to be have believed Jesus and yet had some form of unbelief that has to be dealt with. The father believed in Jesus and yet recognised that he had reservations about Jesus and this has to be dealt with

I wonder if this applies to everyone, to me, to us - that we can claim to believe in God and yet have reservation about Him. It perhaps manifests in how we make back-up plans (however good that idea may be) when we are obeying God in His service. It can happen very subtlely, e.g. I know that I am called by God to teach, but I can secretly make back-up plans to maybe go back to serve as a musician if it doesn’t seem to work out in every sense of the word.

At the end of the day, I hope that I can say with a clear conscience that I have demonstrated an unconditional openness to God, that I fully trust in Him.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Parable of the 'Good Samaritan'

By -
Once there was this man traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among thorns, and the thorns spring up and choked him. And as he went on, he didn’t have money, and he met the Queen of Sheba, and she gave him 1,000 talents of gold and 100 changes of raiment. And he got into a chariot and drove furiously, and when he was driving under a big juniper tree, his hair caught on a limb of that tree, and he hung there many days, and the ravens brought him food to eat and water to drink, and he ate 5,000 loaves of bread and two fishes. One night when he was hanging there asleep, his wife Delilah came along and cut off his hair, and he dropped, and fell on stony ground. But he got up and went on, and it began to rain, and it rained forty days and forty nights, and he hid himself in a cave, and he lived on locust and wild honey. Then he went on ‘til he met a servant who said, “Come, take supper at my house.” And he made an excuse and said, “No, I won’t. I have married a wife, and I c
Read more

Of Teaching and Learning

By -
Image
Over the past two weeks, I was invited to attend a block class on "Learning to Teach." After two weeks of class, here are some reflections that I have. We thank God Bro Casey is a pretty humane teacher... :P  Firstly, teaching needs to meet the changing challenges of the 21st century. This is especially pertinent with all the advancements in technology as well as the worldview changes with the generation today. There is simply no room for the teacher to remain stagnant and not be able to keep up with times so as to engage their students and to facilitate learning. Applying to theological education and Bible school, we have to consider what kind of ministers we are training for the churches in the 21st century. If we are training ministers who are able to engage today’s generation, then we need to review the current methods of teaching and train ministers to be savvy in social media and technology and be able to make use of them in their ministries. Reflecting back on
Read more

Of Exegesis, Wedding Preparation and the Whole Lot of Things: Another Reflection

By -
Image
To those who know what happened, the past months since the start of 2016 had been very stressful to me. In the preparation to my impending wedding this coming October, my future father-in-law decided to throw a few spanners into the wedding preparation by declaring that he was not comfortable with me as a life partner to his daughter because I am a full time Christian worker and more importantly because I come from a different family background from her.  The latter means that there are certain practices in my own family which are unthinkable in his worldview on how a family should function. This led to intense tensions between Angelina and myself. To compound the stress, NT Exegesis class was not that easy also and the stress of meeting the deadlines mean that I sometimes did not have the time to reflect deeper into the situations I was facing in my relationship.  However, studying the text of Philemon 15-20 reminded me of the way we should conduct our relationship in Christ
Read more