Today, many Christians would feel that this “me and God” vs “the enemies” attitude is uncalled for. They might think it’s only relevant for Christians from the third world countries or the middle East.

But it’s not. I myself can testify from experience that you can get persecuted anywhere if you strive to live according to God’s commandments and seek to manifest the full gospel and its power. (2 Timothy 3:12)

You will get a lot of persecutions from, first of all, the Christianity religion. Religion is never the true victim, but it’s often the persecutor to those who are the true followers of the true, biblical God.

If you are just being religious, going to church every week, being churchy and nice to people, and never do something that rock the boat, then not only will you not get persecuted, you might enjoyed the best of both worlds.

But you will not be relevant to the kingdom of God, nor to the world and the enemy.

Let Says You Are A Biblical Christian

Then you are a real threat to Satan, the world, and religious institutions, including some of our own Christian Churches and denominations.

Many church leaders will say harsh things about you and to you if you actually live obediently to God. Be prepared.

Satan, of course, will send his army from hell to harass you, to steal from you, and to destroy you if he can. And humans are one of the main type of instruments that he uses to attack us.

God’s Main Way Of Dealing With the Enemies Is To “Preparest a Table Before You In The Presence Of Your Enemies…”

Don’t expect the enemies to simply disappear and everything to go easy on you.

Rather, God has a wonderful plan. He is powerful enough to set you a table of feast in the middle of your enemies and make them watch you to eat, drink, and merry. They will say all kind of harsh things to you. They will growl, threaten, and insult you. They will do all kind of things to try to take away your peace. But who gets to enjoy the feast?

YOU.

But are you up for it?

Only those who understand the way of God, have strong faith, and are hardened by battles can participate in this. They understand that as long as they place their full faith in God, they will receive no real harm. (Unless their times are up and God let them choose to be a martyr, which only happens once in a lifetime)

Religious leaders might use slanderous talk to attack you, but God will make you a “fisher of men”. (Mark 1:17; Acts 2:46-47)

The world will attack your faith. They will call you stupid. And the modern pharisees will try to conform you into their denominational doctrines, but God will grant you the power of the full gospel and co-labor with you. (Acts 4:16-17; Mark 16:15-20)

Satan will try to keep you sick and poor. Religious people will try to brainwash you into believing that being sick and poor are spiritual. But God wants you to prosper in all things (3 John 1:2) See my post on Biblical Definition Of Prosperity.

God Won’t Remove The Enemies

God wants to demonstrate His power and glory to the enemies through us. If God makes our enemies disappear, then who are going see His power and glory? It is because of His mercy that He does this to the enemies, so that the enemies might repent and give glory to God when they see what God can do through us and for us.

Deuteronomy 28: 10

¹⁰And all people of the earth shall see that thou art called by the name of the LORD; and they shall be afraid of thee.

The world will hate us, but some can choose to follow our examples.

John 15: 18-20

¹⁸If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you.

¹⁹If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.

²⁰Remember the word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also.

Jesus Christ is infinitely bigger than the world and the enemies.

John 16:33

³³These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.

So what Should We do?

Knowing that God wants to prepare a table before us in the presence of our enemies, we should focus on our part— to merry along, have faith, and allow God to demonstrate His tremendous blessings through us by sitting happily right there at the table. If we succumb to fears and complains, we will fall right into our Satan’s scheme and he will overcome us.

It’s like being in a storm’s eye. On the exterior everything might look chaotic, but if you stand in the middle of God’s will, and place your will, mind, and emotion right there, you will enjoy great peace through it all. Don’t be mad about what people say against you, but let them see your supernatural prosperity and let it be your best vindication. If you take matter into your own hand you will lose it.

Remember, if you have enemies, that’s because they have a reason to be jealous of you. This is why you will get persecuted. Because if God is with you, favors will always go your way, and people who are not so close to God would feel bad about themselves so they will try to bring you down to their own level.

I have seen happy and successful people got bogged down by negative people. I myself was a victim of people who accused me wrongly when I had God’s favors on my side. I allowed myself to become negative because of some of the vicious things they said, and I complained (A lot), and at the end I was burn out and lost the favors.

Looking back, I wonder why I didn’t just sit at my table, relax, and let them see how much God had blessed me. A blessed life is a lonely path, but it’s better than the broad path of mediocrity and compromise.

If I hadn’t been negative and complaining at those times of favor, my life would have been continue to be a display of divine blessing. I might already have married, have kids, a successful career, and stuff. (I am serious, read my journals if you want to know more about my life. I mentioned a bit of my previous time of favor in this post.)

Once the enemy scare you away from your God-given table, you will lose your relevance and divine blessing. This is what the enemy is trying to do. So stop caring about what the world think, what carnal Christians think, and what your enemies think. Just enjoy your feast of blessing and prosperity! They will eventually reflect on themselves when they can’t stand your happiness and divine success, and some might turn to God because of that.

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The ultimate causes of depression are spiritual.

The primary cause for depression is bitterness, and secondary cause is regret, and the third cause is the sum of the negative emotions that trace their roots to the spiritual causes such as a verbal curse, demonic attack, or generational curses.

Depression is just the symptom. Biochemical and genetic disorder that contribute to the depression phenomenon are also the symptoms, not the causes.

Drug for depression only suppress the symptoms, not curing the problem, but chemical drug always introduce side effects that might be just as bad as the depression itself, or worst.

The great cost of bitterness

Unforgivingness produces bitterness. In a parable, Jesus compared God to a master, who forgave his servant an enormous debt that he owed him, but that servant turned around and put a fellow servant in jail for a small debt:

³² Then his master, after he had called him, said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you begged me. ³³ Should you not also have had compassion on your fellow servant, just as I had pity on you?’ ³⁴ And his master was angry, and delivered him to the torturers until he should pay all that was due to him. ³⁵ “So My heavenly Father also will do to you if each of you, from his heart, does not forgive his brother his trespasses. Matthew 18:32-35

If anyone refuses to forgive someone, God will deliver him or her to the “torturers”, which could be diseases, mental illness, demons, or other curses.

It might feel unfair to us, but we owe God even more. God is the ultimate victim of our sins. We sin against Him so much that we deserve to die for our sins, but He sent His Son to die on our behalf and the Son was tortured and humiliated by sinners.

If the problem of unforgiving persists, bitterness will soon develop a life of its own. From time to time it will come out and complain about what so and so have done to you, and how bad and how much the wrongs had cost you. The complains will repeat over and over again, lest you forget, and if you forget, it could be worst, because the repressed memory will continue to poison your system but you don’t know why.

It will manifest into different form of negative emotions, physical sickness, and mental disorders. It’s compulsive and contagious.

See to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many. Hebrews 12:15

In my first and second year in college, familial problems from the past re-surfaced and produced intensive feeling of depressions. It wouldn’t go out easily, but it just multiplied whenever I tried to analyze the problem.

Later, I also struggled with what some Christians did to others and God but they didn’t look like they understood the impact of their actions. I couldn’t accept some of the vicious things that some of the Christians spoke against each other, and when I was the direct victim, it was even more difficult because it became personal.

There was periods of time when I had to forgive hundreds of time a person who didn’t know he/she was sinning against me, or that person might be slightly aware but didn’t understand the impact of what he/she was doing.

As a result, that person kept repeating his/her attitudes and offenses and I had to keep forgiving him/her over and over again.

I know forgiving can be super hard, especially when you still feel very hurt even after you had decided to forgive a person and told God you already forgave. The hurtful memory might resurface again, and you forgive, and it resurfaces again, and you forgive, and so on for many times that you doubt if you had really forgiven that person.

Sometime you don’t really understand the depth of the offenses that someone has committed against you, so the first time you find it easy to forgive, but later your mind and heart might be able to slowly grasp the real extent of the offenses, or that the Holy Spirit illuminates how much the offenses have truly cost you so you realize the harm was bigger than you initially thought.

The Holy Spirit does that because He wants you to fully forgive.

It can take multiple attempts to forgive one offense.

The devil might also come and accuse the offender and try to make you dwell on the offenses. If you take the bait from the devil, which always seems appealing, you will fall into difficult battle with bitter thought, and even depression.

I had taken Satan’s baits too many times. I had had depressive thoughts and even suicidal thoughts, even though I forgave every time I was offended.

Finally, I learned that it takes faith to forgive. Satan will try to point to your hurtful memory and convince you that you haven’t forgiven someone, but you can call it a lie to make it stop. You must believe in forgiveness and God. If you decided to forgive someone before God, you had to have confidence that it was done.

Tell the enemy this, “I forgave that person for that already! Get thee behind me!” See My post, Quote About Faith, to learn how to fight the lie of the enemy with faith.

Devourer that devours your joy and goods

If your productivity at work, ministry, or school get “regularly” destroyed due to reasons such as health problems, emotional problems, gossips, office politics, relational conflicts, bullies, distractions, or many other “misfortune” that seems to harass you on purpose, then it is normal to feel depressed due to ongoing loss of opportunities and mediocrity.

It might seems like there is a conspiracy against you behind the scene, and there is.

The Bible mentions a spiritual foe, the devourer, that can devour your produce – your bank account, your school GPA, or any other accomplishment:

¹¹ “ And I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, so that he will not destroy the fruit of your ground, nor shall the vine fail to bear fruit for you in the field,” says the LORD of hosts; ¹² And all nations will call you blessed, for you will be a delightful land,” says the LORD of hosts.   Malachi 3:11-12

If you fulfill a certain condition, God can rebuke the devourer for you. The condition is in the follow:

⁶ “I the LORD do not change. So you, O descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed. ⁷ Ever since the time of your forefathers you have turned away from my decrees and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you,” says the LORD Almighty.
“But you ask, ‘How are we to return?’⁸ “Will a man rob God? Yet you rob me.
“But you ask, ‘How do we rob you?’
“In tithes and offerings. ⁹ You are under a curse—the whole nation of you—because you are robbing me. ¹⁰ Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the LORD Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it. ¹¹ I will prevent pests from devouring your crops, and the vines in your fields will not cast their fruit,” says the LORD Almighty. ¹² “Then all the nations will call you blessed, for yours will be a delightful land,” says the LORD Almighty. Malachi 3:6-12

The main condition is to put God first. Give your first fruits to the Lord, respect His Word, and obey it. If we do that, then He will rebuke the devourer for us.

We should give at least a tenth of what we earn to the servants of God, so they have the resources to expand the kingdom of God. Same for a church. If a local church wants to prosper, it has to obey the same rule, which means her members should share some of their financial resource to missionaries, and to other ministries for the sake of the Gospel.

A devourer is a real creature. It is a class of demons and fallen angels who specialize in sabotage.

Demons and fallen angels are always waiting outside, plotting and waiting for the chance to steal, kill, and destroy (Psalm 10:8-9; John 10:10). It is God’s protection that keeps them at bay.

God’s protection is the default mode, even for the non-believers, but sins can open doors for the devils and invite them in.

If they get the legal right to enter into any area of our life, they will enter and stay there and make it home.

If you have an intimate relationship with God, He will put a hedge around you and protect you

Everyone is born with a hedge of God, see the follow Bible verse:

⁸ Then the LORD said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.” ⁹ “Does Job fear God for nothing?” Satan replied. ¹⁰ “Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands, so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land. ¹¹ But stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face.” Job 1:8-11

For the LORD God is a sun and shield; the LORD bestows favor and honor; no good thing does he withhold from those whose walk is blameless. Psalm 84:11

In the first Bible quote above, Satan literally complains to God for putting a hedge around his servant, Job. Job is a godly man who is informed about the spiritual reality, so he always pray for protection over his family (Job 1:4-5).

The prayers for protection really do work. Satan can find no legal right to attack Job.

If you are a child of God, your default mode is blessedness and safety. If you are depressed, it suggests the enemy might be present.

The enemy is present for a reason. Make sure you didn’t give them the legal right to attack you. A legal right opens a hole in the hedge to demonic force.

An example of demonic legal right is an unconfessed and unrepented sin.

Hidden sins will sap away your joy and strength

Guilt is one of the main causes of depression.

¹ Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.
² Blessed is the man to whom the LORD does not impute iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit.
³ When I kept silent, my bones grew old through my groaning all the day long.
⁴ For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me; My vitality was turned into the drought of summer.
⁵ I acknowledged my sin to You, and my iniquity I have not hidden. I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the LORD,” And You forgave the iniquity of my sin.  Psalm 32:1-7

A hidden sin could be a forgotten sin. Sometimes I hear people said they have forgotten something they did to others and they prided themselves on their ability to forget the negative.

The sins are still working against their systems even though they have forgotten about them. Moreover, those who hide their sins will not prosper, which leads to depression due to ongoing failures and mediocrity (Proverbs 28:13).

¹³ He who conceals his sins does not prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them finds mercy. Proverbs 28:13

I observed that many people have been hiding their sins, but they still manage to tough it out through sheer willpower and positive thinking, and with some smiles on their faces too. They pride themselves on their willpower and positive thinking, but this is the way of the world, not the way of God.

There is a class of demons that specialize in guilt. They are called the spirits of guilt. If sin is not properly due with, a spirit of guilt could enter the sinner and cause excessive guilt, which opens door to other demonic spirits and ultimately bring about a total destruction of the person in the long run.

Repentance that leaves no guilt and sorrow

Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death. 2 Corinthians 7:10

Depression is worldly sorrow, but godly sorrow comes from conviction of the Holy Spirit. Godly sorrow produces genuine repentance. Repentance leads to reconciliation with God and allows the holes in the hedge of protection to be repaired.

If we want to maintain an intimate relationship with God, we have to repent on the spot whenever we sin. At first we might have to do it everyday, but as we mature in Christ, we will sin less and less.

If you still feel guilty after you repent, it indicates the present of the spirit of guilt. The last link above is linked to an article that shows you how to deal with false guilt that comes from the enemy.

Regrets?

Although you might have started living right before God, the past is gone and will never come back. Whatever wrong choices you have made and whatever was lost in the past might still upset you. I totally understand because I was also a victim of regrets.

Here is some of my other posts that will be useful on dealing with regrets.

Getting Over Regrets

How to deal with the thefts: Satan and his demons (Don’t regrets, get back what they have stolen from you 7 folds!! You can do that, click to see how!)

Still feel negative?

Many time Christians have to wander in the “desert” for a while. A desert experience is a trying time. Every Christian will have to go through a period or multiple periods of desert experience.

God designs the desert experience to test and train each Christian. If you are experiencing prolonged period of unanswered prayers, mediocrity, failures, illness, or other misfortunes, a desert experience could be the reason.

Of all the books on waiting for God while dealing with the desert experience, I found the ebook, Waiting For Your Ministry, by Grantley Morris, to be the most inspiring and encouraging.

The author himself went through years of desert, and had been struggling with depression. By praying and seeking God diligently, he found valuable insights in the midst of failures, mediocrities, and many negatives.

After he wrote the book, he was still in the desert! He had to read it over and over again to keep himself from drowning in depression! That’s why I found this book amazing. You can download the book here. (The webpage of Grantley might not look sophisticated, but the content is good)

Please don’t think that it is the end. You know that life isn’t that easy.

Generation Curses and Verbal Curses?

Curses can destroy your destiny in many ways. Most of the time you won’t even notice the effects.

There is an entire world on this topic. If you are unfamiliar with curses, then you might read an online text version of the book, Turning Curses to Blessings, by Carl Fox.

Here is my journal blog entry that explains how my life was cursed, even after I had long become a Christian, but was uninformed about curses: My life Was Cursed

And I highly recommend the book, Blessing or Curse: You can choose, by Derek Prince. Of all the books that talk about curses, that one is probably the best.

Finally, get on the offense!

Now we have discussed so much about how to cure depression, but they are mostly remedies. We need to get on the offenses too. See my article on Parable Of The Mustard Seed to start replace depression with blessings – tangible blessings that you can enjoy starting now!

Return from Best Cure For Depression to homepage

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Why? Because you and I are the sources of suffering and evil.

We create suffering and evil for this world whenever we conceive evil thoughts and/or act upon them. The world can only be perfect if everyone obeys one set of law perfectly, and only if that law itself is perfect.

I believe we have the perfect law, which is God’s Law (Psalm19:7), but no one is perfect enough to obey it (Romans 3:20).

²⁰Therefore no one will be declared righteous in his sight [God's sight] by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin. Romans 3:20

The Law makes us aware of how sinful we are. Try to act good for one week by following the Ten Commandments, and you will discover that you cannot act good for very long.

Even if you are not Christians, you can still act good according to your conscience. Many people have tried this experiment when they were kids. One must be disillusioned to imagine that they are good if they can’t even stay good for a few days.

It took us many years of education and growing up to convince ourselves that we aren’t sinners. Most people were successful in believing that.

Can a boiled seed sprouts?

No, just as a boiled seed can never sprout, a fallen race can never be perfect either.

Have you ever wondered why we have tried for many thousands of years but we still failed at stopping murders, rapes, wars, greed, injustice, poverty, sickness, and other curses that are caused by human weaknesses?

The answer to the problems doesn’t lie in a perfect system or government. If the root of problems is human, you can never fix the problems through a perfected system or government.

People who thought they could change the world with their ideologies only created bigger suffering and evil for everyone. For example, communism and fascism. Communism alone had caused hundred of millions of death in the last half century.

When the first human couple sinned, they and their offspring were fallen and spiritually dead. It could never be undone.

Death had entered the world because of sin, and this was why we have had all kind of suffering and evil since.

The first transgression of Adam and Eve had contaminated our DNA and created a moral weakness, and since then transgressions in the world have only increased as the human race departed further and further from God.

Through generations, our moral weaknesses and hereditary diseases and disorders have been piling up. We have been degenerating, not evolving!

¹²Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned— Romans 5:12

With each new transgression, more damage is done to our race and the world we live in. As we invent new ways to sin and grieve God, we also bring more and more suffering and evil into our world (Romans 1:28-32).

God delayed our punishments because of mercy

If God didn’t delay punishments for anyone, there would not be one single Christian on earth, because all would have died the moment they sinned.

Those of us who asked, “Why does God allow suffering and evil?”, might possibly be pointing our fingers to the “evil men” who do “evil”, such as Hitler. And we might be also pointing fingers to God Himself, and imply that He is the ultimate author of suffering and evil.

If you call someone Hitler, it is considered to be one of the worst insults. No one wants to admit that his or her heart is just as capable of evil as Hitler. However, the truth is we just don’t have the power and guts to carry out the evils in our hearts like Hitler did.

Who voted Hitler into power? The average people! Who carried out his orders? The average people!

Have you ever voted anyone who was pro-choice (pro-abortion) into any public office? If you voted for that person because he or she promised government handouts, you are hiring murderer for bribe!! (Ezekiel 22:12)

In you men accept bribes to shed blood [abortion for example]; you take usury and excessive interest [Illegal central banks such as U.S.'s Federal Reserve] and make unjust gain from your neighbors by extortion [Governmental wealth redistribution program, stealing from the rich and give it to the poor]. And you have forgotten me, declares the Sovereign LORD.

At least half the population of every democratic country have voted for murderers because of welfare or other ungodly reasons. As for totalitarian governments, they were given power by the majority of their people at one time.

There are at least a hundred other ways in which we have been participating murder and extortion, voting for murderers and wealth re-distributors were just two of the many examples.

“Thou shall not murder” and “Thou shall not steal” are just two of the Ten Commandments, and we almost break the rest of the ten commandments on a daily basis.

¹You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge the other, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things. ²Now we know that God’s judgment against those who do such things is based on truth. ³So when you, a mere man, pass judgment on them and yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God’s judgment? ⁴Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness leads you toward repentance? Romans 2:1-4

God allows suffering and evil for you and I!!!! He is tolerating us for just a little while.

This is not the time to fold our arms and judge God and others, but it is the time to repent!!! The day of God’s wrath and reckoning is quick approaching.

God’s solution to our fallen state

If the seed is boiled, then replace it with a new seed! This is God’s solution.

The old seed is useless. Whatever you do to it it will not sprout. Many people try to do something to their nature to become better, spiritually enlightened, or whatever they call it. However, no amount of good work can compensate our sins and transgression, nor can it bring about a lasting change to our fallen nature. (Romans 7:5)

⁵For when we were controlled by the sinful nature,^[a] the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our bodies, so that we bore fruit for death. Romans 7:5

¹⁴We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. ¹⁵I do not undehttp://bible-verses-insights.com/wp-admin/post.php?action=edit&post=609&message=10rstand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. ¹⁶And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. ¹⁷As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. ¹⁸I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature.^[c] For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. ¹⁹For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. ²⁰Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. Romans 7:14-20

To believe we can change our nature, or evolve into a more enlightened being, is like watering a boiled seed and hope it would sprout.

God decided to give us a new nature. This new nature is the new life of Jesus Christ.

⁹No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in him; he cannot go on sinning, because he has been born of God. 1 John 3:9

³ Jesus answered and said to him, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” … ⁵ Jesus answered, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. ⁶ That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. ⁷ Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ John3:3,5

¹⁷Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! 2 Corinthians 5:17

Those who accept Jesus Christ as their personal savor will receive the new nature, but he must also follow Jesus as Lord and live by faith in God every moment to grow and manifest that new nature everyday:

My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you. Galatians 4:19

Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses. 1 Timothy 6:12

For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last,^[c] just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.” Romans 1:17

Faith is superior than willpower. Faith come by the Spirit of God speaking into our spirit (Romans10:17). When God speaks His Word into our spirits, faith is formed, and we response to this initial faith by confessing His spoken Word with our mouths, and believing it in the hearts.

As we do that, the power and faith of God are being released from the Word of God and we will be able to accomplish or receive what the Word of God says it will accomplish.

Holiness is the nature and work of God. What was started by God cannot be completed by our willpower or old nature, but has to be completed by God Himself:

³Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort? ⁴Have you suffered so much for nothing—if it really was for nothing? Galatians 3:3-4

What is our part then? Our part is to live by faith, speak words of faith, act upon faith, and hold our faith.

Seeing then that we have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. Hebrews 4:14

By exercising faith persistently, we substantiate the life of Christ until He is formed in us!

If you haven’t accepted Jesus Christ as your personal savor, go here to learn how to do so.

OK, I have become a Christian now, so when will the suffering and evil stop?

Congratulation! No matter you have become a Christin just a minute ago, or years ago, you have signed up to become God’s lasting solution to the problem of suffering and evil.

Hear this again! You have become part of God’s final solution to the problem of suffering and evil!!!

¹⁸I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. ¹⁹The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. ²⁰For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope ²¹that^[i] the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.²²We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. ²³Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. Romans 8:22-23

After we have become children of God, it added new meaning to our suffering. Prior to knowing God, we suffer for the sake of suffering. After knowing God, we suffer for great purposes.

As we wait eagerly for the manifestation of our full inheritance as children of God (i.e. heaven, eternal life, and the whole nine yards), Christ is forming in us as we face our earthly challenges with godly faith each day (Galatians 4:19).

Suffering become purposeful tests that test our characters and faith. It actually help us grow if we respond to suffering properly:

³Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; ⁴perseverance, character; and character, hope. ⁵And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us. Romans 5:3-5

You may want to know why does it have to take so long? Why can’t we just go back to the good old days of Adam and Eve as if nothing happened? No more suffering and evil as soon as we believe Jesus?

What were God waiting for? Why doesn’t He stop the suffering and evil as soon as we become Christian?

In the good old days of Adam and Eve, everything was good –no death, no sin, no sickness, no aging, no evil, and no suffering – but good wasn’t good enough to prevent them from sinning!! (Genesis 1:31)

Think about it, it hadn’t been too long since God created the earth, the Garden of Eden, and the human couples, before they sinned. Everything was good, nothing was forbidden from humans except just one thing: they can’t eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

Of all the good and juicy fruits in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve chose to eat the only fruits that they were not supposed to eat. God told them, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.” (Genesis 2: 16-17)

They still ate it.

By choosing knowledge of good and evil, they chose to decide for themselves and be their own god. God planted the tree there because He had to give them the option to decide to stay with Him or to depart from Him.

You can’t really physically depart from God, because He is everywhere, but you can depart from God if you separate your spirit from Him and develop a strong sense of self and self determination. This was what our ancestors essentially did.

God already told them they will die if they chose that option, but they didn’t really believe it.

To this day, He still offer us freewill. Without freewill, we can never be perfect. A perfect being is a conscious, sentimental being.

If God simply revert things to the days of Adam and Eve, and stop the suffering and evil right now, what make you think that you won’t decide to sin again?

An eternity with God is too long and too perfect for us… if we enter it without proper preparation

If you have become a Christian long enough, you might have pondered this question, “Eternity… how does God make sure I won’t sin for that long?”

Even some of the angels sinned! In fact, they sinned before humans did.

One third of the angels rebelled against God. Their leader is Satan. They knew mentally what they were doing. They had been living in heaven and seeing God everyday prior to their fall, but still decided to rebel against Him.

They knew what they were doing mentally, but they couldn’t really understand the gravity and the eternal consequences of their choice because they were pure and innocent just before they sinned.

Even the angels, who can see God and dwell in heaven, have the need to learn and gain knowledge (1 Peter 1:12).

If you and I were born in a good state like the angels and Adam and Eve, we wouldn’t understand suffering and evil either. We could never understand the Word of God deeply by just listening to God preaching in heaven, for it is written:

A servant cannot be corrected by mere words; though he understands, he will not respond. Proverbs 29:19

Imagine talking to a healthy kid about death, crime, handicap, cancer, or evil, she won’t really understand if she had never experienced it. She knows no real pain. You can’t talk her out of harm’s way if she feels itchy and wants to entertain her “what if I do this?” kind of curiosity.

In order for a kid to learn to hate evil and love good, she must experience some real pains such as being lied to, get some small cuts, or volunteer for unfortunate people as she grows up in order to understand these things deeper.

God is omnipotent, but I wonder if even He is able to tell a “good” man what sin, death, sickness, murder, and other evil is like. What I meant by “good” was the Adam and Eve kind of good before they sinned for the first time.

God is a wise teacher, so He allows us to learn by experiences if we ask for it. His plan A was for Adam and Eve to never have sinned in the first place, but since that plan was forever gone, now His plan B was to replace our fallen nature and forgive our sin through His Son Jesus Christ.

That’s not all, God is able to bring good out of evil, so He makes use of evil instead of simply eliminating it all together. Therefore, part of His current plan was to raise His Church through present suffering and evil, instead of without.

³Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; ⁴perseverance, character; and character, hope. ⁵And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us. Romans 5:3-5

¹Therefore, since Christ suffered in his body, arm yourselves also with the same attitude, because he who has suffered in his body is done with sin. ²As a result, he does not live the rest of his earthly life for evil human desires, but rather for the will of God. 1 Peter 4:1-2

By going through tribulations and temptations in this world, we learn God’s Word deeper than we would if things were good and perfect. (Psalm 119:71)

Nothing in our life is pointless, even the bad and evil. Everything is going to be useful even after we enter the other side of eternity, because…

Our life is an epistle! The Church is the perfect teaching material!

³ clearly you are an epistle of Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink but by the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of flesh, that is, of the heart. 2 Corinthians 3:3

The reason God let us live the rest of our earthly days after conversion is because He wants to write on us with His Spirit. We are His living letters, books, and tablets. Nothing is more touching than a real life story. God wants to co-author our life as much as we let Him to.

For those who are obedient, they enjoy more blessings and rewards in this life and in eternity, and maybe endure some persecutions for God on earth. For those who are goofing around and are disobedient, they suffer consequences and disciplines, and may become some of the “poorest” folks in the kingdom of heaven, if they make it there.

The suffering and evil that we endure through our earthly life will become part of the eternal teaching materials for the entire heaven and the rest of human race. Everyone will know how good good is, how bad bad is, and how evil evil is, by reading us.

The ripples of every good choice or bad choice made by us in this life will be revealed fully to all intelligent creatures, who are humans and angels, for eternity. God doesn’t need to teach us with “Thou shall not!” anymore. He will have plenty of living epistles to teach everyone.

⁹For it seems to me that God has put us apostles on display at the end of the procession, like men condemned to die in the arena. We have been made a spectacle to the whole universe, to angels as well as to men. 1 Corinthians 4:9

It would be like a multi-dimensional slide show (at least 3-D if not 4, 5, 6 D). The audiences will be able to know exactly what you have been through, feel what you felt, and know exactly how each person felt who had ever interacted with you.

We will be able to study each living epistle from all points of view and depths, gaining experiential knowledge from each epistle quickly and easily. We will be able to understand the Bible much deeper by watching epistle movies in relation to the Word of God.

Remember I established earlier that one of the main reasons why Adam and Eve and the fallen angels chose to sin was because they lacked experiential knowledge? Problem solved!

And that’s not all…

Without the Church, eternity is too big, too long for everyone

God doesn’t want a quick fix for suffering and evil. He wants a solution that guarantees to last!

Part of the lasting solution is to form Christ in each one of us, because only the very nature of God can guarantee to live for eternity without sinning. Good and innocent aren’t enough to ensure a 100%, eternal guarantee, but with the nature and life of Christ intertwined with the very fabric of our soul and spirit, we can have confidences for eternity.

That’s not all, every “Christ container” interconnect with one another as the Church! The Church is the greatest invention ever! Only God could conceive such an ingenious idea (Ephesians 1:8-10, 18-23).

God is huge. He is deep. He is intense. He is absolute and holy. And to think that anyone would live with Him forever, can you imagine that?

Remember, even angels sinned!

But now things have changed: we have the Church!

We learned that in eternity there will be living epistles to gain experiential knowledge from: Not a hundred, not a thousands, but possibly hundreds of millions of living epistles.

The Church is like a gigantic library of epistles.

The Church, which we are part of, will maintain intimate fellowship with God and with each saint for eternity.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. Hebrews 12:1-3

In eternity we will fellowship with every saint who once lived on earth and fought a good fight. They had gone through many suffering, evil, and temptations, but they have overcome with their faith, the word of their testimony, and the blood of the Lamb. (Hebrews 11; Revelation 12:11)

There will be no communication barrier like we have on earth. We can communicate with instant thoughts. The richness and speed we receive and share knowledge and understanding with in eternity will be far beyond our present earthly mind can comprehend. (1 Corinthians 13:9-12)

If temptation to rebel God exist in eternity at all, we have the entire Church behind each one of us. The moment a temptation fly by anyone, the rest of the Church, with all her heroes of faith and saints with different spiritual gifts, will come to our aid in the speed of light, literally.

If there is a Bible lesson to be learned, millions of “movies clips” from epistles that are relevant to that lesson, along with relevant Bible verses, will flash through the mind. There will not be any boring “thou shall not” or “one day you will understand” anymore.

Conclusion: There are more suffering and evil to come, but you can escape it!

The earth will soon go through the most horrible time in history. There was nothing like it before, nor will there ever be. That period is the Great Tribulation.

The Bible has long prophesied that final 7 years of the present world. The anti-Christ will rise. He will persecute those who follow the biblical God, and wage gigantic wars with factions, subdue them and cause mass scale destruction on many parts of the world.

There will be global disasters. People will will be extremely paranoid and frightful because of what happen during that period. It will not be pleasant to have to live with people at that time, because the Bible says the people grow cold because of wickedness, and they betray and hate each other. (Luke 21:25-26; Luke 24:10,12)

The worst thing is, the godly men and women will be snatched away by Jesus Christ into heaven: Christians who are counted worthy will escape the Great Tribulation. (Luke 21:34-36) With all the godly and mighty men and women gone, the world lose its only true light.

And Satan will be given greater freedom to do his evil deed, for only worldly people will be left on earth and they have always been following Satan anyway. Satan will overcome the saints during the Tribulation, and those saints are Christian who are left behind and new converts.

The Escape event is called the Rapture. You can participate in it too if you are a true Christian and you meet the requirement for the Rapture.

I will see you in the Rapture! Let’s look forward to our glorious hope of heaven!

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Now I wouldn’t dare giving you the above grand promises if I hadn’t received some major revelations from the Lord recently, which I believed would change my own life dramatically from now on.

I want to share this blessing with you, and the blessing of these revelations are meant for every Christian, and to a certain extent, even for the non-Christians. Everyone can receive the benefits of God’s promises. It makes me think of Psalms 119:130, “The unfolding of your words gives light; it gives understanding to the simple.”

Mysteries of the kingdom of God revealed!

Jesus told the disciples that he had explained to them the mysteries of the kingdom of God (Luke 8:10). In other words, the mysteries that had been hidden since time of  Genesis were revealed in his teaching.

What mysteries?

Items 1 to 12 from the top of this post, and even more!

The kingdom of God is as close as you want it to be. From now on, stop acting or speaking like you don’t know how to live victoriously. Stop thinking that you shouldn’t be held accountable for things you don’t know.

Why do I say that?

Just days ago I was like most people. I was not above complaining about what I didn’t know, and what I didn’t have. I would say things like, “how do I stop sinning?”; “I am confused!”; “I don’t know why I am like this!”

The Kingdom of God is as close as you want it to be

Right after Jesus talked about this mysteries, he explained why the multitude didn’t understand his parables.

Luke 8:10 And He said, “To you it has been given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God, but to the rest it is given in parables, that ‘ Seeing they may not see, And hearing they may not understand.

People who don’t really want to receive more from God will not receive. They see but they don’t see. They hear but they don’t understand.

In the kingdom of God, the more we have the more we will be given. It’s like capitalism.

For example, have you tried to repeat a refreshing conversation you had with a dear friend to another person?

If that person is a bad listener, or if he doesn’t have the intimate knowledge or experience your dear friend has, you would feel like your words get caught up in your throat. That person might think that he understands you,  but your message is oversimplified and desensitized into something that is far less than the conversation you had with your dear friend.

It’s similar to when God is trying to reveal His mysteries to us. The more we have, the more He will be able to tell us things. The less we have, the less He will be able to explain deeper things to us.

An insincere, passive way of listening is not going to bring us far.

But you are not like that. You obviously want to know more. So don’t worry. You are going to understand the mysteries of God. God Himself guaranteed that. Seek and you will find! (Matt 7:7)

A perfect answer to the question “how?”

Sincere and God-loving Christians often ask “How?”, which is a good question. The fact that you are interested in finding out the answers to items 1 to 12 on top of this post indicates that you like How-to articles, right?

Great, I am a How-to kind of guy. I like clear step by step formula for spiritual matter.

God said, “sin no more!” (John 8:11) And I asked”How?”

God said, “Be joyful always” (1 Thess 5:16) I asked “How?”

God said, “Be perfect, because I am perfect” (Matt 5:48) “How?”

“Have faith in me!” “How?”

“Meditate in my words day and night, and you will be prosperous and have good success!” “How?”

“How do I stop this depressive thought?” “How do I get rid of this bitterness?” “How do I stop sinning?” “How can I become more diligent?” “How can I stop being lazy?” …

God always reveal the answer, although many times I didn’t get the answers quickly. It sometimes took years. God doesn’t answer my questions in essays. The answer often requires God using my own experience and adding bit and piece of enlightenment along the way, which eventually form a 3-D testimony of my own that finally give me the answer.

It’s like putting puzzles together into a picture.

Regarding the question of “how?”.

The perfect answer to the Hows is…

You don’t know how!!!

Yup, that’s the answer. That’s right, you don’t know how. I am not kidding.

Mark 4:26-27 And He said, “The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground, and should sleep by night and rise by day, and the seed should sprout and grow, he himself does not know how.

If you ask God how this happen, how that happen, and how to do this or that, God might actually answer you, but usually the ultimate solution is “just be”.

The words of God change what you are. The Bible is not written to give us a list of How-to, but to give us life.

How often do you see the Bible give you a list of how-to and formulas? You can find them in a cook book, but probably not the Bible.

How does it related to the Parable Of The Mustard Seed?

The key is hidden in the seed.

You might never understand the hows, but if you plant the seeds, and wait patiently, they will give you a harvest. The seeds will change you from within, and release the power of God in everything God called you to do. Problems solved. No need for the hows anymore.

You don’t need to worry about the hows anymore. They are irrelevant.

You have everything you need already. The Bible says God has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness. (2 Peter 1:3)

What is life? Productivity certainly is. Joy, peace, health, and success are also important parts of life. Life isn’t just merely surviving and putting up with sins, defeats, and pains.

And there is godliness. Godliness is perfection and holiness. It’s living above sins!

Life and godliness are the solutions to items 1 to 12!!

Before I go on about actually planting the seeds and getting a good harvest of life and godliness, let me develop my case a little bit better.

How come some Christians are more Christian than the others?

This is the question I had for years. I often heard that some spiritual giants had a major revelation and suddenly they no longer sin. (such as Watchman Nee, Hudson Taylor)

I had been seeking this elusive, mysterious revelation for years, but I didn’t really understand. I read their testimonies but I didn’t see through the surface. I heard but I didn’t understand. (Luke 8:10)

If you have the same experience, welcome to the club! Congratulation because my years of struggles may serve you well!

I often asked Christians whom I admired questions such as “How do you keep yourself from sinning?”, “How come you are so self-disciplined?” “How do you manage to achieve so much within so short a time?”

I’d even asked pastors about this, but they didn’t really answer my questions.

For the victorious Christians, often time they really don’t know how they came to be victorious. They simply are what they are.

I know it’s not about self. It’s about relying on God. I rely on God, too! But how come I fall short while some people always do better than me? And they don’t even know how it happened!

Look into the seeds!!!

The mustard seed has faith, power, and transformational properties within it

Just scatter the seeds (The word of God) on the ground (Your soul: your heart and mind), preserve them with a good heart, and you will reap a harvest. (Luke 8:15)

The mustard seeds are the word of God.

Your faith will increase simply by listening to the word. (Romans 10:17)

Every word of God contains power. (Hebrews 4:12)

The word of God can be implanted into your soul, and save your soul through its living, growing, and transforming power. (James 1:21)

The word of God will accomplish everything it says it will accomplish. (Isaiah 5:11)

How come I don’t experience the word of God that way?

If God’s word has the aforementioned properties, then why do I go to the church so often, read the Bible a lot, and hear the sermons so many times, but still get stuck with certain struggles in my life?

The main reasons can be found in the parable of the sower (Mark 4:1-20, Matthew 13:1-23, and Luke 8:1-15) You and I know that only good seed (not to be confused with the mustard seeds) who persevere, who refuse distractions, who suffer persecutions, and who listen to word of God with a “good heart” will produce a great harvest in the end.

What else? The rest of this post will focus exactly on that.

For the sincere Christians who seem to belong to the category of good seeds : they go to the church, they study the Bible, and they do this, this and that, but they still had problems with lust, depression, laziness, sickness, fears, and etc.

What’s wrong?

You have to unlock the powers within the mustard seeds!!!

God has done His parts, and the only part left is ours.

The Bible says, “His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue” (2 Peter 1:3)

God has already given us everything, absolutely everything that pertain to life and godliness. He doesn’t need to give us more. We have enough. We should.

So how do you unlock the power of God’s word? How do you get the seeds working?

Simple. So simple that it’s almost hard to understand.

#1, speak the word of God in faith and speak it often. (Joshua 1:8)

I don’t mean intellectual conversation or discussion. We can study God’s word intellectually, but that’s another subject. Here I want to let you know that even simple, verbal declaration of God’s word can trigger the power of God.

God said, “Let there be light!” and there was light. The physical world didn’t ask “how?”. It simply obeyed. There was nothing too intellectual or too complicated about it.

Jesus rebuked the sea and the wind, and they listened to him. (Matt 8:26)

The principle of faith is that if you confess with your mouth and agree in your heart the things you want, they shall be given you. (Romans 10:10; Mark 11:22-24)

Jesus taught us this,

Mark 11:22-24 So Jesus answered and said to them, “Have faith in God. For assuredly, I say to you, whoever SAYS to this mountain, ‘Be removed and be cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he says will be done, he will have whatever he SAYS. Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them.

Matthew 17:20-21 So Jesus said to them, “Because of your unbelief; for assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.

You can speak God’s word. You can pray God’s word. One thing is necessary here, faith. If you say it and believe it in your heart, God’s word will manifest.

Don’t pray in a way as if God’s promise isn’t there. For example, don’t pray for victory over sin, or strength over sin, because the Bible say that you and I already connected with Jesus Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection, and therefore we also shared His victory over sins. (Romans 6; Galatians 5:24)

Miraculously, whenever I speak Christ’s victory with all my heart, temptations and the power of sins would collapse and victory would manifest. It isn’t about my willpower. The victory has already been won so don’t attempt to win it again.

If you believe that God’s promise isn’t what it says it is, and pray or speak in a way as if His promise is powerless, then the reality will come out that way.

If you say, “I really don’t know…” or “I am just confused…”, then you will indeed become “don’t know” and confused. You put faith in the words of doubt, so your faith in the negative and your negative words work against you.

Word of faith works in both negative and positive. The negative side of faith is doubt. Doubt means negative faith. It’s one kind of faith. It works.

“I am tired” So you get tired. “I think I am sick” So you get sick. “I don’t know why things get so bad lately” So things get bad and you don’t know why.

In the past many years, I often talked about my sins, my bad habits, and my confusions. I had tried many formula, listen to many godly men and their teachings, but the perfect formula still eluded me. So I kept talking about my sins, my bad habits, and my confusions, and they remained with me faithfully for as long as I talked about them and put my faith in those words.

Countless Christians speak in words of defeats, of their bad experiences, and of their feelings, than they speak in the word of God in faith. No wonder their situations never change. (Me included)

It doesn’t matter how godly you are, how sincere you are, or how much you love God, if you apply this spiritual principle of spoken faith, this principle will work.

You can apply this spiritual principle in ignorant, but this principle doesn’t filter the results base on what you really want. Like electricity, it can hurt you or serve you.

When you speak the word of God often, you hear it often. When you hear it often, your faith increases often. Faith comes by hearing. (Romans 10:17)

I learned to stop trying to find faith from within. I learned that I was only given faith that was the size of a mustard seed. I need to speak it and exercise it to release the faith of God within it.

#2, Deal with the tongue

People often want to know how to have better self-control, productivity, and all that. They also wonder why they don’t have the full life that Jesus promised. (John 10:10)

Some Christians even struggled with bondage such as suicidal thoughts, depressions, angers, bitterness, and all sort of things.

Christians who are willing to obey everything God ask of them might still live a powerless and unfulfilled life, and most often the source of problems trace back to their tongues.

James 3:2-6 For we all stumble in many things. If anyone does not stumble in word, he is a perfect man, able also to bridle the whole body. Indeed, we put bits in horses’ mouths that they may obey us, and we turn their whole body. Look also at ships: although they are so large and are driven by fierce winds, they are turned by a very small rudder wherever the pilot desires. Even so the tongue is a little member and boasts great things. See how great a forest a little fire kindles! And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity. The tongue is so set among our members that it defiles the whole body, and sets on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire by hell.

Psalm 34:12-16 Who is the man who desires life, And loves many days, that he may see good? Keep your tongue from evil, And your lips from speaking deceit.

Proverbs 15:4 A wholesome tongue is a tree of life, But perverseness in it breaks the spirit.

Proverbs 18:21 Death and life are in the power of the tongue, And those who love it will eat its fruit.

The Bible says that evil words of the tongue came from hell!(James 3:2-6) Hell is the home of demons, and there they torture the damned souls whom they had successfully deceived till the end of their earthly life.

For example, people who had self-hatred, suicidal thoughts, and depression were actually victim of demons. They planted these thoughts and deceptions in their victims’ minds.

The purposes of the demons are to steal, kill, and destroy. (John 10:10) The Devil can only achieve that by planting evil thoughts and deceptions in people’s minds. The demons will move on to the next victim after they have done their planting, and they will come back to check their work from time to time. (Job 1:7; 1 Peter 5:8)

If these victims died in sins, or died without Christ, the demons that tortured them on earth will continue their torments in hell.

The tongue is a battle field of the Holy Spirit, the flesh, and the demons. ( Gal 5:17) The demons want to use our tongues to curse, to defile our whole body, and set things on fire!!

Sounds crazy? One time Jesus rebuked Peter with these words, “Get thee behind me Satan!” (Matt 16:23) Peter was just trying to talk Jesus out of the Crucifixion, but Jesus identified the true author of this plead as Satan himself.

The heaven and hell know that if they can control your tongues, they control your whole body.(James 3:2) Which side do you prefer to yield your control over?

When Christians speak evil of any kind, even if they think it’s just harmless venting or teasing, they are actually giving power to the enemy. Words of self-pity, doubts, complains, condemnation, and idle words make the Devil powerful.

The Devil has no power over us unless we give it to him. The Devil cannot order the mountains to move, but we can. The Devil knows it. Therefore, he works very hard to get us to say things that he wants us to say.

Through self-inspection and revelation from God, I learned that I had a pattern of self-fulfilling prophesies. I used to talk about my fears a lot. I was taught to tell things as it is. I was taught to vent it out. For every 1-2 years, some of my worst fear would come to pass, exactly the way I didn’t want it to happen!!

For example, I predicted that since I was so bad in self-discipline (A result of self-fulfilling prophesy in its own right), I would probably suffer lack of achievements. And I predicted that if my dream girl came along, I would be so inadequate and unproductive that I won’t deserve her.

Since immigrated into Canada, I had always worried about my broken English and the fact that I was too lazy to improve it, and when I did meet a dream girl (Second one, see below), she did loath at my accent!

The snobbish attitude that girl had toward me was part of my self-fulfilling prophesy as well. Prior to meeting her in reality, and after I met her, I had been talking about my inadequacy, broken English, and lack of social grace for so many times. I also kept saying and thinking that if I met a dream girl she would probably see through my inadequacies.

A couple of dream girls did come along(Respectively, each for 2.5 years, with 1 year of break in between, so my torments lasted for 5+years), and it did happen the way I predicted. “Better guys” beat me to it, except that the guys weren’t even Christians. They weren’t really superior than I was, but I prophesied my own defeats and contributed to it by the words of my mouth.

It didn’t help when I had been complaining about the snobbish attitude the second dream girl had occasionally expressed toward me, what was I thinking? You can’t get something you really want by complaining about it!!

Side note: Don’t complain about people. Don’t gossip. The more you condemn, the nastier those people would become. Your verbal curses can make people worst than they already are.

Side note#2: I know a lot of failures can be attributed to others, but talking about their incompetence, problems, and attitudes will not make things work. It will actually deliver your worst predictions- “Oh! because so and so … [have done something or failed to do something], it’s going to be … [thousands words description of how bad consequences are going to be]…”

You have faith on the negatives, and you speak it often, so it shall be done for you.

[Back to topic.]

And I did suffer financially and academically because my lack of discipline. I had talked about my lack of self-discipline so many times for so many years, but I had rarely talked about the fruits of the Spirit, which include self-control.

For the 3 years that followed, I cut back on negative words and thinking by listening to God and believing in His perspective on things, rather than in my own perspective– my perspective always lean on the worst angle.

The cut back helped a lot. My depression stopped.

Recently, when I finally had a better understanding of the principle of speaking faith and used it to serve me, bad habits and laziness lose their grips on me!! It’s magical.

Control your tongue, and speak the word of God, and you will get the power of God’s word to work for you. God’s word always deliver when you speak it in faith.

An article I find helpful:

Idle words leak life

#3, Have Faith

Have you ever asked God to increase your faith? When the disciples did this this was Jesus ’s reply.

Luke 17:5-6 And the apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith.” So the Lord said, “If you have faith as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be pulled up by the roots and be planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.

John 14:12-14 “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do he will do also; and greater works than these he will do,

Everybody has faith. If someone believe in doubts, rather than in truth, that person is putting his faith in doubts.

If we believe in our feelings, circumstances, and ourselves, more than we believe in the words of God, then we are putting our faith on these things rather than on God.

Jesus didn’t grant his disciples the request for more faith, but he told them how they can exercise the faith they already had by speaking it.

Faith is like a mustard seed. It’s alive. It can grow.

It grows by hearing the word of God. Faith comes by hearing. (Romans 10:17)

The more we speak our faith, the more powerful our faith become as we listen to our voice of faith.

As we experience the power of God, victories will begin to manifest, and the more we experience victories, the more our faith would be strengthen. It’s a positive circle.

We can duplicate what Jesus did, and even more, if we exercise our faith properly.

# 4, Persevere

Luke 8:11-15 ¹¹“This is the meaning of the parable: The seed is the word of God. ¹²Those along the path are the ones who hear, and then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts, so that they may not believe and be saved. ¹³Those on the rock are the ones who receive the word with joy when they hear it, but they have no root. They believe for a while, but in the time of testing they fall away. ¹⁴The seed that fell among thorns stands for those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by life’s worries, riches and pleasures, and they do not mature. ¹⁵But the seed on good soil stands for those with a noble and good heart, who hear the word, retain it, and by persevering produce a crop.

Perseverance is perhaps the most important key to get the word of God to work in your life. People who just try and see what happen will not last.

The Bible says life’s distraction and time of testing will come. It will look confusing. There will be unpleasant feeling.

After we plant the word of God into our souls and into our circumstances, things probably aren’t going to look very different immediately. It might actually seem worst than before.

The longer you have been a Christian, the more boring things will look like in the short-run. The honeymoon with God has long passed, but if you persevere, God will deliver His promises.

God doesn’t want whiners who whine at the first hint of hardship. God want us to speak the word of faith regardless of our circumstances.

Hebrews 11 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

2 Corinthians 4:13 And since we have the same spirit of faith, according to what is written, “I believed and therefore I spoke,”we also believe and therefore speak,

When situations look bad, and when you feel negative from within, keep speaking the word of God.

You might feel sick, but if you know in your heart that God has promised you healing, then keep speaking your healing out loud. If you are unemployed, but know in your heart that God is giving you a good job, or income of any kind, keep speaking abundance.

When I feel like procrastinating or being lazy, I speak out what I am going to do and why I am able to accomplish the tasks. Although I still feel lazy, my body and mind would find new energy that push me onward, and go ahead to do the tasks that I used to procrastinate under similar situations.

Romans 4:17 As it is written: “I have made you a father of many nations.”He is our father in the sight of God, in whom he believed—the God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were.

The proper way to do it is to calls those things that are not as though they were. You don’t call things that are as though they are. You call thing that are not as though they were.

Man of faith call things that are not as though they were, until they are!!

Man of Doubts call things that are as though they are, until they are.

# 5 , Walk with the Holy Spirit

To be filled with God’s word is to be filled with the Spirit. You can’t have one without the other. Only the Holy Spirit can help you control the tongue.

Go to How to Live A Spirit Filled Life for deeper discussion on the Spirit.

Without the Holy Spirit, we are only as good as non-Christians who practice positive thinking and affirmation. This is why there has been a lot of buzz with The Law Of Attraction and all sort of new age techniques that have to do with verbal affirmation.

You see, many non-Christians can also create abundance and influence others by speaking positively about their situations. They have observed that there was this phenomenon, but they didn’t know why. It was like the discovery of the law of gravity.

The Bible says,

Matthew 7:21-23 “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’

1 Corinthians 13:2 and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.

It is possible to have the faith of God without obedience!! It is also possible to have perfect faith without the love of God.

The principle of spoken faith can work for you in this life, but without obedience to the Holy Spirit and the love of God, one will lose his heavenly reward, and it might even be possible to lose his salvation.

Therefore, even a non-Christian can be blessed in this life by the principle of spoken faith. No wonder there are so many successful non-Christians out there who rely on their own strength and their idols.

We as Children of God have much more powerful allies– God’s word and His Spirit– and if we work with them to our full capacity, we will indeed overcome this world and be on top of things. (Deu 28:13)

God does not show favoritism, whoever obeys His law of spoken faith will receive its benefits, but whoever violates this principle will suffer loss. In terms of this principle, it is not how much you love God or how sincere you are that counts, it’s whether you work with this principle that determines whether this principle serves you or hurts you.

Other resources that I find useful

The Power Of the Tongue

Charles Capps Ministry of Faith

Coming Next: Testimonies Of Faith

The best way to learn a spiritual lesson is combining both scriptural teaching and practical experiences. In the next post I am going to show you the testimonies of faith in actions– How people recover from terminal illness, handicaps, sins, demonic influences, and financial hardship.

Go from Parable Of The Mustard Seed to the Next Post

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4. You will walk a straight path, bypassing all wrong turns and complexities in life
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A Narrow Path

This post is going to challenge and turn upside down the way of men. What is the way of man? Human wisdom, certitude, the board path… You got the idea.

Most people do what most people are doing. The Bible said the same of the board road and wide gate (Matt 7:13).  More people choose that path, but that leads to destruction.

You can hear the same from some of the smartest men in the world – that if you go after the low hanging fruits and do what most people do, you are less likely to succeed. In fact, the majority is usually irrational and wrong. If you follow the stampede, you will hurt yourself. For example, the stock market! History repeats and people still buy high and sell low. They just follow the stampede and the same financial actors.

Only the few who actually know what they are doing and stick to it will receive the rewards at the end (Such as Warren Buffet).

You know what it takes: Courage, patience, faith, wisdom, knowledge…

It takes that same for the spiritual elites to live differently than the majority of people on earth.

And more.

Fortunately, God already wrote down what we need to do in the Bible. It is quite a list, but as I meditate on the verses that explain how to live a spirit filled life, I became so excited because I realized it wasn’t as difficult and complicated as I thought.

They are all familiar Bible verses. I just hadn’t put them together to pay a closer look before. I began to feel that my previous experiences resonate with the verses.

If you happen to have read most of the Bible, this post should be an easy scan for you. I wish I am doing a great service to you by putting the familiar verses in a focused manner that makes it easy to understand our central theme: how to live a spirit filled life. It was all hidden under my nose before!

The Natural Man, The Flesh, And The Spiritual Man

14 But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. 15 But he that is spiritual judgethc all things, yet he himself is judged of no man. 16 For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ. 1 Cor 2:14-16

9 But as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, even so it is now.  Gal 4:29

16 This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh. 17 For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would. 18 But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law.   Gal 5:16-18

As Christians, we have both the spiritual part and natural part within us. The “natural man” is capable for logic, senses, emotions, words/languages, imagination, and general capacities of human beings, while the “spiritual man” is born after the Holy Spirit when we accepted Christ as our personal savor and Lord (John 3:1-16), and one of the functions of the spiritual man is to  serve as a spiritual organ that communicates with the Holy Spirit.

The natural man is pretty good at doing what it does, but it can’t receive truth and revelation from the Spirit 24/7 like we Christians can, because, on top of the natural man we also have the spiritual man in each of us.

Writing a post like this one requires the exercising of both the natural man and the spiritual man. The spiritual man receives divine knowledge from the Spirit, while the natural man deciphers the messages into human languages and understandable thoughts, so we can remember and communicate with others the lessons and messages we have received from the Spirit.

In order words, I have to allow the Spirit to lead and use my natural capacities in order to write this post. It doesn’t mean I become a robot and the Spirit take over the control of my body, but I follow His promptings to do what He directs me to do, and trust that He will empower me to do it.

As Christians, we should dedicate our body members to God (Rom 6:12-13), which include our natural capabilities; therefore, they are to be driven by the Holy Spirit, not the flesh. (Rom 8:4)

The flesh is the sinful tendency that we still retain even after our conversion into the family of God. The flesh will be gone only at the day we get into heaven or at the moment of the Rapture when we experience a transformation of our bodies into the new ones like that of Christ. (1 Cor 15:51-53)

But at the meantime, we have a war to fight. Our spiritual man and the Holy Spirit repels the flesh, and vice versa.

Here is where the natural man comes in. The flesh wants us to rely on our natural strength and capacities, rather than relying on God. The natural man is well-intentioned but it can only put on the form of righteousness. It isn’t able to empower us to live a genuine righteous life.

The natural man and the flesh don’t know what God’s perfect will is, and it will try its best to please God with its limited strength and wisdom.

Humans have a stubborn tendency to rely on the natural man to perform good works. Whenever we sin we like to figure out what went wrong with our own wisdom and logic, and then we double, triple, or quadruple our willpower to avoid sinning again. To our dismay, no matter how hard we try, the power of sin only becomes stronger over us. (Romans 7:21-23)

As Christians, it is very common for us to experience struggles between relying on our natural abilities/flesh and the Spirit.

Most of the times we are philosophically confused about it because very few Christian pastors or teachers teach about walking in the Spirit in a systematical, practical way.

As a result, many Christians are serving God out of the flesh, instead of relying and obeying the Holy Spirit.

To Rely On The Flesh Is Disobedient, Self-Centered, And Counter-Productive

On the surface, it looks like everything is fine as long as we have the heart to serve God and live a good Christian life, but it isn’t.

Matthew 12:30

He who is not with Me is against Me, and he who does not gather with Me scatters abroad.

Matthew 7:21-24

²¹Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.²²Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? ²³And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.²⁴Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock:

1 Samuel 15:23

For rebellion is like the sin of divination, and arrogance like the evil of idolatry.

Romans 8:7-8

7 Because the carnalc mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. 8 So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God.

The flesh can put on the show of good works, but the power source of these good works is the flesh, not the Spirit, and it is the same flesh that is the source of all vices that we find ourselves struggling with in our Christian life.

As long as we continue to rely on the flesh, we will never experience true victory over sins, and we will never truly please God.

The flesh and the natural man can only do what they think is good. They act on what they know in their limited wisdom and knowledge, and thus create a lot of unintended consequences that will ultimately lead to bad results, but this reality will not be immediately obvious to those who are walking in the flesh.

We are in fact resisting God if we rely on our flesh to carry out good works.

The flesh likes to boast of its power. It wants others to see what it can do. It is “self”. To live in the flesh is to live a “self” life without God being our actual Lord.

The Bible never said that the flesh is dead when we accepted Christ as our savior and Lord, but it actually teaches us that the flesh will continue to present, so we have to be watchful, lest it regains its control over us.

The moment we fail to live in the Spirit, the flesh will dominate. (Gal 5:16-18)

When the flesh dominates, sins will abound.

Don’t be surprised if you find your flesh to be active from time to time. It happens if we quench the Holy Spirit (1 Thess 5:19), or by a dozen of other reasons, so be vigilant and always learn from the Spirit so we can always walk in Him and avoid falling into the flesh again.

It is a lifelong practice with a very steep learning curve, so don’t feel disappointed if the flesh beats your best intention at times. Just go back to God and ask for grace to resume the practice again (Proverbs 24:16).

How Do I Walk In The Spirit?

This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh. Gal 5:16

Quench not the Spirit. 1 Thess 5:19

And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption. Ephesians 4:30

He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. Rev.2:7

But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. John 14:26

But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, Jude 20:20

We walk in Him by knowing who He is, by obeying everything that He tells us, and by approaching Him as much as we can. How do we know Him? The Bible teaches us who He is.

He is with us Christians 24/7, and He loves to fellowship with us anytime. (Phil 2:1-4)

The Holy Spirit speaks to us very frequently with a still small voice (1 Kings 19:12). We can easily ignore Him and pretend we don’t know what He is trying to say, or assume that what He says is undo-able.

Why Does Christian Struggle With Sin? Why Doesn’t God Hear Our Prayers And Deliver Us From Sins and Bad Habits Right Away?

By repeatedly ignoring or resisting the Spirit, we can quench his power in us (1 Thess 5:19). If we allow that to happen, we will fall prey to the world, the flesh, and the Devil. Sins will regain dominion over us as the grace and power of the Spirit recede because of our little disobedience here and there.

Many Christians are struggling with sins. Me included. Until recently I re-discovered why – I fail to obey and listen to the Holy Spirit all the time.

When there is the flesh at work, no amount of prayers will stop it from bearing bad fruits, unless I repent at once and walk in the Spirit again.

I said “re-discover” because I learned this before, and this lesson brought me to a major revival a few years ago. I tried my best to stick to the right path while this lesson was still fresh, but later, the subtle deceptions of the flesh had slowly crept back in, and I relied more and more on the flesh again.

I was like a frog in a slowly heated water.

Watch Out Even For The Innocence

There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death. (Proverbs 14:12)

There is no sin that is too little. If the Spirit tells you not to do something that you think is innocent, then run away from it and never look back! I often do it or look back anyway, and it would bring me to a less innocent act, and then another that is even lesser, until I find myself drowned in sins.

In fact, anytime we disobey the voice of the Spirit His power in us will start to diminish, and we will find it harder to obey as we sink further downward.

There Are People You Can’t Handle. If The Spirit Warns You Of Them… Run And Hide!

Similarly, if the Spirit tell you to avoid certain individuals or situations, avoid them right away. There are many people or situations that will lead you astray. They can be innocent, well-meaning folks or events: pastors, Christians, harmless looking people, Christians gathering, or Church functions.

The LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart. 1 Samuel 16:7

There was a Christian whom I admired and wanted to connect with for quite a few years, and finally I had a chance to serve with him in a ministry. Soon, I found out that he had a lot of issues to deal with, and one of them was bitterness. This bitterness had spread out to those whom he had come across with, especially and including me. Gossips, divisions, and outburst of angers (from this person) were frequent when he was present. I regretted that I invited him on board and that I didn’t cut off all ties with him quickly.

God will deal with the people in your life if you lift them into His hand. Don’t intervene. Don’t offer any assistance or counsel to anyone if it wasn’t from the Spirit.

I made this major mistake with the guy I mentioned above, and with some other individuals.

As a result, my walk with God had been contaminated by the negative influences from fellowship with these people. It took me quite some time to recover spiritually. Their negative influence was one of the reasons why I fell prey to the flesh again a few years back – by allowing bad examples before my eyes for too long I was led astray.

He who walks with the wise grows wise, but a companion of fools suffers harm Proverbs 13:20

Examples of harmful effects these individuals can bring you include: they can hurt you deeply or tempt you to sin by gossiping, judgmental attitudes, and slanders. They can give you such a hard time that makes it difficult for you to be joyful, thankful, forgiving, and attentive to God’s voice. Their influences can rob you of peace.

In some extreme cases you can actually receive strong warnings from Holy Spirit when you come across extremely dangerous situations and people, see one of the stories here.

How To Be Successful All Your Life?

Jesus has spent only 3 years on earth, but look how much He has achieved.

It was miraculous.

You and I can replicate His effectiveness too, if we simply do what He would do. We could replicate the results of a successful person by replicate his actions!

But how can we know what He would do in every situation? By the Spirit!

The functions of the Holy Spirit are to teach us all truth, tell us what God’s will is, and remind us of what Jesus taught us. (John 16:13-14; John 14:26)

Without the Spirit, we can only read the letter of the Bible, but we will not be able to truly understand and apply the deeper meanings of them. In other words, God’s words aren’t God’s words if the Holy Spirit doesn’t actively bring the words alive for us. (2 Cor 3:6)

Many times, too many times, I had wanted to read the Bible more, but ended up doing worldly things. The problem was, I wanted to control when I would read the Bible, how often I shall read, and how deep I wanted to understand the words. I was trying to achieve spiritual goals with the power of my flesh.

I had failed almost every time when I tried to be more spiritual with methods, formulas, and plans. But at the time I didn’t know what went wrong.

There is no success formula which you can use apart from the active leadership of the Holy Spirit. Formula will fail, schedule will fail, method will fail, and knowledge will fail if you don’t walk under the active leadership of the Spirit.

To apply this principle on a broader scale: we should do everything out of the Spirit from the beginning to the end. Not just with the spiritual things, but with everything as well, including career choice, spouse choice, school choice, and everything big or small, even when to sleep.

At this point you may worry, “What if I hear Him wrong?” At times you may get deceived or confused as to which voice is the Spirit’s, but if you don’t listen at all, you will always get it “wrong” anyway. So in fact you are left with only one choice – just listen:

John 7:17

If anyone chooses to do God’s will, he will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own.

John 10:4

And when he brings out his own sheep, he goes before them; and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice.

You Will Achieve A lot When You Walk In The Spirit Fully

Joshua 1:8

This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success. Have I not commanded you? Be strong and of good courage; do not be afraid, nor be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.

John 16:13

But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.

To meditate on God’s words day and night is to live a Spirit filled life. They work together. They are almost synonymous. Anytime you treat the words of God with complacency and neglect, you grieve the Spirit and quench His power in you, and anytime you rely on yourselves rather than the Spirit, the power and deep knowledge of God’s words will be withheld from you.

For 5 years, I have attempted to meditate God’s words day in and night out, just like what the Bible commands us to do, but I had failed at every attempt.

However, whenever I sincerely converse with the Spirit, He often shows me relevant verses and explanations with simple real life applications. And when I apply the words according to His leading, it always become obvious of what I should do. It’s like a ray of light shining through thick clouds.

You can’t replicate the work of the Spirit by formula, methods, and plans. There are dozens of dozen of Bible study plans and methods out there, but unless the Spirit initiates the plan and guides you through every thought and step, your effort is futile:

Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it;
Unless the Lord guards the city, the watchman stays awake in vain. Psalm 127:1

Once you meditate on God’s words day and night in the Spirit, God will make you prosperous and successful because He promised it. (Psalm 1; Joshua 1:8)

You will also have the mind of Christ fully at work in you (1 Cor 2: 16) . We are what we think (Prov 23:7). If the mind of Christ in us works actively, we will surely replicate Christ’s results.

Meditation of God’s words in the Spirit is just the “inner game” of our walk. Now let’s move on to the “outer game”!

The Outer Game Of Our Walk In The Spirit

If we get the “inner game” right, the “outer game” will take care of itself. Let me show you what the “outer game” is about:

Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the LORD’s purpose that prevails. Proverbs 19:21

Commit your way to the LORD, trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass. Proverbs 21:5

The steps of a good man are ordered by the LORD: and he delighteth in his way. Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down: for the LORD upholdeth him with his hand. Psalm 37:23-24

When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into deep water, and let down the nets for a catch.”Simon answered, “Master, we’ve worked hard all night and haven’t caught anything. But because you say so, I will let down the nets.” When they had done so, they caught such a large number of fish that their nets began to break. So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them, and they came and filled both boats so full that they began to sink. Luke 5:4-7

The Spirit often instructs me to do something “out of the blue” in random places. There were several times when He used me this way and “we” had brought several strangers to Christ. All I did was just obeying His prompting.

Prior to my walk in the Spirit, i.e., while I was still walking in the flesh as a Christian, I had never brought one single soul to Christ.

Looking back, I can see logical, biblical, and even scientific reasons behind His “random, out of the blue” instructions. The limitation of human understanding often prevents us from seeing the big picture at the time, and thus the prompting of the Spirit often seems random and uncomfortable to us.

But we will eventually get to the big picture and increase our understanding as we simply obey every promptings of the Spirit.

One problem: Humans don’t like unpredictability and unknown; We like schedule, plan, and habits.

You don’t need to force yourself to build godly habits; The Spirit will build something magnificent out of His daily walk with you as you go along. This includes everything in life: career, school, relationship, finance, and health.

You will learn as you do, and whatever you do in obedience to the Spirit you will reap multiple results in this life and the next.

Like in the example of Simon and the fishes (Luke 5:4-7), God loves to instruct us where to “let down our nets”, such as where to drop our resume, which person to marry, which school to attend, and which business venture or ministry to undertake.

He loves to speak His mind to us, if we would let Him.

If we listen and act upon His instruction, we will get multiple good results in our endeavors – just like how Simon caught many fishes in one move.

Simon was an experienced fisher – just like how most of us are experts in our own field – but he and his pals failed to catch any fish for an entire night.

Like Simon and his pals, we will deal with uncertainties in our endeavors no matter how good we are at what we do. As natural human beings, our skills and experiences can only give us the approximation, not the exactitude.

There is a huge difference between approximation and exactitude.

We will never have complete information at any point in life. If we act like the non-Christians, we are playing the number game. “Number game” aptly describes what every human endeavor on earth is like: full of trials , errors, and guesstimates – this is the only way non-Christians can achieve anything.

If we rely on the flesh, we are playing the number game; It’s like throwing spaghetti on the wall and see what sticks; We will have to make multiple shots and hope that one gets in.

We will have to climb all the way up through mountains, and sooner or later we might find ourselves on the wrong mountain, and we have to climb down and try the next one, because we have no map.

We will have to compete with thousands of other people who are relying on the flesh too: job searching, public exams, tournaments and contests, business ventures, and even ministry… Since you are not following an unique calling from God, you will have to do what most others are doing or create something new of your own (and hope it works), and hope that you beat the competitions and reach the top from above the thousands.

Eventually, you may achieve some success on your own term, but the result will not last for eternity since this success isn’t part of God’s plan – it is a discord in His grand scheme of things! You will also have wasted a lot of time during the trials and errors stage. Your time will be much more productive if you give your time to God instead.

With the one clean shot you make under the Spirit’s guidance, you will live your life to the full as you make one clean shot after the next, and the next and the next and the next and the next… for the rest of your life.

If we want to master the “outer game” of our walk in the Spirit, we have to walk every single step under His guidance. (Psalm 37:23-24; Proverbs 3:5-6)

Forget All Your Earthly Glory

God is I AM, not I WAS or I WILL. Forget about your accomplishments, titles, CV, wealth, and circumstance. Surrender your past and future to Him and just focus on Him in the present.

When we truly surrender everything to Him, He can use us freely in the now and then. If our mind get entangled by the past (baggage or accomplishments) or the future (goals and ambitions), the Lord can’t use us freely.

Our employers, business partners, customers, fans, friends, and others all look at our past and evaluate us base on that, but the Lord cares about the NOW. He can use you to accomplish anything if you just walk with Him and obey Him in the present, not the past or future.

Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking fine pearls, and upon finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it. Matthew 13:45-46

I once thought these things were valuable, but now I consider them worthless because of what Christ has done. Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ. Hebrews 5:11

Throughout the Bible, God has used so many different characters, most of them were ignoble: they were shepherds, servant girls, slaves, losers, fishermen, and other weak folks. He has also used someone who had an impressive resume, such as priests, kings, and the riches.

It doesn’t matter to God – as long as you are willing to obey and be faithful, He can use you anytime.

You might have been a loser up to this point, or you might have been successful, but God can do something new and better in your life today if you simply follow His instruction and do what He wants you to do.

In the world, employers look at your education, credentials, references, and all that. You can be unemployed and broke right now, but the Lord can give you a prestigious job, a profitable business, or other amazing accomplishments within a very short time no matter how incompetent you were.

He knows your true gifts and talents. He has an unique calling that is custom-made for you. Only you can do the best job in that calling. No one can substitute your role in His unique plan. If you disobey and miss that calling, the blessings God could have given you and others through you will be forever lost.

His calling may seem insignificant at the first glance, maybe it isn’t a prestigious job, rather, it could be a job no one has ever heard of which is in the middle of nowhere, or it could be a business venture that goes against all odds. Persist and keep going! You will find the hidden gold mine if you just keep digging.

A friend of mine was called to be an academic. His field is data mining (*boring!*). For years he had spent so much time with text books, solving many mathematical and computational problems. He could spend an entire week in a room just to solve one math question that he finds interesting.

As a result, he can now look at any question his colleagues bring him, and within minutes he can formulate a strategy that his colleagues can use. His colleagues are PhD, masters, and some of the sharpest minds in Google. To this day, He has brought hundreds of millions of profits to Google. He manages hundred of researchers, four secretaries, and the whole nine yards (For example, a queen size bed in his office that Google gave him).

On the side he has started a few successful companies that monetize his other research findings, all of which makes multimillion dollars in profits.  (He manages quite a lot of people! )

You too can be very successful in your unique calling if you surrender all of your past and future to God, and regardless of what others think of your resume and credentials, just be courageous and do what He wants you to do.

More On The Inner Game Of Our Walk In The Spirit

Now that we have the overall view of the big picture, we can go back to the “inner game” again to add some more crucial information, because without the light of the big picture, it’s hard to fully appreciate the information I am going to share here.

By now we know how narrow the narrow path is. It’s very easy to fall prey to the flesh again without even being conscious of it. The flesh is subtle and deceitful.

We must remember where our fleshes belong – the cross. We must put our flesh on the cross on a daily, hourly, and as-frequent-as-it-takes basis.

²⁴ And those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. ²⁵ If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. Galatians 5:24-25

The walk in the Spirit requires our active cooperation. We must exercise our willpower constantly to focus and obey the Spirit. And we must not forget the truth — that we have crucified our flesh.

To be watchful of the flesh all the time can be stressful. To be on call for the Spirit all the time can seem stressful too. Also, in the presence of the Lord His light and justice will progressively reveal all of our sins and erroneous thinking. For the faint of hearts it can seem too much to handle.

Satan will siege every opportunity he can find to attack you as you try to maintain this delicate balance on the narrow path. If you start shifting your focus and attention from the Lord to yourself, then Satan, the flesh, and the world will easily deceive you into walking in the flesh again.

One of his tactics is condemnation. Since you have become alert and aware of your own every darkness in the presence of the Lord, he will use that as an opportunity and condemn you with every sin that you see in yourself until you can’t stand before the Lord anymore.

If you fall for that trap, you will see your inadequacy more than you see God’s adequacy, and you will sink in doubts and sins very quickly.

Bouts of depressions and regrets will follow if you let Satan does that to you, and soon your strength, peace, and joy will leave you as you believe in Satan’s accusations and deceptions. (See Spiritual Battle.)

Before you realize what has been going on, you may have long departed from the walk in the Spirit already. It’s a narrow path, so narrow that it’s easy to fall into the ditches on both side.

In my own walk in the Spirit, I learned some important lessons about how to maintain the walk. For example, in Getting Over Regret I shared how I walked through the trap of regrets, and learned to forgive myself as I grew. It’s important to forgive yourself after you have been forgiven by God. Otherwise, the narrow path can become unbearable because of perfectionism.

It’s A Marathon, Not A Sprint

If what I just shared in the last section sound excruciating, it probably is, but in time it will get better as you become more “skillful” at abiding in Christ and walking in the Spirit.

One of the skills you need is to be thankful.

Give thanks often for every little progress and blessing that God grants you. You will find a lot of strength as you give thanks. The walk in the Spirit is full of challenges. It’s important to celebrate every progress you are blessed with before the next wave of challenges come.

The next skill is to forgive, because you will be very sensitive to sin in the presence of the Lord.

If anyone sins, don’t worry too much as you should lift him or her to God, believing that the Lord can take care of every consequence of that sin. If you sin, just repent. True repentance leave no regrets.

The third skill is wait.

You should accept your current condition before the Lord. Don’t strike. Just wait before God and wait for the Spirit to guide you along.

If we try to rush it before God’s timing, we are relying on the strength of self. I have done that many time and it always turns out to be a waste of time. I have forfeited or delayed many blessings and breakthroughs that could have been mine, or could have been mine earlier, by worrying too much and working too hard for them (all those schemes, visions, and plans!), instead of just waiting prayerfully and peacefully before God.

The blessings that I had deprived myself of by striving and scheming include biblical insights, purity, calling, financial wealth, career success, relationship, and more. That sounds a lot, but in fact everyone on earth experiences the same – falling short of God’s perfect plans. I believe very few people throughout history have attained all the blessings that God had planned for them.

If there is such person, he or she is perfect indeed.

Don’t worry too much about failures in your walk! The more you worry, the more likely you will fail. Simply trust God can empower you to accomplish everything He wants you to accomplish.

For me, the first time I embarked on the walk in the Spirit it was exhilarating! It had lasted for 2 to 3 years, and then I fell into the ditches because of many of the traps I have just mentioned in this post.

After that I was able to resume my walk slowly. The big fall into the ditch confused me somewhat, so the recovery took a while.

This time the future is bright, and I was just freed from a major sinful habit because I started walking in the Spirit fully again.

I hope by sharing my personal victories and failures with you I might be able to strengthen your walk in the Spirit. God bless!

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In the Bible, God had risen heroes to deliver his chosen people, the Israelites (Now we call the Jews), from their enemies and the sinful way of living that caused the enemies to arise at the first place. Many times, the chosen ones were surprised by the calling from God, and would consider themselves unworthy of the call.

Most of them were afraid, why me? Of all people in Israel, why me?

One of such heroes was Gideon.

¹⁴And the LORD looked upon him, and said, Go in this thy might, and thou shalt save Israel from the hand of the Midianites: have not I sent thee?

¹⁵And he said unto him, Oh my Lord, wherewith shall I save Israel? behold, my family is poor in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father’s house.

¹⁶And the LORD said unto him, Surely I will be with thee, and thou shalt smite the Midianites as one man. Judges 6: 14-16

The Midian was nomadic people. They were numerous. And they, along with their alliances, the Amalekites and people from the east, were bullying Israel. Every time the Israel had sown, they came to destroy the produces and farm animals, leaving them with nothing.

Basically, the Midian and the foreigners roamed the land of Israel freely and camped anywhere they wanted for however long they wanted. The Israelites had to hide in the mountains.

When God spoke to Gideon and invited him to be the next deliverer for Israel, he was hiding from the Midian.

Gideon questioned the Lord about the call at first, reasoning to the Lord that he was the least in his poor family so he probably couldn’t handle the mission.

But the Lord thought differently, he called Gideon “mighty man of valour” (Judges 6:12)

Many times, how we see ourselves deviate greatly from how God see us. He is our creator so He know what we are fit to do, and He know the best timing for everything.

Arguing with the Lord about what He think of us isn’t humble. It’s an insult to the Lord’s wisdom, thinking we know better than the Lord. Have you ever argued with God when you sensed that He was calling you to do something?

Gideon didn’t argue with the Lord after He promised Gideon that He will be with him in his mission; He only asked for signs from God to prove that it was really God who was speaking to him. Then the Lord showed him that by miraculously consuming a meal prepared for Him by Gideon. (Judges 6:17-22)

Getting Comfortable with Being Uncomfortable

After this, the Lord asked Gideon to do one thing – to demolish the altar of Baal, an idol that the Israel worshiped at the time, and then build a new altar for God, and offer a burnt sacrifice there using the demolished idol as fuel – it was a dangerous mission because the Israelites will kill him for doing that, but he went straight to do it, albeit at night, for fear of the Israelites.

Perhaps God intervened behind the scene, Gideon’s dad said one sentence to the angry folks who demanded his son the next morning, and the mob disbanded. (Judges 6:32)

It doesn’t sound like a comfortable thing for Gideon to do, does it? When God ask you to do something, it’s always doable. He will give you the grace to do it, and take care of the consequences, but often times His instructions are uncomfortable to carry out.

This is a feel good generation. We like to do things that pleases ourselves and avoid things that make us feel uncomfortable. For Gideon and many other heroes of faith, they eventually mastered the skill of getting comfortable with being uncomfortable. We will do well if we obey God just like them, and learn to master this skill as well.

My dad is a Tao priest who offers funeral ceremonial services. He is still doing that today. 10 years ago he forced me to shadow him in one of his services, and it tested my faithfulness to God as I felt I had to refuse it. But I was afraid of man more than I afraid of God, and I compromised. To learn more about my story and how I suffered a sense of shame because of my compromise, click here.

Several months ago, my grandmother died. She passed away without Christ, which was unfortunate, but I knew it was a second chance from God for me to show my faithfulness to Him. This time I stood my ground and refused to participate in any idol related ceremony.

As a result, God has blessed me with a good reputation among my relatives because they saw me stood my ground during the funeral, and my dad was willing to make accommodation for my faith during whole process. Throughout the funeral, people kept saying loud, “He is a Christian so he doesn’t do that”, and because of that everyone knew I was Christian.

Is It God’s Will?

Gideon was a very careful man, after destroying the altar of Baal, he asked for confirmations from the Lord whether it was God’s will to use him to fight the enemies and deliver Israel.

Make senses, because the Lord hadn’t asked him to take any specific action against the enemies yet, so Gideon was right that he chose to ask God specifically about whether it was His specific will that they should attack the enemies at the time, and whether it was him who should do it.

³⁶And Gideon said unto God, If thou wilt save Israel by mine hand, as thou hast said,

³⁷Behold, I will put a fleece of wool in the floor; and if the dew be on the fleece only, and it be dry upon all the earth beside, then shall I know that thou wilt save Israel by mine hand, as thou hast said.

³⁸And it was so: for he rose up early on the morrow, and thrust the fleece together, and wringed the dew out of the fleece, a bowl full of water.

³⁹And Gideon said unto God, Let not thine anger be hot against me, and I will speak but this once: let me prove, I pray thee, but this once with the fleece; let it now be dry only upon the fleece, and upon all the ground let there be dew.

⁴⁰And God did so that night: for it was dry upon the fleece only, and there was dew on all the ground.

So Gideon led the men he gathered and went to the battle field.

Have you regularly sought God’s specific will for your life? Sure you can hear His voice. If we surrender all our excuses to God, we will find that we can indeed hear His voice pretty clearly, the Bible says,

My sheep hear My voice, and I know them,  and they follow Me” (John 10:27);

Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, “This is the way; walk in it.”(Isaiah 30:21);

If anyone chooses to do God’s will, he will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own. (John 7:17)

God has unique plans for everyone. The plans may sound impossible at first, and that we are weak and fragile, but if we obey His prompting, and take the leap of faith every time the next step is shroud with uncertainties, we can expect great things to unfold at the right split of second.

God will engineer our circumstances in such a way that when we obey, people, heaven, and earth will cooperate with our actions, whether they are willing or do it out of evil intentions, or by accident or coincident, and the outcomes of our obedience will in turn trigger a chain of events that lead to multiple ripples that bless many.

A servant of God should do nothing on his own, but to trust and obey God. Many people either refuse to listen to God’s call because of self doubts, or they take matters into their own hands and fight without seeking God’s will. For the former, the result is God’s judgment and punishment (Matthew 25:14-30), and the latter is vain conceit and missing out on God’s perfect plan.

Win Till You (Almost) Drop

Win till you drop, sounds nice isn’t it? As you grow in faith and the skill of obedience, you will win, win, and win. Based on my own experience, the Lord grant me more and more responsibilities, honor, and success as long as I keep obeying Him, until I can’t handle the it anymore, emotionally, and physically.

It might come to a point where you will feel exhausted. The Lord will stretch your faith and obedience to the max. Stretching you makes you grow.

⁴ Gideon and his three hundred men, exhausted yet keeping up the pursuit, came to the Jordan and crossed it…

[Skipping a few lines of how Gideon went through the whole nine yards in his pursue]…

¹⁰ Now Zebah and Zalmunna were in Karkor with a force of about fifteen thousand men, all that were left of the armies of the eastern peoples; a hundred and twenty thousand swordsmen had fallen. ¹¹ Gideon went up by the route of the nomads east of Nobah and Jogbehah and fell upon the unsuspecting army. ¹² Zebah and Zalmunna, the two kings of Midian, fled, but he pursued them and captured them, routing their entire army.

Long story short, Gideon and his 300 men (Yes, they started with 300 only, and ended with 300 in its entirety, but the enemies lost 120,000+ men in this battle) had been beating up their enemies all the way through and they were exhausted by all the one way killings and pursing.

For your information, Gideon wasn’t the only one who won till he almost dropped. There were Moses, who became sick and tired of performing miracles for the losers for 40 years; Joshua, who had fought more than a hundred battles in his lifetime, having only lost once due to someone’s stupidity, and when I read his biography I got bored by the long winded record of places he had conquered; Sampson, the strongest man on earth in his time, almost thirsted to death after killing 1000 men by himself with a donkey’s jawbone. And there were more than I can tell you in one article.

If you want to be a champion who in this life, who is counted by God for eternity, and if you want your success to last, then you should practice obedience and faith all your life.

What Is Grace?

Grace is the desire and the power that God gives us to do His will. Bill Gothard

⁹But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. 2 Corinthians 12:9

When God ask you to do something, He will give you the grace to do it. His grace is always fresh, which also means that you have to rely on His grace daily.

You can count on His grace for today, but tomorrow is a new day and you will have to ask for it again. God do this because he want you to rely on Him. He can’t afford to give you too much that you can wander on your own for too long. We humans are too forgetful and too easy to take pride in ourselves.

Because of His grace, we can bypass our weaknesses and still accomplish what He want us to accomplish, no matter how against all odds it seems.

In my final year of University, God prompted me to run for the vice president position of the student union. I was inexperienced with student activities in the Campus. I didn’t know the big fishes in student politics. I didn’t know what left and right meant politically. And I spoke broken English since I was an immigrant from Hong Kong for only 7 years at the time.

I faced candidates who were in the know, who were influential, who saw me as a nobody, and the media in campus was eager to cast a negative light on me because of my Chinese origin and lack of experience. I was against all odds.

But I prayed hard and followed God, I’d ran from class to class on my own, delivering self-introduction and pitch without script. There were many times when I mis-pronounced my website, allforstudents.org as allforstudents.orgies, the girls looked at me with a weird look. When I someone finally corrected me for that, I was very embarrassed.

My opponents ran for the election in a ticket. They were resourceful and they followed a script. Miraculously, every time my fellow Christians prayed for me, the audiences would applaud, whistle, and screamed, it had happened quite a few times, but I don’t recall any other candidates who had that kind of receptions.

At the end, I won the election. And later it would lead to God using me to deliver some students Christian organizations out of mild troubles.

God’s Grace Is Sufficient

¹⁶Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. Hebrews 4:16

As humans, we will frequently feel the weights of our weaknesses. If we are honest to ourselves, we know we are clumsy and many things aren’t under our control. This is okay, however, because God God will lead us step by step. And whatever He ask us to do, He enable us to carry it out.

We are to cry out to God, approach His throne of grace, and receive from Him mercy and grace, frequently.

It goes against our human nature, which loves to be self-reliant and tends to place trust on humans and things rather than God, so don’t be surprised if you find it difficult to asking God for grace daily. We have to train continuously to put our nature under the control of the Spirit. (Galatians 5:17; Zechariah 4:6)

Focus, focus, and focus! This is very simple, yet very difficult. All you need to do is obey, seeking God’s will, and do it.

And make sure you stick it out!

Other relevant articles:

What Is Grace?

More Biblical Inspiration

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A depressing day is a day goes wasted. Just one depressive thought can sap you of strength and motivation for an entire day.

Most of the time, regret is a product of creative thinking and excessive guilt, rather than a godly remorse. As long as we live, we will have setbacks and missed opportunities; and we will make tons of mistakes along the way. If the way you see things are pessimistic- meaning, you only see a glass half-empty instead of half-full- there will be no shortage of reasons for you to regret.

Regrets for the past

¹³… But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, Philippians 3:13

If you look back in life and regret choosing a certain path, or mourn for missed opportunities, just stop thinking that way the moment you catch yourself doing that!

It’s not fair to judge your past self based on the hindsight that you now have.

When you see missed opportunities, it means that you have become more mature, that you have made significant progress in term of insights and competence, and that you are able to achieve much more if you encounter similar situations again.

So the next time you see missed opportunities that you’d failed to see in the past, you should celebrate because it indicates that you have been growing. The more frequent and the sooner you spot missed opportunities that have passed you by, the more it indicates that you are rapidly improving and growing.

A lot of people can’t spot a missed opportunity! This is called unconscious incompetence.

Given abundance time, or the ability to travel back in time, anyone can make things perfect. But in reality, time is limited; it is always in the passing mode; you will lose it whether you use it or not.

The optimal way to live is to balance speed and quality; accept imperfection and just go along and improvise. You will make mistakes, but reality is not going to wait for you to correct every single mistake before you deliver- reality has deadlines!

And don’t spend time mourning for the past, because while you are doing that, opportunities in the present will elude you too, fast!

In my college years, I developed a habit of regrets. I would often mourn for opportunities I missed, and soon developed stress and worries about the future ones as well. Now that I am more wise, I look back and see that while I had intensive worries and stresses, I often failed to see opportunities that were abundance.

For example, I wasn’t good at finding a job in the co-op program (A program that students find a full-time four month job after every four months of study), and I had to quit it. Although I quitted co-op, I still had plenty of time in school that I can start a part-time business- i.e. create my own job- such as blogging! I didn’t need to feel bad about my situation.

Remember, there are always opportunities lying around, you just have to train your eyes to see them.

Regrets for sins

¹⁰Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death. 2 Corinthians 7:10

If you’re struggling with certain sins in your life, but are otherwise a solid Christian, then you don’t need to regret.

How do you define solid? As long as you sincerely repent every time you sin, rely on God and walk with Him every day and hour, and is seeking knowledge of Him and doing what you know is the right thing to do (Deu 29:29), you’re solid.

If you keep up this way, in time you will grow out of the sins that you are struggling with, so don’t make things worst by regretting.

Regret is rehearsal. By regretting sin, you’re rehearsing it in your mind, reinforcing the memory. What you think will become what you are; You will get stuck with the sin you regret.

The Bible makes it clear that no one is exempt from sin, but if you confess your sin, you will receive forgiveness (1 John 1:8-9). True repentance leaves no regret! This is God’s promise.

Repent! Regret isn’t repentance. Regret only brings negative emotions and thoughts, but don’t confuse it with genuine repentance and humility.

What about sins that have major consequences?

Forgiveness doesn’t guarantee pardon. Pardon is a remission of the legal consequences of an offense. You can’t expect people to forget and treat you the same as before. You will have to live with consequences of sin, in some cases consequences could last for life.

Sins also produce natural consequences, such as damaged health, financial loss, broken relationship, and dishonor.

All sins have consequences, we have to accept them as reminder of our weakness and to humble ourselves before the Lord.

And, who knows? God might just heal you and remove the consequences of sin.

Conclusions: How do you get over regrets?

Here is the list:

1. Be successful now: No need for regret or mid-life crisis. You can have success now if you start meditating on God’s word and obey, because God had promised that we will prosper if we obey His commands and think about His words day and night. (Psalm 1:2-3, Deuteronomy 28:13, John 15:4-7)
2. Let God speaks to you: God is the giver of consolations. If you practice spiritual disciplines such as prayer and solitude, in time you will learn how to pay attention to God’s voice, and every time He speaks, He gently reminds and comforts. Although the Lord does rebuke us, He will never do so carelessly like humans do. I tend to have excessive guilt and regrets easily, but instead of forcing myself to be positive, I let God speaks to my heart. Every time I do that, my self-doubts and imaginary guilt will be gone.
   
3. Speed over stall: Most obstacles are psychological rather than real. Regrets breed stalls. You have to realize that it doesn’t take really long to really make real progress in anything, be it skills, academics, careers, relationships, or any other achievements. If the matter you worry about is mainly an issue of competence, please understand that competence can be improved very quickly if you just stop stalling and start taking action. See my articles on speed and competence.
   
4. Forgive yourselves: If you keep beating yourselves up over past sins and the consequences of sins, you haven’t forgiven yourselves yet. The Lord make it clear that if you don’t others, He will not forgive you (Matthew 18: 21-35). This includes forgiving yourself! If you don’t forgive yourself, the Lord won’t forgive you!
   
5. Repent and Godly Sorrow: Don’t beat yourself up and create worldly sorrow. A Christian is to walk with the Spirit, so he or she should feel guilty only if the Spirit of God rebukes him or her, and bring his or her sins to light. It’s easy to become legalistic and perfectionistic.
6. Write Journals: You don’t know what your thoughts are until you write them down. Memory is unreliable; it is a subjective interpretation of what really happened. And the longer time passed, the more easy it is to twist your memory. To prevent imaginative regret, make journal entry regularly so when you doubt yourself in the future, you can always refer to the journal and check what exactly were going on in the past. This help you sympathize with your past.
7. Acceptance: Almost 90%+ of the outcomes in life have occurred because of your choices and character. In the future you are likely to repeat the way you have done things in the past anyway, so don’t spend your energy to regret the past, but focus on character growth and learning to make wiser choices now. No matter how imperfect you were, this was you. You have to accept yourself, knowing that you have been trying the best, with the resources and experiences that you had at the times.

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Life is busy. It’s hard to focus on one task at a time. There are always several dozens other tasks pending. It’s easy to get stuck in a treadmill of doing task A and worrying about task B; while doing task B, worrying about task C; and, during task C, thinking about task A.

We busy people tend to chase our own tails.

How to take the leap of faith when there are many dozens tasks coming against you?

Prior to the moment of writing this post, I have been doing research on keywords for several hours —part of my work as a blogger is to understand what people type into the search engine search box and from their keywords guess what type of information they are looking for — and at the same time contemplating on the future direction of my websites. I’ve also scanned through many old posts that I have written so far and felt nervous.

I felt nervous because I doubted if what I have written so far are leading toward the right direction. Are they compatible with my sites’ central theme? Will people find them awkward?

I also worried that surfers might not “get” the overall picture I am trying to deliver and get confused. Am I doing too much with just one site and one blog? Am I doing too many topics? Am I being too subtle with the spiritual message I am trying to come across?

I am “already” 27 years old! To this day I have already been experimenting with self-employment for 2 years and 4 months! That means no income.

I have been living on allowance from my parents!

Take Deep Breaths

My mind has been scattered by all the questions and self-doubts that come non-stop. There is no one single answer to each of the question I asked.  No one can ever have all the advantages at any single point in life, especially while doing a big project such as building a blog. It’s a matter of perspective: a glass half empty or a glass half full.

For example, I am living with my parents and I am self-employed (Or unemployed if you look at the empty half), so I can focus on doing the most important, blogging for God. There’s a lot of ways to look at my situation.

I will probably talk more about perspective in the future posts. Let’s go back to when I said my mind was scattered.

I have to consciously breath.

When in doubt, don’t fidget. Calm down and focus. You can’t silence the voice of self-doubts by sheer force, but you can relax by doing other things such as taking deep breaths and go for a walk.

Breathing is a great technique. As a Christian, breathing is a very useful aid because many spiritual disciplines require patience and focus.

Let the Lord Speak

Deep down, I know what God want me to do: to build a website that share my daily meditation and experience with Him with the world. But there are just a thousand and one tasks that are fighting for my attention. Can I put aside everything and focus on the priorities?

One time, Jesus was received by the sisters, Martha and Mary, into their house, and thus came the famous bible story:

Now as they went on their way, he entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying. But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.” But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her” (Luke 10:38-42).

Like Martha, we all have many tasks that can distract us, and we can trace the origin of these tasks to sources such as self-imposed standard, conventional definition of success, and worries about how other people might think of us. They are illusions. They tempt us to fight a war that will never end.

If I look for problems to fix, problems will pop up from everywhere. I will never be good enough, financially independent enough, and spiritual enough to blog for God. I will never reach a point where I am perfect. And there’s rarely a perfect timing.

True perfect timing is when God ask you to do something. If God speak to your heart, obey.

Early on, when I was investigating online marketing, I was planning to build a site based on personal finance. Since I had never had a financial focus in my life at all, I had to learn from ground up. I did it because I joined a MLM company in the financial sector, and I was thinking a website would help me recruit people. I read financial books for beginners such as Personal Finance For Canadian For Dummies and Susie Orman’s Young, Fabulous, & Broke. The learning curve was STEEP!

To this day, there’s still a lot of things that I don’t know in the area of personal finance.

I asked myself why I chose that direction instead of blogging for God immediately.

The reason was that I was trying to make myself perfect, so people would agree with me. For years, I had thought of myself as someone who only pursued the spiritual things, but was ignorant of solving real world’s problems. I worried people might not listen to my sermons when I became a pastor because I was ignorant with “real” problems of the world.

When The Lord Speak

The following is a chorus of an old hymn, Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus:

Turn your eyes upon Jesus,
Look full in His wonderful face,
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim,
In the light of His glory and grace.

Indeed, when I listen to God’s voice, all my self-doubts would fade.

We humans like to complicate things with our minds, but the Lord will simplify things for us if we listen.

In the next installment, I will talk about what to do and what will happen when God speak to us and tell us to do something.

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I heard its voice last night.

My respond to it was to give thanks for what I have got and for how far I had come, in spite of my imperfections and mistakes.

Putting myself out there through blogging and building a website based on my own insights and experience instead of hiding behind an impersonal tone of cold information are one of the biggest tests to my courage and faith. It’s also a tremendous growth experience in my walk with God.

When I first began, I found a lot of reasons why I should do this big online project. It seemed like such a good idea at first, and it still is a very good idea. However, last night, I was feeling intimidated when thinking about where this project would lead me. Will my non-native English be a problem? Will people care about what I have to say? Am I successful enough to write any insight at all?

On one hand, I felt the urge to write more about what I really think. But on the other hand, the voice of doubt said, “You are different! You’re a Chinese young guy who lives in Hong Kong trying to write to the Western people!” The fact that a lot of my writing ideas come from the West doesn’t help, because that would makes me un-unique! Reading information from the Web and from the Western World, then turn around and send them all back to the Web and the Western people by posting them on my websites make no sense. I have to be original and be confident about myself.

But am I good enough? Will people like it?

There’s also a guzillion of factors to consider while I write a page, such as Search Engine Optimization, compatibility with the overall theme of the blogs, grammar, tone, priority, time constraint, and many others. Many times when I try to sit down and simply write, I can’t help but surf through established websites and blogs. They are magical. I say magical, because I wouldn’t have believed that they would succeed if they hadn’t already succeed, but they did.

Through my trained eyes, I could see their imperfections, but they did a lot of work and they came through in spite of their imperfections.

Successful people always seems bigger in our eyes. Competitions always look tough when we first enter the market. Sometime I questioned if I could really overcome my imperfection and build a successful website too.

But my experience indicated that if one keeps shooting her best shots consistently, factors such as races, languages, cultures, and others disadvantages will turn out to be irrelevant as the result came through. Odds and troubles that were once problems became reasons for higher honors and glories during triumphs.

Difficulty is always exaggerated by the mind.

In the Old Testament time, God led the Israelites out of Egypt and into the promised land. While the Israelites reached the border of the promised land the first time, they sent out spies to check the land out. They saw that the land was wonderful beyond imagination —it took two adult men to carry a single cluster of grapes — but there was one problem, the natives were huge.

The spies reported to the Israelites, “…All the people we saw there are of great size… We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them.” Then the Israelites reacted to Moses, they cried, they whined, and they threatened to kill Moses and choose another leader to lead them back to Eygpt, the land of slavery.

When it comes to confronting my own imperfections and disadvantages, they keep growing bigger whenever I paid too much attention to them.

It’s easy to look at successful stories and to hear about how other people made it. But when it comes to our own situation, success always seems far away and unreal.

The Israelites could have chosen to believe in God and fought the fight, and then the rest would have become history. Instead, they chose the victim mindsets. Because of this, the Lord punished them and had them wandered in the desert for 40 years until the whole generation of whiners had aged to death, and had their children picked up on where they failed.

The whiners could have entered the promised land had they not complained and succumbed to fears.

Uncertainty

No one know what the future holds. In theory, if I keep posting articles on my blog and website, by the time I reach 400 articles, I should be able to at least get a few thousand unique visitors per day. I had done my research and I knew this goal was attainable, as long as I do the major things right. That’s the big picture. However, as the author of the sites, I am aware of every tiny mistakes —mistakes that were real or mistakes that I imagined —that I’ve made on a micro basis.

That’s what everyone has to face though. You will never know exactly what’s going to happen in the future. If you stall because you think too much, that’s analysis paralysis.

Even at this moment, I doubt if what I just write in this article will ever be appreciated by someone!

No one like uncertainty. When I feel uncertain, I sometime surf the Web to look at how other website owners make it. There are many successful websites on every topic under the sun, and I would just keep surfing instead of writing for my own websites.

You Know What To Do Next

The fact is, we know what to do next. We procrastinated because we were too lazy, or too impatient, to eat the elephant one bite at a time. Sometime, it’s possible to know what the next 20 steps are. Sometime, we just don’t know. Even for those of us who don’t plan much and are not so organized, we know what to do next. The solution to self-doubt is to take the leap of faith, and do what’s obviously needs to be done now. The next step will reveal itself.

I have been learning Wing Chun Kung Fu recently. In Wing Chun, we train our reflex system by doing “Sticking Hand”, an interactive training that simulate real fight. See this video if you want to see it in action. I learned from sticking hand that if you use your eyes to watch your opponents, and think about how to respond, it’s usually too late. You have to rely on systematic training to condition your reflex to reach the level that when your opponent move, even just slightly, your hands feel it and respond automatically. There’s just no room to think.

Similarly, when you know what to do next, do it. Thinking can be addictive.

Taking immediate actions and think later is the best solution to self doubt and procrastination.

In the next installment, I will continue to delve further into the topic.

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