Smallest Seed

Image above from Flickr. It's alarming when the church relies mainly on its intellect, logic and reason to understand God and his Word---which is where it's plunging headlong today. And at best, what it thinks it has spiritually is just plain instinct, not spiritual discernment. Instinct has to do with a fixed mindset or action in response to a stimulus. It's really inbred thinking pattern. God can use it to reveal to you but it's not the Holy Spirit's gift. Lots of mothers, even non-Christians, have instincts. Nothing spiritual about that. You can know a used cup was left on the table by your spouse (and not your child or someone else) due mainly to familiarity. If you've been counseling folks for years, you get to a point where sometimes you can easily tell their emotions by simply seeing familiar hints on their faces or moods. That's intuition and has nothing to do with God's spiritual gifts. What It Is and It Is Not God's discernm

Image from Instash Today, the modern church has gotten quite creative. It's doing a lot of ministries that seem to compete even with government programs or the rotary club, like dental and medical missions, sports clinics, bikers' clubs and feeding programs, to name a few. It also has crowd-drawing programs like concerts, music fests and non-stop worship that target especially the youth. These are all good and in keeping with Paul's maxim, "All things to all men, that I may save some." Indeed, we can lend the world our creative minds in Christ to help more people. For instance, instead of just giving poor folks free meals or helping calamity victims with relief goods, we add a little spiritual color by sharing God's Word, too. What Jesus Actually Did But we should be careful not to neglect Jesus' real ministry in the bible. Ministry diversification is good---exploring more ways to reach people by becoming creatively responsive to their need

Jesus was dead serious when he told the people to  eat his flesh. He said it like it wasn't figurative in any way. He is really the Bread of Life, and as Bread we have to really eat him. Bread is food, after all, designed to be eaten. And eating him is the only way to have eternal life. Watch this: For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. 56 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them. [John 6] Before that, he said: Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. His flesh is real food . It's literal. But then, it's literal in a spiritual way. You really have to "eat him" in the spirit. I know smart Alecks will tell me it's figurative. But no, I believe it's literal, but in a spiritual sense, like how we true believers can see Jesus and the Holy Spirit, as Jesus said in John 14, which we'd tackle in another issue. The world cannot see him but we believer

Image from ZipRecruiter. One book author said it well. Most churches today lack love, especially for sinners. They may love each other in church but they often neglect non-Christians who sometimes feel left out or out-of-place because believers keep their church fellowships too tightly sealed---like an exclusive club. Non-believers find it hard to squeeze their way in. But what's the solution? The popular notion today is to give special treatment to the unchurched. I even read something about asking people what they want or expect from a church and build church from that foundation. In other words, go after people. They say that demonstrates "love" for sinners. Yeah, once upon a time I also thought so. I made sure I entertained visitors in church, made them feel welcome so they'd go back next Sunday. I thought that was how Jesus did it---until one day I sought Scriptures to confirm it. Sinners Should Pursue Jesus (That's God's Love) To my surprise,

Image from Optimal. There was a time I tired of going to church. Really. I was excited about God but not anymore the church---I mean "church" as religious people have made it---the programs and activities and everything they do there "for God" which had all become meaningless to me. What they called "ministry." Since then, I've always looked for churches that look like Jesus' ministry and the Acts church. Especially preaching---I really tired of hearing about church growth and strategies and how to reach people out there and bring them in church---and inspirational preaching about them. These are important but NOT as important as the one thing that Mary chose and which Martha didn't see. This story has been there in the bible but the church has never really learned from it. They still prioritize what makes them worry and upset about many things and neglect the one thing that's really needed. I heard this preaching in church year i

Image from ShareFaith. You'd probably say an angel told the shepherds to go to the manger scene so they ended up there. Not quite. But this is what most people think happened. Actually, the angel simply tickled their imagination and aroused their curiosity. Anyone proclaiming the good news about Jesus Christ should use this Kingdom principle instead of "trapping" people into attending their churches each Sunday. But why shepherds? Why did they have to be there? Why not prominent people like Herod or the rich? Shepherds were the poorest people and the lowest type of laborers at the time. They were unschooled and often rough mannered. And yet, they were the first to be told of the birth of Jesus. But first things first---take note that God chose to send his Son to a poor family when he came to the world to save us. It was no accident. It was pre-planned. Father, Son and Holy Spirit sat down and carefully planned all this and decided to go to a poor and weak nati

Dappered You know the story---there was a wedding at Cana and wine ran out. If you carefully study the passage, you'd see that Mary, Jesus and his disciples were somewhere near the servants when Mary urged Jesus about the shortage of wine. After Jesus told Mary, "Woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come," we see Mary immediately talking with the servants. "Do whatever he tells you." This means they stayed where the servants were. I'm sure we wouldn't find the servants sitting at one of the banquet tables reserved for guests, and definitely not at the presidential table. Where were the servants? Most probably in the kitchen, right? Or even in the "dirty" kitchen. Here's another proof Jesus and his disciples and mother were in the kitchen. When Jesus was ready to turn water into wine, he told the servants to fill the six stone jars with water. Definitely, this scene could not be taking place in the main re

Dreamstime.com You seldom see Jesus approaching the rich in the Gospel. He took time to visit a dying servant (though he found her dead on his arrival) and personally visited Peter, James and John to invite them to be his disciples, but I don't remember him taking time to visit the rich or those in high positions. In Luke, he said "Blessed are the poor" and in another instance he praised a poor widow who gave her last two small copper coins, while belittling the donations of the rich. Except for one guy---Zacchaeus, I often wonder why Jesus stayed away from the rich. What did he see in Zacchaeus to invite himself to his house, even saying, "I must stay at your house today." Was it because Zacchaeus wanted to see him? But other rich people wanted to see him, too. Nicodemus wanted to see him, but Jesus never invited himself to his place. I think it was Zacchaeus' death-defying tree-climb that prompted Jesus to want to stay at his place. Seriousl

www.gettyimages.com I've always been intrigued by Jesus' disinterest in people. No doubt, he had compassion on them. He loved them. But he always reserved an element of detachment. Some may call it objectivity, perhaps. I prefer calling it disinterest . For instance, he just let the rich young ruler walk away. This rich, young guy was the ideal church member---dedicated to Scriptures, rich, a leader and young and idealistic. What pastor is going to let someone like that get away after coming to him to seek advice? Most pastors would entertain and grab him for membership. But not Jesus. He simply watched him walk away. He loved him, but he was disinterested about him. Interested people would have gone after him, taken his address and visited him often for follow up. That's what pastors are trained to do. And who wouldn't want Nicodemus, teacher of Israel and respected member of the powerful Sanhedrin, as his follower or even church member? Imagine an i

www.dreamstime.com You may be wondering---why do we need to receive Jesus Christ into our hearts and why does he have to enter into our bodies? Why can't God just declare us saved once we have faith in him? Jesus has to enter our bodies because he needs to be revealed in us. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body. [2 Corinthians 4.10-11] How important is Christ being in us? Paul described it simply: "Christ in you the hope of glory." It's God's plan to glorify Jesus Christ in our bodies. Thus, we have to receive him, invite him to enter our bodies---our lives---so we can reveal him in these last days. The idea is to form Christ in us: My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you, [Galatians 4.

questionsfacingmen.wordpress.com "Go tell that fox!" said Jesus one time. "Fox" is a crafty or tricky person, like how unscrupulous politicians are. It's not a good word to describe the top leader of your nation. Jesus was referring to King Herod who supposedly wanted to kill him. Not very nice of Jesus, was it? Well, not very nice of Herod, too. Jesus was frank and honest. He wasn't one to flatter people with nice but inapt words. When Jesus spoke, you always got what you deserved, although his grace made sure you didn't get it full-swing. Most pastors have been accustomed to being too nice to people, sometimes even overly too nice to the point of aiming to over-please everyone at all times. In fact, most ministries are actually PR organizations designed primarily to keep people feeling good about themselves and pampered and spoiled---so they'd keep coming back to church every Sunday. I've always wondered why Jesus was different. H

www.inc.com Even when I was already actively doing ministry the denominational way, I'd been questioning some things we were doing. My question was, why didn't Jesus do them? Sure, the things church denominations were doing resulted to increased church membership and increased church income, plus increased number of churches planted. But I saw that these increases didn't really mean the Gospel was being spread and people really getting to know the King and his Kingdom. Often, it only meant people were becoming more aware of the church denomination and gradually getting involved there. What I saw more was the spread or expansion of the church denomination using God's Word as cover or front. Honestly. And I was beginning to be disappointed. The goal then was really to get more people into the church so there would be more money to build more churches elsewhere for the denomination and be able to say, "Hey, look how our church denomination is growing!"