Fighting against me

Today is Sunday.
Besides preaching once in a month, I was assigned to teach in Sunday School.
I would like to say things that change lives, however, I must be just a boring teacher.
Last year, I was teaching to seniors (> 50 year's old); I felt that the class was diminishing along the year. This year, I am teaching to 6 adolescents, three are my children. I think that I can keep my three children attending to the class.
I decided to teach the short catechism from Westminster. Today I read questions from 21 to 25. I must confess that it was a difficult reading. Our Lord Jesus is our sumo sacerdot who intercedes for us and He is also the Lamb. He is the prophet that speaks according to the Lord's will and He is also King. He is human and He is also God. As human, He was born, grew in wisdom (He did not possess all wisdom at birth), and He was tempted; but besides other humans, He was not born in sin. I told that Adam was created without sin and he was an exception to other human beings, however he was tempted and felled.
I think that it is somehow profound all these statements; however, it is extremely difficult to join all these in a comprehensive way, in half hour. What is the impact of this knowledge in my life?
I tried to argument that it is important to see Jesus as God because all sins offend God and only Him can forgive, but He also must pay for it. For a better understanding, I should have studied in a seminary.
I tried to read many Bible verses that support all these statements and I tried to explain each one; but I would like to have done much better.
Today I am not in my normal state.
I have been proud in the church.
First, there is no "credo" in our church: it is a mix of Amianism and Calvinism. I have seen myself as some kind of ex arminian, illuminated by the calvinism, some kind of a salved person with a stronger faith. I have not been considering myself as proud till now, but certainly there are many things in the Bible that I can not explain; besides, this pride makes me repulsive to others, and makes me a much more sensible guy.
Certainly, today I am fighting against me; or the Lord is fighting against my pride.
Let the Lord win.
Let my soul praise the Lord and not me.
Let me see the hands of the Lord conducting me.

He leadeth me, He leadeth me,
By His own hand He leadeth me:
His faithful foll’wer I would be,
For by His hand He leadeth me.

Persistence, salvation and eternal life assurance: are they compatible?

What is salvation?
A person who is drowning in deep waters is saved from death when he comes to the surface and breaths air.
A slave is saved when he is set free and does not have to honor his former master.
In a certain way, Jesus was saved when the Lord resurrected Him.
We Christians say that a saved person is the one who has eternal life while a lost person is the one who has not.
Who is qualified to be saved?
There are many verses in the Bible talking about that, however we tend to simply put: the one who believes in Jesus.
We forget to pay attention to:
Matthew 24:13 13 But the one who endures to the end, he will be saved.
How, then, may someone be confident that he will endure to the end?
This was my question for a long time. I have seen many people abandoning their faith in Jesus: people that do not congregate in a church, do not read the Bible, do not pray. Perhaps they say to themselves that they are saved, but I am quite sure that under persecution they would not endure to the end because of the great signs that they had already given up their faith.
How can I be different?
In my youth, I also had given up congregating; therefore, I have never been confident on my abilities to follow Jesus.
I have always heard in churches:
- Unless you have assurance of your salvation, you are not saved. If you want to be saved, come and receive Jesus as your savior.
I responded many times to altar calls. I do not know how many times I received Jesus.
For a long time, Matthew 24:13, among many other verses, do not fit to our american model of salvation (quite sure, it is american or, at least, it is British).
Therefore, for a long time, I have seen salvation, endurance and eternal life assurance as not compatible. It took sometime to perceive the root of the incompatibility: free will.
In another post, I will try to be pro free will and then, against free will. I will try to show how it affects our eternal life assurance.

Orchid

My daughter received an orchid as a birthday gift. My wife made her responsible for it, however, she fertilized it and suddenly, the orchid lost their leaves and now it is piratically dead.
My wife is trying to bring it to life again.
I tried to take a lesson from it:
Life is fragile.
She has just discovered that its roots were immersed in plenty water. Certainly our daughter does not know what pleases an orchid. This made me think:
We must respect God's laws to keep life.
The Lord created the human being that was stained by sin. As a sinner, every human must die and every human seems the orchid that is almost dead. How to bring a sinner back to life? The Lord established the way to salvation, as the Lord established how an orchid should live.

Bullying

I was bullied when I was young: I was a good Japanese descendant student in a public school full of Italian descendants. Now I am 54, but I feel some kind of bullying ghost following me.
I work with another 2 other professors. I am very anti social and I really do not enjoy these December parties before Christmas, but I am not so averse to have lunches with closer friends; so today I and my colleagues went to lunch. I became the spotlight as others enjoy to tease me: the joke was that I had to pay the bill as I am famous for being scrooge. After a lot of jokes, mainly by one of them, I got tired. The other professor noticed that I was fed up and I told him:
- It is more important to love than to be loved as San Francisco told. I really do not deserve so much love.
The bullier professor answered: Yes you deserve.
But what really have annoyed me was that my bike tire was empty as I was leaving school at the end of the day. I am quite sure that it was emptied on purpose, not by accident. I called my wife to take me at school and she rescued me despite the traffic jam.
I and my family were having a dinner when I remembered about Job: his children died on a accident, but he was also robbed by thieves. I asked my children: what annoys more: to be robbed or to become sick? They told me: to be robbed. I said that other humans seems more aggressive than sickness, but in case of Job, both were at the same level: God let both happen.
In conclusion, my bike tire and bullies from my colleagues are some kind of test that the Lord sent me; He is writing the story of my life. In his story, I have doubts, sometimes, I do not discern things very well, but at the end, my soul rests in him. Blessed be the Lord.

psalm 90

Yesterday, I read Psalm 90 to my children before sleeping.
It is a prayer to God from Moses (a tradition, not specified in the text, but let us assume it).
Some point of the Psalm are:

• Life is short. 
• 5 We are merely tender grass 6  that sprouts and grows in the morning but dries up by evening. 10 We can expect seventy years, or maybe eighty,  if we are healthy, but even our best years bring trouble and sorrow. Suddenly our time is up and we disappear.
• Life is not easy. 
• 9 Your anger is a burden each day we live, then life ends like a sigh.
• God is somehow behind our suffering. 
• 7 Your furious anger frightens and destroys us, 8 and you know all of our sins even those we do in secret.
• God is the All Might. 
• 2 You have always been God long before the birth of the mountains, even before you created the earth and the world. 3 At your command we die and turn back to dust, 4  but a thousand years mean nothing to you! They are merely a day gone by  or a few hours in the night.
• We fear God. 
• 11 No one knows the full power of your furious anger, but it is as great as the fear  that we owe to you.
• We ask Him to make our lives easier, happier, 
• 15  Make us happy for as long as you caused us trouble and sorrow. 16 Do wonderful things for us, your servants, and show your mighty power to our children.
• 13 Help us, Lord! Don’t wait! Pity your servants. 14 When morning comes, let your love satisfy all our needs. Then we can celebrate and be glad for what time we have left.
• We ask Him not to waste our lives.
• 12 Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom. 17 May the favor of the Lord our God rest on us;    establish the work of our hands for us— yes, establish the work of our hands.

It is very interesting how the psalmist prays in a much more different way than we pray in our churches today. He is certainly much more sincere than we commonly are. The Lord is the All Mighty. I suffer. Thus, the anger of the Lord is a burden each day I live. In our churches, we are always talking about his love, his compassion; but it is very rare to mention his anger. Is it possible to fear a Lord that is said to love us, but seems impotent to deal with our suffering? For Moses, the Lord is really in charge of everything, our sufferings included; so he fears him.
Moses was an example of a well succeeded life. How then did he write: "establish the work of our hands for us"? Certainly, the deeds of the Lord through Moses will be remembered to the last day of our times; so his work was established by the Lord.
I really want that the Lord establishes the work of my hands.
It is so easy to waste the life, and I certainly have wasted so much time...
Establish the work of my hands for me, Lord, -- yes, establish the work of my hands, please.

Doctor Doug died

On July, 6th, 2016, I told you about Doctor Doug in this blog, a physician in our church. He died on December, 15th. He had a weak heart due to a Chagas disease - a tropical disease that inflates the heart. He had to change his mark step after a cardiac arrest. His kidneys stopped working and after many problems, he died.

He was loved by his family, his colleagues, his students, his church. I was told it was a big funeral. 

Is he with Jesus?

Yes, I think so.

He began to attend our church in his old age. Before that he thought that all religions are good, but Christianity talks about sin as the way to hell and Jesus as the way to heaven. 

His niece that does not attend our church, told us that before his conversion, doctor Doug was a good man but she did not find love or tenderness in him. He was a cold guy. She really hates the way evangelical people talk (I am saved, you are not, let me introduce Jesus to you), but she considered that something different happened to his uncle.

He knew he was dying much before this year. He was preparing to his death. For instance, he bought his grave in a cemetery some years ago.

wealth in heaven

A rich man in God's eyes is the one who evaluates things according to the Lord's values.
God is love.
A rich man is the one who loves, but what do I need to do to grow in love?
Some ideas:
- practice acts of love: visit my parents, sick people, help spouse, help children, etc. All these things go against my own will. My will is not a good parameter to guide my acts of love.
- do not expect human reward for acts of love. I must practice acts of love for God's sake, for God's reward.
- continually ask myself how to be helpful. Do not wait to receive orders.