Living Up to God's Gift

Living Up to God's Gift

“For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Eph 2:10)

Khen Lim




Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson, originally published February 26 1986 (Image source: gocomics.com)

In the Parable of the Talents (Mt 25:14-30), Jesus relates how a master had planned a journey that would take him away for a very long time but before he set about to depart, he called upon three able servants and entrusted them with a fairly substantial amount of money in a hope that they would do something positive with it. This would be when he return in the future asking for an account from each of them.

How Did We Come To This? (Part Two/Final)

The grim reality of our unstoppable immorality

Khen Lim




Image source: advindicate.com

Unchangeable and permanently irreversible?

This is the kind of hope that the world can no longer depend on. Immorality has virtually come to stay. In the twenty-four fairly detailed areas we have described, the reader may begin to understand the depth of problem we are under throughout the world but these only scratch the surface. We certainly have not talked about many of the other examples of serious immorality including the following:

How Did We Come to This? (Part One)

The grim reality of our unstoppable immorality

Khen Lim




Image source: metal-archives.com

Introduction

Look at the world around us today. The eternal optimist will say it’s a great world out there. No conservative would ever be this optimistic. Only a liberal would believe that the world is changing for the better, that the people want equality, affirmative action, minority rights, free education and all sorts of handouts by the government and that they have the right to insist that the wealthy pay for their daily needs.

Gone is the world in which our parents remind us that success comes to those who work hard at their goals. Gone is the world where if you’re good at something, you can be any race, creed or colour because people will notice your skills and recognise the real value of your talents. Gone is the world in which honesty is cherished and immorality is not tolerated at all levels of government.

What we have left today is worse than a half-eaten plate of stale dog chow. We have an incredibly corrupted world filled everywhere with so much immorality that it’s a real worry trying to hand this world over to our children to inherit. There is so much evil happening literally around us that it’s difficult to know which target to aim at first and perhaps the hardest thing to swallow is that our governments are not in a hurry to do anything concrete in protecting their people from it.

In this in-depth article, we look at immorality and determine what it is that churches can do for their flock but before that, we have handpicked twenty-four areas to see how far we have turned away from God and the values He commanded us to embrace. Each of these areas offers us a cursory glimpse as to how much society has brazenly sinned against God and we try to offer some real-world examples for the reader to take note of.

Note: If you want to get on with the article and skip these details, wait for Part Two, which will be published next week and then head on to the chapter titled The Thessalonian Lesson.

The Parable of the Sower and the Soils

A Reflection of Matthew 13:23

By Khen Lim




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Lent has always been known as a dusty and pallid interlude in the period from Epiphany to Easter. It’s what some would call the ‘season of dirt.’ As of this time of writing, we’re nowhere near Lent but I remind myself that any time is still a good time to reflect on one of the most engaging of Jesus’ many celebrated parables. For here is a story that, whatever else it may be to others, it is about dirt. It is of no surprise that Jesus would once again be dealing with… dirt. God, it seems, has chosen to adopt a constant agrarian approach in many of the narratives in the Bible as evidenced from the time He “planted a garden in Eden, in the east.”

Inheriting an Upside-Down Kingdom

By Khen Lim



Image Source: snipview.com

Author of ‘Share Jesus Without Fear,’ Bill Fay is today also an ardent evangelist but he was not one since young. There was a time when, in his own words, he led a “pagan lifestyle.” In the website crosswalk.com, he tells a story of knowing and befriending the co-pilot of the private jet that he used in his heydays to ply his “illegal mob” trade whatever that meant. When his co-pilot came to Christ, he also made Bill promise that he would share the Good News with his son.

Notes to Understand the Parable of the Sower

By Khen Lim

This article is the sequel to the one entitled, Is It About the Soil or the Sower? published on the same date. It seeks to provide a deeper understanding of the Parable of the Sower.



Image Source: beliefnet.com

Is It About the Soil or the Sower?

By Khen Lim



Image Source: hayespress.org

Parables are a key feature in the Gospels and for good reason. They serve up moral or spiritual lessons. They are instructive and they are principled about the life that Christ wishes us to lead. The word parable itself has Greek origins - παραβολή – or parabolē (Hebrew מָשָׁל mashal) – is, simply put, an illustration or an allegory. The Gnostic standpoint is such that parables have their true meanings obscured so that only Jesus’ circle of disciples could understand.