blueSpirit

2 Chronicles 역대하 12 - 17 장

2009-11-23T04:34:20Z

역대하 12 장 1-8‏ 절‏ 입니다.

르호보암이 다스리는 유다는 점점 강성하게 되었습니다.

그러나 르호보암은 어리석게도 나라가 강성해지자 하나님의 은혜를 잊어버리고 교만해지고 말았습니다.

즉 그는 하나님의 말씀을 버리는 치명적인 실수를 하고 말았습니다.

이 사건은 르호보암만이 아니라 우리도 얼마든지 저지를 수 있는 실수임을 기억해야 합니다.

1. 르호보암의 실수

우리가 아는대로 인생의 위기는 힘들고 어려울 때가 아닙니다.

만사가 잘 풀리고 평안할 때 넘어지기 쉽습니다.

사도 바울은 그래서 스스로 선줄로 생각하는 사람은 넘어질까 조심하라고 했습니다 (고전10:12).

3년동안 형통했을 때에 그는 하나님을 버리고 말았습니다.

자기가 잘해서 그렇게 된 줄 알았던 것입니다.

거기다가 방백들과 백성들은 아무 생각없이 르호보암을 따르고 말았습니다.

한 가정이나 나라의 지도자는 그래서 중요한 것입니다.

2. 하나님의 사랑을 받는 법

하나님을 떠나자 하나님은 애굽을 들어 유다를 치셨습니다.

르호보암을 그렇게 노력을 들여 지어놓은 성읍들을 순식간에 함락되고 말았습니다.

성을 지켜주시는 분은 하나님 이십니다. 군대가 아닙니다.

선지자 스마야를 통해 하나님은 유다를 책망하십니다.

다행스럽게도 유다는 회개하고 돌아옵니다. 하나님은 회개하면 용서해 주십니다.

3. 하나님의 용서과 채찍

유다의 수도 예루살렘이 상하지 않도록 지켜주십니다.

그러나 저들은 애굽을 섬겨야 했습니다.

그러면서 하나님을 섬기는 것과 세상 나라를 섬기는 것 중에 어떤 것이 힘든 것인지 깨닫도록 하셨습니다.

평안할 수록, 형통한 때일 수록, 하나님만 섬기는 우리가 되어야 하겠습니다.

복된 하루 되세요.

역대하 12 장 9-16‏ 절‏ 입니다.

전임자 보다 잘하는 대통령이 있는가 하면 못하는 대통령도 있습니다.

과거보다 현재를 낫게 만드는 사람이 있는가 하면, 과거보다 현재를 못하게 만드는 사람도 있습니다.

부왕 솔로몬으로 부터 강대한 나라를 물려 받았던 르호보암은

이스라엘을 둘로 쪼개더니 이내 형편없는 나라를 만들고 말았습니다.

세상에 우연은 없습니다. 이런 결과를 가져온 원인은 우리에게 또 다른 교훈을 전해 줍니다.

1. 금방패에서 놋 방패로

애굽왕 시삭은 예루살렘을 유린합니다. 예루살렘의 보물들을 약탈해 갑니다.

특히 솔로몬 시대의 영광과 부요의 상징이었던 금방패로 모조리 가져갑니다.

르호보암은 금 방패 대신에 구리 방패를 만들게 합니다.

금과 구리 비슷해 보였겠지만 옛 금방패를 기억하는 예루살렘 사람들에게는 초라한 모습이었을 것입니다.

르호보암은 과거보다 못한 현재를 만든 그런 왕이 되고 말았습니다.

2. 고통을 자초한 사람

왜 이렇게 되었습니까?

그는 먼저 백성들의 요구와 나라 원로들의 조언을 무시했습니다.

그 결과 나라를 둘로 분단되었습니다.

하나님의 은혜로 3년동안의 강성기가 있었지만 그만 교만해져서

이번에는 여호와의 율법을 즉 하나님의 말씀을 버리고 말았습니다.

그리고 백성들을 잘못된 길로 오도하고 말았습니다.

3. 하나님의 평가기준

그의 사후에 그에 대한 평가는 그는 악을 행한 왕으로 기록합니다.

특별히 그는 '여호와를 구하는 마음을 굳게 하지 않았다'고 했습니다.

이 말을 이렇게도 번역할 수 있습니다.

'여호와를 구하는 마음을 고정시키지 않았다' 흔들렸다는 것입니다.

상황이 좋을 때는 하나님을 버리고 상황이 좋지 않을 때는 하나님을 찾았던 그런 사람이었습니다.

그를 향하여 '악했다' 고 하십니다. 오늘도 하나님은 우리의 삶을 기록하십니다.

모두가 아름다운 삶의 기록을 가지고 하나님 앞에 설 수 있어야 하겠습니다.

어제 보다 나은 오늘, 그리도 오늘 보다 더 나은 내일을 만드시는 복되 하루 되세요.

역대하 13 장 1-12 절‏ 입니다.

르호보암의 뒤를 이어 유다의 왕이된 사람의 아비야였습니다.

그의 재위 기간동안 북 이스라엘과 남 유다간의 전면전이 발생했습니다.

르호보암 시대에도 크고 작은 충돌이 있었지만 아비야 시대에 일어난 전쟁은

각각 40만과 80만 즉 120만명이 동원된 대규모 전쟁이었습니다.

이 전쟁을 통한 교훈은 무엇입니까?

1. 두 배로 많은 적

아비야는 40만명을 여로보암은 80만의 병력을 이끌고 전쟁에 임했습니다.

그런데 아비야가 생각보다 담대했습니다.

40만대 80만이면 숫적으로 절대 열세라고 볼 수 있습니다.

그러나 그는 두려워하지 않았습니다.

전쟁은 병력의 숫자에 달려있지 않다(삼상 14:6)는 것을 아비야는 알았습니다.

그랬기에 적은 수의 병력을 가지고도 담대히 전쟁에 임했습니다.

2. 정치적 정통성

아비야는 적을 앞에 두고 적을 향해 연설을 합니다.

그가 가장 먼저 언급한 것은 정치적 정통성의 문제였습니다.

솔로몬의 신하였던 여로보암이 이스라엘의 왕이 된 것은 잘못이라는 것이었습니다.

여로보암은 난봉꾼과 잡배들을 모아 나라는 세운것이라고 비난했습니다.

정치적 정통성이 문제가 되면 대의 명분을 상실할 수 있습니다.

대의명분을 상실하면 사실 전쟁의 필연성을 잃을 수도 있습니다.

아비야는 그것을 노린 것이었습니다.

3. 신앙적 정통성

이스라엘은 남으로 내려가는 자국민을 막기 위해 금송아지 둘을 만들었습니다.

그리고 그것이 곧 하나님이라고 했습니다.

그리고는 숫 송아지 한마리와 양 일곱마리를 드리면 누구나 제사장이 될 수 있었습니다.

이건 하나님을 떠나도 아주 많이 떠난 것입니다.

제사장들과 레위인 그리고 경건한 이스라엘 사람들이 남으로 피난을 내려온 이유였습니다.

그러나 유다는 성전 중심의 신앙생활을 잘 이어가고 있었습니다.

즉 신앙의 정통성이 유다에게 있었다는 것입니다.

이것이 이 전쟁의 승리의 비결이었습니다.

우리는 정치적 정통성도 잘 지켜야 하지만 더 중요한 것은 신앙의 정통성 입니다.

신앙의 정통성을 잘 지키면 담대합니다.

하나님께서 나와 함께 하심을 확신하기 때문입니다.

복된 하루 되세요.

역대하 14 - 15 장 1-7 절‏ 입니다.

유다의 아비야 왕이 죽고 그 뒤를 이어 아사가 왕이 되었습니다.

아사 왕은 재임 기간 동안 훌륭하게 나라를 다스렸습니다.

나라에 평안이 찾아왔습니다. 어떻게 평안이 찾아왔을까요?

1. 없앰으로 누리는 평안 이었습니다.

북 이스라엘과 남 유다를 비교해 보면 유다가 모든 면에서 열세였습니다.

국토의 크기도, 인구 수도, 산업도 그랬습니다.

그러나 한가지 하나님을 섬기는데는 유다가 열심이었습니다.

아사 왕은 하나님 보시기에 기뻐하시는 일을 했습니다.

그것은 유다에 들어와 있던 이방신의 제단과 산당을 없앴고,

주상을 깨뜨렸으며, 아세라 상을 찍어버렸고, 태양상을 제거했습니다.

이런 것들을 없애자 유다에 평안이 찾아왔습니다. 없앰으로 얻은 평안이었습니다.

하나님의 백성은 마땅히 없애야 할 것을 없앨때 평안이 있습니다.

2. 얻음으로 누리는 평안이었습니다.

아사 왕은 이런 고백을 합니다.

'우리가 주를 찾음으로 주께서 우리 사방에 평안을 주셨느니라'(14:7).

그분을 찾아 그분을 얻음으로 누리는 평안이었습니다.

하나님은 우리에게 평화와 평안을 주시는 분이십니다.

3. 믿음으로 누리는 평안이었습니다.

큰 전쟁이 일어났을 때 아사 왕은 자신의 군대를 의지하지 않고 하나님을 믿었습니다.

승리케 하시는 하시는 하나님, 약한 자와 강한 자 사이에서 도우실 분은

오직 주 여호와 하나님 뿐임을(14:11) 고백하며 기도했습니다.

전쟁 속에서도 믿음으로 평안을 누렸습니다.

평안을 누리시길 바랍니다.

역대하 15 장 8-19‏ 절‏ 입니다.

아사 왕의 2차 부흥운동입니다.

먼저 유다와 베냐민 온 땅에서 가증한 우상을 제하고 성전의 현관을 새롭게 단장했습니다.

아사 왕의 부흥운동을 통해 우리가 가야할 신앙의 길을 제시해 줍니다.

1. 그는 먼저 우상을 제거했습니다.

자기 통치하는 땅에서 우상을 제거하였으며, 빼앗은 성에서도 우상을 제하였습니다.

우리도 하나님과 교제하는 영적인 생활을 소홀하게 될 때 우리 마음에 어느새 우상이 들어서게 됩니다.

그리고 마음의 우상은 곧 눈에 보이는 우상으로 나타납니다. 우상을 제거해야 합니다.

2. 하나님을 찾았습니다.

아사 왕이 하나님을 찾으니 하나님께서 그와 함께 하셨습니다.

하나님께서 그와 함께 하시는 것을 보고 북 왕국 이스라엘 사람들이 유다로 내려 왔습니다.

그리고 온 백성이 하나님을 섬기지 않는 자들은 사형에 처하겠다고 큰 결단을 합니다.

하나님은 그들에게 평안의 복을 주셨습니다.

우리가 하나님 앞에 바로서면 하나님은 우리를 축복하십니다.

강건케 하십니다. 도와 주십니다. 다른 사람들이 알게 하십니다.

그리고 사람들을 붙여 주십니다.

3. 약속을 실천했습니다.

아사 왕의 어머니 즉 태후 마아가가 가증한 아세라 목상을 만들었습니다.

아사 왕은 태후의 위를 폐하였습니다.

그리고 우상을 부수고 빻아서 불살라 버렸습니다.

왕은 타협하지 않고 백성들 앞에서 약속을 지켰습니다.

성경은 그의 모습을 이렇게 전합니다.

'아사의 마음이 일평생 온전하였더라' (17).

그리고 하나님은 그의 시대에 평화를 허락해 주셨습니다(19).

선명한 하나님의 사람으로 살아가기를 소원합니다.

복된 하루 되시길 빕니다.

역대하 16 장 1-14 절‏ 입니다.

사람은 누구에게나 위기가 옵니다.

그 위기는 어려운 때도 오지만 때로 평안의 때도 옵니다.

그 위기를 우리는 어떻게 대처해야 할까요?

1. 아사 왕의 첫번째 위기

35년간 전쟁이 없는 태평성대를 구가하던 어느날

북 왕국 이스라엘 왕 바아사가 남 유다를 침공해 들어왔습니다.

이 난국을 해결하기 위해 아사 왕은 성전과 왕궁의 금과 은을 거두어

아람 왕 벤하닷에게 보내며 바아사를 치도록 요청합니다.

그리고 그와 같은 외교 전술은 아사 왕의 승리로 마무리 되었습니다.

언뜻 보면 아무 문제가 없어 보이는 사건이지만 그렇지 않았습니다.

하나님을 의지하던 아사 왕이 변한 것입니다.

전쟁이 일어나도 하나님을 의지하지 않고 힘있는 이웃 나라의 왕을 의지했던 것입니다.

아사와 유다나라에게 있어서 이것이 진짜 위기였습니다.

어쩌면 오랜 평안이 아사 왕으로 하여금 하나님을 잊게 했는지도 모릅니다.

2. 아사 왕의 두번째 위기

하나님은 선지자 하나니를 통해서 아사 왕에게 경고의 멧시지를 보내셨습니다.

그러나 아사 왕은 선지자를 통해 들려지는 하나님의 말씀을 듣고 화를 냅니다.

하나니를 옥에 가두어 버립니다. 그리고 충언을 했던 신하들을 탄압했습니다.

하나니를 옥에 가두었다는 것은 결국 하나님을 옥에 가둔것이나 다름 없었습니다.

정말 아사 왕은 큰 위기에 빠졌습니다.

오늘 우리에게도 주의 종을 통해 들려지는 경고의 말씀들이 있을때 어떻게 받습니까?

화가 나지는 않습니까? 감사함으로 받고 돌이킵니까? 상처 운운하며 거부하지는 않습니까?

3. 아사 왕의 세번째 위기

아사 왕의 육신에 병이 들었습니다.

그런데 그럼에도 아사 왕은 하나님을 의지하지 않고 의사를 의지했습니다.

하나님께 돌아올 수 있는 마지막 기회조차 그는 놓치고 말았습니다.

내 경험, 내 능력을 자꾸 믿고 행동하게 되면 하나님을 잊게 됩니다.

다른 그 어떤 상황이 위기가 아닙니다.

위기의 때 하나님을 의지하지 않는 것이 위기 입니다.

하나님만 의지하는 복된 하루 되세요.

역대하 17 장 1-9‏ 절‏ 입니다.

아사 왕의 아들 여호사밧은 왕이 되자 다윗의 처음 길로 행했습니다.

다윗의 처음 길이란 우상을 섬기지 않고 하나님만 의지하며 신실한 믿음의 길을 간 것을 말합니다.

이런 여호사밧에게 하나님이 주신 복은 '하나님의 함께 하심', 곧 '임마누엘'의 복이었습니다.

1. 그는 자주국방 정책을 폈습니다.

외국을 의지하지 않고 스스로 국방을 강화했습니다.

술수가 아닌 정당한 방법으로 나라를 지키고자 했던 것입니다.

모든 성읍에 군대를 주둔시켰으며,

부왕이 점령한 지역에는 더 강력한 수비대를 보내 지키도록 했습니다.

우리도 혹 부실해진 영적진지는 없는지 돌아보고 든든히 세워가야 합니다.

2. 그는 하나님을 의지했습니다.

'그의 아버지의 하나님께 구했다'는 말은 하나님을 의지했다는 말입니다.

그러자 하나님은 그에게 나라를 견고하게 해주셨고 그에게 부귀와 영화를 주셨습니다.

오늘도 많은 사람들이 우상을 찾습니다.

불안한 미래 때문에 점을 치는 집이 성행을 합니다.

신문에 오늘의 운세는 빼놓을 수 없는 중요한 페이지가 되었습니다. 아닙니다.

우리는 하나님을 의지해야 합니다. 그래야 하나님께서 함께 하십니다.

3. 그는 말씀을 가르쳤습니다.

산당들과 우상을 제거한 여호사밧은 이제 백성들에게 말씀을 가르쳤습니다.

진정 나라를 부강하게 하는 방법은 다름 아닌 말씀을 가르치는 것임을 그는 알았습니다.

모든 교육의 근본은 하나님의 말씀입니다.

여호사밧은 버릴 것은 버리고, 취할 것은 취함으로 하나님이 주시는 복을 받았습니다.

오늘 내가 버려야 할 것은 무엇인지, 그리고 취해야 할 것은 무엇인지 깊이 생각해 보십니다.

승리하세요.

역대하 17 장 10-19 절‏ 입니다.

여호사밧 왕이 백성들에게 말씀을 가르치며 온전한 부흥과 신앙의 개혁에 힘쓰자

하나님께서는 그 나라를 강성케 하셨습니다.

주변 사방의 열국들이 함부로 유다를 넘보지 못하도록 지켜주셨습니다.

우리가 얻을 교훈은 무엇입니까?

1. 열국이 유다를 두려워하게 되었습니다.

권투 선수들이 시합전에 체중을 재면서부터 서로 으르렁 거리고 신경전을 벌입니다.

기 싸움을 하는 것이지요. 싸움을 물리적인 충돌이 있기전에 정신력으로 먼저 판가름이 납니다.

하나님께서 유다의 주변 나라들에 두려움을 불어넣으셨습니다.

저들은 싸우지도 않고 유다를 두려워하게 되었습니다.

여호사밧 왕이 말씀을 가까이 하며 백성에게 가르쳤더니 하나님은 유다를 존귀케 하셨습니다.

2. 점점 강대해졌습니다.

점점 쇠하는 나라가 있고, 점점 강대해 지는 나라가 있습니다.

요즘 미국은 점점 쇠하여 가고 있습니다. 그전에 미국의 동네 마다 있는 교회들이 먼저 쇠하여 왔습니다.

오늘 중국은 점점 강대해지고 있습니다.

비록 지하 교회이지만 중국은 세계에서 가장 빠른 속도로 기독교인 인구가 늘어나는 나라 중 하나 입니다.

벌써 지하교회 출신의 선교사들이 나오고 있습니다. 하나님이 함께 하시면 점점 강대해 집니다.

3. 즐거이 여호와께 헌신하게 되었습니다.

하나님의 은혜를 깨달으니 즐거이 헌신하는 지도자들이 나오게 되었습니다.

여호사밧 시대의 군대 장관 중 아마시야는 자신을 하나님께 즐거이 드린자 였다고 했습니다.

하나님 앞에 드리되 아낌없이 즐거이 드린 사람이었습니다.

하나님은 이런 사람에게 복을 주십니다. 이런 사람이 많은 나라를 축복하십니다.

여호사밧은 나라가 강성하고 평안할 때도 교만하지 않았습니다. 긴장을 늦추지 않았습니다.

하나님을 바라보며 그가 맡은 사명에 최선을 다했습니다.

하나님의 도우심으로 여러분의 가정과 사업이 점점 강대해 지시길 바랍니다.

http://sahnsem.com by Pastor Joseph Yoon

tag : 믿음, 축복, 평화, 사명, 용서, 은혜, 승리, 하나님, 교훈, 역대하, 아름다운 삶, Chronicles, 없앰으로 누리는 평안

Mere Christianity - Book Four - Making and Begetting

2009-11-23T03:53:47Z

Book Four

Beyond Personality:

Or First Steps In The Doctrine Of The Trinity

1. Making and Begetting

Everyone has warned me not to tell you what I am going to tell you in
this last book. They all say "the ordinary reader does not want Theology;
give him plain practical religion." I have rejected their advice. I do not
think the ordinary reader is such a fool. Theology means "the science of
God," and I think any man who wants to think about God at all would like to
have the clearest and most accurate ideas about Him which are available. You
are not children: why should you be treated like children?

In a way I quite understand why some people are put off by Theology. I
remember once when I had been giving a talk to the RA.F., an old,
hard-bitten officer got up and said, "I've no use for all that stuff. But,
mind you, I'm a religious man too. I know there's a God. I've felt Him: out
alone in the desert at night: the tremendous mystery. And that's just why I
don't believe all your neat little dogmas and formulas about Him. To anyone
who's met the real thing they all seem so petty and pedantic and unreal!"

Now in a sense I quite agreed with that man. I think he had probably
had a real experience of God in the desert. And when he turned from that
experience to the Christian creeds, I think he really was turning from
something real to something less real. In the same way, if a man has once
looked at the Atlantic from the beach, and then goes and looks at a map of
the Atlantic, he also will be turning from something real to something less
real: turning from real waves to a bit of coloured paper. But here comes the
point. The map is admittedly only coloured paper, but there are two things
you have to remember about it. In the first place, it is based on what
hundreds and thousands of people have found out by sailing the real
Atlantic. In that way it has behind it masses of experience just as real as
the one you could have from the beach; only, while yours would be a single
isolated glimpse, the map fits all those different experiences together. In
the second place, if you want to go anywhere, the map is absolutely
necessary. As long as you are content with walks on the beach, your own
glimpses are far more fun than looking at a map. But the map is going to be
more use than walks on the beach if you want to get to America.

Now, Theology is like the map. Merely learning and thinking about the
Christian doctrines, if you stop there, is less real and less exciting than
the sort of thing my friend got in the desert. Doctrines are not God: they
are only a kind of map. But that map is based on the experience of hundreds
of people who really were in touch with God-experiences compared with which
any thrills or pious feelings you and I are likely to get on our own are
very elementary and very confused. And secondly, if you want to get any
further, you must use the map. You see, what happened to that man in the
desert may have been real, and was certainly exciting, but nothing comes of
it. It leads nowhere. There is nothing to do about it In fact, that is just
why a vague religion-all about feeling God in nature, and so on-is so
attractive. It is all thrills and no work; like watching the waves from the
beach. But you will not get to Newfoundland by studying the Atlantic that
way, and you will not get eternal life by simply feeling the presence of God
in flowers or music. Neither will you get anywhere by looking at maps
without going to sea. Nor will you be very safe if you go to sea without a
map.

In other words, Theology is practical: especially now. In Ac old days,
when there was less education and discussion, perhaps it was possible to get
on with a very few simple ideas about God. But it is not so now. Everyone
reads, everyone hears things discussed. Consequently, if you do not listen
to Theology, that will not mean that you have no ideas about God. It will
mean that you have a lot of wrong ones-bad, muddled, out-of-date ideas. For
a great many of the ideas about God which are trotted out as novelties
today, are simply the ones which real Theologians tried centuries ago and
rejected. To believe in the popular religion of modern England is
retrogression-like believing the earth is fiat.

For when you get down to it, is not the popular idea of Christianity
simply this: that Jesus Christ was a great moral teacher and that if only we
took his advice we might be able to establish a better social order and
avoid another war? Now, mind you, that is quite true. But it tells you much
less than the whole truth about Christianity and it has no practical
importance at all.

It is quite true that if we took Christ's advice we should soon be
living in a happier world. You need not even go as far as Christ. If we did
all that Plato or Aristotle or Confucius told us, we should get on a great
deal better than we do. And so what? We never have followed the advice of
the great teachers. Why are we likely to begin now? Why are we more likely
to follow Christ than any of the others? Because he is the best moral
teacher? But that makes it even less likely that we shall follow him. If we
cannot take the elementary lessons, is it likely we are going to take the
most advanced one? If Christianity only means one more bit of good advice,
then Christianity is of no importance. There has been no lack of good advice
for the last four thousand years. A bit more makes no difference.

But as soon as you look at any real Christian writings, you find that
they are talking about something quite different from this popular religion.
They say that Christ is the Son of God (whatever that means). They say that
those who give Him their confidence can also become Sons of God (whatever
that means). They say that His death saved us from our sins (whatever that
means).

There is no good complaining that these statements are difficult
Christianity claims to be telling us about another world, about something
behind the world we can touch and hear and see. You may think the claim
false; but if it were true, what it tells us would be bound to be
difficult-at least as difficult as modern Physics, and for the same reason.

Now the point in Christianity which gives us the greatest shock is the
statement that by attaching ourselves to Christ, we can "become Sons of
God." One asks "Aren't we Sons of God already? Surely the fatherhood of God
is one of the main Christian ideas?" Well, in a certain sense, no doubt we
are sons of God already. I mean, God has brought us into existence and loves
us and looks after us, and in that way is like a father. But when the Bible
talks of our "becoming" Sons of God, obviously it must mean something
different. And that brings us up against the very centre of Theology.

One of the creeds says that Christ is the Son of God "begotten, not
created"; and it adds "begotten by his Father before all worlds." Will you
please get it quite clear that this has nothing to do with the fact that
when Christ was born on earth as a man, that man was the son of a virgin? We
are not now thinking about the Virgin Birth. We are thinking about something
that happened before Nature was created at all, before time began. "Before
all worlds" Christ is begotten, not created. What does it mean?

We don't use the words begetting or begotten much in modern English,
but everyone still knows what they mean. To beget is to become the father
of: to create is to make. And the difference is this. When you beget, you
beget something of the same kind as yourself. A man begets human babies, a
beaver begets little beavers and a bird begets eggs which turn into little
birds. But when you make, you make something of a different kind from
yourself. A bird makes a nest, a beaver builds a dam, a man makes a wireless
set-or he may make something more like himself than a wireless set: say, a
statue. If he is a clever enough carver he may make a statue which is very
like a man indeed. But, of course, it is not a real man; it only looks like
one. It cannot breathe or think. It is not alive.

Now that is the first thing to get clear. What God begets is God; just
as what man begets is man. What God creates is not God; just as what man
makes is not man. That is why men are not Sons of God in the sense that
Christ is. They may be like God in certain ways, but they are not things of
the same kind. They are more like statues or pictures of God.

A statue has the shape of a man but it is not alive. In the same way,
man has (in a sense I am going to explain) the "shape" or likeness of God,
but he has not got the kind of life God has. Let us take the first point
(man's resemblance to God) first. Everything God has made has some likeness
to Himself. Space is like Him in its hugeness: not that the greatness of
space is the same kind of greatness as God's, but it is a sort of symbol of
it, or a translation of it into non-spiritual terms. Matter is like God in
having energy: though, again, of course, physical energy is a different kind
of thing from the power of God. The vegetable world is like Him because it
is alive, and He is the "living God." But life, in this biological sense, is
not the same as the life there is in God: it is only a kind of symbol or
shadow of it. When we come on to the animals, we find other kinds of
resemblance in addition to biological life. The intense activity and
fertility of the insects, for example, is a first dim resemblance to the
unceasing activity and the creativeness of God. In the higher mammals we get
the beginnings of instinctive affection. That is not the same thing as the
love that exists in God: but it is like it-rather in the way that a picture
drawn on a flat piece of paper can nevertheless be "like" a landscape. When
we come to man, the highest of the animals, we get the completest
resemblance to God which we know of. (There may be creatures in other worlds
who are more like God than man is, but we do not know about them.) Man not
only lives, but loves and reasons: biological life reaches its highest known
level in him.

But what man, in his natural condition, has not got, is Spiritual
life-the higher and different sort of life that exists in God. We use the
same word life for both: but if you thought that both must therefore be the
same sort of thing, that would be like thinking that the "greatness" of
space and the "greatness" of God were the same sort of greatness. In
reality, the difference between Biological life and spiritual life is so
important that I am going to give them two distinct names. The Biological
sort which comes to us through Nature, and which (like everything else in
Nature) is always tending to run down and decay so that it can only be kept
up by incessant subsidies from Nature in the form of air, water, food, etc.,
is Bios. The Spiritual life which is in God from all eternity, and which
made the whole natural universe, is Zoe. Bios has, to be sure, a certain
shadowy or symbolic resemblance to Zoe: but only the sort of resemblance
there is between a photo and a place, or a statue and a man. A man who
changed from having Bios to having Zoe would have gone through as big a
change as a statue which changed from being a carved stone to being a real
man.

And that is precisely what Christianity is about. This world is a great
sculptor's shop. We are the statues and there is a rumour going round the
shop that some of us are some day going to come to life.

A discussion about life and how it relates to God.

What does the word Theology mean? Are you interested in having the clearest and most accurate ideas about God?
Lewis makes an analogy between Theology and a map, can you describe this analogy?
Do you think a person can gain eternal life by experiencing some kind of feeling of the presence of God? What are the criticisms that Lewis has regarding feelings about God?
Lewis describes the popular religion of his day as being an acknowledgment of the excellent moral teachings of Jesus. Why does Lewis say that this religion is unable to make any difference in the world?
What is the difference between begetting and creating?
Think of some things (objects biological or non-biological) in the Universe. How are they like God?
How is the life of man different from the life of God?
Lewis uses the terms Bios and Zoe. Can you describe the meaning of these terms?

Theology means 'the science of God,' and I think any man who wants to think about God at all would like to have the clearest and most accurate ideas about Him which are available. You are not children: why should you be treated like children?

Theology and doctrines are like a map. They give us an idea of what God is like, but they are not God and they are not, in truth, "real." Theology, though, gives us a much greater scope of the personality of God that we cannot get on our own.

But that map is based on the experience of hundreds of people who really were in touch with God-experiences compared with which any thrills or pious feelings you and I are likely to get on our own are very elementary and very confused. And secondly, if you want to get any further, you must use the map.

The map analogy goes a long way:

Our personal "God moments" don't lead us anywhere greater than the moment
Basing your relationship on "God moments" leads to a vague and useless (but easy) religion
"But you will not get to Newfoundland by studying the Atlantic..."
"...and you will not get eternal life by simply feeling the presence of God in flowers or music."
"Neither will you get anywhere by looking at maps without going to sea."
"Nor will you be very safe if you go to sea without a map."

Theology is practical:

Just because you don't listen to/read theology, does not mean you won't have ideas about God.
By not learning about theology, you will inevitably have the wrong ideas about God.
Most of the novel ideas about God in popular media today are the very same thing that theologians tried and rejected centuries ago.
"To believe in the popular religion of modern [America] is retrogression - like believing the earth is flat."

The modern version of Christianity is pure simplicity:

Jesus was a really nice guy, and moral teacher
His ideas might lead to a better social order, or help us avoid another war.

It is quite true that if we took Christ's advice we should soon be living in a happier world. You need not even go as far as Christ. If we did all that Plato or Aristotle or Confucius told us, we should get on a great deal better than we do. And so what: We never have followed the advice of the great teachers. Why are we likely to begin now? Why are we more likely to follow Christ than any of the others? Because He is the best moral teacher? But that makes it even less likely that we shall follow Him. If we cannot take the elementary lessons, is it likely we are going to take the most advanced one? If Christianity only means one more bit of good advice, then Christianity is of no importance. There has been no lack of good advice for the last four thousand years. A bit more makes no difference.

Real Christianity says something very different from the popularized version:

Jesus is the Son of God (whatever that means)
Those who give their lives to him can become Sons of God. (whatever that means)
His death saved us from our sins (whatever that means)

Now, those are difficult concepts to grasp. Christianity tells us about something beyond the world we smell and touch and see... another world that we can't directly contact.

The most shocking claim of Christianity is the statement that we can become 'Sons of God.'

In a sense we are 'sons of God' by being the children of Adam who was the 'son of God.' We have been created by God, right?
'becoming' the Sons of God must mean something different, then.

Christ is spoken of as being 'begotten' of God, not created. Theological language here gets fuzzy. When speaking of Jesus as "the only begotten Son of God," the reference is to the pre-incarnate God the Son, the Word, the Logos. The theological language for 'begotten' speaks of the pre-existent Word. The Word (see John 1) existed before time, before the creation of the world. The 'Word became flesh' speaks of the Word becoming human, becoming the Jesus through the virginal conception. The Word/Logos/Christ is of the same stuff as the Father, and is not a creature, but the creator.

In God's image, imago De:

'Created in God's image' does not mean we look like God.
When we speak of 'likeness,' we speak of sculptures or paintings looking like the person they were created to look like.
In the same way, space is huge, like God, but not as huge and it is not God in it's likeness to him.
When we look at plant life, it is like God in that it is alive, but it is not God in it's likeness to him.
Man is like God, more than any of God's other creations, to the point of being His image barer:
- Man is creative
- Man is imaginative
- Man is free to choose
- Man is free to act
- Man can love and is free to love
- Man is uniquely expressive amoung the animals

Let us take cases. Many a sensible modern man must have abandoned Christianity under the pressure of three such converging convictions as these: first, that men, with their shape structure, and sexuality, are, after all, very much like beasts a mere variety of the animal kingdom; second, that primeval religion arose in ignorance and fear; third, that priests have blighted societies with bitterness and gloom. Those three anti-Christian arguments are very different; but they are all quite logical and legitimate; and they all converge. The only objection to them (I discover) is that they are all untrue. If you leave off looking at books about beasts and men, if you begin to look at beasts and men then (if you have any humour or imagination, any sense of the frantic or the farcical) you will observe that the startling thing is not how like man is to the brutes, but how unlike he is.

It is the monstrous scale of his divergence that requires an explanation. That man and brute are like is, in a sense, a truism; but that being so like they should then be so insanely unlike, that is the shock and the enigma. That an ape has hands is far less interesting to the philosopher than the fact that having hands he does next to nothing with them; does not play knuckle-bones or the violin; does not carve marble or carve mutton. People talk of barbaric architecture and debased art. But elephants do not build colossal temples of ivory even in a roccoco style; camels do not paint even bad pictures though equipped with the material of many camel's-hair brushes.

Certain modern dreamers say that ants and bees have a society superior to ours. They have, indeed, a civilization; but that very truth only reminds us that it is an inferior civilization. Who ever found an ant-hill decorated with the statues of celebrated ants? Who has seen a bee-hive carved with the images of gorgeous queens of old?

No; the chasm between man and other creatures may have a natural explanation, but it is a chasm. We talk of wild animals; but man is the only wild animal. It is man that has broken out.

All other animals are tame animals; following the rugged respectability of the tribe or type. All other animals are domestic animals; man alone is ever undomestic, either as a profligate or a monk.

-- G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

Man includes two kinds of life:

Physical/biological life -- Bios
- Comes through nature
- tends toward decay
- requires 'subsidies from Nature' - air, water, food, etc.
Spiritual life -- Zoe
- Comes to us from God
- eternal

The two are as different as the 'greatness' of God and the 'greatness' of space. (i.e. NOT the same.)

Bios has, to be sure, a certain shadowy or symbolic resemblance to Zoe: but only the sort of resemblance there is between a photo and a place, or a statue and a man. A man who changed from having Bios to having Zoe would have gone through as big a change as a statue which changed from being a carved stone to being a real man.

And that is precisely what Christianity is about. This world is a great sculptor's shop. We are the statues and there is a rumour going round the shop that some of us are some day going to come to life.

http://lib.ru/LEWISCL/mere_engl.txt

http://www.opendiscipleship.org/Mere_Christianity_leaders_notes

http://www.gordy-stith.com/Mere%20Christianity/mere_christianity_study_guide.htm

tag : C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Spiritual Life, Beyond Personality, First Steps, In The Doctrine Of The Trinity, Making and Begetting, life and how it relates to God, Bios and Zoe, Biological Life

Four Secrets to Answered Prayer

2009-11-23T03:31:27Z

Four Secrets to Answered Prayer

"Then [Nehemiah] said, 'O Lord, God of heaven, the great and awesome God who keeps his covenant of unfailing love with those who love him and obey his commands, listen to my prayer! . . . I confess that we have sinned against you . . . Please remember what you told your servant Moses: If you are unfaithful to me, I will scatter you among the nations. But if you return to me and obey my commands and live by them, then even if you are exiled to the ends of the earth, I will bring you back to the place I have chosen for my name to be honored . . . Please grant me success today by making the king favorable to me. Put it into his heart to be kind to me'" (Nehemiah 1:5-11).

Here are four secrets to answered prayer from the life of Nehemiah:

Base your request on God's character--Pray like you know God will answer you: "I'm expecting You to answer this prayer because of Who You are. You are a faithful God. You are a great God. You are a loving God. You are a wonderful God. You can handle this problem, God!"

Confess the sins of which you're aware--After Nehemiah based his prayer on who God is, he confessed his sins. He says, "We've sinned." He says "I confess . . . myself . . . my father's house . . . we have acted wickedly . . . we have not obeyed." It wasn't Nehemiah's fault that Israel went into captivity. He wasn't even born when it happened and he was most likely born in captivity. Yet, he's including himself in the national sins. He says, "I've been a part of the problem."

Claim the promises of God--Nehemiah prays to the Lord, saying, "I want You to remember what You told your servant Moses." Can you imagine saying "remember" to God? Nehemiah reminds God of a promise He made to the nation of Israel. In effect, he prays, "God, you warned through Moses that if we were unfaithful, we would lose the land of Israel. But you also promised that if we repent, You'd give it back to us."

Does God have to be reminded? No. Does He forget what He's promised? No. Then why do we do this? Because it helps us remember what God has promised.

Be very specific in what you ask for--If you want specific answers to prayer, then make specific requests. If your prayers consist of general requests, how will you know if they're answered?

Nehemiah is not hesitant to pray for success. He's very bold in his praying. Have you ever prayed, "Lord, make me successful?" If you haven't, why haven't you? What is the alternative? A failure?

Is it OK to ask God to make you successful? It all depends on your definition of success! I believe a good definition of success is--"Fulfilling God’s purpose for my life in faith, love, and the power of the Holy Spirit, and expecting the results from God." That is a worthy life objective that you should be able to pray for with confidence.

Consider this--If you can't ask God to make you a success at what you're doing, you should be doing something else. God doesn't want you to waste your life.

The Waiting Is the Hardest Part, Part 1

by Jon Walker

"Now Sarai, Abram's wife, had borne him no children . . . so she said to Abram, 'The LORD has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my maidservant; perhaps I can build a family through her.' Abram agreed to what Sarai said" (Genesis 16:1–2).

(This guest devotional is by Jon Walker, author of 'Growing with Purpose,' and editor of the Purpose Driven Life On-line Devotionals)

And so Sarai took it upon herself to solve God's problem. After all, God told Sarai's husband, Abram, that he'd have a huge family, more descendants than there are stars in the sky (Genesis 15).

Sarai waited and waited for God to provide their first descendant, to answer her prayers, to make good on his promise--but the baby didn't come. Every day, the tension and the frustration mounted. As that great theologian and musician, Tom Petty, sings: "The waiting is the hardest part."

Like me--perhaps like you--Sarai began to wonder if God would ever answer her prayers or if he had forgotten about her. Perhaps--like you, like me--Sarai questioned whether God really knew what he was doing.

It appears Sarai's thoughts walked as far as her faith would carry her until she stood looking at the mountains of her fear. Did God understand how important this was to her? How could God deny her the greatest desire of her heart? Was God even on her side?

Even as Sarai acknowledged God's ability to fulfill the promise--"The LORD has kept me from having any children . . . "--she denied God's sovereignty to decide when the promise would be fulfilled.

If we could ask Sarai, "Can God?" she most likely would answer "Yes." If we then asked Sarai, "Will God?" her honest answer may have been "No."

When faced with a delayed answer, do you break with God? What does manipulating an answer to our prayers say about our belief in God's character?

The Waiting Is the Hardest Part, Part 2

"Now the serpent . . . said to the woman, 'Did God really say, You must not eat from any tree in the garden?'" (Genesis 3:1).

And so Sarai took it upon herself to fulfill the promise, no longer trusting God to do his job. The waiting is the hardest part, and Sarai was tired of the wait.

Sitting in a humid tent, she heard the support poles creak; she heard, through the open flaps, a camel snort; and she heard . . . was that a voice, like the hiss of a serpent, saying, "Did God really say your husband would be the father of a family so vast it would surpass the number of stars in the sky?" (Consider Genesis 3).

Perhaps Sarai said, "God can, but he won't." Or maybe she said, "God can't figure this out, but I can." Looking through the tent's door, she saw her servant Hagar, and in that moment she saw the solution, though she didn't see the Pandora's box she would soon open. Perhaps she even thought, "Of course! This is probably the answer God meant for me to see all along."

Sarai believed her assumptions more than she believed God's promise. She wondered why God was no longer on her side--"Why is the LORD keeping this from me?"--instead of confessing she was no longer one with God's will.

Ask God to help you identify the places in your life where you're saying, "The LORD is keeping this from me!" God's interest is that you master the lessons of faith. He wants you to succeed, able to walk further in faith each day. So failure is not defeat; he will continue to teach you--and stretch you--until walking by faith and not by sight is as natural as breathing. Tell God, "I believe; help my unbelief!"

The Waiting Is the Hardest Part, Part 3

"God also said to Abraham, 'As for Sarai your wife, you are no longer to call her Sarai; her name will be Sarah. I will bless her and will surely give you a son by her. I will bless her so that she will be the mother of nations; kings of peoples will come from her.'" (Genesis 17:15–16).

Just like you or me, Sarah and Abraham may have thought, "God doesn't understand our circumstances; his commandments are good guidelines, but they simply don't work well in the nitty-gritty of life."

And so Hagar gave birth to Ishmael.

Yet the promise had been that Sarah would be the one to deliver a son for Abraham; so the wait continued, long after reaching the point of desperate frustration--the place where you say, "God, I can't go on any longer!"

You've been there--like the widow knocking on the judge's door, you pray day and night but the shutters stay closed and the door remains shut (Luke 18). Sarah and Abraham knocked on that door for another fourteen years! (Genesis 16:16; Genesis 21:5).

While Abraham and Sarah waited, God made a covenant with Abram, changing his name to Abraham, which means "father of many." And he changed Sarai's name to Sarah, saying she would be the mother of nations and among her off-spring would be kings (Genesis 17).

Then God sent three mysterious visitors to tell Abraham that Sarah would provide him a son within the year. Sarah laughed, not believing God was about to give birth to his promise (Genesis 18).

Yet, they were totally and wholly dependent upon God to fulfill his promise. Not dependent because they'd obediently submitted everything to God, but totally dependent because they'd exhausted every other possibility.

And that's often why God delays. He's waiting on us to be ready for him.

Finally, God opened Sarah's womb so she could bear Abraham a son in his old age, at the time appointed by God (Genesis 21:2).

Jon Walker can be found on Facebook at GraceCreates with Jon Walker.

PurposeDriven.com by Rick Warren

tag : Rick Warren, Genesis, Luke, Nehemiah, Purpose Driven Life, Jon Walker, Four Secrets to Answered Prayer, The Waiting Is the Hardest Part, Growing with Purpose, GraceCreates

2012

2009-11-15T08:02:53Z

2012 is a 2009 action film-disaster film based loosely on the 2012 phenomenon and directed by Roland Emmerich.

The film has an ensemble cast, including John Cusack, Amanda Peet, Danny Glover,

Thandie Newton, Oliver Platt, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Woody Harrelson.

The film was distributed by Columbia Pictures. Filming began in August 2008 in Vancouver.

The film is set in a modern setting and only brushes on Mayanism and the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar.

The 2012 phenomenon comprises a range of beliefs and proposals positing that cataclysmic or transformative events will occur in the year 2012. The forecast is based primarily on what is said to be the end-date of the Mayan Long Count calendar, which is presented as lasting 5,125 years and as terminating on December 21 or 23, 2012. Arguments supporting this dating are drawn from a mixture of archaeoastronomical speculation, alternative interpretations of mythology, numerological constructions, and alleged prophecies from extraterrestrial beings.

A New Age interpretation of this transition posits that, during this time, the planet and its inhabitants may undergo a positive physical or spiritual transformation, and that 2012 may mark the beginning of a new era. Conversely, some believe that the 2012 date marks the beginning of an apocalypse. Both ideas have been disseminated in numerous books and TV documentaries, and have spread around the world through websites and discussion groups.

Mainstream Mayanist scholars argue that the idea that the Long Count calendar "ends" in 2012 misrepresents Maya history. To the modern Maya, 2012 is largely irrelevant, and classic Maya sources on the subject are scarce and contradictory, suggesting that there was little if any universal agreement among them about what, if anything, the date might mean.

Certain predictions about how the world could end in 2012 (alignment with a black hole, collision with a rogue planet, polar shifts) have been rejected as pseudoscience by the scientific community, which maintains that many of these suggestions would violate the laws of physics, or are contradicted by simple observations.

http://www.whowillsurvive2012.com

tag : 2012, 2012 phenomenon, Mayan Long Count calendar

Korean Numbers

2009-11-15T05:40:35Z

Korean Numbers

There are two sets of numbers in Korea, the native Korean and the Sino-Korean Numbers. Sino-Korean numbers are borrowed from Chinese. Generally speaking, for expression involving dates, money, foreign loanwords, minutes, seconds and counting beyond 99 Sino-Korean numbers are used otherwise its the native Korean numbers.

You might be wondering why some numbers are skipped in both numeral systems, this is because there are certain patterns to achieve the numbers in between.

80 여든 yodeun

In Native Korean, to express let say 11 it’s 열하나 (yolhana) so the formula is 10(열 yol )+1(하나 hana ).

This is the reason why after the number 10 only numbers in multiples of 10 are provided up to 90.

So you have to memorize at least 18 numbers in Native Korean.

While in Sino-Korean, to express let say 32 it’s 삼십이 (sam-ship-ee)

so the formula is 3(삼 sam ) X 10 (십 ship ) + 2 (이 ee).

There are few numbers to memorize in Sino-Korean, with just 13 numbers to you can go up to a million already.

http://hanguladay.wordpress.com/korean-numbers

tag : Korean Numbers

2 Chronicles 역대하 7 - 11 장‏

2009-11-15T05:25:40Z

역대하 7장‏ 입니다.

솔로몬은 성전을 다 지은 후 하나님께 봉헌을 합니다.

이 성전봉헌을 하나님은 기쁘시게 받으셨습니다.

1. 솔로몬 왕의 기도에 대한 응답 (1절)

솔로몬의 기도가 끝나자 하늘에서 불이 내려와 솔로몬이 바친 번제물과 제물들을 살랐습니다.

이는 하나님이 솔로몬의 기도를 들으셨고 드린 성전과 제물을 기뻐하셨다는 뜻입니다.

아무리 많은 돈을 들여 만든 영화도 관객이 들지 않으면 소용이 없습니다.

아무리 유명한 사람이 텔레비전에 나와도 보는 사람이 없으면 의미가 없습니다.

기도도 그렇습니다. 하나님께서 들어 주실때만 그 의미가 있습니다.

우리의 기도는 사람들이 들으라고 하는 것이 아닙니다.

하나님이 들으셔야 합니다. 좋은 기도는 하나님이 들으시는 기도 입니다.

2. 여호와의 영광이 가득함 (2절)

또 솔로몬의 기도에 하나님은 영광으로 임재하셨습니다.

하나님의 영광을 '쉐키나'라고 합니다. 하나님은 영광의 존재이십니다.

사람들이 영광을 돌려서가 아니라 하나님이 영광이 성전에 가득함으로

그 성전에 있던 사람들이 그 영광에 동참한 것입니다.

하나님의 집은 하나님의 영광이 있어야 합니다. 그래야 진정한 성전입니다.

아무리 화려하고, 아름답고, 크다고 해도 하나님의 영광이 없다면 성전이 아닙니다.

고린도전서 3장 16절에 우리 몸이 '성령이 거하시는 전' 이라고 했습니다.

우리 안에 성령이 거하시면 우리도 성전인 것입니다.

3. 기쁨이 가득함 (10절)

기도와 응답과 하나님의 영광이 가득했습니다.

그러자 백성들은 큰 기쁨 가운데 있었습니다. 교회의 모습입니다.

교회는 기쁨이 있어야 합니다. 설렘이 있어야 하고 즐거움이 있어야 합니다.

사람이 있어서가 아니라 하나님이 계시기 때문입니다.

벌써 11월 이네요. 한해를 잘 마무리 하시길 바랍니다.

역대하 8장 1-11절 입니다.

솔로몬은 성전과 궁전을 다 짖고 나서 온 나라의 중요한 성읍들을 대대적으로 보수하고 건축하기 시작했습니다.

이것은 솔로몬 치세에 나라가 부강해졌음을 의미하는 것입니다. 본문이 주는 교훈을 생각해 보십니다.

1. 성읍의 건축

고대 사회에서 성읍은 매우 중요한 의미를 가지고 있었습니다.

우선 침략하는 적을 막을 수 있는 방위의 개념에서 군사적인 측면이 있었습니다.

견고한 성읍의 숫자가 곧 나라의 안보와 직결되어 있었습니다.

선왕 다윗이 확장한 국토를 솔로몬이 성읍들을 지으므로 내실을 기했다고 볼 수 있습니다.
또 하나 솔로몬이 지은 성읍들은 후람에게 선물로 주었다가 그의 눈에 들이 아니하여 돌려받은 지역들이었습니다.

후람은 그곳을 가불이라 불렀는데 쓸모 없는 땅이라는 의미 입니다.

솔로몬은 그 땅을 쓸모 있는 땅으로 만들어 놓았던 것입니다.

믿음은 사람을 긍정적으로 만듭니다. 진취적으로 만듭니다.

나중에 가불지역은 이스라엘 방어의 요충지 역할을 했던 것입니다.

2. 건축의 유감

역사을 보면 자신의 이름을 남기기 위해 대대적은 건축사업을 일으킨 사람들이 있었습니다.

피라밋을 세운 애굽의 파라오들이나, 만리장성을 쌓게 했다는 중국 진나라의 시황제 같은 사람들 입니다.

그러나 그런 큰 건축 사업에는 많은 돈과 노동력이 필요합니다. 고스란히 백성들이 부담이 되는 것입니다.

이 문제는 솔로몬 시대에서 그의 아들 르호보암 시대까지 이어지더니

결국 나라가 남과 북으로 갈라지고만 원인이 되었던 것입니다.

눈에 보이는 건축이 다가 아니라 백성들의 삶을 보살피는 정치도 있어야 했던 것입니다.

솔로몬 치세의 흠이 되고 말았습니다.

3. 하나님 백성의 존귀함

솔로몬은 가나안 백성들을 역꾼으로 동원했습니다.

이스라엘 백성들을 그들을 지휘하는 지휘관이 되었습니다. 이것은 놀라운 역전 입니다.

이스라엘 백성들은 애굽에서 노예 였습니다.

그러나 가나안 땅에 들어와서는 다른 민족을 다스릴 수 있는 위치에서게 된 것입니다.

그러나 이스라엘은 또 바벨론에 의해 멸망당해 포로로 끌려가는 신세가 됩니다.

기억합시다. 오늘의 축복은 언제나 바뀔 수 있습니다.

솔로몬은 비록 눈에 보이는 건축을 많이해서 큰 업적을 남겼습니다.

그러나 우리가 기억할 것은 보이는 성읍만이 나라를 견고하게 하는 것이 아닙니다.

백성을 평안케 하고, 보이지 않는 신앙의 집을 건축하는 하는 것이 더 중요합니다.

하나님의 말씀을 따라 살아감으로써 오늘의 축복을 지켜 나갈 수 있습니다.

복된 하루 되세요.

역대하 8장 12-18절 입니다.

솔로몬은 성전을 완성한 다음 모세의 명령을 따라 날마다 정해진 대로 제사를 드렸습니다.

성전에서 제사를 집례할 사람들을 제자리에 배치했습니다.

그들은 그들이 맡은 소임을 다했고, 나라는 점점더 부강해져 갔습니다.

1. 솔론몬이 드린 제사

한마디로 모세의 명령을 따랐다고 했습니다. 솔로몬은 똑똑했던 사람입니다.

그의 지혜는 당시 근동의 모든 왕들과 모사들이 인정해 주었던 그런 왕이었습니다.

얼마든지 자기 생각과 계획을 말할 수 있었을 것입니다.

그러나 그는 모세의 명령 즉 하나님의 명령을 따랐습니다.

교회 생활을 좀 하고 나면 우리는 익숙해 집니다.

익숙해 지면 말이 많아집니다. 이래야 한다 저래야 한다. 아닙니다.

우리는 말씀대로 신앙생활을 해야 합니다.

내 생각대로 이래야 하고 저래야 한다면 그것이 바로 우상 숭배의 시작이 되는 것입니다.

2. 성전을 섬긴 사람들

아버지 다윗 시대에 이미 성전을 섬길 제사장들, 성가대원들, 성전에서 제사장을 도우며 수종들 사람들,

심지어 성전의 문지기까지 다 조직을 해놓았습니다.

솔로몬은 아버지 다윗이 짜놓은 조직대로 사람을 배치하여 섬기도록 했습니다. 그렇습니다.

교회에서는 각자 자기 자리에서 자기가 감당해야 할 사명이 있습니다.

그 사명 잘 감당하면 됩니다. 남이 봉사하는 일에 콩나라 팥나라 할 것 없습니다.

3. 부요한 나라

이렇게 예배를 잘 드리니 나라가 부강해 집니다.

주변의 왕들이 자진해서 보물을 가지고 솔로몬을 찾아 옵니다.

오늘 본문의 시대가 솔로몬 시대의 황금시대 였으며 이스라엘 역사상 가장 부강했던 시대 였습니다.

어떻게 이렇게 되었습니까? 하나님의 명령대로 예배를 잘 드렸기 때문입니다.

다른 방법은 없습니다. 우리는 예배를 잘 드려야 합니다.

나머지는 하나님께서 책임져 주시는 것입니다.

주님 안에서 승리하세요.

역대하 9장 1-12절‏ 입니다.

본문은 솔로몬 치세의 황금기에 있었던 일을 기록한 것입니다.

솔로몬의 명성이 날로 높아졌습니다.

급기야 먼 스바에서까지 여왕이 찾아오는 일이 일어났습니다.
여왕은 실제로 솔로몬을 만나 보고는 크게 놀라 하나님을 찬양했습니다.

1. 솔로몬의 소문

세상에는 좋은 소문도 있고 나쁜 소문도 있습니다. 솔로몬은 좋은 소문을 냈던 그런 왕이었습니다.

문화와 예술과 건축 그리고 신앙에 있어서 이스라엘 역사상 황금기를 이루며 각지에 좋은 영향력을 끼치고 있었습니다.

하나님의 백성은 자신이 가진 선한 영향력을 사방에 떨칠 수 있어야 합니다.

2. 여왕의 놀람

소문은 일반적으로 거의 모두가 과장될 수 밖에 없습니다.

초기 목격자는 본대로 전한다고 할 수 있지만 그 다음 부터는 전하는 사람의 생각이 붙게 되어 있기 때문입니다.

스바의 여왕도 그런 생각으로 솔로몬을 찾아왔는데 와서 보니 소문보다 훨씬 대단했습니다.

그래서 황홀했다고 표현 합니다. 그리고 솔로몬의 신하들이 부럽다고 했습니다.

왜냐하면 솔로몬의 지혜의 말들을 늘 들을 수 있기 때문이라고 했습니다.

3. 찬송받으실 하나님

스바의 여왕은 솔로몬을 만난 후 이건 사람의 지혜가 아니라는 생각을 했습니다.

그리고 이스라엘의 하나님께 영광과 찬송을 돌렸습니다.

사실 솔로몬의 모친은 행실이 별로였던 여인이었습니다.

그리고 솔로몬은 왕위 계승 순위에서 한참 뒤에 있었습니다.

그런데 그가 다윗의 뒤를 이어 왕이 됩니다. 모두가 하나님의 은혜 였습니다.

우리도 그렇습니다. 구원도 은혜요, 가정도 은혜요, 자녀들도 은혜 입니다.

승리하세요.

역대하 9장 13-31절‏ 입니다.

오늘 본문은 솔로몬 시대의 부귀영화와 그의 죽음을 전해 주고 있습니다.

1. 솔로몬 시대의 부요함

솔로몬 시대의 부귀를 한마디로 이렇게 언급했습니다.

'솔로몬 시대에 은을 귀하게 여기지 아니함은'(20절).

놀라운 물질의 복을 그는 받았습니다. 모두가 하나님께서 주신 것입니다.

일천 희생을 드렸을 때, 하나님께서 그에게 약속하신 것들 이었습니다.

하나님의 약속은 변개가 없으십니다. 그분은 식언치 않으시는 분이십니다.

그분의 약속대로 솔로몬은 놀라운 부귀를 누렸습니다.

2. 솔로몬 시대의 영광

그 시대의 영광은 이렇게 표현했습니다.

'천하의 열왕이 ... 그의 얼굴을 보기 원하여'(23절).

그의 지혜를 듣기를 원하였고, 그의 얼굴을 한번 보기를 원하였습니다.

이 또한 하나님께서 약속하신 것이었습니다.

목동 다윗을 불러내셔서 이스라엘의 왕을 삼으신 하나님께서

그의 아들 솔로몬은 왕 중의 왕으로 세워주셨던 것입니다.

이것도 하나님께서 하신 것입니다.

3. 솔로몬의 한계

그의 지혜도, 그의 부귀와 영화도 그의 죽음을 막지 못했습니다.

천하의 솔로몬도 한계가 있었던 것입니다. 이 한계는 모든 인생의 한계이기도 합니다.

이 한계를 알고 살아가는 것이 삶의 커다란 지혜입니다.

오늘도 나의 한계를 인식하며 하나님 앞에 겸손히 사는 우리가 되어야 하겠습니다.

좋은 주말 되시길 빕니다.

역대하 10장 - 11장 ‏ 1-13절 입니다.

아무리 아버지가 왕이라 하더라도 아들이 그냥 왕이 되는 법은 없습니다.

나름대로 나라에 공을 세워야 순조롭게 왕위가 승계될 수 있습니다.

솔로몬의 사후 그의 아들 르호보암이 왕이 됩니다.

그러나 그는 아버지 솔로몬이나 할아버지 다윗같지 않았습니다.

그의 시대에 나라가 둘로 갈라지는 아픔을 겪었습니다.

그 이유가 우리에게 교훈이 됩니다.

1. 그는 하나님께 묻지 않았습니다. (10:1-10)

백성들의 부역을 가볍게 해 달라는 요구가 있었을 때에 원로 대신들과 젊은 신하들에게 물었습니다.

그리고는 젊은 신하들의 의견을 따릅니다.

여기서 그는 하나님께 묻지 않았습니다. 치명적인 실수를 범한 것입니다.

2. 그는 교만했습니다.(10:10-14)

자기의 새끼 손가락이 자기 아버지 솔로몬의 허리 보다 굵다고 합니다.

참으로 오만 방자한 발언이 아닐 수 없었습니다.

화려함의 극치속에서 자라난 사람이었습니다.

아무런 어려움이 없던 태평성대속에 자라난 사람입니다.

그리고 어느날 왕이 되었습니다. 자기가 잘나서 된 줄 알았던 것입니다.

여기에 문제가 있었습니다. 교만입니다.

평안함 가운데 자라고 있는 우리 자녀들이 교만하지 않기를 바랍니다.

3. 그는 백성들의 생명을 쉽게 생각했습니다.(11:1-4)

열한개의 지파가 떨어져나가자 즉각 전쟁을 준비합니다. 동족과의 전쟁입니다.

어제까지 같은나라 였습니다. 전쟁이 뭔지도 모르는 듯 합니다.

십팔만명의 군사를 모으며 전쟁을 준비합니다.

자기를 해치려 했다는 이유로 수많은 백성이 목숨을 잃을 수 밖에 없는 전쟁을 계획했던 것입니다.

내 새끼손가락이 내 아버지의 허리 보다 굵다던 그의 교만한 외침은 초라하게 되어 버리고 말았습니다.

하나님은 겸손한 사람을 높이시고, 교만한 사람은 낮추십니다.

좋은 하루가 되시길 바랍니다.

역대하 11장 ‏ 13-23절 입니다.

누구나 사람은 강성하기를 원합니다. 그러나 강성하게 되기 위한 방법은 여러가지가 있습니다.

강성하게 되어 보겠다고 어떤 사람들은 신의도 의리도 다 외면합니다. 심지어 부모, 형제도 모른체 합니다.

오늘 말씀은 강성함의 조건이 무엇인지를 교훈하고 있습니다.

1. 여로보암의 실수

북쪽 이스라엘의 열지파와 그 땅을 차지한 여로보암은 큰 고민에 빠졌습니다.

성전이 남쪽 유다의 예루살렘에 있었기 때문입니다.

여로보암은 궁리 끝에 금송아지를 만들어 하나님이라 우기며 벧엘과 단에 세워놓고

백성들로 그 우상앞에 제사하도록 했습니다.

그리고 레위지파 출신의 제사장들을 대신하여 아무나 제사장을 세웠습니다(왕상 12:25-33).

돌이킬 수 없는 실수가 되고 말았습니다.

2. 남으로 내려간 사람들

일이 이렇게 되자 제사장들과 레위인들 그리고 말씀에 충실한 백성들이 남쪽 유다로 피난을 내려오게 됩니다.

삶의 터전을 버리고, 생업도 다 버리고 떠납니다. 그리고 그들에 의해서 유다는 강성하게 됩니다.

삶의 터전을 버려도, 생업에서 떠나도 신앙만 버리지 않으면 살 길이 열리게 됩니다.

3. 다윗과 솔로몬의 길에서 떠나지 않다

남으로 내려온 경건한 사람들이 다윗과 솔로몬의 길을 행하였습니다.

즉 하나님을 경외하는 길로 행했던 것입니다.

남 왕국 유다가 강성하게 된 것은 다른데 있지 않았습니다. 바로 신앙이었습니다.

나라든 개인이든 강성함의 조건은 오직 하나 하나님을 경외하는 것입니다.

우리가 떠나온 조국도 또 몸담고 살고 있는 이 나라 미국도

하나님을 잘 섬기는 나라가 되기를 기도해야 하겠습니다.

오늘도 주님 안에서 승리하세요.

http://sahnsem.com by Pastor Joseph Yoon

tag : 기도, 축복, 겸손, 솔로몬, 하나님, 교훈, 영광, 삶의 지혜, 역대하, Chronicles, 산샘, SahnSem, Pastor Joseph Yoon, 성령이 거하시는 전

Mere Christianity - Book Three - Faith

2009-11-15T03:32:59Z

Book Three

CHRISTIAN BEHAVIOUR

12. Faith

I want to start by saying something that I would like everyone to
notice carefully. It is this. If this chapter means nothing to you, if it
seems to be trying to answer questions you never asked, drop it at once. Do
not bother about it at all. There are certain things in Christianity that
can be understood from the outside, before you have become a Christian. But
there are a great many things that cannot be understood until after you have
gone a certain distance along the Christian road. These things are purely
practical, though they do not look as if they were. They are directions for
dealing with particular cross-roads and obstacles on the journey and they do
not make sense until a man has reached those places. Whenever you find any
statement in Christian writings which you can make nothing of, do not worry.
Leave it alone. There will come a day, perhaps years later, when you
suddenly see what it meant If one could understand it now, it would only do
one harm.

Of course all this tells against me as much as anyone else. The thing I
am going to try to explain in this chapter may be ahead of me. I may be
thinking I have got there when I have not. I can only ask instructed
Christians to watch very carefully, and tell me when I go wrong; and others
to take what I say with a grain of salt- as something offered, because it
may be a help, not because I am certain that I am right.

I am trying to talk about Faith in the second sense, the higher sense.
I said last week that the question of Faith in this sense arises after a man
has tried his level best to practise the Christian virtues, and found that
he fails, and seen that even if he could he would only be giving back to God
what was already God's own. In other words, he discovers his bankruptcy.
Now, once again, what God cares about is not exactly our actions. What he
cares about is that we should be creatures of a certain kind or quality- the
kind of creatures He intended us to be-creatures related to Himself in a
certain way. I do not add "and related to one another in a certain way,"
because that is included: if you are right with Him you will inevitably be
right with all your fellow-creatures, just as if all the spokes of a wheel
are fitted rightly into the hub and the rim they are bound to be in the
right positions to one another. And as long as a man is thinking of God as
an examiner who has set him a sort of paper to do, or as the opposite party
in a sort of bargain-as long as he is thinking of claims and counterclaims
between himself and God-he is not yet in the right relation to Him. He is
misunderstanding what he is and what God is. And he cannot get into the
right relation until he has discovered the fact of our bankruptcy.

When I say "discovered," I mean really discovered: not simply said it
parrot-fashion. Of course, any child, if given a certain kind of religious
education, will soon learn to say that we have nothing to offer to God that
is not already His own and that we find ourselves failing to offer even that
without keeping something back. But I am talking of really discovering this:
really finding out by experience that it is true.

Now we cannot, in that sense, discover our failure to keep God's law
except by trying our very hardest (and then failing). Unless we really try,
whatever we say there will always be at the back of our minds the idea that
if we try harder next time we shall succeed in being completely good. Thus,
in one sense, the road back to God is a road of moral effort, of trying
harder and harder. But in another sense it is not trying that is ever going
to bring us home. All this trying leads up to the vital moment at which you
turn to God and say, "You must do this. I can't." Do not, I implore you,
start asking yourselves, "Have I reached that moment?" Do not sit down and
start watching your own mind to see if it is coming along. That puts a man
quite on the wrong track. When the most important things in our life happen
we quite often do not know, at the moment, what is going on. A man does not
always say to himself, "Hullo! I'm growing up." It is often only when he
looks back that he realises what has happened and recognises it as what
people call "growing up." You can see it even in simple matters. A man who
starts anxiously watching to see whether he is going to sleep is very likely
to remain wide awake. As well, the thing I am talking of now may not happen
to every one in a sudden flash-as it did to St Paul or Bunyan: it may be so
gradual that no one could ever point to a particular hour or even a
particular year. And what matters is the nature of the change in itself, not
how we feel while it is happening. It is the change from being confident
about our own efforts to the state in which we despair of doing anything for
ourselves and leave it to God.

I know the words "leave it to God" can be misunderstood, but they must
stay for the moment. The sense in which a Christian leaves it to God is that
he puts all his trust in Christ: trusts that Christ will somehow share with
him the perfect human obedience which He carried out from His birth to His
crucifixion: that Christ will make the man more like Himself and, in a
sense, make good his deficiencies. In Christian language, He will share His
"sonship" with us, will make us, like Himself, "Sons of God": in Book IV I
shall attempt to analyse the meaning of those words a little further. If you
like to put it that way, Christ offers something for nothing: He even offers
everything for nothing. In a sense, the whole Christian life consists in
accepting that very remarkable offer. But the difficulty is to reach the
point of recognising that all we have done and can do is nothing. What we
should have liked would be for God to count our good points and ignore our
bad ones. Again, in a sense, you may say that no temptation is ever overcome
until we stop trying to overcome it- throw up the sponge. But then you could
not "stop trying" in the right way and for the right reason until you had
tried your very hardest. And, in yet another sense, handing everything over
to Christ does not, of course, mean that you stop trying. To trust Him
means, of course, trying to do all that He says. There would be no sense in
saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice. Thus if you
have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying
to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing these
things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already.
Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably
wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is
already inside you.

Christians have often disputed as to whether what leads the Christian
home is good actions, or Faith in Christ. I have no right really to speak on
such a difficult question, but it does seem to me like asking which blade in
a pair of scissors is most necessary. A serious moral effort is the only
thing that will bring you to the point where you throw up the sponge. Faith
in Christ is the only thing to save you from despair at that point: and out
of that Faith in Him good actions must inevitably come. There are two
parodies of the truth which different sets of Christians have, in the past,
been accused by other Christians of believing: perhaps they may make the
truth clearer. One set were accused of saying, "Good actions are all that
matters. The best good action is charity. The best kind of charity is giving
money. The best thing to give money to is the Church. So hand us over
Ј10,000 and we will see you through." The answer to that nonsense, of
course, would be that good actions done for that motive, done with the idea
that Heaven can be bought, would not be good actions at all, but only
commercial speculations. The other set were accused of saying, "Faith is all
that matters. Consequently, if you have faith, it doesn't matter what you
do. Sin away, my lad, and have a good time and Christ will see that it makes
no difference in the end." The answer to that nonsense is that, if what you
call your "faith" in Christ does not involve taking the slightest notice of
what He says, then it is not Faith at all-not faith or trust in Him, but
only intellectual acceptance of some theory about Him.

The Bible really seems to clinch the matter when it puts the two things
together into one amazing sentence. The first half is, "Work out your own
salvation with fear and trembling"-which looks as if everything depended on
us and our good actions: but the second half goes on, "For it is God who
worketh in you"- which looks as if God did everything and we nothing. I am
afraid that is the sort of thing we come up against in Christianity. I am
puzzled, but I am not surprised. You see, we are now trying to understand,
and to separate into water-tight compartments, what exactly God does and
what man does when God and man are working together. And, of course, we
begin by thinking it is like two men working together, so that you could
say, "He did this bit and I did that." But this way of thinking breaks down.
God is not like that. He is inside you as well as outside: even if we could
understand who did what, I do not think human language could properly
express it. In the attempt to express it different Churches say different
things. But you will find that even those who insist most strongly on the
importance of good actions tell you you need Faith; and even those who
insist most strongly on Faith tell you to do good actions. At any rate that
is as far as I go.

I think all Christians would agree with me if I said that though
Christianity seems at first to be all about morality, all about duties and
rules and guilt and virtue, yet it leads you on, out of all that, into
something beyond. One has a glimpse of a country where they do not talk of
those things, except perhaps as a joke. Every one there is filled full with
what we should call goodness as a mirror is filled with light But they do
not call it goodness. They do not call it anything. They are not thinking of
it. They are too busy looking at the source from which it comes. But this is
near the stage where the road passes over the rim of our world. No one's
eyes can see very far beyond that: lots of people's eyes can see further
than mine.

Lewis discuses the two levels of Faith.

An understanding of the second level of faith comes only after a man has ...
What is a way of thinking which identifies a man who is not in a right relationship with God?
Lewis states that a man who watches himself to see when he will fall asleep is very likely to remain awake. How does this relate to growing in faith?
In handing ourselves over to Christ, we desire to obey him. But we must obey in a new way of obedience. What is this new way?
What are the two parodies of truth which Christians have been accused of believing?
You have come to the end of Book III

This is Faith in the "second" or "higher" sense of the Christian term.

We discover this Faith when we have tried our hardest to be Christian, and we find that we cannot. We discover our bankruptcy, and discover what God really cares about:

Not our actions
He desires that we become "creatures of a certain kind or quality -- the kind of creatures he intended us to be -- creatures related to Himself in a certain way."
that we become creatures that relate to each other in a way dictated by the statement above.

"When I say 'discovered; I mean really discovered: not simply said it parrot-fashion. Of course, any child, if given a certain kind of religious education, will soon learn to say that we have nothing to offer to God that is not already His own and that we find ourselves failing to offer even that without keeping something back. But I am talking of really discovering this: really finding out by experience that it is true."

We can only discover our bankruptcy by trying our hardest and failing at keeping God's law.

We can only come to Faith when we have tried
and failed
and quit trying
and rely on God to fulfill His law in us.
You will only realize that you've arrived when you look back and find that you've been there. You won't know it at the time.

Trusting God means...

trying to do all he says.
following the his instruction/advice
in finding that we can't follow on our own, we learn to follow in His power.
We don't do the things He commands in order to be saved, but...
[we do them] because He has begun the saving of us already.
We don't do things hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for our actions, but...
[we do them because] the "first faint gleams of heaven" are already planted inside us by Him!

Faith and Works

We should do good works, not for salvation, but in a response to God's working within us.
The works are the outworking of the faith.
If we are called to good works (prepared in advance for us), but we don't do them, we suppress the work of God within us.
"Faith without works is dead" -- That's doesn't mean that it's not real, saving Faith, it just means that it's been confined, restricted, and incapacitated to continue the work in our lives that God called us to.

http://lib.ru/LEWISCL/mere_engl.txt

http://www.opendiscipleship.org/Mere_Christianity_leaders_notes

http://www.gordy-stith.com/Mere%20Christianity/mere_christianity_study_guide.htm

tag : GOD, Faith, Work, C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, CHRISTIAN BEHAVIOUR, Trusting God

The Four Laws of God’s Blessing

2009-11-15T02:30:12Z

The Four Laws of God’s Blessing

"I will make you into a great nation. I will bless you . . . and you will be a blessing to others" (Genesis 12:2).

The Bible teaches that we should use our blessings to bless others:

Our blessings should flow to others The Bible teaches us that we are blessed not just so that we can feel good, not just so we can be happy and comfortable, but so that we will bless others. God told Abraham, "I will make you into a great nation. I will bless you and make you famous, and you will be a blessing to others" (Genesis 12:2). This is the first law of blessing: it must flow outwardly.

When we bless others, God takes care of our needs God promises that if we will concentrate on blessing others, he'll take care of our needs. There's almost nothing that God won't do for the person who really wants to help other people. In fact, God guarantees this blessing. Jesus said, "I tell you the truth . . . no one who has left home or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God will fail to receive many times as much in this age and, in the age to come, eternal life" (Luke 18:29-30).

When you care about helping other people, God assumes responsibility for your problems. And that's a real blessing, for he's much better at handling your difficulties than you are. Our blessings to others will come back on us The more you bless other people . . . the more you help others, the more God blesses your life. Luke tells us, "Give away your life; you'll find life given back, but not merely given back--given back with bonus and blessing. Giving, not getting, is the way. Generosity begets generosity" (Luke 6:38).

You cannot out give God. The more you try to bless other people in the world around you, the more God says, "I'm going to pour blessings out on you. We'll play a little game here. Let's see who will win. Let's see who can give the most. The more you bless others the more I'm going to bless you in return."

The more we're blessed by God the more He expects us to help others. Jesus said it this way: "Much is required from the person to whom much is given; much more is required from the person to whom much more is given" (Luke 12:48).

Would you agree that based on the blessings of your life you probably have a greater responsibility than other people in the world? If you live in the United States, I'm sure you’d agree, because it's obvious we've been given freedom that many people don't have. We've been given opportunities that many people don't have. We've been given material and physical and spiritual abundance that a lot of people around the world simply do not have.

Think this through with me. If I've been blessed more than the rest of the world then it would stand to reason that God would want me to care about the rest of the world. Does that make sense?

Be Thankful Even in Tough Times

"May you always be joyful in your union with the Lord. I say it again: rejoice!" (Philippians 4:4).

In Philippians 4, Paul says, "May you always be joyful in your life in the Lord." Can we really be joyful in all circumstances? The Bible suggests the following strategy:

Don't worry about anything--Worrying doesn't change anything. It's stewing without doing. There are no such things as born-worriers. Worry is a learned response. You learned it from your parents. You learned it from your peers. You learned it from experience. That's good news. The fact that worry is learned means it can also be unlearned.

How do you unlearn it? Jesus says, "Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own" (Matthew 6:34). He's saying don't open your umbrella until it starts raining. Don't worry about tomorrow. Live one day at a time.

Pray about everything--Next, instead of worrying, use your time for praying. If you prayed as much as you worried, you'd have a whole lot less to worry about. Some people think God only cares about religious things, such as how many people I invite to church or my tithing. Is God interested in car payments? Yes. He's interested in every detail of your life. That means you can take any problem you face to God.

Thank God in all things--Whenever you pray, you should always pray with thanksgiving. The healthiest human emotion is not love but gratitude. It actually increases your immunities. It makes you more resistant to stress and less susceptible to illness. People who are grateful are happy. But people who are ungrateful are miserable because nothing makes them happy. They're never satisfied. It's never good enough. So if you cultivate the attitude of gratitude, of being thankful in everything, it reduces stress in your life.

Think about the right things--If you want to reduce the level of stress in your life, you must change the way you think because the way you think determines how you feel. And the way you feel determines how you act, which is why the Bible teaches that, if you want to change your life, you need to change what you’re thinking about.

This involves a deliberate conscious choice where you change the channels. You choose to think about the right things. Because the root cause of stress is the way we choose to think, we need to focus on the positive and on God's word.

What is the result of not worrying, praying about everything, giving thanks, and focusing on the right things? Paul tells us the result is, "you will experience God's peace which is far more wonderful than the human mind can understand. His peace will keep your thoughts and your heart quiet and at rest as you trust in Christ Jesus."

What a guarantee!

A Biblical Response to an Uncertain Future

"Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don't get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes" (Matthew 6:34).

No matter what the pollsters, pundits, and prognosticators claim, no one can accurately predict all that is going to happen in the next year, let alone the next few days or weeks. Our best forecasts are just educated guesses.

Change is not only increasing in speed and intensity, but also in unpredictability. How can anyone succeed when the future is so uncertain?

The Bible suggests three timeless principles for facing an uncertain future:

Set goals according to God’s direction--It's foolish to make plans without first consulting God. He's the only one who DOES know the future - and he's eager to guide you through it: "I alone know the plans I have for you, plans to bring you prosperity and not disaster, plans to bring about the future you hope for . . . You will seek me, and you will find me because you will seek me with all your heart" (Jeremiah 29:11,13).

The Bible also says, "We may make our plans, but God has the last word" (Proverbs 16:1). In other words, planning without praying is presumption. Start by praying, "God, what do YOU want me to do over the next year?"

Live one day at a time--While you can plan for tomorrow, you can't live it until it arrives. Most people spend so much time regretting the past and worrying about the future, they have no time to enjoy today!

John Lennon once wrote, "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans." Decide to make the most of each moment this year. Jesus said, "Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don't get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes" (Matthew 6:34).

Don't procrastinate - DO IT NOW!--"Never boast about tomorrow. You don't know what will happen between now and then" (Proverbs 27:1).

Procrastinating is a subtle trap. It wastes today by postponing things until tomorrow. You promise yourself that you'll do it 'one of these days.' But 'one of these days' usually turns into 'none of these days.'

What did you plan to get done last year that you didn't do? When do you intend to start working on it?

Three Steps Toward Spiritual Growth

"I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds" (John 12:24).

When you think about your walk with Jesus, some days you may wonder, "Why is this so hard? I'm still struggling with so many problems. When will I finally get it right?"

In my journey as a pastor, I've learned spiritual growth is often like the growth we see in nature--the best fruit ripens slowly. In John 12:24, Jesus says, "I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds" (John 12:24).

The problem is we tend to get impatient, so we dig up the seed to check the progress of its growth, and that slows down our growth! If you're not seeing as much fruit as you'd like, don't despair. Growth takes time.

In the meantime, try these steps toward spiritual growth:

Nurture growth with God's Word--I know you're already doing this, but when you read the promises of God, again and again, it helps you remember that he is at work, even when you can't see him at work: "Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see" (Hebrews 11:1).

Cooperate with God as he prunes--Praise God for the work he's doing in your life, remembering "he prunes the branches that do bear fruit so they will produce even more" (John 15:2).

Pray through the 'fruit list'--Pray through the 'fruit list' from Galatians 5:22-23. The NIV Bible lists the fruit as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Ask God to help you grow this fruit in your life.

PurposeDriven.com by Rick Warren

tag : Matthew, Genesis, Proverbs, Philippians, Hebrews, Luke, John, Jeremiah, The Four Laws of God’s Blessing, Be Thankful Even in Tough Times, A Biblical Response to, an Uncertain Future, Three Steps Toward Spiritual Growth

새로움

2009-11-15T02:04:52Z

재단법인 씨알

< 새로움 >

새로움이란 첫째로 힘 있음이다.
힘 있다 함은 밖을 이김이다.

생명은 스스로 끊임없이 피어나고 지어내는 것이기 때문에
늘 어디 가든지 막아냄, 건드림, 잡아당김을 느낀다.

그것을 이기고 제대로 하는 것,
자유 하는 것이 생명이다.

- 함석헌전집 2, 216쪽 -

< 풀이 >

생명은 스스로 하는 것이므로 늘 새로운 것이다. 새로우려면 자기와 밖을 이기는 힘이 있어야 한다. 내적인 힘이 있을 때 생명은 자유를 느낀다. 생명은 언제나 도전과 저항을 받게 마련이다. 도전과 저항, 장애와 억압을 뚫고 나가는 것이 생명이다.

- 박재순 -

< 새로움은 낳음이다 >

새로움은 낳음이다.

상한 것, 고장 난 것을
고치는 동시에,

또 자기 속에서 자기를 벗고
자기 이상 것으로 새로 남이다.

새는 낳음이요,
낳음은 새로움이다.

새로움은 자람이다,
핌이다, 완성함이다.

생은 자기완성을 위하여
자기부정을 하는 것이다.

죽지 않기 위하여
죽어서 아들을 낳는 것이다.

하나님이 영원, 무한한 생명이라면,
하나님은 늘 새롭게 하는 이다.

그래서 생명을 약진이라 하고
불연속의 연속이라 한다.

- 함석헌전집 2, 219-220쪽-

< 풀이 >

생명이 새롭다는 것은 자신을 고쳐서 새롭게 되는 것이고 자신을 새롭게 하는 것을 넘어서 새로 태어나는 것이다. 자기를 완성한다는 것은 자기를 연장하는 것이 아니라 자기를 부정하고 초월하여 새로운 존재가 되는 것이다. 기독교에서는 이것을 거듭난다고 말한다. 생명은 약진(躍進)하는 것이고 생명의 진화는 불연속의 연속으로 이루어진다. 나는 나이면서 늘 새로운 나로 태어나야 한다.

- 박재순 -

< 사람을 알자면 >

사람을 알자면 그 사람의 말을 알아야 한다.

반대로 그 사람의 말을 알면 그 사람을 알게 된다.

사람으로서 꼭 들어야 할 말을 들으면 죽어도 좋다는 것이다.

말을 알자는 인생이고 말을 듣고 끝내자는 게 인생이다.

- 씨알의 메아리 15쪽 -

< 풀이 >

사람의 말 속에 사람이 들어 있다. 말은 말하는 사람을 온통 드러낸다. 감정과 생각, 인격과 품격, 혼과 얼이 무심히 던지는 말 속에 고스란히 담겨 있다. 부드럽고 점잖은 말로 자신을 포장하려고 해도 소용이 없다. 사람들은 말을 함부로 하고 남의 말을 들으려고 하지 않는다. 세상에 난 것은 오직 한 마디 옳은 말을 하고 옳은 말을 듣자는 것이다. 평생 헛소리만 하다가 아무 말도 듣지 못하고 세상을 뜨면 허망하지 않은가? 사람으로 나서 사람을 모르고 죽으면 이보다 허무한 일이 없을 것 같다.

- 박재순 -

< 형이상학적 성욕(性慾) >

한아님이 계시느냐고 물으면 나는 ‘없다’고 말한다.
한아님을 아느냐고 물으면 나는 ‘모른다’고 말한다.

그러나 사람이 머리를 하늘에 두고 산다는
이 사실을 알기 때문에,

사람의 마음이 절대를 그린다는
이 사실을 알기 때문에

나는
한아님을 믿는다.

몸의 본능인 성욕이 있는 것이
이성(異性)이 있다는 증거이듯이,

내 마음에
절대(한아님)를 그리는

형이상학적 성욕(性慾)이 있는 것은
한아님이 계시기 때문이다.

우리들이 바라고 흠모하는 거룩한 존재,
이 존재를 나는 한아님이라고 부른다.

- 씨알의 메아리 15~16쪽 -

< 풀이 >

식욕과 성욕이 너무 두드러진 세상이라 사람의 본성은 식욕과 성욕인 것처럼 보인다. 유영모에 따르면 사람의 가장 근본적인 욕구는 절대를 갈구하는 형이상학적인 욕구다. 유영모는 사람들이 말하는 성욕(sex)을 육욕이라 하고 형이상학적 욕구를 사람의 본성에 속한 성욕(性慾)이라고 했다. 유영모는 절대를 한아님이라고 하였다. ‘한아님’은 절대의 큰 ‘한’과 ‘아’(我)를 함께 나타낸다. 절대 큰 하나의 님은 ‘나’의 본성 속에 깊이 들어 있다. 한아님을 그리워하고 탐구하는 것이 ‘나’를 살리고 실현하고 완성하는 것이다. 식욕과 육욕에 매달려 살면 사람다운 모습을 잃지만, 느낄 수 없고 알 수 없는 절대 한아님을 그리워하고 탐구하며 살면 사람답게 되고 사람이 옹글게 된다.

- 박재순 -

www.crlife.org

tag : 새로움, 생명, 자유, 함석헌, 유영모, 박재순, 씨알이 씨알에게, 새로움은 낳음이다, 사람을 알자면, 형이상학적 성욕 性慾, 한아님

Chalk Artist Julian Beever

2009-11-09T08:25:53Z

Julian Beever

Julian Beever is an English, Belgium-based chalk artist who has been creating trompe-l'œil chalk drawings on pavement surfaces since the mid-1990s. His works are created using a projection called anamorphosis, and create the illusion of three dimensions when viewed from the correct angle.

Beever works as a freelance artist and creates murals for companies. He has worked in the UK, Belgium, France, The Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Denmark, Spain, the U.S., Australia, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Russia and Portugal.

Besides this pavement art, Beever also paints murals with acrylic paints and replicas of the works of masters and oil paintings, and creates collages. Amongst his other work are wood panelled drawings, usually themed around music, measuring 7 metres long by 1.5 metres high.

http://users.skynet.be/J.Beever/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Beever

tag : Julian Beever, Chalk Artist

This Is It - Michael Jackson

2009-11-08T10:03:15Z

1,2,3,4
This is it, Here I stand
I’m to light up the world
I'll feel grand
Got this love, I can feel
And I know, Yes for sure
It is real

And it feels as though I’ve seen your face one thousand times
And you said you really know me too yourself
And I know that you have got addicted with you eyes
But you say you’re gonna leave it for yourself
Oh
I never heard a single word about you
Falling in love wasn’t my plan
I never thought that I would be your lover
Come on baby just understand

This is it
I can say
I’m the light of your world
run away
we can feel
This is real
Every time I’m in love that I feel

And I feel as though I’ve known you since a thousand years
And you tell me that you’ve seen my face before
And you said to me that you don’t want me hanging around
many times wanna do it here before
Oh yeah
I never heard a single word about you
Falling in love wasn’t my plan
I never thought that I would be your lover
Come on baby just understand

This is it
I can feel
I’m to light up the world
This is real
feel my song
we can say
And I tell you can feel that way

And I feels as though I’ve known you for a thousand years
And you said you saw my face yourself
And you said want to go with you on a while
And I know that it’s really for myself
Oh yeah
I never heard a single word about you
Falling in love wasn’t my plan
I never thought that I would be your lover
Come on please dear understand

I never heard a single word about you
Falling in love wasn’t my plan
I never thought that I would be your lover
Come on dear please understand
Oh yeah

I never heard a single word about you
Falling in love wasn’t my plan

The first new Michael Jackson song to emerge since the world mourned the loss of this musical icon has been released – a brand new single entitled “This Is It.” Sony Music Entertainment’s Columbia/Epic Label Group has also released the two-disc album This Is It (you can purchase at that link) featuring the music that inspired Sony Pictures’ forthcoming film of the same title. This two-disc album will be available internationally on October 26th and North America on October 27th to coincide with the worldwide release of the motion picture which arrives in theaters on October 28th and runs for a limited two-week engagement. Here is the song:

“This song only defines, once again, what the world already knows – that Michael is one of God’s greatest gifts,” comments John McClain, co-producer of the album.

Disc one will feature the original album masters of some of Michael’s biggest hits arranged in the same sequence as they appear in the film. The disc ends with two versions of the never-released “This Is It.” This song is featured in the film’s closing sequence and includes backing vocals by Michael’s brothers, the Jacksons.

Disc two offers previously unreleased versions of some of the artist’s classic tracks. This disc also features a touching spoken word poem from Michael Jackson entitled “Planet Earth” that has never been heard before.

The two-disc This is It is a stand-alone companion to the motion picture and includes a 36-page, commemorative booklet featuring exclusive photos of Michael from his last rehearsal.

The motion picture Michael Jackson’s This Is It will offer Jackson fans and music lovers worldwide a rare, behind-the-scenes look at the performer as he developed, created and rehearsed for his sold-out concerts that would have taken place beginning this summer in London’s O2 Arena. Chronicling the months from April through June, 2009, the film is produced with the full support of the Estate of Michael Jackson and drawn from more than one hundred hours of behind-the-scenes footage, featuring Jackson rehearsing a number of his songs for the show. Audiences will be given a chance to discover the man they never knew through this privileged and private look at Jackson. In raw and candid detail, Michael Jackson’s This Is It captures the singer, dancer, filmmaker, architect, creative genius and great artist at work as he creates and perfects his final show.

Kenny Ortega, who was both Michael Jackson’s creative partner and the director of the stage show is also directing the film, which is being produced by Randy Phillips, Kenny Ortega and Paul Gongaware. Executive producers are John Branca and John McClain. The film will be distributed worldwide by Sony Pictures Releasing.

Tickets for the limited two-week engagement of the film go on sale beginning September 27.

Rhees' in Hillsboro, OR on Nov. 2009

2009-11-08T09:24:02Z

Michael Jackson

Will You Be There

Hold Me
Like The River Jordan
And I Will Then Say To Thee
You Are My Friend

Carry Me
Like You Are My Brother
Love Me Like A Mother
Would You Be There?

Mary
Tell Me Will You Hold Me
When Wrong, Will You Scold Me
When Lost Will You Find Me?

But They Told Me
A Man Should Be Faithful
And Walk When Not Able
And Fight Till The End
But I'm Only Human

Everyone's Taking Control Of Me
Seems That The World's
Got A Role For Me
I'm So Confused
Will You Show To Me
You'll Be There For Me
And Care Enough To Bear Me

(Hold Me) show me
(Lay Your Head Lowly)
told me
(Softly Then Boldly)
yeah
(Carry Me There)
I'm Only Human

(Lead Me)
hold me
(Love Me And Feed Me)
yea yeah
(Kiss Me And Free Me)
yeah
(I Will Feel Blessed)
I'm Only Human

(Carry)
Carry
(Carry Me Boldly)
Carry yeah
(Lift Me Up Slowly)
yeah
(Carry Me There)
I'm Only Human

(Save Me)
save me
(Heal Me And Bathe Me)
lift me up, lift me up
(Softly You Say To Me)
(I Will Be There)
I Will Be There

(Lift Me)
i'm gonna care
(Lift Me Up Slowly)
(Carry Me Boldly)
yeah
(Show Me You Care)
Show Me You Care

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8rYl6K2STc

tag : Rhee, Hillsboro, Michael Jackson, Will You Be There

Isaiah 이사야 61 - 66 장‏

2009-11-08T08:45:50Z

이사야 61장 입니다.

세상에는 상처받고 가난하고 질병 가운데 고생하는 사람들이 많습니다.

세상 사람들은 가까운 친척이나 형제라도 이런 사람들을 불편해 합니다. 당연히 가까이 하기를 꺼려 합니다.

그러나 하나님께서는 이런 어려움 가운데 있는 사람들을 외면하지 않으십니다.

찾아 오십니다. 그리고 위로해 주십니다.

가난하고, 포로되고, 갇힌 사람들에게 위로와 자유의 말씀을 선포해 주셨습니다.

이렇게 어려운 사람들에게 찾아가 위로의 말씀을 전하는 것은 우리 성도의 사명이기도 합니다.

어떻게 이 사명을 감당할 수 있습니까?

1. 성령의 충만함을 입어야 이 사명을 감당할 수 있습니다. (1-3절)

주님께서도 복음을 전파의 사명을 감당하시기 전에 성령의 충만을 받으셨습니다.

1절에 '주 여호와의 신이 임하였다'는 말씀은 성령이 임했다는 말씀입니다.

하나님의 사람은 말씀을 전하기 전에 하나님의 영으로 감동 되어야 합니다.

그래야 마음에 상처가 있는 사람들을 위로 할 수 있습니다.

사람의 말로는 오히려 부작용만 있을 뿐입니다.

주님도 성령의 능력을 힘입어 말씀을 전하셨습니다. 우리는 더더욱 그래야 합니다.

범사에 성령 충만하도록 기도에 힘써야 합니다.

2. 하나님의 봉사자로 일해야 합니다. (4-9절)

4절로 9절까지의 내용은 메시아의 사역의 결과로 넘치게 될 복들을 전해주고 있습니다.

우리를 여호와의 제사장이라고 하십니다. 어떻게 우리가 제사장이 될 수 있습니까?

보혈의 공로 때문입니다. 보혈의 공로로 하나님 앞에 나아가게 된 것입니다.

어디서 무엇을 하든 제사장 처럼, 제사장 답게 주신 사명을 감당해야 합니다.

3. 매일 찬송하는 생활을 해야 합니다. (10,11절)

선지자는 하나님과 함께하는 기쁨이 얼마나 큰지 그 기쁨을 결혼식의 기쁨으로 표현하고 있습니다.

구원받은 백성들은 기쁨의 노래를 부르고 있습니다. 교회는 찬양이 있는 곳입니다. 교회의 참 모습입니다.

성령충만하여 날마다 찬송하는 복된 성도들이 되시길 바랍니다.

이사야 62장 입니다.

복음을 전하는 사람들이 해야 할 일을 가르쳐주는 말씀입니다.

1. 하나님의 교회를 영광스럽게 해야 합니다. (1-5절)

하나님께서는 당신의 백성들이 공의를 나타내며 영광스러운 자리에 이르기까지 쉬지 않고 일하십니다.

구원이 완성될 때까지 하나님은 쉬지 않으십니다.

오늘날 교회안에 선하지 못한 일들이 없지 않아 있습니다. 유감스런 일입니다.

그러나 그럼에도 하나님은 교회를 사랑하십니다. 영광스럽게 하사 기뻐하십니다.
예수님께서는 당신의 피값으로 교회를 사셨습니다. 그리고 그분의 터위에 교회를 세우셨습니다.

거룩하게 하셨습니다. 그 교회가 바르게 서가길 원하십니다.

2. 파수꾼의 책임을 다해야 합니다.(6-9절)

지금까지 하나님께서는 당신의 교회와 나라를 영광스럽게 만들어 오셨습니다.

파수꾼을 세우시고(6절),

능력의 오른팔로 교회와 성도들을 지키시고 끊임없이 이스라엘의 회복을 위해 일해오셨습니다(7,8절).

성벽위의 파숫꾼은 예루살렘의 재건을 위해 기도하는 경건한 자를 가리킵니다.

즉 성벽위에 세운 파숫꾼은 하나님께서 그 백성을 잊지 않으시도록 백성을 위해 기도하는 자들을 가리킵니다.

진정한 파수꾼은 백성들을 위하여 하나님께 기도하는 사람들 입니다.

3. 날마다 준비해야 합니다. (10-12절)

하나님의 말씀은 우리 개개인의 구원뿐만 아니라 더 엄밀하게는 천국에 대한 약속입니다.

구원은 전적인 하나님의 은혜 입니다.하나님께서는 이스라엘 백성들에게 구원의 길을 명령하십니다.

성문으로 나아가라 하시고 백성의 길을 예비하라 하십니다.

그리고 대로를 수축하고 수축하라 하시며 돌을 제하고 만민을 위하여 기를 들라 명하십니다.

친히 시온에게 '보라 네 구원이 임하느니라 보라 상급이 그에게 있고 보응이 그 앞에 있느니라'(11절) 반포하십니다.

세상의 사람들도 시온을 향하여 '거룩한 백성이라 여호와께서 구속하신 자라' 한다고 했습니다.

구원은 하나님의 전적인 은혜이지만 세상 사람들도 인정하는 사실이 된다는 것입니다.

하나님의 구원을 받은 자는 좋은 나무가 되고 좋은 열매를 맺기 때문입니다.

행함으로 믿음이 드러나며, 사랑으로 그 믿음이 드러나기 때문입니다.

승리하시는 하루가 되세요.

이사야 63장 입니다.

우리는 누구나 세상에 살면서 원치 않는 어려움에 처할 때가 있습니다.

그때마다 우리는 하나님께 기도하게 됩니다.

오늘 성경은 기도자의 자세 가르쳐 주고 있습니다.

1. 승리를 확신하며 기도해야 합니다(1-6절)

홀로 싸우시는 하나님께서 승리하십니다. 그분은 우리의 도움이 필요치 않으십니다.

누구와 싸워도 승리하시는 분이십니다. 사탄의 궤계도 이미 십자가에서 패배한 것입니다.

승리의 날도 그분의 마음에 있다는 말은(4절), 모든 것을 그분이 주장하신다는 것입니다.

우리의 대장 되시는 그분이 승리하셨습니다.

2. 함께 계심을 믿고 기도해야 합니다(7-14절)

사람들은 내가 실수하고 내가 어려움에 빠지면 나를 피하거나 나를 떠나갑니다.

이건 인지상정입니다. 뭐라고 할 것도 없습니다. 왜냐하면 나도 그러니까요.

그러나 하나님은 내가 어떤 좋지 않은 상황가운데 있어도 나를 떠나지 않으십니다(9절).

애굽의 노예로 살때도, 광야의 이름없는 방랑자 ㅇㅏ였을 때도,

바벨론의 포로로 잡혀갔을 때도 하나님은 저들과 함께 하셨습니다.

3. 하나님을 아버지 믿으며 기도해야 합니다(15-19절)

아브라함은 모르고 이스라엘(야곱)은 인정하지 못해도 하나님은 아버지시라고 합니다(16절).

그 믿음이 확실했습니다. 오늘 우리도 이 믿음에서 흔들리지 않아야 하겠습니다.

이런 믿음으로 기도하시는 모두 되시길 바랍니다.

승리하는 하루가 되세요.

이사야 64장 입니다.

오늘 말씀은 환난 가운데 있는 사람들이 어떤 자세로 기도해야 하는지를 가르쳐 주고 있습니다.

1. 확신을 가지고 기도해야 합니다. (1-4절)

1절은 이렇게 시작합니다. '원컨대' 기도자는 무엇을 기도해야 하는지 분명히 알고 있었습니다.

우리도 그렇습니다. 늘 기도한다고 하지만 무엇을 기도해야 할 지 막연할 때가 있습니다.

기도는 구체적으로 해야 합니다. 기도를 구체적으로 한다는 말은 하나님의 뜻을 구체적으로 알기를 원한다는 것입니다.

기도자는 무엇을 원했습니까?

하나님의 영광을 구했습니다. 하나님의 임재를 구했습니다.

하나님이 나타나시면 그의 모든 어려움이 해결될 것을 믿었기 때문입니다.

2. 나의 모습을 바로 보며 기도해야 합니다. (5-7절)

'우리는 다 부정한 자 같다'고 했습니다. 누구도 하나님 앞에서 의로움을 주장할 수 없습니다.

우리는 다 부정한 자들 입니다. 스스로 정결케 될 수 없고, 스스로를 구원할 수 없습니다.

그것을 깨달으면 구원의 은혜가 큰 것입니다.

3. 하나님께서 아버지 이심을 고백해며 기도해야 합니다. (8-12절)

우리는 아버지께로서 온 사람들 입니다. 우리는 진흙이요 하나님은 토기장이(8절)라고 합니다.

우리는 하나님의 지으신바 된 사람들 입니다. 그래서 소중합니다. 그래서 감사합니다.

복된 하루 되세요.

이사야 65장 입니다.

이사야서를 성경 한권을 볼 수 있습니다.

1 - 39장은 구약성경에 해당되고, 40 - 66장은 신약에 해당됩니다.

좀더 세분하면 40-53장은 구속사역에 관한 내용으로 '복음서'에 해당되고,

54,55장은 하나님 나라의 확장으로 '사도행전'에 해당되고,

56-64장은 일반적인 내용으로 '서신서'에 해당되고,

65,66장은 하나님 나라의 완성으로 계시록에 해당된다고 볼 수 있습니다.

오늘 본문에는 계시록 21장에 나오는 새 하늘과 새 땅이 등장합니다.

그 새 하늘과 새 땅에 들어갈 백성들의 삶의 자세는 어떠해야 합니까?

1. 하나님의 은혜를 알고 감사해야 합니다. (1-7절)

하나님께서는 자기를 찾지도, 부르지도, 구하지도 않은 이방인들에게 자기를 나타내 보이시고 구원하셨습니다.(1절)

우리도 그렇습니다. 우리는 아브라함의 후손들이 아닙니다. 불과 백여년 전 만해도 우리는 복음을 알지 못했습니다.

그런데 우리에게 복음이 들려지게 되었습니다. 나에게도 그 복음이 들려지고, 믿어지게 되었습니다.

은혜 입니다. 아무것도 한 것이 없습니다. 모두가 그분이 하신 일입니다. 그러므로 감사해야 합니다.

2. 하나님 중심으로 살아야 합니다. (8-16절)

다 망하는 것 같아도 하나님은 구원받을 자들을 항상 남겨 두셨습니다.

노아의 홍수때도 노아의 가족은 살려 두셨습니다.

세상이 아무리 악하고, 무섭게 돌아가고 참된 신자를 찾아 볼 수 없다 하더라도 남은 자는 어딘가에 남겨 두십니다.

하나님 앞에 힘을 다해 성실하고 신실해야 합니다. 중심을 늘 하나님을 향해야 합니다.

이런 사람들을 하나님은 먹이시고, 즐거움을 주시고, 새 이름과 또 과거의 모든 아픔을 치유해 주십니다.(16절)

3. 믿음으로 사는 사람이 되어야 합니다. (17-25절)

새 하늘과 새 땅은 이전의 것이 아닙니다. 전혀 다른 세상입니다.

그곳은 즐거움과 기쁨이 계속되는 곳입니다. 영광스러운 곳입니다.

우리는 어느날 그 곳에 갈 것입니다. 완전한 평화가 있는 그 곳입니다.

주님주신 믿음을 잘 지킨 사람들이 그곳에 갑니다.

오늘도 이 믿음 안에서 승리하시길 바랍니다.

이사야 66장 입니다.

오늘 새벽에 읽은 말씀은 이사야서 마지막 장인 66장 이었습니다. 이사야서의 결론이라고 볼 수 있습니다.

새 하늘과 새 땅을 바라보는 사람들이 구속의 완성을 소망하며 살아가기 위해 어떤 자세를 가져야 하는 지를 가르쳐 주고 있습니다.

1. 외식적인 신자가 되지 않도록 해야 합니다. (1-6절)

사람들은 서로의 겉모습을 보고 판단합니다.

그래서 열길 물속은 알아도 한길 사람속은 모른다는 말을 합니다.

겉모습을 보고 판단하는 것에 실수가 많다는 것입니다.

그러나 하나님은 우리의 중심을 보십니다. 하나님을 속일 수는 없습니다.

신앙의 외식이란 무엇일까요?

먼저 하나님의 말씀을 쉽게 생각하는 것입니다.

하나님의 말씀을 경외해야 합니다.

또 예배와 생활이 너무 다른 것의 외식입니다.

드리는 예배에 진실함이 있으려면 그 삶이 뒷받침 되어야 합니다.

그리고 조그만 시험에도 넘어지는 것입니다.

하나님께서 살아계심을 우리가 믿는다면 어떤 어려움이 와도 낙심치 않을 수 있습니다.

2. 시련 중에도 끝까지 하나님을 신뢰해야 합니다. (7-14절)

하나님의 약속은 반드시 이루어 집니다.

우리의 구원을 시작하신 하나님께서 우리의 구원을 반드시 이룰 것입니다.

해산의 고통은 어머니만 당하는 것이 아니라 태어나는 아이도 당한다고 합니다.

그러나 그 고통을 이겨낸 아이와 제왕절개로 세상에 나온 아이가 고난을 극복하는 데 차이가 있다고 합니다.

연단을 통해 우리를 겸손하게 하시고, 성장케 하십니다.

3. 우리의 삶의 자리에서 하나님의 영광을 나타내야 합니다.(15-24절)

새 하늘과 새 땅에 하나님의 백성들의 이름과 그 자손들의 이름이 영원히 있을 것이라고 했습니다.

천국에서는 하나님께 드리는 경배가 있고(23절),

지옥에서는 영원한 고통이 있습니다(24절).

소망 가운데 날마다 믿음으로 승리하시는 모두가 되시길 바랍니다.

http://sahnsem.com by Pastor Joseph Yoon

tag : 기도, 감사, 믿음, 사명, 자유, 구원, 공의, 성령, 은혜, 승리, 열매, 소망, 사도행전, 하나님, 복음서, 영광, 이사야, Isaiah, 계시록, 서신서

Mere Christianity - Book Three - Faith

2009-11-08T08:13:56Z

Book Three

CHRISTIAN BEHAVIOUR

11. Faith

I must talk in this chapter about what the Christians call Faith.
Roughly speaking, the word Faith seems to be used by Christians in two
senses or on two levels, and I will take them in turn. In the first sense it
means simply Belief-accepting or regarding as true the doctrines of
Christianity. That is fairly simple. But what does puzzle people-at least it
used to puzzle me-is the fact that Christians regard faith in this sense as
a virtue, I used to ask how on earth it can be a virtue-what is there moral
or immoral about believing or not believing a set of statements? Obviously,
I used to say, a sane man accepts or rejects any statement, not because he
wants or does not want to, but because the evidence seems to him good or
bad. If he were mistaken about the goodness or badness of the evidence that
would not mean he was a bad man, but only that he was not very clever. And
if he thought the evidence bad but tried to force himself to believe in
spite of it, that would be merely stupid.

Well, I think I still take that view. But what I did not see then- and
a good many people do not see still-was this. I was assuming that if the
human mind once accepts a thing as true it will automatically go on
regarding it as true, until some real reason for reconsidering it turns up.
In fact, I was assuming that the human mind is completely ruled by reason.
But that is not so. For example, my reason is perfectly convinced by good
evidence that anaesthetics do not smother me and that properly trained
surgeons do not start operating until I am unconscious. But that does not
alter the fact that when they have me down on the table and clap their
horrible mask over my face, a mere childish panic begins inside me. I start
thinking I am going to choke, and I am afraid they will start cutting me up
before I am properly under. In other words, I lose my faith in anaesthetics.
It is not reason that is taking away my faith: on the contrary, my faith is
based on reason. It is my imagination and emotions. The battle is between
faith and reason on one side and emotion and imagination on the other.

When you think of it you will see lots of instances of this. A man
knows, on perfectly good evidence, that a pretty girl of his acquaintance is
a liar and cannot keep a secret and ought not to be trusted; but when he
finds himself with her his mind loses its faith in that bit of knowledge and
he starts thinking, "Perhaps she'll be different this time," and once more
makes a fool of himself and tells her something he ought not to have told
her. His senses and emotions have destroyed his faith in what he really
knows to be true. Or take a boy learning to swim. His reason knows perfectly
well that an unsupported human body will not necessarily sink in water: he
has seen dozens of people float and swim. But the whole question is whether
he will be able to go on believing this when the instructor takes away his
hand and leaves him unsupported in the water-or whether he will suddenly
cease to believe it and get in a fright and go down.

Now just the same thing happens about Christianity. I am not asking
anyone to accept Christianity if his best reasoning tells him that the
weight of the evidence is against it. That is not the point at which Faith
comes in. But supposing a man's reason once decides that the weight of the
evidence is for it. I can tell that man what is going to happen to him in
the next few weeks. There will come a moment when there is bad news, or he
is in trouble, or is living among a lot of other people who do not believe
it, and all at once his emotions will rise up and carry out a sort of blitz
on his belief. Or else there will come a moment when he wants a woman, or
wants to tell a lie, or feels very pleased with himself, or sees a chance of
making a little money in some way that is not perfectly fair: some moment,
in fact, at which it would be very convenient if Christianity were not true.
And once again his wishes and desires will carry out a blitz. I am not
talking of moments at which any real new reasons against Christianity turn
up. Those have to be faced and that is a different matter. I am talking
about moments where a mere mood rises up against it.

Now Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art
of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your
changing moods. For moods will change, whatever view your reason takes. I
know that by experience. Now that I am a Christian I do have moods in which
the whole thing looks very improbable: but when I was an atheist I had moods
in which Christianity looked terribly probable. This rebellion of your moods
against your real self is going to come anyway. That is why Faith is such a
necessary virtue: unless you teach your moods "where they get off," you can
never be either a sound Christian or even a sound atheist, but just a
creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really dependent on the
weather and the state of its digestion. Consequently one must train the
habit of Faith.

The first step is to recognise the fact that your moods change. The
next is to make sure that, if you have once accepted Christianity, then some
of its main doctrines shall be deliberately held before your mind for some
time every day. That is why daily prayers and religious reading and church
going are necessary parts of the Christian life. We have to be continually
reminded of what we believe. Neither this belief nor any other will
automatically remain alive in the mind. It must be fed. And as a matter of
fact, if you examined a hundred people who had lost their faith in
Christianity, I wonder how many of them would turn out to have been reasoned
out of it by honest argument? Do not most people simply drift away?

Now I must turn to Faith in the second or higher sense: and this is the
most difficult thing I have tackled yet. I want to approach it by going back
to the subject of Humility. You may remember I said that the first step
towards humility was to realise that one is proud. I want to add now that
the next step is to make some serious attempt to practise the Christian
virtues. A week is not enough. Things often go swimmingly for the first
week. Try six weeks. By that time, having, as far as one can see, fallen
back completely or even fallen lower than the point one began from, one will
have discovered some truths about oneself. No man knows how bad he is till
he has tried very hard to be good. A silly idea is current that good people
do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who
try to resist temptation know how strong it is. After all, you find out the
strength of the German army by fighting against it, not by giving in. You
find out the strength of a wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying
down. A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not
know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in
one sense, know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life
by always giving in. We never find out the strength of the evil impulse
inside us until we try to fight it: and Christ, because He was the only man
who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full
what temptation means-the only complete realist. Very well, then. The main
thing we learn from a serious attempt to practise the Christian virtues is
that we fail. If there was any idea that God had set us a sort of exam, and
that we might get good marks by deserving them, that has to be wiped out. If
there was any idea of a sort of bargain-any idea that we could perform our
side of the contract and thus put God in our debts so that it was up to Him,
in mere justice, to perform His side-that has to be wiped out.

I think every one who has some vague belief in God, until he becomes a
Christian, has the idea of an exam, or of a bargain in his mind. The first
result of real Christianity is to blow that idea into bits. When they find
it blown into bits, some people think this means that Christianity is a
failure and give up. They seem to imagine that God is very simple-minded! In
fact, of course, He knows all about this. One of the very things
Christianity was designed to do was to blow this idea to bits. God has been
waiting for the moment at which you discover that there is no question of
earning a pass mark in this exam, or putting Him in your debt.

Then comes another discovery. Every faculty you have, your power of
thinking or of moving your limbs from moment to moment, is given you by God.
If you devoted every moment of your whole life exclusively to His service
you could not give Him anything that was not in a sense His own already. So
that when we talk of a man doing anything for God or giving anything to God,
I will tell you what it is really like. It is like a small child going to
its father and saying, "Daddy, give me sixpence to buy you a birthday
present." Of course, the father does, and he is pleased with the child's
present. It is all very nice and proper, but only an idiot would think that
the father is sixpence to the good on the transaction. When a man has made
these two discoveries God can really get to work. It is after this that real
life begins. The man is awake now. We can now go on to talk of Faith in the
second sense.

Lewis discuses the two levels of Faith.

Lewis admits to being puzzled by the concept of simple belief being a virtue. How did he resolve this puzzlement?
Lewis defines Faith as ...
How does one train the habit of Faith?
Before discussing the second level of Faith, Lewis returns to cultivating humility and suggests that one try to live the Christian life for a while. One will then discover by failure that ...

"Faith" in the first sense: Belief -- "accepting or regarding as true the doctrines of Christianity."

Obviously, something should be accepted or rejected based on the facts about what seems to be true.
- Being honestly wrong about something doesn't mean a person is 'bad,' only (possibly) 'not very clever.'
- If a person thinks the evidence for something is bad, but he wills himself to believe it anyway, he's just stupid.

This assumes that we accept and reject things strictly on reason, which is not true.

example of panic on the operating table

It is not reason that is taking away my faith: on the contrary, my faith is based on reason. It is my imagination and emotions. The battle is between faith and reason on one side and emotion and imagination on the other.

example of the girl that lies, and the boy can't keep his head about her.

The same thing happens in Christianity.

You should only accept Christianity, if your best reason says that it's true.
Within a few weeks of accepting it, something will come along that makes you question Christianity:
- bad news, trouble, or your friends who aren't Christians.
- temptation, when Christianity not being true would seem convenient.
In these times, your emotions will carry out an assault on what your reason accepted.
These are all moods that rise up against what you accepted by reason.

Now Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted in spite of your changing moods. For moods will change, whatever view your reason takes.

So, you must train the habit of Faith.

Recognize that moods change
Spend some time, every day deliberately reflecting on some of the main doctrines of Christianity. (quiet time, small groups, prayer, Bible reading)
"We have to be continually reminded of what we believe."
No belief will automatically remain alive in the mind.
People who abandon Christianity rarely have been reasoned out of it -- they simply drift away.

Faith in the second/higher sense - stick to it.

'"No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good."

It is silly that people who always yield to temptation think that those who don't aren't tempted, "Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. After all, you find out the strength of the German army by fighting against it, not by giving in."
Those to always give into temptation live the sheltered life of never having to face the struggle of fighting it.
Jesus is the only complete realist because he is the only man who every faced temptation and never yielded -- thereby facing the full fury of temptation and evil.

We find that a serious attempt to practice Christian virtues results in our failing. In that failing we find that our only hope is to rely on God -- that we cannot do it without him.

we learn that we can never be good enough to put God in our debt.

Then comes another discovery. Every faculty you have, your power of thinking or of moving your limbs from moment to moment, is given you by God. If you devoted every moment of your whole life exclusively to His service you could not give Him anything that was not in a sense His own already. So that when we talk of a man doing anything for God or giving anything to God, I will tell you what it is really like.... When a man has made these two discoveries God can really get to work. It is after this that real life begins. The man is awake now. We can now go on to talk of Faith in the second sense.

http://lib.ru/LEWISCL/mere_engl.txt

http://www.opendiscipleship.org/Mere_Christianity_leaders_notes

http://www.gordy-stith.com/Mere%20Christianity/mere_christianity_study_guide.htm

tag : GOD, Faith, C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, CHRISTIAN BEHAVIOUR, Virtue

Developing Self-Control

2009-11-06T13:31:10Z

Developing Self-Control

"Like a city whose walls are broken down is a man who lacks self-control" (Proverbs 25:28).

Self-control brings with it the good feeling of competency. Like a finely tuned precision automobile, your life stays on course with the slightest touch of steering. The results of self-control are confidence and an inner sense of security.

Self-control and self-discipline are also key factors in any success you hope to have in this life. Without self-discipline, you are unlikely to achieve anything of lasting value.

The apostle Paul realized this when he wrote, "Every athlete in training submits to strict discipline, in order to be crowned with a wreath that will not last; but we do it for one that will last forever" (1 Corinthians 9:25).

Olympic athletes train for years in order to have a chance to win a brief moment of glory. But the race we are running is far more important than any earthly athletic event. So self-control is not optional for Christians.

How do we gain true self-control?

Admit your problem. The starting point for developing self-control is to face what God has already said about me: I am responsible for my behavior.

James 1:14 says, "A man's temptation is due to the pull of his own inward desires, which can be enormously attractive."

Do you realize what that says? It says you do things because you like to do them! When I do something I know is bad for me, I still do it because I like to do it. I want to do it; it's an inner desire.

Do you want more self-control? Admit you have a problem and be specific about it. Begin praying specifically about your problem areas.

Put your past behind you. Philippians 3:13-14 says, "Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal..."

This verse exposes a misconception that will keep you from gaining self-control: Once a failure, always a failure.

Failure in the past does not mean you'll never be able to change. Focusing on past failures, however, does guarantee their repetition. It's like driving a car and looking in the rearview mirror the whole time. You're going to collide with what's ahead of you.

Ask God to help you put your past behind you.

Self-Control Is Not an Option

"For the grace of God...teaches us to say 'No' to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives" (Titus 2:11-12).

As we discussed yesterday, self-control is not optional for Christians. The race we are running is for eternity, and so we're to develop a strict discipline (1 Corinthians 9:25).

Here are some other steps to self-control.

Talk back to your feelings. Do you let your moods manipulate you? God doesn't want you to be controlled by your feelings. He wants you to master your moods. With Christ as the Master of your life, you can learn to master your feelings.

Talk back to them. Learn to challenge your emotions: "For the grace of God...teaches us to say 'No' to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives..." (Titus 2:11-12).

God's grace gives us the power to do what is right. God gives you the ability to say no to that feeling, to that desire, to that impulse.

Believe you can change. The fruit of the Spirit begins in your thought life. The seeds must be planted in your mind: The way you think determines the way you feel, and the way you feel determines the way you act.

God gave us the power to change our habits when he gave us the power to choose our thoughts. Does Romans 12:2 tell us to be transformed by working hard at it or by sheer willpower? "Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind" (Romans 12:2).

What are we to be transformed by? The renewing of the mind. When your self-control is being tested, you need to fill your mind with the promises of God. First Corinthians 10:13 says, "God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it."

That's a fact. If you are a Christian, you can't honestly say, "The temptation was too strong; I couldn't help myself." The Bible says God is faithful. If you're a Christian, he won't let you be tempted beyond what you can bear.

He never asks you to bear something that is bigger than the strength he puts inside of you through his Holy Spirit.

Self-Control Is Christ's Control

"Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken" (Ecclesiastes 4:12).

There's nothing you can do as well without Christ as you can with him. Any struggle you're facing will be easier to conquer with his help.

Don't make the mistake of thinking you have to clean up all your messes before you ask God for help. That's like curing yourself of a disease before you go see the doctor. Go to God first and get his help in all your battles.

The secret of self-control is Christ's control. Then, as you face temptations that are too strong for you to resist, remember he is with you and turn them over to him. Remember, Christ provides the power to change your life!

But there are two things you must still do to develop self-control:

Avoid temptation. It is just pure common sense: Don't put yourself in situations where you'll face temptation. If you struggle with alcohol, don't go into a bar. If you're struggling to lose weight, don't load the refrigerator with ice cream. Do whatever you must to avoid temptation.

Make yourself accountable. Find someone who will check up on you, pray for you, and encourage you in the areas where you want to develop more self-control. Ecclesiastes 4:12 says, "Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken."

If you're serious about self-control, find another believer you trust and say, "I have this problem. I've confessed it to God. I've asked forgiveness, and now I want to ask you to help me. Will you be my 'buddy,' a person I can call on the phone when I need support and encouragement?"

I believe God intends for every church to be filled with "buddy" relationships where people are accountable to each other, where they help and encourage each other in the Lord.

Having someone hold you accountable is tough, but it works.

Building Margin Into Your Life

"Jesus said to his followers, 'Go everywhere in the world, and tell the Good News to everyone'" (Mark 16:15).

A lot of people are on overload and headed for a crash. Consider these statistics among U.S. citizens:

• People now sleep 2 1/2 fewer hours each night compared to people from one hundred years ago.

• The average work week is longer now than it was in the 1960s.

• The average office worker has 36 hours of work piled up on his or her desk. It takes three hours a week just to sort through it and find what we need.

• We spend eight months of our lives opening junk mail, two years of our lives playing phone tag with people who are too busy to answer, and five years waiting for people who are trying to do too much and are late for meetings.

We're a piled-on, stretched-to-the limit society; chronically rushed, chronically late, chronically exhausted. Many of us feel like Job did when he said, "I have no peace! I have no quiet! I have no rest! And trouble keeps coming" (Job 3:26).

Overload comes when we have too much activity in our lives, too much change, too many choices, too much work, too much debt, too much media exposure.

Dr. Richard Swenson says, "The conditions of modern day living devour margin. If you're homeless we direct you to a shelter. If you're penniless we offer you food stamps. If you're breathless we connect you to oxygen. But if you're marginless we give you one more thing to do. Marginless is being thirty minutes late to the doctor's office because you were twenty minutes late getting out of the hairdresser because you were ten minutes late dropping the children off at school because the car ran out of gas two blocks from a gas station and you forgot your purse. That's marginless."

You need margin in your life. When you're not hurrying and worrying all the time, you have time to think. Time to relax. Time to enjoy life. Time to be still and know that God is God (Psalm 46:10).

Three Benefits of Margin

"One handful of peaceful repose is better than two fistfuls of worried work..." (Ecclesiastes 4:6).

Margin is the space between your load and your limit. Your load should never be heavier than your limit. But the truth is, most of us are far more overloaded than we can handle; we have no margin for error in our lives.

Dr. Richard Swenson explains, "Marginless is not having time to finish the book you're reading on stress. Margin is having the time to read it twice. Marginless is our culture. Margin is counterculture, having some space in your life and schedule. Marginless is the disease of our decade and margin is the cure."

Here are three immediate benefits you'll receive by building margin into your life:

1. Better health. Unrelenting stress harms our bodies. We all know that, yet we let it continue day after day after day. Many times the only time we get margin in our lives is when the heart attack almost happens (or does happen) or the blood pressure skyrockets. Why do we wait until our health plummets before we make this decision? Why not realize that we need to build some margin into our lives now? The truth is, your body needs downtime in order to heal.

2. Stronger relationships. Lack of margin is one big reason for the collapse of the American family today. When we don't make relationships a priority and make time for each other, our relationships suffer. The truth is relationships take time, and margin provides that time to sit and talk, to listen and enjoy one another, and to provide the comfort we each need.

3. Usefulness in ministry. When you're overloaded by activity, you can only think of yourself. You're in survival mode, just trying to make it through another day. But being available to God for his use makes all the difference in this world.

When you have no margin in your life and God taps you on the shoulder, saying, "I'd like you to do this for Me," your first response isn't joy. Your first response is, "Oh, no! Another thing to do! Sorry, God, I'd like to do that, but I'm just too busy."

We end up resenting the great opportunities God brings into our lives. But when you have margin, you're available for God to use.

You don't have to live on overload. You don't have to live in survival mode. Begin today to build a buffer around your schedule, then enjoy the benefits of margin and see what God does next!

Steps to Un-Stuff Your Schedule and Increase Your Margin

"Reverence for God adds hours to each day" (Proverbs 10:27).

Do you ever get to the end of your day and think, "Did I accomplish anything?"

Where does all the time go?

If you don't master your schedule, it will master you!

Here are three suggestions from the Bible for reducing the stress of your schedule and increasing the margin:

1. Line up your priorities. Obviously, you don't have time to do everything, so you must make choices. You must decide what's really important and what isn't. Take some time to consider the direction of your life. The Bible says, "An intelligent person aims at wise action, but a fool starts off in many directions" (Proverbs 17:24); "It is stupid to waste time on useless projects" (Proverbs 12:11); "We should make plans—counting on God to direct us" (Proverbs 16:9).

2. Lighten up your attitude. Do you really have to do everything on your to-do list? No one is holding a gun to your head; a lot of your stress is self-imposed. The Bible says, "Worry weighs us down..." (Proverbs 12:25); "A relaxed attitude lengthens a man's life" (Proverbs 14:30); "Being cheerful keeps you healthy. It is slow death to be gloomy all the time" (Proverbs 17:22).

3. Look up to God. Stress is always a warning light that you've taken your focus off God and are looking at your problems from your limited viewpoint.

I believe the single greatest cause of stress is this: We take ourselves too seriously and we don't take God seriously enough!

Margin Comes From Managing Your Time

"Then Jesus said, 'Let's get away from the crowds for a while and rest.' There were so many people coming and going that Jesus and His apostles didn't even have time to eat" (Mark 6:31).

Jesus experienced enormous stress and pressure, yet it didn't seem to disturb His peace of mind. In spite of opposition, constant demands, and little privacy, His life reflected a calm sense of balance.

What was His secret?

1. Identification: Know who you are (John 8:12). Eighteen times Jesus publicly defined Himself. There was no doubt in His mind as to who He was. If you are unsure of your identity, you'll allow others to pressure you into their molds. Trying to be someone you're not causes stress!

2. Dedication: Know who you want to please (John 5:30). You can't please everyone. Even God can't! Just about the time you get "Crowd A" happy, "Crowd B" will be upset with you. Jesus never let the fear of rejection manipulate Him. No one can pressure you without your permission.

3. Organization: Set clear goals (John 8:14). Jesus said, "I know where I came from and where I am going." Preparation prevents pressure but procrastination produces it. You work by either priorities or pressures.

4. Concentration: Focus on one thing at a time (Luke 4:42-44). You can't chase two rabbits at the same time! Jesus knew how to handle interruptions without being distracted from His primary goal.

5. Delegation: Don't try to do everything yourself (Mark 3:14). We get tense when we feel it all depends on us. Jesus enlisted twelve disciples. Don't allow the fear that others may not do as good a job as you, or that they may do a better job than you, to keep you from asking for help.

6. Meditation: Make a habit of prayer (Mark 1:35). No matter how busy Jesus got, He found time to get alone to pray every day. A daily quiet time is a great stress decompression chamber. Use this time to talk to God about your pressures and problems, evaluate your priorities, and discover the rules for successful living by reading the Bible.

7. Relaxation: Take time to enjoy life (Mark 6:30-31). Balance is the key to stress management. Work must be balanced with fun and worship.

PurposeDriven.com by Rick Warren

tag : Psalm, The Purpose Driven Life, Romans, Job, Corinthians, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Philippians, Luke, John, Mark, Titus, Developing Self-Control, Self-Control Is Not an Option, Self-Control Is Christ's Control, Building Margin Into Your Life, Three Benefits of Margin, Steps to Un-Stuff Your Schedule, Increase Your Margin, Margin Comes From Managing Your Time