Sons of Light and Sons of Day

1 Thessalonians 5:5
You are all sons of light and sons of the day. We are not of the night nor of darkness.

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We have always known that we are the children of light when we believe in God. Today when I did my devotion and with help of Holy Spirit and sermon by David Oh from CHC KL on 'What On Earth is God Doing'. I was touched by this particular verse.

Many of us when we read about 1 Thessalonians 5, we will always see a familiar passage about the coming back of Chirst like a thief, which I always thought so too, until I know that we are the children of light.

Jesus said "I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness." (John 12:46)

So as long as we believe in God, we are the children of light and we will not stay in the darkness. Right, with this, let us look at the following familiar verse.

1 Thess 5:2-11
2 For you yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so comes as a thief in the night. 3 For when they say, “Peace and safety!” then sudden destruction comes upon them, as labor pains upon a pregnant woman. And they shall not escape. 4 But you, brethren, are not in darkness, so that this Day should overtake you as a thief. 5 You are all sons of light and sons of the day. We are not of the night nor of darkness. 6 Therefore let us not sleep, as others do, but let us watch and be sober. 7 For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk are drunk at night. 8 But let us who are of the day be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love, and as a helmet the hope of salvation. 9 For God did not appoint us to wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, 10 who died for us, that whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with Him.
11 Therefore comfort each other and edify one another, just as you also are doing.

From here, we could see that, the Lord come as a thief for those who are in the darkness! But for us, who are in light, we will be aware and we will be prepared for his coming. Let us all stay awake and do the works of God in the end-time era. If God put us in this generation, there must be a purpose for that.

Let us do the will of God and be the salt and the light of the world!

Redeeming the Time

Colossians 4:5

Walk in wisdom towards those who are outside, redeeming the time.

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I have encountered similar verse 2 books before in the book of Ephesians. Paul said the similar advise to two different places.

Ephesians 5:16

Redeeming the time, because the days are evil.

What did Paul really mean by redeeming the time? So I checked back to the lexicon of these two verse and I found something interesting.

In Hebrew, there are two types of 'time':
1) Kronos - which became 'chrono-' in English, means the normal time, of uncertain derivation; a space of time
2) Kairos - a special appointed moment, an opportunity

In both of these verses, the time here refer to "Kairos" time, which means, redeeming the opportunity.
Paul here told us the reason and the way to seize an opportunity:

1) The days are evil (Eph 5:16)
The devil will always seek to destroy believer from redeeming those kairos moments to hinder the work of God. As a result, we must know how to identify the kairos moment and do not afford to miss it.

2) Walk in wisdom towards those who are outside (Col 4:5)
God doesn't only give the problem and reason, He also provide us a solution. Thank God! To redeem the kairos moment, we have to walk in wisdom towards others. The word we say should be seasoned with salt, should speak with grace and not hurting others. Reply others just like how Jesus did and live your life as testimony and with wisdom.

How do we gain the heart of wisdom?

Psalms 90:12

So teach us to number our days, That we may gain a heart of wisdom.

Dwell in the Word

Colossians 3:16

Let the word of Christ (logos) dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.

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Word of God is very important in our lives, it is the only weapon that God gave us with attacking power while all the others are of defensive power (Eph 6:14-17, Sword of Spirit, which is the Word of God). Hence, if we dwell in the Word, we could equip ourselves with full armor of God, with both defensive and offensive power to fight against the devil.

Using all wisdom, not only let the world dwelling in us, but RICHLY. Here Paul told the Colossians some methods to let Word of God dwell richly in us:

1) Psalms and Hymns
When you praise and worship God, it will open up your heart to accept the presence of God. You will be open to the communication with God and starts to learn His Word, not only the logos, but the rhema word. Very often I always encounter people saying that God has healed them when praise song was sung, worship song was played. Truly the power and the word of God do play a part.

2) Spiritual Songs
When you open up and sing spiritual songs, speaking in tongues. The word of God will come upon your heart and true enough that I have also heard people said they saw vision of God and heard the Word of God during Spiritual worship.

3) Grace (Thanksgiving)
Only with heart of thanksgiving the power of God can open up without hindrance. It is beginning of the imparting of the Word of God.

4) Teaching and Admonishing one another
When you teach other, you will be taught back and this process happens to and fro. By this you could learn more about the Word of God.

Just as Paul said, by all wisdom, keep the word of God richly in our heart.

Be Rooted

Colossians 2:6-7

As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith, as you have been taught, abounding in it with thanksgiving.

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Acceptance of Jesus Christ as personal saviour is always a wonderful thing I have ever seen in my life. When people starts to accept Jesus, I see their lives started to change, stronger and stronger, brighter and brighter in attitude. However, there are times too I saw many friends back-slidden, lose their faith in God and busy with their personal affairs.

One of the reason which gives these kind of action would be the lack of rooting and building up of personal life in Jesus Christ. Be rooted is a very powerful and yet difficult action. You can only suck up the nutrients if you are rooted on the ground. You can only get the revelation from the vine tree only if the branch is attached to it. Growth can only happen when you get rooted. Therefore, it is vital for one to be rooted and be built up in Chirst. In order to be rooted, one needs:

1) Faith
To have faith in God, trust that He will lead us to place from better to best. Trust that He will lead us into our own destiny. Trust that He is faithful, always be with us, the conqueror and the counselor. With this faith, we could be secure that even if situations around us looks bad and unfair, like Paul, you will still be confident and continue believing in Him.

2) Perseverance
Especially in times of crisis, perseverance is the one who keeps us praying, keep us praising Him, keep us strong and courageous.

3) Heart of Thanksgiving
With thanksgiving, the power of God will be unleashed in us and the true growth will come forth. The process of growth is difficult and hard, but it is always wonderful after the process. With the offer of thanksgiving, God can perform his might works on our lives and he will make the poor be rich, weak be strong.
Indeed, let the poor say 'I am rich', and let the weak say 'I am strong'.

Many Christians would think that after accepting Jesus Christ, it is the end of the journey. Instead, it is just the beginning of the journey.

Be rooted in Christ.

Positive Thinking

Proverbs 23:7 "For as he thinks in his heart, so is he...."

In life, we are often surrounded by negative news, negative things, negative friends, and sometimes you might be in a negative family. This will indirectly influence our character, just as the bible says, "For as he THINKS in his heart, so is he..".

As medical reports suggests, your psychological thinking will indirectly influence your health too. There is a case where medical reports of two different patients were swapped accidentally, one of the patient is confirmed diagnosed as terminally ill patient while the other does not. In the end, as the healthy patient got to know that he is diagnosed to be terminally ill, his heart kept on thinking that he will die and be very negative, truly, not so long after that, the patient passed away; On the other hand, the true terminally ill patient did not know he has cancer so he is very happy and eventually he live a healthy life onwards.
What you think could influence you yourself!

In other words, the opposite is also true, POSITIVE thinking will make us to be a POSITIVE person! It is what Jesus' character is too.

Application:

1) "What should I do if I could not cope with my studies?"
--> "I must be able to get through this, God will give me wisdom and understanding to study about this!"

2) "Oh, no I will not be able to do this properly since this is my first time"
--> " I will try my best to do this although this is my first time!"

3) "Oh, today is raining, I think I will not come to church."
--> " Oh, today is raining, it is not too hot. I should go to church."

4) ... so on.

Praise

Psalms 146:1-2
"Praise the Lord, O my soul! While I live I will praise the Lord; I will sing praises to my God while I have my being"

1) “Praise the Lord, O my soul!
Praise comes deep from our soul, from your soul it will surely be reflected in the outside, that you dance and sing and shout to Him. Praise is a sacrifice and it does depend on circumstances. In fact, the praise which you give to the Lord even when you are in difficult situations is the most precious to God. That is why praise is a sacrifice.

2) Praise is a life-long thing
Praise is not once-a-week thing, it is not true that you can only praise God during Sunday worship. Everyday we shall give praise and worship to the lord, in our devotion, in our daily lives, as long as we have breath of life in us!

3) Praise brings us closer into the presence of God

Psalms 100:4
"Enter into His GATES with THANKSGIVING, And into His COURTS with PRAISE. Be thankful to him, and bless His name."

When we give thanks, we enter into the Gate of God's house (presence), when we praise, we enter into his COURTS, which is even closer to God. From this verse we can see that thanksgiving and praise follows one after another. (Outside-->Gate-->Courts-->Holy of Holies)

Do you want to be in the presence of God? Do you want your praise to be precious to God? Let's praise God everyday!

Verse O' Thought

Mark 7:24-29
The Faith of a Gentile Woman

24 Then Jesus left Galilee and went north to the region of Tyre.[i] He didn’t want anyone to know which house he was staying in, but he couldn’t keep it a secret. 25 Right away a woman who had heard about him came and fell at his feet. Her little girl was possessed by an evil[j] spirit, 26 and she begged him to cast out the demon from her daughter.

Since she was a Gentile, born in Syrian Phoenicia, 27 Jesus told her, “First I should feed the children—my own family, the Jews. It isn’t right to take food from the children and throw it to the dogs.”

28 She replied, “That’s true, Lord, but even the dogs under the table are allowed to eat the scraps from the children’s plates.”

29 “Good answer!” he said. “Now go home, for the demon has left your daughter.” 30 And when she arrived home, she found her little girl lying quietly in bed, and the demon was gone.

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I've come into this verse today and I think this verse is worth meditating, I dont understand what the blue and red words mean but I know that it reveals the faith of the woman.

Meditating.....