Jonah and me

I just came back from retreat last weekend and we learned from the book of Jonah in great detail. I said in great detail because I have never look at the book of jonah in depth and one thing that i always know since sunday school about jonah is that, he is the prophet who run away from God and was eaten by a fish and was there for 3 days. Nothing much more apart from that.

Another thing that I learned about Jonah last weekend is that he is an unwilling prophet who is used by God anyway to accomplish his desires which is to bring many people to him and build his kingdom. Through Jonah unwillingness, God brings the captains and people on board to be christians when they realised that Jonah's God is powerful even he is able to calm the sea ( Jonah 1:16). God also brings the nation of Niniveh to come to him even though Jonah was unwillingly telling them that God is against them. It shows that God is sovereign above all and he will accomplish whatever he desires regardless of our obedience (Isaiah 55:11).

What struck me most from the book of Jonah is when I found out that he was running away from God and his responsibilities because he knows that God is a compassionate God and will forgive the people of Niniveh. Basically, he doesnt wanna to go Niniveh and tell them that God is against them because he knows that they will turn back to God and God will forgive them thus God will not destroy them. He is so selfish that he wants God to destroys the nation of Niniveh.

God deffinitely doesnt wanna see sinners to die thats why he sent Jesus to die in our place, but Jonah selfishly wants the people of Niniveh to be destroyed.

Jonah has God's word but he doesnt have God's heart because he wants to see the people of Niniveh to be destroyed.

When i ponder about the kingdom of God, I wonder whether my attitude is the same as Jonah. I wonder whether i pick the people i want to share the gospel with, whether i love my group of friends too much and dislikes other people, whether the kingdom of god for me is limited to certain people only, whether i have an unwilling hearts like jonah and or whether i am running away from my responsibilities as a christians.

When it comes to the gospel, it is available diffinitely to all people not just my friends or those who i pick.

Are you sharing the gospel to build your own kingdom (that is to build up your own pride) or to build God's kingdom (that is to be God's centered) ???

Big relief

It fees like a huge weight has been taken from my shoulders knowing that tomorrow is my day off. A day where i wouldnt have a burden to wake up so early in the morning and able to sleep anytime i want tonight without having to worry that i'll be tired at work tomorrow because I dont have enough sleep.

Always feel exhausted on sunday night and feeling excited on friday night.

Thinking about future scares me. It will come to a time where i have to work full time continuously (for the rest of my life maybe) and not having add up to around 6 months of holiday in a year. Working hard definitely needs a lot of effort and will not be easy. At times it becomes a burden and becomes so hard to do it and we get tired and stop working hard. 

It is such a huge relief too to know that I dont have to work hard to earn God's favour because Jesus did the hard work for me. I dont have to work hard for the rest of my life just to purchase my ticket to heaven. I fail everytime i attempted to have a good habit so then it can balance out my bad habit because of my nature that is so reluctant and lazy.

I once read a blog post about feeling exhausted and the writer was saying that one of the reason of us feeling exhausted is because we rely on ourselves and we always fail.

I reckon this is a good news for everyone who doesnt wanna feel weary and burden by all the things that we have to do which are overwhelming. I feel tried already now having to think about working hard all my life to earn happiness because i know that my attempt would never meet God's standard. Many might think that after we submit our lifes to Jesus, we still have to work hard to do good things because we have to live a life that is pleasing to God which is putting off our sin aside. Are we signing up to a bunch of rules if we submit our life to Jesus??
I am reading a book called transforming grace by jerry Bridges at the moment and he discuss the issue of grace and good works which I would share later after i finish reading the book :D:D

Yup, there is no such free gift in this world, but through Jesus I received my salvation in full for free :D:D

I Love Church because...

Joshua Harris posted a blog a few weeks ago about wrong reasons to love the church which i find interesting and something that is worthwhile to think about as a christian.
I personally agree with his point about if you love the church because of the human leaders, they will let you down and yet I dont think that it only applies to human leaders. I think it applies to humans in general, the fact that we cant rely on human to give us complete satisfaction.