Milk VS. Solid food

Brothers and sisters, I could not address you as people who live by the Spirit but as people who are still worldly—mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere humans? For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not mere human beings? (1 Corinthians 3:1-4)

There are two types of Christians: The people who live by the Sprit and the people who live by their flesh (Who are worldly) In here Paul describes the people who are still worldly as “mere infants in Christ”

I had to ask my self: Am I still an infant in Christ? Am I asking for milk only, because I’m not ready to handle the solid food? There was another verse that re-iterated this point:

Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil. (Hebrews 5:13-14)

Here is a characteristic of someone who’s still an infant in Christ and lacks maturity. They are jealousy and quarreling amongst Christians which results in lack of unity and division. (They’ll follow different religious leaders and idolize them instead of focusing on Christ and his leadership) Also they are not aquatinted with the teaching about righteousness. Because the righteousness comes from Christ and Christ alone.

However when we take a look at someone who are mature and living by the spirit, they truly have a correct understanding of righteousness through Christ, and they can discern what is good and what’s not.

We need to stop drinking milk and move on to digesting solid food.

All I have is very little…

 “As surely as the Lord your God lives,” she replied, “I don’t have any bread—only a handful of flour in a jar and a little olive oil in a jug. I am gathering a few sticks to take home and make a meal for myself and my son, that we may eat it—and die.”

Elijah said to her, “Don’t be afraid. Go home and do as you have said. But first make a small loaf of bread for me from what you have and bring it to me, and then make something for yourself and your son. For this is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘The jar of flour will not be used up and the jug of oil will not run dry until the day the Lord sends rain on the land.’ ” (1 King 17:12-14)

She didn’t have any bread,

only a handful of flour and little oilve oil. That’s all she had, so she was going to eat that with her son as the last meal and die.

But Elijah, instead of giving her food or the help she needs, first, tells her to not be afraid. If there was a woman in dire need and is starving, my first instinct would be to just simply feed her and her son some food. But Elijah was different. He heard from God the instruction and told the woman to use that LAST little bit of flour and oil to make a small loaf of bread and give it to him.

Instead of using that last bit for herself, the woman used that to serve the Lord and his servant. That act of faithful sacrifice has resulted in the flour and oil never running out in the household. It was not by Elijah, that she was fed, but it was by God’s supernatural provision.

There are times in our lives, where we feel like we have nothing left. No money, no energy, no love, nothing. Drained/ burnt out and ready to just give up and die. But what would happen, if in a situation like this, we decide to give that last bit of ourselves to the Lord? Lord just take everything, even this ounce of energy I have left, I just give it all to you. If I die, then I die, but I sacrifice everything I have left to you.

That’s when the true miracle happens.

 “Here is a boy with five small barley loaves and two small fish, but how far will they go among so many?” (John 6:9)

The boy’s meal, it wasn’t much, but he gave it up to the Lord with faith. If he held on to his meal, then we would’ve never witnessed the miracle! I need to think about what I’m holding on to, and not letting go to the Lord. If we try to feed ourselves with what we have, then we are missing out on the true provision from God.

Our God is a good God who wants to bless us, and he has ALL the resources to do that. But we have to let him. How can God bless us when we are SO self-sufficient? Lord, please help me to fully sacrifice every last bit of myself to you. Amen.

Trials that prove your faith

In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. (1 Peter 1:6-7)

Who likes trials? … Not me.

I’m not sure what it is but lately (especially last 2 months-ish) I’ve been meditating on so many verses regarding trials and suffering. It seems to be a running theme. My friend has asked me about 2 weeks ago, “What’s your trigger?” My mind started to run wild and I was thinking about ALL the things that ticks me off. The very first one being fear of pain/suffering.

Is comfort my idol?

There are so many verses in the bible that talks about trials and persecution. Because Jesus went through so much of that, we are to take up our cross daily and walk with him. (Matthew 16:24)

But oddly God pairs up the word “trials” with words like “JOY”

When I think of trials, there is nothing truly joyful about it. It is quite dreadful to just think about all the suffering we need to go through. I want to be joyful at all times regardless of my circumstances, because the God of all heavens loves me and is my father. He lives in me! If that does not make you joyful, I don’t know what does. But when situations in front of us gets dire or frustrating, we immediately start complaining and asking God to take that suffering away from us. I wish I was more like Jesus, who can endure such excruciating trials and suffering, yet displaying the perfect obedience.

Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. (James 1: 2-4)

Trials tests your faith, and faith produces perseverance. Perseverance produces maturity. We will become more and more Christlike with these trials. When we truly focus on the end goal, of us being complete in heaven, with God, we will be able to rejoice even the worst suffering.

Yeast Yeast Yeast!

For seven days you are to eat bread made without yeast. On the first day remove the yeast from your houses, for whoever eats anything with yeast in it from the first day through the seventh must be cut off from Israel. (Exodus 12:15)

Yesterday I went to Wingstop to get some chicken wings, and my husband pointed out a picture on a wall of these yummy looking yeast rolls. “We must get this!” We ordered 2 of them, but for some reason the word “yeast” reminded me of unleavened bread in the bible. And today when I was reading through Exodus, I kept on seeing “yeast” EVERYWHERE! I was really surprised at how many times it was repeated in the scripture.

Why so many times? And why such significance?

Celebrate the Festival of Unleavened Bread, because it was on this very day that I brought your divisions out of Egypt. Celebrate this day as a lasting ordinance for the generations to come. (Exodus 12:17)

God called this the Festival of Unleavened bread. I bet the main thing they ate was Lamb that was slaughtered, but why was the bread emphasized more? The fact that the bread was Unleavened seemed like the most important thing, but I couldn’t tell exactly why. As I kept meditating on the verse, something interesting hit me.

On the first day remove the yeast from your houses

It was not just about avoid eating the yeast, but also removing yeast from your house altogether! It almost sounded like ridding ourselves completely and cleansing ourselves from sin. Do not even let the trace of sin be found anywhere. Also eating the leavened bread resulted in being cut off from God, just like sin causes the separation between us and God.

or whoever eats anything with yeast in it from the first day through the seventh must be cut off from Israel.

That’s a serious consequences for just eating some sort of bread, isn’t it? This all represents and symbolizes something more significant.

“A little yeast works through the whole batch of dough.” (Galatians 5:9)

It is quite true that even a slight trace of unrepentant sin can affect the whole body. It quickly spreads to the whole batch before you know it. I got curious about yeast, and started to research a bit more into it. Scientifically speaking how does yeast affect the dough and what’s the optimal state for it to work and make the whole dough rise?

That’s when I found something even MORE interesting.

The optimum temperature range for yeast fermentation is between 90˚F-95˚F (32˚C-35˚C). Every degree above this range depresses fermentation. While elevated temperature is problematic in all phases of ethanol production, it is specifically hazardous during the later stages of fermentation.

Basically yeast thrives and grow the fastest (just like how sin spreads fast) at a certain temperature. That’s between 90 and 95˚F, and you know what that is?

That’s a lukewarm temperature.

So, because you are lukewarm–neither hot nor cold–I am about to spit you out of my mouth. (Revelation 3:16)

Sin thrives in lukewarmness. Lord, I repent for all the times I was lukewarm and complacent. I want to do a thorough search within myself to find if there is even a small trace of sin hidden, and get rid of it. With a pure and clean heart, I want to run after you with passion, Amen.

10 Plagues in Exodus

When I was going through exodus this time, I had SO many questions. (Can’t even begin to list all of them here) One that made me really curious was actually the 10 plagues that happened in Egypt. It was quite painful to read through all 10 and and it got to a point where it seemed truly ridiculous for Pharaoh to keep rebelling against God. I was asking “Why did all these plagues had to happen?” Couldn’t it have been two or three?

All the vivid imagery in my head of Nile turning to bloody red mess, and fly infested foul smelling land was pretty gruesome. I’m a pretty visual person, so when I read, I picture these things in my head like a scene in a movie.

There must be something here that I’m not seeing.

What is God trying to tell us through this? What was God trying to show the Egyptians and Israelites at the time this happened? Why were all 10 of these plagues necessary? I wanted to find the significance in each of these, so I started to do some researching into what each of these plagues represented. And it DID represent something! Every single plague corresponded to Egyptian gods. For example,

● Heket – Egyptian goddess of fertility, water, renewal, had the head of a frog (this corresponds to the plague of frogs infesting people’s bedroom etc, hence it being the goddess of fertility)

● Ra – The sun god, who was the most worshipped god in Egypt. (corresponds to the three days of complete darkness)

Basically God was showing that NONE of the gods in Egypt were sovereign. There is one and only God who’s all powerful and none other even measure up. He was going over all the idols of Egypt and showing the people that no other gods or magicians can do what he does.

And then I started to see another message God was trying to tell me through this. He was also showing us what God-less world would look like with all these plagues. This goes back to Genesis, and the story of creation. All these plagues in a way, were sort of reversing the wonderful work he has done in the beginning of time.

● He said “Let there be light” (Genesis 1:3) and this corresponds to the plague of darkness. (He said the light was “good”)

● And God said, “Let the waters under the sky be gathered into one place, so that the dry land may appear.” And it was so. (Genesis 1:9) and this corresponds to the plague of blood tainting the body of water God’s created.

● And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, land crawlers, and wild animals according to their kinds.” And it was so. (Genesis 1:24) This is a direct opposite of the plague of death of livestock.

So on.. you get the idea.

● Then the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils, and the man became a living being. (Genesis 2:7) Which obviously corresponds to the last finale, which was the plague of death of firstborn.

I was sort of in awe, there are so many symbolism and hidden meanings in the bible and it was so cool that God revealed some part of them to us.
The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him; and he will shew them his covenant. (Psalm 25:14) I pray that I will walk in the fear of the Lord, holiness and righteousness. Lord thank you so much for your word, and all the hidden mysteries that you choose to reveal to us, Amen.

Do not even think about it.

Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh. (Romans 13:14)

Out of all the books in the bible, I would probably have to say Roman is the book that convicts my heart the MOST. It just stabs me sometimes. Just like a double-edged sword, it penetrates and judges my thoughts and even my attitudes.

For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. (Hebrews 4:12)

I just ordered hundreds of dollars worth of clothing from online, happily unpacked the package and did a little fashion show and twirled around, because I was busy clothing myself with pretty things. Self gratifying with frivolous things. Where am I even going with these new clothes during the Pandemic? Perhaps grocery store.

When the bible talks about clothing ourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, I always wonder what that looks like. Speaking of clothing, everyone sees what we wear, because we wear it on the outside, not inside. It is not hidden, it is for everyone to see. When we wear Jesus, do people see? Are we proudly carrying his glory for the whole world to see? Or are we hiding him in only in our hearts?

Another way I see it is, when we wear Jesus, we are protected. It says in Ephesians 6, Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. Not only just a vague, figurative way, but it goes into specific detail about what to wear. It’s pretty cool.

¹³ Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. ¹⁴ Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, ¹⁵ and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. ¹⁶ In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. ¹⁷ Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. (Ephesians 6:13-17)

We are at a spiritual war with the darkness, and without clothing ourselves in our Lord Jesus Christ, we will suffer. The second part of this verse then talks about our flesh. (Oh how I just love that word……..)

and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh.

What’s interesting here is it doesn’t say Do not gratify the desires of the flesh. It says to NOT EVEN THINK ABOUT IT. Do not even let the thought of the world get into you. As soon as you recognize it, take captive of it, and give it to God instead of entertaining it.

…and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. (2 Corinthians 10:5)

Lord please help us to take any fleshly thoughts and desires captive and to clothe ourselves in you. Amen.

Cling to What is Good

Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. (Romans 12:9)

Seems like a simple enough verse, but this time, when I read it again, it really penetrated my heart. Being a newlywed, I got to think a lot more about love these days. What does love look like? How do we love well? and so on. Yes, of course love must be sincere. But what really caught my attention was what directly followed it, “Hate what is evil”. How do we know love towards God is sincere? We hate what is evil. God hates sin, and this is a question that we should all be asking ourselves: Do we hate sin? Do we hate what is evil? The Greek origin of the word “hate” is “ἀποστυγοῦντες”, it translates to “abhor” (regard with disgust and hatred) That’s a strong word. I would say sin bothers me, yes, and I try to stay away from it but I don’t think I regard it with such disgust. To be perfectly honest, sometimes certain sin does not seem so bad. I needed to check myself, and question my sincerity.

It moves on to the next part which says “cling to what is good.” That seems quite vague, but I was immediately reminded of Romans 7:18 “For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.” Then where is the “good” that I need to cling on to?

No one is good but One, that is, God. -Mark 10:18

We need to cling to God. It is as simple as that. The Greek origin of the word “cling” being “κολλώμενοι”, means to glue, and to unite. Not only be close to God or be near him, but actually glue ourselves to become one with God. The perfect union, cling on to him with our dear life and more and more by the power of Holy Spirit we are going to love what God loves and hate what God hates. Because we are one.

Lord, countless times I said I loved you, but I never really hated what you hated. Teach me how to cling on to you to so tightly and to stay away from evil at ALL times. Amen.

Don’t call me Naomi

“Don’t call me Naomi,” she told them. “Call me Mara, because the Almighty has made my life very bitter. (Ruth 1:20)

I think there is a period in everyone’s life when we go through this process of sorrow and bitterness. For Naomi, the sorrow of losing most of her family members truly impacted her. In biblical times, and even now, I believe name of a person is very significant. It’s not just something we call people by, but it determines their character and even their calling.

God called Abram and gave him a new name “Abraham”, or Jacob “Israel”, and Saul to “Paul” Their new names hold such significance and it God prophesies their future through it. Name is their identity.

But when Naomi lost her family, she decided to take her own fate into her hand and determine her future as “Bitter” She gave herself the wrong identity that was never meant for her. God given name “Naomi” means pleasantness, but because of her circumstances, she forgo her identity in God.

When we are faced with trials, first thing devil tries to do is accuse and try to take away your identity, or give you a wrong one. “you’re not worthy” “you are never enough” “you’re not loved” “you are not God’s precious one” All lies, and the area they attack the most is your identity. If we had a firm understanding of who we are in God (precious sons and daughters of the most high king) all these trials would not make you second guess who you are and who God is.

Lord, help us to truly believe in our identity in you as a children of God. Amen

A Living Stone

A Living stone. What an odd idea, I thought.
Because stone seems like the most lifeless and static thing in the world.

In 1 Peter 2 verse 4-5, “As you come to him, the living Stone– (Jesus is the living stone) – rejected by humans but chosen by God and precious to him – you also, (meaning US, you and me are also living stone) also like living stones are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood.

I could understand why God used to describe us as stones, because it is an integral part in building God’s temple/kingdom. Stone was a main building material at the time this was written. Jesus being described as the Cornerstone, was also very fitting, because cornerstone is what anchors the whole building (the very foundation) and it is absolutely crucial for the cornerstone to be perfect. 4 corners of the cornerstone being same height, without imperfection, perfectly leveled and balanced. (Jesus fulfilled the law and brought the true justice. God’s Righteousness was in Christ)

What about the other living stones then? (us) I imagine we are the building block of this beautiful house of God with Jesus as our core foundation. We are stacked right next to each other and on top of each other to support this structure. How we are united as a body of Christ is what really makes or breaks this building. As I was envisioning me as a stone in my head suddenly it hit me,

Stones cannot walk!

Stones cannot even move themselves to other places or do anything by itself. It needs to be moved BY someone. (In this case, the builder) We are living stone, who are completely and helplessly dependent on our master architect and the builder, God. All we have to do is trust him when you have no idea what the whole building looks like, or what the master plan is. We humbly let God place us in right places we were meant to be.

Only God has the blueprint.

Let’s say that a stone had a mind and agenda of its own and decided to jump out of a building to a sidewalk. In verse 8 it says “A stone that causes people to stumble and a rock that makes them fall.” They stumble because they disobey the message—which is also what they were destined for. We might be the ones making others stumble from our disobedience.

Lord, thank you so much for being our master builder and architect. We give our control over to you. We don’t want to live our lives on our own accord, but to submit fully to your word and follow your spirit daily. Amen.