Bended Worship Ministry

There is something more that must be stressed about regarding the peace of God. That in order for the believer or the servant to truly live a fruitful life unto the Lord, he or she should come to the acknowledgment that there is more to peace than just having peace. That there is a purpose that is meant just for the present time. I would like to say this that if we will be just be seeing salvation as just receiving Jesus and then having peace then expect to see Christians that are just filling the pews and nothing more.

Let us listen to what the Lord says about this matter: In John 14:27, our Lord Jesus speaks, ” Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you….” Here if we are but willing and God open our eyes, we will see clearly. One thing is clear here through Chapters 14-17 and that is – we will have troubles! You will be hated. You will be persecuted. The Lord said it…” No servant is greater that his master.” (Jn.15:20). Are you a child of God? A believer of the Lord? A servant of God? Do you stand for the Gospel and it’s continuing heralding? Do you stand for and with the Church and her God-given call? Then this is what the Lord says for you – you will have troubles. Why? Because you stand in the Lord’s place!

I remember playing a mobile game of Mission Impossible and there’s this bar that goes red all the way whenever an enemy spotted me or tripped something and a sound goes up like toot! toot! toot. Then I stop a little while until the bar that had gone red goes to normal and the tooting stops. This is like the Lord’s peace. It’s also like a vehicle that goes to third or the fourth gear whenever there’s an uphill climb. The peace of the Lord is like that. It is living. It is active specially when a believer undergo some troubling times. The Lord’s peace will enable a believer to move on…to push through…to persist…to persevere and to achieved the purpose of that which these troubles intends to hinder. The Lord’s peace will enable a believer to stand strong and tall as a mountain under and through all these trying times and come out proving to all that Jesus is Lord. And so the Gospel is preached.

Remember the Lord Jesus at the time he said he will give his peace. What he had undergone before, the temptations, the insults, the very unbelief of his own and now just a little while, him being nailed to the cross. There alone you see, why this peace. This is the peace that have brought him through the cross and to victory. And this is the peace that will bring you through everything until that day you stand before him who had said…..” Peace I leave to you; my peace I give to you ” and …” In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

Living on a planet of conflict and rebellion. Jesus often must have felt “not at home”, a stranger in His own. He came unto His own, but His own rejected Him. At such times he went aside and prayed, as if to breathe pure air from a life-support system that would give him the strenght to continue living on a polluted planet. Yet he did not alwasy get answers to his prayers. The Gospels reports that he had prayed before choosing the twelve disciples, yet a traitor was included in the group. In Gethsemane he prayed at first that the cup of suffering be taken from him, that he would not passed through it, but of course the request was not given him. At the cross, he cried aloud, “Father, why have you forsaken me!” Clearly a picture of a man, forgotten and abandoned. He was not at home.

These scenes so vividly tell us that Jesus was a stranger in his own home. He endured that cross looking forward to the prize set before him – the scripture so loudly declares.

How about us? How about you? Me? Yes, you and me! We who believe, and has accepted Him as savior and LORD! Are we at home? Do you not feel the rejection? Do you not feel the enmity of the world to the cause we carry, the cross of Calvary?

Mercy and compassion be ours as the Lord leads us deeper into His heart and surrendering our will to His glorious will.

The peace that transcends or surpasses all understanding.( Phil.4:4-7 ). Wow! And this is God’s peace. It is not man’s peace, for if it is then we will not see the world like we are seeing it today. Wars, poverty, hunger, untold sufferings and misery. This peace, God’s peace, say’s his word is beyond any ability or capacity of man to understand. Left to his own, man even though how much he try and pursue peace will be just spewing more wars, more poverty, more misery.

Can we know this peace? If it is beyond our capacity to understand, how can we know and even to have and achieved such peace. I say no! Yes, left to our own that is, but there is hope. God himself who is the very realization of this peace graciously gave us what we cannot have on our own. His peace in the person of his Son – Jesus Christ. This is what the angels sung in Luke 2:14 when Jesus was born…” Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rest. This is his express will all along to give peace to man and that this peace can be had only and I repeat only, in the person of his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

God gave us his peace. And Jesus Christ is that peace. Now if there is a giving, it also means that there must be a receiving. Peace is something that is not achieved, it is something that is received. We must receive peace so that we can truly have peace. And receiving peace is receiving Jesus. I would not elaborate so much on this. The plain fact is that God gave us his Son. Have the Son and you will have the peace that transcends all understanding. It is that simple. To have peace is to have Jesus.

I, for one have received this peace. I have received and I have Jesus. He is my savior and my Lord. I have seen days of rejoicings and I will see more. I have seen gentleness for those that have Jesus, they are gentle persons. I have seen days of anxiousness and I prayed, on my knees petitioning, requesting God who I know have nothing for me but his goodness, love, and faithfulness. I have come to see this peace makes a man thankful for all things for nothing I will ever have, and nothing will ever come to me except from the gracious hand of God. I know I have this peace that transcends all understanding. I have Jesus.

Merry Christmas!

The word of God says that we are in the hands of the Lord. By this declaration then we could be most assured that there is no time at all that a believer is not in the presence of the Lord. Add to this the truth of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit whom the Lord Jesus himself said will be in us for all eternity ( Jn.14:15-17 ) and you will realize that you have in you one of the most wonderful truth God has done in saving us – and this about Himself…and yes! God himself coming to dwell in man. He dwells in you – the believer.

If this is the case then, why the need for us to spend time with the Lord. Time and time again we are reminded and exhorted in this matter – the need and the importance of a believer spending time with the Lord. You may say, there’s no need for that, the Lord is gracious, he is merciful , he loves me, even more I am already in his hands, there’s no need for that or just 5 minute..10 minutes, it’s enough. Nothing could be more robbing than this kind of thinking. Robbing I say because you rob yourself of most precious time and opportunity for the Lord to do his work in you and through you.

One of the clear example of one who truly have spent much time with the Lord is King David. In Psalm 92:1-2 this is what the King sung..”It is good to praise the Lord and make music to your name, O Most High, to proclaim you love in the morning and you faithfulness at night.” Here we can see the fullness of time spent with the Lord – in the morning is God’s love looking out through the day and at night is God’s faithfulness looking back to the day just past. Here we can also deduce if we are just willing that it’s not anymore time that is spent with the Lord but life itself. Those who think that they are here just to spend time with the Lord is missing out on the big picture and that is - God is at work in you!

Another example we have and one that is the perfection of them all is our Lord Jesus Christ himself. This the One who declared ” My food…is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.” As God is at work in Christ then, so God also is at work in you…in us. That’s why you could read the gospels and you see Jesus rising every morning everyday without let up. That’s why you could also read him finding time even in the most hectic schedules. God is at work and that work is you – yourself – the believer. Ministries is but manifestations of that work God has in the believer. For it is first and foremost God’s work to conform us in the likeness of his Son.( Rom.8:29 ) There alone everything follows.

God is at work in you. This should be a conviction and a realization in you. For in so having you realize too that it”s not just time spent with the Lord but your life itself. Your life will be spent in continual and loving expectation of what God will do next in your life. This will be your prayer, your thanksgiving, and this will be where you will most joyfully praise God. Yes you will see and realize that it is not time that you will be spending with the Lord but that it is your very life you will be spending with the Lord.

There is always the issue of the clashing of the will. There’s the will of God and the will of one who supposedly have declared that Jesus is Lord.In this all along is the reality of the self, the self that finds it’s expression in this will that sometimes if not most of the time goes against the very will of God.This self that we are always reminded that must die if we are to live a life that truly honors God. In fact for the one who have truly received Jesus and that say’s He is his savior and his Lord, he is already reckoned dead as the words of God testified in Gal.2:20 and that he is called by God to reckoned himself as such.Romans 6:11.

Now what is then the problem?Why so many of God’s children, brothers and sisters we love live their lives in mediocrity? The problem is the will! Yes it is renewed in that the Paul declared ” therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, ” but the truth is there’s still the capacity of the will to decide on it’s own. And God in His sovereign will desired and made it to be. Yes! christian, God the sovereign in His unequalled love have made you also sovereign in yourself in that He had made you and given you the capacity to decide for yourself. And we live still in this fallen world. So many distraction, temptations, desire for things, the business of life, the enemy still out there scheming, and we are not always wise!

A classic example of this is one that our loving Lord Himself have gone through by which he also have shown us what it is to truly live according to God’s will. We can read this in Matthew 26:36-42. Here we can see the Lord in agony, ” my soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death ” He exclaimed. Have we not always find ourselves in such situations. Us being overwhelmed by things, by life itself? But we know and we read and have heard time and again what the Lord have spoken ” Yet not as I will, but as You will.”

Now how can we be like that? If we are to live a life that is truly a happening of the very will of God. Let’s learn this from the Lord:

1. He has a clear vision of His purpose. He came to redeem God’s people from the clutches of sin. He knows clearly who he is. Do you know and believe for a fact that even now you are a child of God. You must come to know your very own salvation, your calling your purpose. That’s the will of God for you. That’s why the Lord could say ” but as You will. That very will that he come to lay down His life.

2. He Surrendered so gracefully. He is our true example of a life of true surrender. Read Philippians 2:5-8 and you will see. I will not elaborate so much on this. You for yourself know that you have to surrender more fully. You want to serve the Lord, to be fruitful. You are missing out on the joy of what it is to be a child of God. What’s keeping you? This is it. Surrender the will that it can lovingly say with the Lord ” not as I will, but as You will.”

As I have said before, God blessed you with the capacity to decide for your own. Why? He want’s you to see Him in His greatness, His goodness, His love, His grace, His glory and splendor in Christ. That there is nothing more glorious than what he had purposed for you. That he had nothing for you but your good. Nothing more could you ever desire. And in seeing this you come, and you say, Lord I surrender, not as I will, but your will be done. May God open our eyes to see.

God is the one who declares “ blessed are all who fear the Lord.“( Ps.128:1-4 ) In that declaration is the truth of Him revealing Himself so that we may learn to fear Him. Remember Moses and the burning bush. Jacobs dream of the ladder from heaven and before them the very call of Abraham. Many more we could cite but why not remember your own moment with God. And if you realize now you don’t have any, maybe the Lord is revealing Himself to you even now.

Let see about this blessedness that God speaks about:First is the truth of them walking in His ways.This is one testimony of those who truly fear God that cannot be denied – they walk in the ways of the Lord. The Lord Himself said “ you can see them by their fruits.“ Second, is that there will be blessings and prosperity. Now I would just like to point out the difference between being blessed and having blessings. Having blessings is about receiving things be they material and spiritual things but being blessed is a state. It means the one who fears the Lord has come to a state of blessedness. And from which all such blessings flow. The third is that his wife will be like a fruitful vine. Proverbs 18:22 reads..” He who finds a wife finds what is good and receives favor from the Lord and in 19:14 “ a prudent wife is from the Lord. Fourth and last is that his sons will be like olive shoots. Shoots that grows into branches from where fruits are borne.

See, God is saying something about the blessedness of one who fears the Lord. One that can readily be seen. And that is of his being fruitful in everyway. From his walk, to his labors, to his wife and sons there will always be fruitfulness. Who will not desire such a life. God alone makes this possible. And He said “ if you will seek me with all of your heart you will find me.”

Let us take heed to the words of the Lord Jesus in John 15:8 – “ It is to my father’s glory that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.”

I am bended…and what do this mean? Is it just to kneel before God? Is it just to kneel before God and ask for things? Is it even just to go and attend prayer meetings? I say yes! But there is more to this than just going through the routine of all of these.

To be sure to be bended has in it the very element of prayer. But prayer that has taken the whole being in something more profound in so much so that the apostle Paul could exclaim ” Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!”...( Rom.11:33). It is to see yourself apprehended into the grandest of all schemes. It is to come to finally see this scheme, this plan, this purpose that you come to say that everything that you are, everything that you can ever desire in this world and everything that you have or everything that you can ever have is nothing! And when this is arrived at, O what willingness, what a life of surrender to everything that God so desires one so apprehended can lived.

Let see how Paul put it: In Ephesians 3:14 he wrote – ” For this reason I kneel before the Father”…For this reason he says and you can see why, just look seven verses up or even up to the very first chapter. Here is the apostle, and it’s like he’s saying – God have opened my eyes.. and I see this..I see Him at work..I see this purpose..this purpose He is fulfilling in His Son..that He is at work in and through the church. You see the I there have become different, something had changed. It is not anymore the knee that kneels but it is the I that kneels. That is bended. You come to see what God is doing in and through His son..the church that you come to say with the apostle Paul “ everything is but rubbish”. That is bended. You come to see what He is doing in you and through you in this purpose that He has in His Son and in the church that you say yourself ” my life is nothing, and that this can only find meaning and worth if lived according to this.” That is bended.

I am bended. Not a one time event. But a journey of a lifetime. And is this my prayer that I will be until such time that He comes for Whom I am bent.Yes until such time that he takes me to be with Him forever.

Wisdom or Folly? Folly or Wisdom?

The question hinges solely on obedience, acting promptly or procrastination. For parents raising children this is a battle of the will every single day. Some children act promptly to errands others will think that by putting it off he can avoid the need to do so. In a sense, the one who puts the action off is the wise one, for in putting off he has achieve his goal. He has found a loophole in his parents will. If this indeed the case, and as parents you are weak enough to allow your children to find those loophole so he can escape then indeed your child is wise, for he has succeeded in doing nothing.

But if your word holds true, insisting on the completion of the command, that it ultimately must be obeyed, then he is certainly the wiser, one who faces the issue and responsibility square at once. He will grow up to be the wise one. He will make decisions later in life that will have greater good and wider influence.

Be clear about the will of God. If God’s words can be discounted, then you MIGHT not be foolish to try to escape their implications. But as it stands, God is an unchanging God with an unchanging will, what He has spoken, is speaking, and will be speaking is consistently consistent. He cannot be mocked, we reap what we sow…, then BE WISE; ACT NOW; REDEEM THE TIME!

Read further the article about the excellency of God.

In His Mighty Hands,
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Oh Lord, How excellent is Your Name in all the earth! – as King David once exclaimed. Perhaps in response to how people blasphemed the Name of the Almighty, or maybe in expressing his awe of the wonders of the work of God’s hands that nothing in his vocabulary properly describes the magnitude of the Lord’s presence as he experienced it. So he exclaimed, Oh Lord, how excellent is your name!

Having thus concluded on the magnificent of God he goes on to remember the time before the fall of man, all the way back to the creation, where God said, “All things He has created was very good!”. And so he exclaimed, How excellent is Your Name in all the earth!

Had we been observing, we would have felt already the magnitude of God’s presence, the excellency of the work of His hands. That excellency comes only from the one of whom all excellence emanates and have its being. For God is unchanging, He was, and is, and is to come… – nothing takes away anything from His will. What he was at creation, is the same he is in sanctification, and the same He will be in consummation of all things. Nothing changes God. Even the fall of Adam didn’t and never has changed the excellency of His purpose for creation, that ultimately, man shall have dominion over His creation. Thus we exclaim, “Oh Lord, how excellent is Your Name in all the earth.”

That in Jesus God has restored man and made him whole. He is the Man, and He has already dealt with the thing that muddle our view of God’s excellency, so that we can see with the eyes of faith the greatness of our God. And then we will exclaim, Oh Lord God, How excellent is Your Name in all the earth! In Him all God’s desire is realized, and he is related to us, for he has been made like us, taking on the form of a servant he submitted himself to the death of the cross. There is no deviation in the eternal ways of God: they go straight forward. “OH LORD, HOW EXCELLENT IS THY NAME IN ALL THE EARTH”.