The Servant of God 24/7

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. 
The LORD said to Moses, 2 “Command the Israelites to bring you clear oil of pressed olives for the light so that the lamps may be kept burning continually. 3 Outside the curtain that shields the ark of the covenant law in the tent of meeting, Aaron is to tend the lamps before the LORD from evening till morning, continually. This is to be a lasting ordinance for the generations to come. 4 The lamps on the pure gold lampstand before the LORD must be tended continually.  Le 24:1–4
The work of the OT priests in Israel is a daily routine stuff. There were sacrifices being done on a daily basis. And based on this passage, the duty of a priest is to keep the lamp in the tabernacle burning. It is a continual job. In fact, because the lamp may burn out anytime, it is more than merely a 9-5 job, it is a job/duty that spans throughout the day.

The implication is this: working for God does not stop. We are 24/7 servants of God regardless of our other identities. At work, we may be employees of our organisation but we only take on that identity when we are "working" on that "full-time" job in office and occasionally out of office. At home, we play the roles of sons and daughters, husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, but that happens in the context of a home. It is the identity of a servant of God, or the identity of a child of God that the Scripture demands us to play 24/7, 52 weeks a year.

This means that this identity overlaps with all our earthly identities, and that is the reason why we glorify God, offer Him a living sacrifice in us as a pleasing sacrifice wherever we are. That is why our worship to God takes place even outside of church settings.

And that is why I can tahan shit from some people, not because of my own strength, but because of the strength that stems from my own identity as a servant of Christ - that I need to glorify Him even when it is difficult to do so or when it is pointless to do so.

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 ...
Read more