Live Fully!

A Japanese doctor, Nojawa, Shigeo, invented a new method of farming named Hiponica in the 80s. His method produced tremendous results from ordinary garden plants.

An average tomato plant will mature to about 25 inches tall and yield about 20-30 tomatoes a year. But with the Hiponica farming, one will get a 10 feet tomato sprout with a 33 feet crown and an 8 inch trunk. What’s more amazing than the size of the plant is the amount of fruit it yields - around 13,000 tomatoes a year! How is this possible?

Dr. Shigeo discovered that soil was, in fact, an obstacle to the full growth of plants. So instead of using substrate, as he considered soil to be “a nuisance on the plant’s way to show its maximum potential”, he used no soil and only used a specially formulated nutrient packed liquid. Soil blocks oxygen and light on their way to the plant's roots. Furthermore, it is difficult to keep a stable temperature, fixed amount of nutrients and humidity using soil. Dr. Sigeo realized that the nutrients needed to grow the plant were able to be pulled from the soil itself. So rather than planting the tomato plants in soil, Dr. Siego immersed the plants' roots into a solution that was packed with the necessary nutrients.

With right conditions - the perfect amount of sunlight and a nutrient rich liquid with controlled temperature and humidity, the tomato plants utilized the nutrients to not grow a wider root system, but rather used all that energy to produce fruits which yielded an incredible amount of fruit.

Who would have thought that an ordinary garden plant could hold so much potential. When the most unlikely obstacle, soil, was taken away, the energy used to overcome the obstacles was used instead to maximize the plant's potential in producing fruits. 

I believe this is true with people as well. People carry many obstacles that prevent them from fully utilizing their God given potential. If we are able to overcome such obstacles, we can exercise and live fully in our God given potential. What are some of the obstacles in your life that are taking your energy from living a life fully for Jesus?

What are some of the hindrances that exist in your life, whether it be intentional sin or unintentional life circumstances, that continue to side track your walk with the Lord, that your life is stifled and stunted instead of blossoming into something beautiful God desires?

This week spend your time with the Lord. Ask as David did. 

“Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!” Psalm 139

Memorize Philippians 4.13 and recite to yourself:

“I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”

Remind yourself that God is thinking of you all the time:

How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! If I would count them, they are more than the sand. I awake, and I am still with you. Psalm 139

Live fully to your God given potential!

"I Say It Again Rejoice!"

We live in a negative world. A world that seems to be obsessed with bad news, a world that is filled with heartaches and a world where hurting people hurt each other.  So many people are simply angry at something; and they don’t even know why. Just this afternoon, I read that the man who tried to kill law officers died in a cabin about 100 miles from the city he once swore to serve. So much anger. So much pain. So much wasted life! How do we respond to this? What shall we do? 

In many ways, it’s hard to live with hope in this world. Are you familiar with Murphy’s Law? Murphy’s Law says, “If anything can go wrong, it will.” “If you wash your car on Saturday morning, then it will rain that afternoon.” “The other checkout line always moves faster.” “When things are going well, something will go wrong... just wait.” “When things can’t get any worse... they will.”

Why do we entertain these thoughts? We are called to live in the world but not be conformed to the ways of the world.

Paul made it clear that he was not impressed with this world. His citizenship was in heaven. Everything this world offered was nothing compared to life with Christ. In the hardest and darkest time Paul found hope and strength in his faith in the Jesus he met with each day!

If anyone had reasons to complain or ask for people to join in a pity party, surely Paul would be the one with the most reasons. Paul could stand up and declare his problems that would qualify him.

After his conversion on the way to Damascus, the Jerusalem Church continued to fear and shun him. Saul renamed Paul was a terrorist and not a Christian. They believed that God was merciful, but to a well known terrorist, no way!

Paul was put in prison in Philippi for preaching and casting out demon from a young girl that Satan had given an ability to tell the future. [Acts 16]

In Jerusalem Paul was falsely accused of desecrating the temple and was arrested and put on trial and eventually ended up in Rome under house arrest.

2 Corinthians 11:23-28 Paul gives a list of hardships he faced during his short life:

o in prison many times

o beaten severely with whips and rods

o exposed to death time and time again

o stoned with rocks

o shipwrecked and spent a night and day in the open sea

o in danger from both Jews and Gentiles

o gone without sleep

o gone without food and water

o lived everyday of his life in danger

How is your life? How is your day? Is it any worse than this?

Yet with all his hardships, the theme of Paul’s writing from the Philippian jail was “JOY!” Philippians 4:4, “Rejoice in the Lord always, I say it again, Rejoice!” Don’t let the devil have the best of you. Rejoice because the Lord is at work in your life! Don’t fear the troubles in life, be afraid when nothing happens at all!

J.I. Packer said, "We should not be upset when unexpected and upsetting and discouraging things happen. God in his wisdom means to make something of us which we have not yet attained and is dealing with us accordingly.

Let me end with one of my favorite Psalms - 

“I look up to the mountains -- does my help come from there? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth! He will not let you stumble; the one who watches over you will not slumber. Indeed, he who watches over Israel never slumbers or sleeps. The Lord Himself watches over you! The Lord stands beside you as your protective shade. The sun will not harm you by day, nor the moon at night. The Lord keeps you from all harm and watches over your life. The Lord keeps watch over you as you come and go both now and forever!” ~ Psalm 121

Amen! 

To Simply Love... by Pastor David Kim

I love You, Lord

And I lift my voice to worship You

Oh my soul, rejoice!

Take joy, my King, in what you hear

May it be a sweet, sweet sound in Your ear.

I love this song because it's nothing more than an honest declaration of our love to God.  We cry out to our God, lifting our voices to Him while demanding that our souls rejoice because of all that we have and experience through our God.  We rejoice in the fact that our action of worshipping and loving, and being loved by our Father is all that we need to sustain us through this life; because, after all, we were all created to worship and have communion with God.  The song ends with the simple request that what we sing, what we say and what we do would be pleasing to God.  Indeed, our lives, as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, is our spiritual act of worship.

Even though I love this song, at times I've found it difficult to sing.  Not because I'm not rejoicing in God. Nor because I don't want to be pleasing to God.  But because of the simple confession of my love for God.

As I look back on my Christian life, I can say a few things with certainty.  I've been faithful.  I've been obedient.  I've followed after God.  And all of these things out of my love for God.  But when I think about whether or not I've truly loved Him, I cannot say that I have with full confidence.

My love for God was stuck in that position of love between a God and the creation.  The love between a Father and a son.  But as I've been living life, I've realized that this is not enough.  That perhaps God wants a deeper, more intense, more intimate love.

Although we may not categorize our love for God in the same way we would categorize a romantic love with a spouse or a significant other, I believe that the same intense desire is demanded.  I have to even question whether or not the first assumption is true, whether or not our love for God is the same as a romantic love.  After all, the Bible does begin with the marriage of Adam and Eve and ends with the marriage of Christ and His church.  Not to mention, God is the source of all love.  Even the romantic aspects.

When people are in love, it's quite easy to notice.  They eagerly await a response to a text, they constantly think about their beloved, they go completely out of their way to spend just a moment with the one they cherish so dearly.  You may say that this is just infatuation or merely a honeymoon phase, but I truly believe that these are the moments of pure, untainted, unaltered love.  The moments when hour long commutes are nothing compared to the few minutes spent.  The moments when we go completely out of our way to get a glimpse of our love.  The moments when someone would be willing to die for the one they love rather than see them in pain.  I believe that this is the kind of love God has for us.  That He waits for us to kneel down before Him and spend a moment in prayer.  That He pushes certain events into our lives so that we would run back to Him when we have nowhere else to go.  That He would send His Son to die so that we might have even just a chance of returning to His open arms.

We love like this as well.  We get giddy with excitement when we hear the name of the person we adore.  We get butterflies when that special someone walks in through the door.  We get angry when another says something negative about our significant other.  Some of us will even pursue long distance relationships, traveling hours, just to maintain a connection with the one we love. 

Unfortunately, most of us cannot say that we love God in the same way.  I cannot remember the last time I went to sleep eagerly awaiting the morning so I could spend my day worshipping Him.  I cannot remember the last time I got angry when someone misused the name of my God.  I cannot remember the last time I spent hours on my knees praying to Him.

Sure, we serve Him.  We obey Him.  We follow diligently after Him.  All out of love.  But do we truly love Him?  We so often say that Christianity is not a religion but a relationship.  Is there love in this relationship? Or are we just blindly serving Christ?  Like I said, some may say that a romantic love isn't the kind of love we should have for God.  I disagree.  I believe our love for God should be reflective of every type of love that we know.  Romantic, familial, servant-like; every type of love that could be fulfilled by God.  After all, He is our bridegroom.  He is our Father.  He is our Lord.

I'm not particularly one to show emotions.  I strongly believe that Christianity involves much more than just feelings and emotions.  But a while ago, I had been weeping over my love for God.  Over how I would get so excited over a human, but barely anticipate the coming of my eternal Lord. As I prayed, I realized a lot of others are this way as well.  Of course, I'm in no position to judge how much one love's God.  But if our lovers asked us to introduce them to our friends, would we not do so?  If our lovers asked us to speak with them for hours, would we not do so?  If our lovers asked us to go away with them for days, would we not do so?  Would we do the same for our God?

I truly pray that we, as Disciple Church, our love for God would be unrivaled in our lives.  That we would wait eagerly for the seconds we get to spend with our God.  That people would look at us and say that we are obsessed with our God.  That in comparison to God, our love for everything else would appear as hate.  That we would simply love.

No More Guilt and Shame!

Early on in my faith, I heard many elders and deacons at the church I was attending pray on behalf of the congregation with these words: “Oh, God! Have mercy on us. We are less than worms. We are the worst of all sinners.” I accepted these words at face value. But when I read the Bible myself, I realized God never called those who are in Jesus with these words. God calls His people redeemed, saved, new creations, friends but never the words that were used by the elders and deacons I used to know. 

Romans 6 celebrates the glorious freedom we have in Jesus. Ephesians 2 celebrates the fact that we are new creations, created in Christ Jesus. In fact it uses the word, “poetry” to describe us who belong to Jesus. Poetry is emotional, expressive, thoughtful, moving...etc. God says you are my poetry! Over and over again, the Bible calls those who have accepted Jesus as their Lord and Savior as saints and holy ones. The primary identity of those who are in Jesus has shifted from ‘sinners’ to sons and daughters of God!

 In Romans 6, Paul rejoices over the truth that, where as we were once slaves to sin, God has redeemed us through Jesus and we are now ‘slaves to righteousness’ [Romans 6:18]. Followers of Jesus ought to accept their new identity in Christ which the gospel provides; and we ought to stop trying to defend the old identity, ‘sinners’!

Read 2 Corinthians 6:11|And that is what some of you WERE. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

Paul pens the above words after listing terrifying list of evils that had formally characterized the believers in Corinth. In fact, they were still struggling with much of their old habits such as idolatry, adultery, stealing, drinking...etc. So Paul reminds the Corinthian Christians, that the old habits were what they ‘WERE’ but now they are washed by the blood of Jesus, sanctified and justified in the name of Jesus by the Holy Spirit! Justified equated to being just as if they had not sinned! 

Some people may think that if we do not regard ourselves fundamentally as sinners, we will not value the cross and the blood Jesus shed upon the cross! But doesn’t the cross amaze you with wonder and worship, praise and thanksgiving, awe and surrender, not because you are a sinner but because a holy and supreme God, creator of all that exists, instead of ignoring us as He could have and sent to damnation in hell, decided to step out of eternity to save sinners so that they could be called sons and daughters of God? Don’t you think calling yourself a sinner essentially dishonor the wonder and the beauty of the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ? Friends we won the battle. We triumphed! It was a victory on the cross! From death to life.... sinners to saints!

To quote John Bunyan:

Run John run the law demands
But gives me neither legs nor arms
Better news the gospel brings
It bids me fly and gives me wings!

To quote Paul again, ‘If any man is in Christ he is a NEW CREATION. Old things are passed away, behold all things are become new.’ 

Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones ‘A new principle of life has been put into the Christian. He has a new disposition – the life of God in the soul of man! That is Christianity!’

Does this mean that Christians do not sin? Of course we do, there is a conflict in the world between the Spirit who lives in us with the forces of Satan. So we do sin! But we sin as saints with all the sadness and inappropriateness of it but not as sinners with all the inevitability!

Friends, claim your identity as sons and daughters of God. You are the bride of Jesus sanctified by His blood! Your core identity has shifted! Paul writes to the messed up, conflict littered, and sexually immoral church in Corinth with the follower words...

“To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of the our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”
1 Corinthians 1:2-3

Live not in guilt and shame but in the freedom Jesus provides for us through the shedding of the blood on the Cross! The Bible says that the resurrection power that raised Jesus from the dead resides in each one of His disciples! Live in that power! For it is for freedom Christ died for us! Blessings.