Remember Your Creator

9 June 2007 – Remember Your Creator

Ecclesiastes 12:1

Don’t let the excitement of youth cause you to forget your Creator. Honor him in your youth before you grow old and say, “Life is not pleasant anymore.”

Whoever you are, wherever you go, whatever you think, it is undeniable that, we have a Creator. We enjoy the privilege of God’s creation at the beginning, how wonderful is it when I imagined the time of Adam, God created Adam as human, to share his masterpiece together

Gen 2:19-20

So the Lord God formed from the ground all the wild animals and all the birds of the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would call them, and the man chose a name for each one. He gave names to all the livestock, all the birds of the sky, and all the wild animals…

God even granted Adam a creative and scientific mind that he could name the wild animals that God created, it is the beginning of creativity and science. Everything starts from the beginning of the world. God has also gave us a Cultural Mandate that all of the people should fulfill.

Gen 1:28

Then God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and govern it. Reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and all the animals that scurry along the ground.”

We should be fruitful by the gifts that God has given us, no matter is in Education, Entertainment, Office, Music, etc. We should excel in what we are good at and MULTIPLY! We should subdue the earth, we are the co-creator of God that God has created all the raw materials for us and we then co-create the other things out of it. For example is sand, sand is created at the seashore, but we human can make use of it to make glasses that our homes now have; Trees are created at the forest, but human can use it for paper manufacturing and construction materials; Silicon is an element on earth and Thomas Edison made use of it to innovate a light bulb!

Friends, now can you get it? It is undeniable that all things begin with the Lord. You can’t deny the truth which is real, heaven and earth will pass away, but the word of the lord will never pass away. So, take this opportunity that we still young and strong, we should remember our Creator, who has a genuine plan for each one of us. We are encountering with the destiny that we can achieve great and extraordinary things by our ordinary bodies in the name the Lord.

Franco

The End matters

8 June 2007 – The End matters

Ecclesiastes 7:8

The end of a matter is better than its beginning,

and patience is better than pride.

The last article I talked about what is really about with the “meaningless” of Solomon’s teachings and I emphasized that we should live the life to the fullest. We have to run our race to win the prize! Today I have to talk about to forget about the past and prepare for the future.

Philippians (腓)3:13-14 Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead,

I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

Indeed, we are running the race and our goal got by winning back the prize! We are born to win in the name of the Lord, so we have to go for excellence in the way we wished for. If you really like to pursue in your studies, go ahead and excel in it; If you really wished to play a proper role of a worker, go ahead and make a difference; If you wanted to become an honest businessman, then go ahead and penetrate the business world. Win back what you deserve!

Once you know this truth, you will start to have a free and progressive lifestyle, yet a righteous and faithful life! We should not withdraw ourselves from the outside world, but we need to have a church without walls! So that we can make an impact to the whole world and excel in it!

Whatever you thought and wanted to do, bear in mind that you have a promise, from God, is that the end of a matter is better than its beginning! What you start from now might not be optimistic, but bear in mind that at the end, it will sure be better and far better than you think or imagine!

Franco

Live a Full Life

7 June 2007 – Live a Full Life

Ecclesiastes 5:15

Naked a man comes from his mother’s womb,

and as he comes, so he departs.

He takes nothing from his labor

that he can carry in his hand.

Solomon, who is a wise man, wiser than all others, thinks that everything is meaningless, why did he say that? I personally has an opinion to share, if something is too much for a person, it will bring disaster rather than blessings even if the matter is good for itself.

The matter includes wealth, wealth is a good thing by itself, it is totally agreed. Wealth can make us do what we want, without money, it is impossible for us to make influence to others.

Ecc 7:12

“.. money is a shelter, …”

Without money, we don’t have shelter. As a person really pursuing wealth by all of his life, then it will be meaningless, as Solomon said, chasing after the wind.

Naked a man comes when he was born, and so when he dies, he will take nothing back to him. This is the reason why Solomon said that everything is meaningless. What shall we say then? Do we not live the life to the fullest since it is meaningless? Certainly not! We indeed should live it to the max, it is okay for us to pursue the things like wealth, God has given us the days for us, so it is good for us to enjoy and be glad in it!

Let us have an optimistic view of life, the view of life will start to be magnificent once you have changed your mindset, and make yourself into a new attitude!

Franco

Seasons in the Sun

6 June 2007 - Seasons in the Sun

Ecclesiastes(传) 3:1

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heaven.

If we say four seasons in a year, then everyone will understand deeper the meaning of this verse, especially for those who lived in those places. We know that 4 seasons include:

1. Spring – A season where the floras start blossoming and flowering
2. Summer – A season where the weather become unreasoningly hot
3. Autumn – A season of which the withering of floras come, welcoming winter
4. Winter – The coldest season among all four, some places are filled with snows

Now, what am I trying to say, these 4 seasons represents different environment and different feelings, poets often use seasons to represent their mood in poetry, and many literatures contains seasons representing their feelings and situations. It includes not only the change of climate, but the change of mood and environment.

So this is the meaning of the verse above, there is a season for everything. There is a change of everything, take note, is EVERYTHING. So you can understand that sometimes we work, we study, we live and everything must have a period and it will change. Sometimes we felt that we have no mood in everything, that we did not find them meaningful; but sometimes we found that we sometimes had a great drastic change of the point of view of something that all of them are meaningful to you.

There is a time for them to come, so we should not be grabbing them too much as they will soon be coming. Everything that God made has a time, so sometimes when businessmen felt that his business is experiencing a low season, it will soon be over; sometimes it is just the feeling that is playing the part, so we have to overcome it. The seasons, no matter you like it or not, it will soon be coming. SO what we have to do is to learn to accept it and overcome it.

Franco

“CorRebukEncourag”ing Words

5 June 2007 – “CorRebukEncourag”ing Words

Proverbs 30:33

As twisting the nose produces blood, so stirring up anger produces strife.

As shown in the title, I suppose most of you are able to see the term above is triple mixed words – Correct, Rebuke and Encourage (2 Timothy 4:2). Indeed, when we talked, we should be aware of our mouths; it is undoubted that most of the time, dispute starts from our speeches, strife started when someone is furious against someone humiliation and flattering. God said that we should speak out the words which build your friends up, not to blast them down!

We should correct them for what they had done wrongly for their goodness sake. You won’t be bothering to correct them if you does not care for them, as you are correcting them, meanwhile, rebuke sometimes takes place, there is a saying that words of rebuke comes from love, it is somehow true. As a human, we must have confidence to carry us on to do things we do, so we need encouragement from our peers sometimes. These are the techniques of public speaking as well, when you say the right thing at the right time, it will produce the maximal influence to the listener.

So beware of our mouths, we should not stir up anger among two persons but the cool down them. We are demanding to live in a peace environment rather than a place full of strife and wars right?

So, what now? Start practicing “Correbukencourage”!

Franco

Care for Love

4 June 2007 - Care for Love

Proverbs 28:23

He who rebukes a man will the end gain more favor than he who has a flattering tongue.

As a child in the family, I personally understand the power of love. At once, I didn’t understand how my parents can love me if they are willing to scold me and punish me. There is no way a person love will become a rebuke and punish. As I asked the people around me, why they scolded me when I was wrong, they said,

“Punish is care, Rebuke is love”

“打是疼，骂是爱”

I still can’t get anything out of it, but now I knew, if a person does not love, he or she doesn’t bother to care about you, neither does he or she scolds you.

Now we change the focus from the person who scolds to the person who is being scolded. Solomon once said:

Pro 19:20

“Listen to advice and accept instruction, and in the end you will be wise.”

You will indeed learnt a lot by a rebuke and instruction, it is just the matter of are you willing to receive it or not. If you are willing to listen and accept, then you will be learning of something that you can apply for the rest of your life.

Nothing is more beneficial than the rebuke of parents to children, parents undoubting will give the best of them to their children for their own good, they will teach almost everything they understood. When we had done wrong, they do not feel tedious to rebuke us; even sometimes we thought that they are so long-aired and speaking non-stop. In the process of growth, you will soon experienced that how wise did your parents are when they gave lessons to you.

Learn to accept their love, through their rebukes. For rebukes come from love, which requires much endurance to do so.

Franco

Parenting in Excellence

2 June 2007 – Parenting in Excellence

Proverbs 22:6

Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.

Parenting is one of the most significant parts both to parents and child. Recently I read about the ‘Ten Commandments’ by Loron Wade, in the fifth commandment states that we should honor our parents so that we may live long in our lives:

Exodus 20:12

'Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you.

Notice that the commandment is focusing on the point of view of a child, this is because God understands that we may not have not be parents that bore a child, but we certainly are the sons and daughters of our dad and mom. This means that we should have our role to play for our parents – We should honor them.

Honor always comes with the word ‘obedience’, what is meant by obedience literally? In Oxford Dictionary, it states that it is “to do what you are told or expected to do”. In other words, to follow their ways at which they instructed us to. Many think that to obey is to be controlled by parents. In fact, obedience is an attitude, it comes with self willing, not unwillingly.

I have seen that there are many parents whom are just scolding their children once they do not follow what we wanted them to do. This will mostly lead to procrastination and disobedience. We should sometimes think in the angle of the child and let him decide something that they are able to decide, do not just straight forward telling them what you want, but show something before it. So they will be convinced on what they do.

Soon, they will be adult, and in the process, we can have a relieve heart to know that they have grown up finally. When you come back to the old times, you will be very happy that you have used a right method to train the child. Furthermore, we must keep God’s words in our mind and teach them with the wise words, so that they will learn about it and giving their lives to God for living sacrifice.

Let all things commit to the Lord and rejoice and be glad in Him! Amen!

Franco

From your dearest Friend,
Franco
in love, in sincerity