Do we still need SIGNS?

It is common for believers in Christ to expect God's working in their lives through signs and miracles. We expect that God give us a sign either by answering our prayers in a way that we expect or do something to demonstrate His love and care. God does answer us and He does show us signs of His love and care. Yet sometimes we are left with nothing but His word. During times when there is no sign of God's presence or His working in our lives, even the Word of God may seem blank in our lives. Haven't we felt that?

Questions can linger in our minds when there is absence of God's signs. The waiting period can be long and weary. These are times when questions about God's love and intervention can be doubted. A weak soul can easily be wearied and lose hope. But at such times, it wont be unreasonable to ask God to renew or strengthen our faith to believe in His unfailing love towards us.

I didn't ask God to renew my faith. But nevertheless He did it for me. I personally was revived about God's love and intervention in my life when I narrated my life testimony to a friend. I never planned or thought that I will share my testimony to her. It was a casual conversation and I narrated how I met with Jesus, how I came to believe and follow Him and His wonderful blessings in my life. I am not sure whether my testimony influenced her, but I knew it was a powerful reminder to me to the extent that the very reality of me living without health complications is nothing but His pure grace.

My faith was revived. I cannot deny His love, His presence or His interventions in my life. I did not earn any of these but He gave it to me because of His love for me...

Oh! How much more of proof do I need? If for the present time I am allowed to face some lengthy trials, does that mean He no more cares for me or doubt His selection of me? I seldom not do that even if trials are pulling me down day in and out. I got to rely on His faithfulness for He is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow...Amen!

Hebrews 13:8 (NASB)
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever

He can Never Forget

There can be times where we are left with nothing but pain and hurts and the most common question asked by the people of God is where is God when it hurts? Praying, arguing, complaining and moaning nothing works with God. Every man and woman of God has gone through this phase in life and they have found that God has not answered their prayers or given them an explanation for why they are going through such pain or mental agony. Every Christian understands that God has a reason for why He allows certain things in their lives. But this simple answer doesn't soothe an aching soul. It hurts all the more.

What do one do during such times? People turn to fellow believers for prayer and support. For some it may serve as a temporary relief at least to know they have other believers to pray and say a word of encouragement to them. Yet the deepest hurts of the heart cannot be healed by applying a balm. These agonies of the heart are so interlinked with other aspects of life that sometimes it can seem like as if faith or life seems to be purposeless. It is almost like faith is at the brink of being lost. Yet amidst all these believers are only left with the knowledge of God and His faithfulness. Even the presence of God may seem to be lacking.

During such times, though the Lord may not answer prayers as a believer expects, His Spirit does take them to times of old to remind them of God and His faithfulness in their lives by bringing those memories afresh. A believer is allowed to soar to the past and remember how the Lord helped them or intervened in times of their toughest trials.

I was reminded of this truth with a powerful scripture that speaks of the Lord's love and His faithfulness.
Isaiah 49:15 (NIV)
“Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you!

Being a mom, I can never imagine a mother who can neglect her nursing baby. I doubt if there can be a mother of that kind. The scripture says even if there a mother who can afford to forget her nursing child, the Lord says He will never do that ...I would rather say "He can never do that".

Faithfulness is a characteristic of our Lord Jesus Christ and He very well demonstrated that on the Cross. He died not only for the sinners but even for the faithless. Those who trusted and followed Him; and those who received healing from Him were among the crowd that jeered Him. Yet even for them He died on the Cross faithfully.

If such is the love that Christ demonstrated for us and if He seems silent for the hurts and pain we go through, He is neither indifferent to our pain nor is neglecting it. He knows and He cares. He knows how to get us through it...

Two Side of a Coin

Its a while since I wrote a post on building relationship with others. Perhaps God wanted me to have a rich experience of both positive and negative sides of relationships before I pen down a post on relationships. This month perhaps from the end of January God has been taking me through varied experiences with respect to relationships. I got to experience that people got to acknowledged the love we showed them, are able to respond back with same kind of love and do their best in terms of expression of love like hospitality, love, care and genuine concern.

I had been blessed to be united to my husband's side cousins whom we had not met for many years. The richness of positive experience stays with us afresh every time my husband and I think and talk about our trip to his native place. Even before that the Lord had blessed me to get connected with my husband's cousin last November (who is more like a friend to me as we have similar kind of attitude and characteristics).

On the other hand, there has also been my share of negative experiences with people when I tried to be my original self; when I stood for what I believed to be right in doing good for others; when I tried to forget the past (being blamed for others' choice) and build relationships afresh...

What God made me realize from these two experiences is that...life is like the two face of a coin...you have both the head and the tail. So relationships that we may try to build selflessly with no secret agenda or wrong motive can still afford to produce both positive and negative results. Its up to us how we take it...

While I tried to take the negative strike on a lighter note, I was reminded of one scripture that helped my mind to be put at ease

1 Corinthians 13:4-7 (NASB)

4 Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, 5 does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, 6 does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; 7 [a]bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Happiness of Sharing

One last thing I would like to touch on the topic of happiness. Happiness comes when we perceive others the way we perceive ourselves. All of us have a good perception of ourselves that we are right, we are intellects, we are good people at heart and more importantly, we are God's children. When we have the maturity to look at others in the same way we look at ourselves then we will have happiness. Only when we are able to appreciate the positive things in others we will be happy.

Sometimes, in spite of we being able to appreciate others' individuality, talents and good traits the other individual may not like us. In such cases we need to understand that it is fine if the other person does not like us though we may be good to them. It is absolutely alright. It is not necessary that we have to be likeable by all...

But once we develop the attitude of loving others, accepting others and appreciating others for their individual positive traits, God will definitely bring into our circle those people who appreciate the love and the friendship we give and share with others selflessly without restraint.

As Smith Wigglesworth the 20th century evangelist says "when you have the love, joy and the presence of the Lord in you, you cannot stop yourselves but emit the same when you meet others". The love and the joy of God is contagious. It will be accepted by those whose heart is ready for it. A heart that is open without deceit, hypocrisy and manipulation.

When we are able to experience the love, joy and the presence of God we cannot afford to hold it ourselves but leak it to others...

Matthew 22:37-40The Message (MSG)
 Jesus said, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence.’ This is the most important, the first on any list. But there is a second to set alongside it: ‘Love others as well as you love yourself.’ These two commands are pegs; everything in God’s Law and the Prophets hangs from them

Mental Maps for Happiness

We are currently talking about the way we define happiness. In others words, happiness is a by product of our mind's definition. We can lose our happiness if we see our current situation with unpleasantness and hope for an alternative. I am not referring about problem solving here. I am referring about the mental maps we make about the definition of happiness. For instance, I can say to myself...'I will be happy if I go for a trip this vacation'. I can also decide ' I am going to be happy this vacation by spending time with my family by doing lot of activities like watching movies together,  playing board games, cooking special food, visiting friends, etc.'

Both are definitions of happiness. But we ultimately decide between what gives us happiness or how we can choose to be happy. There is a vast difference between the two and the secret of defining happiness depends on our heart's maturity. If we learn to be content with any situation in our lives, i.e. learning to be happy with our current situation then we can learn to make mental maps of happiness by choosing ways to be happy. Rather than saying I will be happy if I get this or I will be happy if I find love/friendship/relationship, then we are basing our happiness on something or someone which is not directly under our control. By doing so we will fail to be happy at all...

Paul learnt this secret...He quotes this in Phil 4:12-14 (The Message)

I’ve learned by now to be quite content whatever my circumstances. I’m just as happy with little as with much, with much as with little. I’ve found the recipe for being happy whether full or hungry, hands full or hands empty.

I learnt this lesson from my dad...

The Way We Define Happiness...

In one of my previous post or another blog, I had mentioned this phrase. "Happiness is what we define for ourselves". Each of us define what brings happiness in our lives. For instance, I may define that by having more writing projects I would be happy as it would help me financially and satisfy me psychologically; and hence may base my happiness on my work prospects. Similarly, another person may define that getting married may bring happiness or change of job or building a house or having an offspring can bring or add happiness to their lives. While this is true to a greater extent and we may be praying hard or waiting desperately for a breakthrough, our minds might be so fixed on the future that we may fail to live in the present. This is a common phenomenon to all and has to happened to me as well...and I am no exception.

One of the things that we may forget in the process  of waiting for our defined future happiness is to live in the present. By doing so we can get so lost in our mental struggles that we miss out on small joys of the present...like a good time with the family, few moments of fun with spouse or children or parents or friends...Since we are so engulfed in our minds to live in our defined future happiness (which we see only in our daydreams) we loose to focus on the present.

We cannot change our present either by bargaining or negotiating with God or even by fighting with Him. We cannot achieve by making God change His mind.  We have to face the reality and wait with hope and prayer. We are left with no option. However, we can change the way we handle our present life instead of unnecessary mental struggles....that is by learning to live the present life by changing our definition of happiness.

Unless we learn to be happy in our current situation, we cannot assume that we will be happy in our future as per our defined happiness that we perceive. What guarantee do we have that we will be happy tomorrow without any kind of problems or worries. For the Bible clearly says,

Matthew 6:34 (NIV)
Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

I got the message...

Maintaining Our Mental Serenity

In my last post I was talking about inner peace. Another way to find inner peace is to have a healthy thinking process...our thinking patterns is an very important ingredient for our mental serenity. Psychologists call this positive thinking. However, what I am referring here is not with respect to having a positive thought process about ourselves, our lives and future. A majority of us do have positive thinking when it comes our present lives, ourselves, our family and our future.

But what I am referring to is with regard to our thought process or thinking patterns that we have towards others. In my opinion this is the most significant or crucial mindset that determines our  serenity. If we can afford to hold positive perception towards others (can be anybody we come across in life or related to us either professionally, workwise, relatives, friends,  neighbors, acquaintances, associates or members of the community) we will hold our serenity. When we hold negative thoughts towards others in terms jealousy, criticism, bitterness, anger, hatred, etc. the resultant is that we will lose our serenity. This is backed by Biblical scripture.

Galatians 6:7 (NIV)
Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows.

If we hold jealousy, anger or bitterness towards others we cannot afford to gain a good harvest in our lives and thus will lose our mental serenity. To best of our consciousness and awareness may we learn to think only good things for others so that we may have inner peace and serenity for a happy and healthy living.