Making God our best.

Well it’s been a while I guess, since I last posted on this blog.

Whilst hearing much about focusing on God in the past week, I couldn’t help but realize the focus on the theme of putting God first in everything. This is undoubtedly important, and could be said to be one of the marks of a Christian. But it begs the question, how? To what effect? And Why? I remember Michael saying: “You just feel better that you have spent time with God over doing well for that subject”. That essentially summarizes the whole feeling of what we’re supposed to feel when we have spent time with him.

What I want to say today would be one of another perspective and things to keep in mind. Around a week ago, a friend had mentioned to a few of my friends and I saying “I see a growing rift in how I behave as a Christian in front of Christians and in front of non-Christians.” No doubt, her intentions to better herself were virtuous, in hope that she would be good enough to be a Christian for the world to see, if not, why be a Christian, it would be very hypocritical don’t you think?

I often hear this statement resonating in my mind from time to time – He or she is a Christian why is he or she like this? Then looking back into my own life I see all the flaws that would make me so awfully sinful, then I wonder – In that case, are all Christians hypocrites? In a simple definition of ‘hypocrites’ we would see one who does not practice what we preach. We see Christians telling each other off and telling one another what the word of God says, and in the end not living up to it. Then we would end up coming back to the question – I can’t live up to being a Christian, so hypocrite? So why be a Christian and end up getting judged by people around and spoil the image of a Christian?

Well my answer to this is Grace & Love. How often have we forgotten the basis of the Gospel of Jesus Christ? How much have we forgotten “The Lord has commanded that those who preach the gospel should receive their living from the gospel” – 1 Corinthians 9:14

So what does that all mean? Let me give a simple analogy that the Holy Spirit had helped me draw out through several months of qt. Imagine the relationship as that of a father and child, (as we always were taught about in Romans 8:15 “Spirit of sonship, and by whom we cry Abba, Father”.) Draw the parallel between the relationship of a child and father and that of God and us. Imagine a familiar scenario. Daddy says “Don’t touch the iron, it’s hot”, and by a child’s inquisitive nature we go touch it when he’s not looking and get burnt. Then Dad returns and goes, “sigh. I told you so”. Or what about this, Daddy says “Don’t cram so many things in your day”, and you thinking “hey I’m a teenager, so full of energy, I think I can do it.” And at the end of the day, you didn’t do your best for anything because you were so tired, you end up making things worse. Then we cry out to daddy and say “why? Why!?”

I guess in the same way, we could relate that to sin, God telling us don’t do this don’t do that, it’s bad for you. But we in our happy-go-lucky-smart-aleck self decide that we know what’s best and do it, reaping sad consequences. But in the end of it all, God is always there to pick us up. It is in these failings that we would learn to trust in Him and listen to what He says to us. It is also in this we learn of His ways, His will for us and His will for the people around us – Knowing the Father’s heart. How you may ask? Let’s take another analogy, something probably closer to heart of teenagers (maybe a BGR or just a BFF [best friend forever *as girls like to call it*]), when we spend time with these special people in our lives, we would learn of their likes and dislikes as we invest into these relationships with them. And extrapolating as such to a relationship with God, we would know what he dislikes and likes, we would know of his nature and with that knowledge we could become what He desires us to become – More Like Christ.

In the same way that we would learn about Him, and possibly experience what He experiences as we learn of His heart, we realize sometimes much of this is just head knowledge, stuff we would know is right, stuff we know he dislikes, stuff that we know would please him, stuff that sometimes we feel we cannot live up to. What I always liked to call it, Head Knowledge vs Heart Knowledge, doing something because we know it’s right vs doing something naturally because we feel and know without uncertainty that it’s right. It’s often a hard and arduous process , but FEAR NOT! Jesus said in John 16:13 “But when the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own, he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.” He will guide us INTO ALL TRUTH, He will let us experience it and live by it. Sharings at FireAC, devotions, Sermons, Teachings can only bring you unto truth, not into it to experience and live by it.

It is the Holy Spirit that will be with us and change us in the process of Sanctification into becoming perfect as we enter into His presence in heaven forever. So going back to the point of feeling hypocritical, I would say this –The start of any change and possibly another mark of a Christian is how much we are willing to change, for as long as we are willing, God will do the rest.

In the same way about changes, I would say this about the relationship we have with God our father because of the wonderful sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is a 2 way relationship, God will do His best for us (as seen on the cross) and he will continue to, and in the hope that we ourselves will give our best to God, and make God our best. For “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the Heavenly Lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” James 1:17.

There’s a common misconception that God is only willing to gives us what we need, not what we want, well, I doubt that’s a father. "Which of you fathers if a son asks for for a fish will give him a snake? If you, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will our Father in Heaven give good gifts to those who ask him?" Matthew 7:19-11

We see Dr Ong always quoting this verse from the Psalms, “Delight yourself in the Lord, God will grant us the desires of our heart.” Psalms 37:4. So if we delight in the relationship, we would learn his thoughts and change to become more like him as established earlier, making His desires our desires, and God will grant us the desires of our hearts. So is that just the need? I doubt it. To make someone happy, we would often times give them something they want, not just what they need. More so our Father in heaven who gives us the very best, for “Our God will meet all our needs according to his riches in glory” Philippians 4:19, not from his riches, but according to what he has, so as a measure of what he has is a measure of what he will give to us. An overflowing and far surpassing providence over that of need!

With respect to exams, just an observation (you could call it an epiphany) of sorts. Always remembered when we used to say we do our best and let God do the rest, (though not Biblical) we realize that God doing the rest is like 99.999999999% where our best is a mere 0.00000000001%. So why not, we let God be our best, instead of asking God to help us do our best, we let God work through us in everything, and hence, he becomes our best as his Best is brought out in us.

So what are you waiting for? God will carry you through and He is just waiting for you to say Yes. Yes to His blessings and his calling. Give God your best and make him your best!