OBEDIENCE

I praise and thank the Lord for Glorious Hope, it is there that I learned the humility in making amends; It is not important as to who harmed who, at the end of the day "it always takes 2 to tango", in God's eyes the other is just as guilty as the other, no winner, everybody involved get hurt in the process.
  

Humility and obedience to the Lord is far more important than in taking pride in the validation that we get from people and in knowing or pointing out whether who's right or wrong. For Him, what is important is to start practicing what we learned from Him; as what is written in 1 Samuel 15:22 “Obedience is better than sacrifice and submission is better than offering the fat of rams.” God is after our obedience not in our sacrifices, like Abraham’s obedience when the Lord asked him to sacrifice Isaac; Abraham’s love for the Lord was remarkably demonstrated through his obedience to the toughest “test” in his life and until now many are blessed by his story.
  

Humanly speaking making amends is not an easy feat, sometimes pride (either we do not want to admit that we are also somehow at fault or because we enjoy in taking pride making ourselves believe that we are in no fault at all) or fear (because we do not want to feel defeated or rejected by the person that we’ll make amends with) gets in the way.  God did not ask us to make amends so we would know who hurt first,  whose fault it was or who wronged who, God wants us to make amends because that’s what He wants us to do, He wants us to obey Him and I think the humility in such act is one of the loudest proclamation in our faith walk on how much we really love and value the Lord.  It’s never easy to utter “I’m Sorry” for we all have our own set of human expectations; though we should always aim for restoration but we should never expect anything from the other party when we apologize, we just need to arm ourselves with prayer, sincerity, humility and obedience; it’s no longer important whether they won’t immediately extend their forgiveness (or choose not to forgive at all), refuse to say a thing or opt not to apologize back, their forgiveness and/or admission that they are also (somehow) at fault is just a bonus from God (at the end of the day, they are the one who is accountable to our Creator), such “bonuses” should never be our objective nor goal, our main focus should just be the Lord, nothing more, nothing less. 

 

Often God allows us to go through unlikely situations to test us. God is after the condition of our hearts’, our response to His given predicament will determine what will happen next, whether we take the next level or reap the consequences and be a “repeater” until we realize exactly the lessons that God wants us to learn.  Never forget that The Lord never meant to hurt us, like He never intended Isaac to be slayed for sacrifice by his own father, all were just a heart test, a test of our O-B-E-D-I-E-N-C-E.  

If we want God to author our own “love story”, we should learn to listen, follow and trust the future that is yet to be revealed.  Our hurts, pains, defeats, struggles and challenges are great opportunities for us to bless others through our response in pressing situations; Victory only comes in our obedient response to God, and I pray that our love story with God will greatly encourage others to believe in the divine power of Godly obedience.

JOHN 3:16

Before I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior, I didn’t had much appreciation or should I say understanding on this verse; though I heard about it but it didn't make an impact on me until such time I realized how much I needed God in my life.

It was in the year 2008 when I accepted Jesus, God placed me in a difficult situation where I was forced to contemplate on how I lived my life for 33 years; I knew there was a God (or many Gods),  I thought I believed in God, I thought I was worshipping  and serving Him through good works, only to realize when I looked back that I was only doing such to earn my way to heaven when my time comes,  but I was wrong! I realized, should good works is my ticket to heaven, Jesus died for nothing. 
In my 5 year journey as a Christian, the more I get to know Christ, the more John 3:16 creates a bigger impact not only in me but in my pursuit to obey Him. I may not be a parent yet, but I could not just imagine how painful it could have been to sacrifice His only Son to save His creations who have sinned against Him and deserving to be eternally in hell.

Jesus had gone through excruciating pain inside –out (emotionally, mentally and physically), He was humiliated, insulted, denied and scourged by lashing Cat-o-nine-tails for 39 times that literally ripped His skin and crowned Him with 1 to 2 inches reeds of thorns that was pressed so hard that according to scriptures it pierced His skull  to further intensify Christ’s undescribable pain,  but His obedience to His Father and love for us lead Him into facing the Romans’ most brutal punishment – Crucifixion.

Prior to the crucifixion, Jesus carried part of the cross weighing 75 to 125lbs for half a mile, without taking any sort of meal.  Then, when He finally reached Golgotha, Jesus was nailed through His wrist (if its on the palm it would most likely tear down once the cross was up) that it caused His wrist bone to dislocate while the nails were still tightly holding on the cross.  At that time, the Romans had discovered the Medial nerve located just above the wrist joint and the centre of the foot.  The weight of the body caused the nail to press against the nerve shooting horrific pain throughout the nerves of the body.  The art of crucifixion did not cause Jesus to lose a lot of blood but the pain was deeply and truly  agonising.  Jesus’ body would have sagged downwards, causing agonising pain and severe cramp on the arms, shoulders and chest. He would then have found it difficult to breathe and maybe in an attempt to buy some time, he would have pushed himself up by the nails in his feet and stretched his legs which would have enabled him to breathe, but at the same time caused unbearable pain. The weight of the body, pulling down on the outstretched arms and shoulders, would tend to fix the intercostal muscles in the position of inhalation. The only way the Jesus could have exhaled was to lift with his arms and push with his legs to hold himself up for a few seconds to allow the air to escape from his lungs. To avoid suffocation Jesus was forced to cause his own excruciating pain by putting more pressure on the medial nerves. It was only a matter of time before the Jesus’ heart failed and his lungs would fill with fluid.
Reference: http://donaldsona.tripod.com/index-24.html

I cannot imagine the pain of a Father staring on His only begotten Son facing a capital punishment only to save those who have betrayed Him of their sins, in order to give them/us the opportunity to be with Him in heaven. I can’t imagine how much God truly loves us that in spite of our sins, despite how we live our lives, He still wants us to be saved and be with Him in heaven.

Thank you Jesus for your obedience to the Father, thank you for saving us and thank you for loving us the way you do.