2005/04/20
A Christian's' point of view on the topic of "Life changing events?!"
"Earth keeps ever evolving until the second coming of Jesus. Big and small events keep on happening. Events change people's lives; vise versa, people change events as well." This is a natural law, all these are permitted by God to give people opportunities of self awakening and strengthening our relationship with Him.
When events happen, God always gives us two paths to choose: one is to walk closer with Jesus, the other is to walk away from Jesus (walk with Satan). There isn't a third way, only two paths. If one chooses the former way (walk closer with Jesus), less suffering, punishment more bearable, and more grace are guaranteed. If one choose the latter way, may God pull one back with his own hand, and the pulling may be quite painful. Personally, I prefer the former choice - walk with Jesus.
From my humble and limited experience, the way to walk closer to Jesus is "Pray and reading His Words (the Bible)" - pray Jesus to change one's own heart, not others; to tell Jesus' one's feeling, recognize one's shortness and sin and ask Jesus for strength. Sometimes talking about one's feeling to other people (friends and relatives) may help a bit, but I found the support would only be skin deep because they are "just" people like you and I. However, talking to Jesus and reading the Bible is quite different - His guidance and teaching is filled with power. No one can change anyone's heart, only Jesus.
Any event happened to us, each of the party involved actually more-or-less contributed to the event. (Except for incident, incident is not event, but there's a purpose behind those as well. Let’s just concentrate on event now.) If one wasn't a contributor, then the event has nothing to do with you, and you shouldn't be affected in any way.
Worldly juridical system promotes people to be the victims and find excuses, because this is the way to extract compensation and getting worldly (e.g. money, benefits... etc) compensation. In the Kingdom of Jesus, victims are looser – “victim role playing” does not work in the heavenly Kingdom. If we choose to be the winner of all life's events, then we will receive abundant blessings and experience grace from our God. So how to be the winner? When a major event happened to us, we grief and seek counseling from our church's pastor or elders. We pray to Jesus with our feelings, our part of fault, and ask for His help and strength (pastor or elders do not have the power to change our hearts, only through Jesus). Finally, we switched our victim’s role and become a winner to enhance healthy relationship with God and people around us. Certainly, God will give much peace, grace and joy to winners than victims.
If one remains in a position of unforgiving (forgetting is different from forgiving - forgave remembers but does not hold grudges), whining, feeling sorry for oneself and looking for excuses; then he/she still remains in the victim stage. May Jesus help one's heart becoming a winner soon.
Transform one's heart to be closer to Jesus, and body for sacrifice is the old me:
"Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God–this is your spiritual[a] act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is–his good, pleasing and perfect will."
-Romans 12:1-2
Our ultimate goal on earth - Christian faith includes building up one's own relationship with God, spread His Good News to non-believers through the blessing of the Holy Spirit:
"I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day–and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing."
-2 Timothy 4:7-8
Recently, an article from a community newspaper: "a priest gives blessing to farm animals". This is totally ridiculous, and the priest certainly does not understand the meaning of blessing. Blessing given to Christians are not only to soothe themselves; its ultimate purpose is to spread the Good News to unbelievers and let them know they have the option of not being a slave to sin through Jesus; therefore, they can become winners of their lives’ events by praying for strength in Jesus' name. Then, their hearts can gradually free from undesired habit/thoughts. How can a cow go and spread the Good News to other people, and help anyone's soul?! A cow may able to reveal God’s great creation and be a friendly companion pet, but certainly unable to counsel people.
