Winter Trees

Monday, March 13, 2006

I have learned a lot of things last week especially during our journey to Archenland. King Edmund was used by God to teach me about many things in life. I have learned a lot from his testimony and from the testimony of the people in that land. I'm just so blessed that I want to share it in my blog.

I have learned that:

1. Having lost the fire and passion for God makes all efforts worthless and fruitless. It can be compared to ironing your clothes without heat. Whatever effort you put into ironing, you won't get the outcome that you so desired for your clothes. It's the same thing with our ministry. We can put all effort in following-up our contacts and even meet more than twice a week, but the outcome that we long for their growth, won't be achieved because we ourselves do not have the fire that comes from God. "Fire" gets things moving...

2. Fire and Passion comes only from the throne of God. We cannot generate it by ourselves. It is only because of God's grace that we are able to be on fire. This will never be possible if God is not our first love. The fire gradually dies without fuel, and the fuel of spiritual fire is LOVE. If we have lost the fire, maybe we can ask ourselves who our first love is...

3. During our times of burning for the Lord we do things solely for Him, and He blesses these things so that they bear good fruit. God also blesses us with things or people because He is well pleased with us. Unfortunately, later on, we become so indulged with the things that we do, or the rewards that He gave us, that little by little our eyes move and look away from our Saviour and Lord. We become numb from His love and we try to get contentment from those activites or those rewards, may they be things or people. Unknowingly and slowly, they become our idols.

4. God will do His best to get our attention back to Him. Usually, He starts with a gentle nudge from the Holy Spirit, but when those idols become too valuable for us, we often disregard that nudge. Little by little, our loving Lord increases the intensity of that nudge (even to the extent of being painful) until we find out that we have indeed left Him as our first love.

5. Upon realizing that, we become guilty and we realize our frailty. But God so loves us and His grace is more than enough to restore us. He will keep on reminding us that His grace is sufficient for us and that His power is made perfect in our weakness. And upon that realization, we can remember the times when we were really on fire for the Lord. We can repent from our unfaithfulness, and restore the things that we used to do for Him.

6. However, things won't be easy. Our unfaithfulness may have been too long that the ill-effects of it have already taken place and it will be difficult to restore things back to where they were. But again I say this : God's grace is sufficient. His power is made perfect in our weakness.

7. It was during times that we were weak and hopeless, that the power of God was revealed to us and had conquered our enemies and fears.

8. It's very difficult to surrender our greatest idol in life. But the longer we delay ourselves in surrendering it, the harder it gets... And when God can already see that it's impossible for us to do it ourselves, He helps us but taking it away from us [most of the time, painfully].

9. It's always a better choice to surrender. God blesses us with joy and the contentment that only comes from Him afterwards.

10. But during the process of restoring the fire and during the times that we think we are already stable, Satan will again try to offer us things that may seem nice at first but will later take our eyes off our God. Let us FIX our eyes on Jesus.

11. Like a guy deeply in love with a girl, let us think of things that we can sacrifice each day to prove that we love the Lord more than anything else.

12. Take each day as an opportunity to decide for the Lord.

13. There will be times (many times) that we will long to gain our idols back because of the memories we had with them, but let us not let those thoughts linger for they might cause us to lose our focus once again.

14. We will feel weak often because of the absence of things that we have given up, but the Lord will give us strength.

15. With man, surrendering some idols may seem impossible, but with God, all things are possible!
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5 Comments:

Anonymous said...: :)...looks like "the one who started this flame in your heart
is giving you more".... Ü; 3:38 AM
Headmaster Cid said...: Yes... more than the first time :); 3:42 AM
daphne said...: wow! dami nun ah..and those are what i need now. thanks bro! you've been a source of encouragement to many esp to me.
Actually, Beads has told a lot about the trip. and the things she learned were just so overflowing! pls pray for her..she's faced witha very important decision in her life..a big step of faith.
As ate ellen has told her..Faith is obedience without knowing what will happen next. Haaaaay, Lord!!; 4:55 AM
daphne said...: oopss..has told ME a lot..sorry for the oversight :P; 4:57 AM
Headmaster Cid said...: princess, oo nga eh.. i'm excited as well as fearful for her... if i'm in her situation, i don't know what to do too... i was overwhelmed and blessed by her mere consideration to join the LDI eventhough it meant the sacrifice of a job that she prayed for. I'm hurting din for her because I know the pain she must be feeling right now but i know that whatever her decision may be-if it is according to God's will for her, in the end, everything will work together for good... God bless :); 5:01 AM