The Picture: Our Daily Reflection

One day we will all be a picture on someone's wall. Or maybe in a wallet, or in a frame on the table in someone's drawing room.

When people see the picture what will they remember? Success? Failure? Honesty? Gratitude?

I think none of the above. But they will see another picture in their minds - a picture based on characteristics exhibited by us, hopefully of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

How will we rate against these characteristics? What will our picture communicate to those who see it? Will it inspire the viewer to inculcate those traits, or will it inspire nothing?

Whatever it inspires is the legacy we will have left behind.

It is this nature that will define whether our profession of Christianity has been successful. Those who are in Christ are distinguished from unbelievers in that they have been gifted with the Holy Spirit, enabling them to bear fruit, that is the fruits of the Spirit. Our belief that we do have these is only a belief. The truth will be when others experience them in us, through our life.

Matthew 7:16-17 says - Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.

So, what will we be? Will we be a picture on the wall or a picture in someone's heart? The choice is ours.

Praise and Worship in Heaven: Pastor Rajiv's Mid-Week Message

 

Nellie's Message: Pastor Rajiv's Daily Reflection

 You can't get away from God!

Moses, Jonah, Lot, Abraham, Elijah, and so many more had a calling from God to do His work - as many of us still do. Some of these gentlemen meekly did what they were told, and some tried to run away, just as we do. The story of each one of these folks indicates just one thing: If God has called you, don't try and run. You can't! So here is Nellie, a member of the Hilton Street Church who tells it like it is. 

All we have is His Time: Our Daily Reflection

 All we have is time. 

I, you and we belong to a world where more is less. We want more of everything, from food to clothes to cars, to education and other luxuries and we want more time to do what we want to do. When we get what we wanted, we dream and want the next level. We want it for ourselves as well as for our children, which is natural. And our children want the same for their children. And the story goes on till it can no longer, because we die. And we spend the last few years of our lives deciding who to give what, of what is left of what we have collected.

So we spend 20 years dreaming, 40 years acquiring and then the last phase where we are giving or rather planning to give or praying hard to get more time for all of this. 

Covid broke that vicious circle for me. 

I and my family were stuck in a foreign country for more than 2 years. We had planned travel for 1 month but spent 2 years and more. Everything we had was in our home which was locked up and deserted. We had to learn to manage on less. Less money day by day, less clothing, less fashion, less friends, less access to things we took for granted in our country like education, etc etc. Everything was less except food since our hosts, Pastor Rajiv and his family saw to all our provisions. Business Tailed, and then finally petered out as did our income. 

But we survived. Professionally, I gave the option to our small team to go out and find a job. Most did. One stayed, for reasons beyond my understanding.

Personally, it was a challenge as well.... I have a closet of numerous coats, an overcoat and numerous Woollen pants, since I live in extreme cold weather (by my standards). And here I was stuck in winter with none. I prided myself on clothes and dressing. That pride went down the drain. But we survived.

We survived without a car (we had two at home, a chauffer cum attendant, 3 maids), without travel, without shopping, without our luxuries which we thought were necessities. We who never boarded a bus, travelled in busses and trains and walked. We now had nothing and we loved it!

Yet, through these two years all we had was time. 

Time to think, to review our lives and figure out how to make it better. And we did. Not in terms of money. Not in terms of riches. Only in terms of experiencing God's love. and His hand on us and, trying to pass it on.

Yes, God's hand was on our family. Our elder daughter who got left behind earlier was able to travel at the height of Covid, and join us against all odds. An answer to our prayers, because we were having sleepless nights and making our own plans of getting out somehow and being with her in her place of posting far away. 

Our hibernation in fact protected us. I know that with my business travel in India, I would have been sure to get Covid. (in retrospect, this turned out to be a fact. We came back to India for a couple of months and i did get it because of numerous business travel. Yet I survived.) Not only this, numerous encounters with Gods hand at work showed us He was with us always.

Since we had time we started deepening our devotions. Started understanding more, reading more following more. And the more we imbibed from His word, the more satisfied we were, and the happier. Our desire for the material turned into a desire for His knowledge and truth. For His wisdom and His peace. And all of this, was prompted by Rev Rajiv. 

In the meanwhile, the pandemic changed my life with one single change - I lost the desire for more things and gained the desire for more of His word.

Today I am back in my natural habitat. But the first thing I did on my return was to empty out my closets, give away shoes, clothes, artefacts and miscellaneous stuff which I had held onto for years and years. That stuff filled a full room.

With desires being gone, that empty space got filled with Gods word, and a strange thirst to know more.

And hence today I quote 

"Two things I request of You

(Deprive me not before I die):

 Remove falsehood and lies far from me;

Give me neither poverty nor riches—

Feed me with the food allotted to me;

Lest I be full and deny You,

And say, “Who is the Lord?”

Or lest I be poor and steal,

And profane the name of my God" 

The key line is "Give me neither poverty nor riches.... "Feed me with the food allotted to me" which translates to a prayer we all know, "give us this day our daily bread". 

I anyone wants to know the value of time please visit - 

Rohit Shipstone: Just a Little more time...

For a first hand account of the value of time. 

Don't create angels: Pastor Rajiv's Daily Reflections

For I was ashamed to require of the king a band of soldiers and horsemen to help us against the enemy in the way: because we had spoken unto the king, saying, The hand of our God is upon all them for good that seek him; but his power and his wrath is against all them that forsake him. — Ezra 8:22

The story of Ezra is very often our story as well. His situation was very similar, yet while he demonstrated faith to the point of facing death, we fail miserably, seeking the help of fellow men, while professing faith in God.

We profess all blessings of God and His power to help us overcome any mountains we face. We say God provides. Yet in the time of adversity, we run to our fellow men for their help. Will that cry for their help not dishonor the very God we professed to them? Will they not laugh and think, where is the God we so highly talked about?

Craving aid from man dishonors the very God we proclaim to have saved us.

Yes, God may work through man. He may send an angel in times of our need, in the form of a man, but that does not mean we lose faith and rush to create our own angels and beg their help. It is a most blessed thing to have no props and no buttresses, but to stand upright on the Rock of Ages, upheld by the Lord alone, with the faith of Ezra.

We need to always remember that the Lord is magnified by our implicit reliance upon his solitary arm.

Lets read Ezra today and learn a thing or two about faith in God.

Who do you think I am? Pastor Rajiv's Mid-Week Message

 

Let Him in: Pastor Rajiv's Daily Reflections

And they shall know that I am the Lord their God, who brought them up out of the land of Egypt, that I may dwell among them. I am the Lord their God (Exodus 29:46).

God living among men. What a fantastic thought! What security, what peace!

And yet...

The sin of man is so loathsome to God that When God appeared even to his servant Moses, he said, “Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet”; and when he manifested himself upon Mount Sinai, to his own chosen and separated people, one of the first commands was, “Thou shalt set bounds about the mount.”

Both in the sacred worship of the tabernacle and the temple, the thought of distance was always prominent. The mass of the people did not even enter the outer court. Into the inner court none but the priests might dare to intrude; while into the innermost place, or the holy of holies, the high priest entered but once in the year. It was as if the Lord in those early ages would teach man that sin was so utterly loathsome to him, that he must treat men as lepers put without the camp.

How and why did God dwell among men? The fact is God always wanted to dwell with us but could not accept our sinfulness.

His plan was great, as per the quoted verse, but the problem was we didn't want to be His people. Our tendency to disobey Him and over lay His will with ours made sure He was always at a distance.

How did those commands of separatism change to invitations to come and unite with God?

That change happened because of Jesus Christ.

Remember, "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest,”

Jesus Christ is the bridge, cleaning and transforming us before we cross that chasm, so that we are presentable to God the Father. He transforms us for God the father.

This transformation does not happen overnight. We have to relentlessly pursue it, again and again, till it happens.

When we accept Christ, He will transform our minds, transform our desires, transforms our relationships, and finally transforms our purpose. 

For this to happen we have to open the door. He will not barge in; He will wait patiently till we decide to open the door and Let Him in.

Break out of the box: Pastor Rajiv's Daily Reflections

God has said: ‘I will dwell in them and walk among them. I will be their God, and they shall be My people".

There is a very old song which goes -

"He walks with me and He talks with me and He tells me I am His own..."

Both these quoted verses, one from God outlaying His plan for us and the other by Merle Haggard actually make me very sad. Sad because an invitation from our creator, dedicating His time for us, is hardly taken seriously.

Why? Because We reserve time for Him, time that He has given us, for 2 hours on a Sunday, or an hour for our daily devotions or another few minutes at night, while He waits for us throughout the day.

This does not mean we pray all day and not work or enjoy our time. What it means is that we don't involve Him in ourselves, except when we are in trouble. 

It's time we broke out of reserved timings for God and involve Him and talk to him throughout the day, involving Him in our daily lives, our joys and our sorrows. Talk to Him as we walk with Him. 

Judas was God Chosen: Pastor Rajiv's Daily Reflections

Judas is a famous man. Famous for the greatest and most spectacular sin in the world. And yet he was part of Gods plan and chosen by God, followed Jesus, worked miracles and was an apostle.

This can be perplexing, for if he was chosen by God to betray Jesus, was he really guilty? If he was preordained was he at fault?

Here is a problem we all face. If things are preordained, why am I guilty or why am I blessed or why am I suffering? Can I be a follower of Jesus and yet not be?

Judas example shows us that we can be Gods followers yet not be. By choosing from the beginning an apostle who was destined for apostasy and destruction, and by including him in his closest relations, and by giving him power over unclean spirits and over diseases, Jesus shows us that religious associations and religious practices and miracle-working are no sure evidence of being born again. And born again we must be to become a true follower of Jesus.

Secondly Judas had a choice: that of begging God's forgiveness after his spectacular sin. He did not. He preferred death through suicide rather than face God.
What we learn from Judas is that
A. Gods word is never broken. The scriptures talked about Gods plan, and it had to be done.
B. Inspire of our worst sin we have the choice of repenting
C. Religious associations and religious practices and miracle-working are no sure evidence of being born again.
D. And lastly predestination and human responsibility go hand in hand. If sin and sinfulness is predestined, repentance is our choice. Judas had that choice, as do we all.

We all have a Judas in us. We all have betrayed Jesus in our lives. Yet we all have the right to His saving grace. That's the miracle of Christ.

Courage is not impossible: Pastor Rajiv's Daily Reflections

"He shall not be afraid of evil tidings: his heart is fixed, trusting in the LORD". Psalm 112 ver 7

We are no strangers to bad news. Not one of us. And we are no strangers to fear as well. Fear is the one thing that can undermine our belief and faith in our God. It is well written that fear is the sharpest tool of Satan and which he uses well. When we fear, it is because we see no hope for the future. We depend on man and human power to bail us out. But as a follower of Christ and God, and with the presence of the Holy Spirit in us, we do not need to fear.

The KJV Bible Study says - "Christian, you ought not to dread the arrival of evil tidings; because if you are distressed by them, what do you more than other men? Other men have not your God to fly to; they have never proved his faithfulness as you have done, and it is no wonder if they are bowed down with alarm and cowed with fear: but you profess to be of another spirit; you have been begotten again unto a lively hope, and your heart lives in heaven and not on earthly things; now, if you are seen to be distracted as other men, what is the value of that grace which you profess to have received? Where is the dignity of that new nature which you claim to possess?"

So, what do we need to do as followers? Trust in the Lord and wait patiently for Him. Your wisest course is to do as Moses did at the Red Sea, “Stand still and see the salvation of God.” For if you give way to fear when you hear of bad news, you will be unable to meet the trouble with that calm composure which nerves for duty, and sustains under adversity. How can you glorify God if you play the coward?

This courage is not impossible and needs to be built up through experiences. When we are in fear, we need to look back on our life and remember all those times that God has pulled out of the deepest mire and set us up on a rock. We need to demonstrate to God that we believe in Him, have faith in Him and we do not have short memories. We need to depend on Him and not our friends and relatives. 

We need to remember our covenant with God, “let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.”