Whose Battle Is It?

“But you will not even need to fight. Take your positions; then stand still and watch the Lord’s victory. He is with you, O people of Judah and Jerusalem . Do not be afraid or discouraged. Go out there tomorrow, for the Lord is with you!” 2 Chronicles 20:17 (NLT)

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In today’s passage, God is talking to King Jehoshaphat and the Israelites. They’re about to be attacked by three enemies: the Moabites, the Ammonites, and the Meunites.

Jehoshaphat had to be worried about how his people could defend themselves in such a battle, but God knew exactly what Jehoshaphat was thinking. He said, “You will not have to fight in this battle.” Now, that’s the kind of battle I like!

What God tells Jehoshaphat in this passage, and what he would remind us today, is this: “The battle is not yours; it’s mine. You don’t have to fight in it.”

In other words, it’s God’s problem. Let him solve it.

The fact is if you are God’s child, then your problems are his problems. And he’s much better at fighting your battles and solving your problems than you will ever be. Your job is to trust him to work it all out. Perhaps the reason we have so many tired, fatigued, and discouraged Christians is because we think, “It all depends on me.”

The day you resign as General Manager of the Universe, you’re going to find that it doesn’t fall apart. You can relax in faith, trusting that God is able to run things without your help.

Twice in this passage it says, “Don’t be afraid,” and “Don’t be discouraged.” When you face a seemingly impossible situation, don’t be afraid and don’t be discouraged. Has God ever lost a battle? No. He doesn’t lose battles.

There’s an important phrase in verse 17. God tells Jehoshaphat, “Take your positions and stand firm.” What does it mean to stand firm? It means to have a mental attitude of quiet confidence. It is never God’s will for you to run from a difficult situation. I’ve discovered that when I run from a difficult situation, inevitably God always brings it back around and gives me another chance. It’s inevitable. Why?

Because God wants us to learn – and he wants to teach us through experience – that in every situation he is sufficient. He is competent and capable and he will meet our needs in that situation. Don’t be afraid; fear is the opposite of faith.

You stand firm on two things:

• The character of God – He’s faithful. He does not bring us this far just to let us down. He doesn’t bring you out on a limb and then cut off the limb. Have faith in the nature andcharacter of God.

• The truth of his Word – God’s Word is faithful. You can count on the promises found in the Bible.

Stand still. Remember Who the battle belongs to. Trust that he is able to deliver you. And then watch him do it!..... Rick Warren

တျပည္လံုးဆိုင္ရာ ဆုေတာင္းရာေန႕။

“ ဒီနွစ္က ထူးထူးျခားျခား ေမေဒးနဲ႕ တျပည္လံုးဆိုင္ရာ ဆုေတာင္းေသာေန႕ က တထပ္တည္းက်ေနပါတယ္။ က်မတို႕ ျမန္မာ ျပည္ေထာင္စုၾကီးကို ေခါင္းေဆာင္လာမည့္သူမ်ား သည္ မိမိတိုင္းျပည္ကို ခ်စ္ျမတ္နိုး၍၊ တိုင္းသူျပည္သားတို႕၏ စားဝတ္ေနေရး၊ ပညာေရး၊ စီးပြားေရး၊ သာသနာ အေရး၊ မ်ားကို အထူးေကာင္းမြန္ေအာင္ ဦးေဆာင္နိုင္ျပီး၊ ေခတ္မွီတိုးတက္၊ ပညာၾကြယ္ဝ၍ ကမာၻ႕အဆင့္အတန္းမွီ (စက္မႈ႕ ထြန္းကား၍၊ သံယဇာတ ေတြကိုထိန္းသိမ္းတတ္ေသာ) ျပည္ေထာင္စုၾကီး ျဖစ္ေအာင္ လုပ္ေဆာင္ နိုင္ေသာ သူမ်ား အတြက္ အတူတကြ ဝိုင္းဝန္းဆုေတာင္းၾကပါစို႕။ ”

မိမိတို႕ရွိေနရာမွ ဆုေတာင္းၾကရေအာင္လို႕ ဆႏၵျပဳပါသည္။

Learning to Laugh

က်န္းမာေသာ နွလံုးသည္ ကိုယ္အသက္ရွင္ေစေသာ အေၾကာင္း၊ ျငဴစူေသာ သေဘာမူကား၊ အရုိးေဆြးေျမ့ျခင္း အေၾကာင္း ျဖစ္၏။ သုတၱံက်မ္း ( ၁၄ း ၃၀ )

A relaxed attitude lengthens a man’s life. Proverbs 14:30 (LB)

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Did you know that people who laugh live longer? It’s true. Proverbs 14:30 says, “A relaxed attitude lengthens a man’s life.” (LB)

Humor is an amazing thing. It’s a tension dissolver. It’s an antidote to anxiety. It’s just like a tranquilizer, but without any troublesome side-effects. And it’s free! You don’t even need a prescription.

Laughter is life’s shock absorber. If you want to have less stress in your life, learn to laugh at your circumstances.

Someone once asked U.S. President Abraham Lincoln how he handled all the stresses of the Civil War. He said, “If it hadn’t been for laughter, I could not have made it.”

Many famous comedians grew up in poor neighborhoods with lots of problems. They coped with their troubles by learning to laugh and making others laugh.

So learn to laugh. If you can laugh at it, you can live with it. And besides, if you learn to laugh at your troubles, you’ll never run out of anything to laugh at! Life is full of funny situations. The cowboy comedian Will Rogers once said, “I don’t know any jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.”

One of my favorite verses in the Bible is Psalm 2:4, “The One enthroned in heaven laughs.” (NIV) Isn’t that a great verse? God has a sense of humor. God laughs!

Have you ever seen the face of an orangutan? God thought that one up! That proves he has a sense of humor. Do you want to be more like God? Learn to laugh. ... Rick Warren

ဟင္ဒူ ဘုရားဝင္စား

မတ္ခ်္လ ( ၅) ရက္ေန႕က နယူးေဒလီမွ (၅၅) ကီလိုမီတာကြာေဝးေသာ၊ ႏြဳိင္းဒျမိဳ႕၊ ဆိုင္းနိေက်းရြာတြင္ မ်က္နွာနွစ္ခုပါ ကေလးေမြးဖြားခဲ့ပါသည္။ ကေလးသည္ ပါးစပ္ေပါက္ နွစ္ခုလံုးမွ အစာစား၍၊ မ်က္လံုးေလးခုစလံုး မွိတ္တုပ္၊ မွိတ္တုပ္နွင့္ လုပ္တတ္ပါေသး၏။ ကေလးမိဘမ်ားက ဟင္ဒူဘုရားမ ဝင္စားသည္ဟုဆိုကာ ခြဲစိပ္ဖို႕ရန္ လက္မခံပါ။

ေက်းရြာလူမ်ားသည္လည္း ဘုရားပြင့္သည္ဟုဆိုကာ လာေရာက္ပူေဇာ္၊ ေကာင္းခ်ီးမ်ားလာယူ လွ်က္အုတ္အုတ္ သည္းသည္းျဖစ္ေနသည္ဟု သတင္းရထားပါသည္။ သိပံၸ ပညာအရ ဦးေခါင္းခြံ၌ မ်က္နွာနွစ္ခုေပၚ ေနျခင္းကို ဘယ္ေနရာမွ ျဖတ္ထုတ္ျခင္းျဖင့္ ပံုမွန္ျပန္လည္ ျဖစ္နိုင္မည္ကို စမ္းသပ္လိုေသာလည္း၊ မိဘမ်ားအေနျဖင့္ ဘာသာေရး အယူအရ လံုးဝခြဲစိတ္မည္ မဟုတ္ေၾကာင္းတဲ့ ဗ်ိဳး၊ ေျပာၾကေပေတာ့... အျမင္ေလးေတြ။

How to Handle Failure

ဒဏ္ခ်က္ရာတို႕သည္လည္း ကိုယ္အတြင္းအရပ္တို႕၌ ထိုသို႕ေသာ ေက်းဇူးကိုျပဳတတ္၏။ ( သုတၱံက်မ္း ၂၀ း ၃၀ )

Sometimes it takes a painful experience to make us change our ways. Proverbs 20:30 (GNT)

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No one’s life is an unbroken chain of victories. We all experience setbacks, defeats, losses, and failures. Nobody bats a thousand. We all make mistakes.

Since failure is common to all of us, one of the most important life-skills you can learn is how to respond to it. Mature people know how to turn every failure into a learning experience, a stepping stone for future success.

The first thing to do is to analyze why you experienced failure. Although there may be a variety of reasons – many out of your control – here are five common causes of failure:

· When we don’t plan ahead – As the old saying goes, “If you fail to plan, you’re planning to fail.” Proverbs 27:12 (LB) says, “A sensible man watches for problems ahead and prepares to meet them.” Remember, Noah had to start building the ark long before it started raining!

· When we think we’ve “arrived” – Remember the lesson of the whale: just when you get to the top, and you start to blow– that’s when you get harpooned! Proverbs 16:18 (GNT) says, “Pride leads to destruction, and arrogance leads to downfall.” In other words, the man who gets too big for his britches will be exposed in the end.

· When we’re afraid to take necessary risks – The fear of failure can cause failure. We worry about what others will think of us if we fail, so we don’t even try. Former U.S. football player Fran Tarkenton says, “Fear sets you up to be a loser.” We fail to take advantage of golden opportunities. “Fear of man is a dangerous trap” (Proverbs 29:25 LB).

· When we give up too soon – Many times, success is just around the corner. Remember, the game is often won in the final seconds. If at first you don’t succeed … you’re normal! Keep on keeping on! The value of a postage stamp is found in its ability to stick to one thing until it gets there. “A lazy fellow has trouble all through life” (Proverbs 15:19 LB).

· When we ignore God’s advice – The Bible is our owner’s manual for life. It is filled with practical instructions and guidelines for work, home, finances, relationships, and health. When we fail to follow these, we’re asking for trouble. “There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death” (Proverbs 14:12 NIV).

But remember failure is never final unless you let it be!

If you’ve experienced failure, here are some steps for starting over:

· Accept responsibility for your own failure – If you’ve made a mistake, admit it! Welcome to the human race. Don’t blame others. “A man who refuses to admit his mistakes can never be successful. But if he confesses and forsakes them, he gets another chance” (Proverbs 28:13 LB).

· Recognize the benefits of failure – For instance, it shows you what doesn’t work. The great inventor Thomas Edison said, “Don’t call it a failure. Call it an education!” Failure forces you to be more creative.

· Failure prevents arrogance and egotism – If everything you did was a stunning success, no one could live with you! It causes you to re-evaluate what’s important in life. Failure is one way God gets us to reflect on the direction of our lives. “Sometimes it takes a painful experience to make us change our ways” (Proverbs 20:30 GNT).

· Ask God for wisdom to understand the cause for the failure – Ask, “Why did I fail? Is there any reason I might have set myself up to fail?”

· Forget the past and focus on the future – Your past is past! It’s water under the bridge. You can’t change it so you may as well stop worrying about it.

Brothers and sisters, I can’t consider myself a winner yet. This is what I do: I don’t look back, I lengthen my stride, and I run straight toward the goal to win the prize that God’s heavenly call offers in Christ Jesus. Philippians 3:13-14 (GWT)

Be encouraged! ....... Rick Warren

National Day of Prayer

Everybody, if you want to know more about National Day of Prayer, you can click here http://www.ndptf.org


တျပည္လံုးဆိုင္ရာ ဆုေတာင္းရာေန႕ စတင္လာပံု၊ အစစ အရာရာကို ဗဟုတုတ အေနျဖင့္ သိလိုပါက ဤေနရာ မွသြားေရာက္ေလ့လာနိုင္ပါသည္ http://www.ndptf.org

ဆာလံက်မ္း ၂၈ း ၇

ငါေတာင္းေလွ်ာက္ေသာ အသံကို နားေထာင္ ေတာ္မူျပီ။ ထာဝရဘုရားသည္ ငါ၏ခြန္အားဗလ၊ ငါ၏အကြယ္အကာ ျဖစ္ေတာ္မူ၏။

NOT ALONE

There is hardly a human need stronger than the need to belong. We were created this way. Every one of us came out of a womb screaming for warmth, companionship, and someone else’s heartbeat. We were rudely ripped out of that idyllic existence and thrust into a cold, impersonal, lonely world. (No wonder babies cry.) And the rest of our lives are spent trying to find that intimacy again. Everyone knows this feeling because everyone has had the same experience once – being so close that our mother’s heartbeat was a constant presence – and everyone knows that reuniting with others is somehow a part of our common purpose in life. No man is an island.

Is it any wonder Jesus prayed, “My prayer for all of them [his disciples and us] is that they will be one, just as you and I are one, Father – that just as you are in me and I am in you, so they will be in us, and the world will believe you sent me.” (John 17:21 NLT)

We were made to be together. We often think only in terms of our own spiritual lives and forget the fact that God is saving a people to come together for his glory. Salvation is not just an individual matter; it’s a corporate thing – it plugs us into everyone else in the Body of Christ. It is when the church functions as a whole that we give evidence to who we really are. We are the Body of Christ, not the Individual of Christ. Not one of us can reflect, alone, what that body is. His will is expressed in all of us together.

Together we are the bride of Christ. (My grammar checker doesn’t like that last sentence because this concept challenges even our language. Since when is “bride” plural?) I am not the bride; you are not the bride. We are only the bride in completion with all other believers in history and in the world. This is all part of God’s plan to bring us back together where we can hear each other’s heartbeat and experience the oneness that Jesus has with the Father and desires to have with us. Jesus prayed that we would be all wrapped together in oneness with him – us in Christ, and Christ in the Father.

So what does this mean for you and me today? It means we are not alone. We know where we belong. We need to give priority to our relationships with other believers because who we are depends on it. Check your calendar; arrange some lunches. Time put into people is time committed to God and his purposes...... John Fischer

National day of prayer for Burma!

အေမရိကန္ျပည္ေထာင္စု တခုလံုးက ေမလ၊ ပထမပတ္ရဲ႕ ၾကာသေတးေန႕ ကို တျပည္လံုးဆိုင္ရာ ဆုေတာင္းရာေန႕ အျဖစ္သတ္မွတ္ပါတယ္။ အသင္းေတာ္စံု၊ ဘုရားေက်ာင္းစံုမွ ၾကီးမႈးျပီး အတူတကြ၊ နိုင္ငံေခါင္းေဆာင္းမ်ား၊ စီးပြားေရး၊ လူမူ႕ေရး၊ ဘာသာေရး၊ ပညာေရး၊ တပ္မေတာ္၊ နွင့္ ျပည္သူ မိသားစုတိုင္း အတြက္ဆုေတာင္းၾကပါတယ္။

အခုလည္း တျပည္လံုးဆိုင္ရာဆုေတာင္းရာေန႕ကိုေရာက္ရွိလာပါျပီ၊ က်မအေနနဲ႕ ဗမာျပည္သူ၊ ျပည္သား၊ အမိနိုင္ငံတြင္း၌ ျဖစ္ေစ၊ ရပ္ေဝး၌ ျဖစ္ေစ၊ ခရစ္ယာန္ဘာသာမွမဟုတ္၊ ဘာသာမေရြး၊ လူမ်ိဳးမေရြး၊ လူတိုင္းလူတိုင္း၊ မိမိ ယံုၾကည္ရာဘာသာနဲ႕၊ စကားနဲ႕ အတူတကြ ရွိေနရာ အရပ္က ဝိုင္းျပီး ဆုေတာင္းရေအာင္လို႕ ဖိတ္ေခၚခ်င္ပါတယ္။

ဘာေၾကာင့္က်မဒီလို ဖိတ္ေခၚရသလဲဆိုေတာ့၊ ဟိုတေန႕ ကဘဲ က်မအစ္မၾကီးနဲ႕ ဖုန္းေျပာရင္း သတင္းတခုရပါတယ္၊ သူကဗမာျပည္ရဲ႕ ျပင္ပမွာေရာက္ေနတာ၊ ျမန္မာသံရုံးကိုေတာ့ အျမဲအခြန္ေဆာင္၊ သတင္းပို႕ရတာေပါ့ေနာ္။ သူ႕လိုဘဲ နိုင္ငံရပ္ျခားမွာ တရားဝင္ေနထိုင္ေနသူေတြကို သံရုံးက ဆင့္ေခၚျပီး မဲေပးခိုင္းတယ္တဲ့၊ လူကိုယ္တိုင္သြားရတယ္ဆိုတာပါဘဲ၊ မဲကေထာက္ခံမဲ ေရးျပီးသားကို အလွည့္က်ယူျပီး၊ ပံုးထဲထည့္ခိုင္းတာပါဘဲတဲ့၊ ေရြးခ်ယ္ခြင့္တို႕၊ ဘာကို၊ ဘယ္လိုေရးျပီး၊ ေထာက္ခံခိုင္းမွန္းေတာင္ မသိရဘဲထည့္ရတဲ့မဲေလ။

လြန္ခဲ့ေသာ္နွစ္ေပါင္း ( ၆၀ ) ေလာက္ကတည္းက ျမန္မာျပည္မွာေနထိုင္ၾကတဲ့ လူမ်ိဳးစု အသီးသီး၊ ဘာသာေရး အသီးသီး၊ နိုင္ငံသားအသီးသီးတို႕ မိမိတတ္နိုင္တဲ့ဘက္က၊ နည္းမ်ိဳးစံုနဲ႕၊ ျမန္မာျပည္ၾကီး တိုးတက္ေအာင္၊ ျငိမ္းခ်မ္းသာယာ ဝေျပာ၊ တိုးတက္ေသာနိုင္ငံၾကီး ျဖစ္ေအာင္ ၾကိဳးစားခဲ့ၾကပါတယ္။ အသက္ေပါင္းေျမာက္ျမားစြာ၊ သားေကာင္းရတနာေပါင္း ေျမာက္ျမားစြာလည္း ဆံုးရႈံးခဲ့ ၾကပါျပီ။ ဖခင္၊ မိခင္မဲ့ သားသမီးမ်ားစြာ၊ သားေပ်ာက္၊ သမီးေပ်ာက္၊ မိဘမ်ား လည္းအေျမာက္အျမားရွိသြားပါျပီ၊ ေအာင္ျမင္မႈရဲ႕ လမ္းစခုထိတိုင္ေအာင္ မရခဲ့ေသးတဲ့ အျပင္၊ ရမဲ့ အလားအလာ လည္းခုရွိမေနေသးပါဘူး။

ဲက်မတို႕ တစည္းတလံုးနဲ႕ပါဝင္ဖို႕က မိမိကိုးကြယ္ရာဘုရားထံ ဆုေတာင္းေမတၱာရပ္ခံ ဖို႕အခ်ိန္တန္ျပီလို႕ ထင္ပါတယ္၊ ဒါေၾကာင့္က်မဒီစာကိုေရး၊ ဒီလိုေမတၱာရပ္ခံလိုက္ျခင္းျဖစ္ပါတယ္၊ သင္တို႕အား ရက္စက္ ညွင္းဆဲေသာသူတို႕အဘို႕ဆုေတာင္း ေပးရမယ္လို႕ ရွင္လုကာခရစ္ဝင္က်မ္း ၆း ၂၈ မွာဆိုထားပါတယ္။ က်မတို႕ွိအားလံုး တညီတညြတ္တည္းနွင့္ မိမိရွိေနရာအရပ္ရဲ႕ ေမလ (၁) ရက္၊ ၾကာသေတး၊ မိမိတို႕ စံေတာ္ခ်ိန္ ၀၇း၀၀ မွာ မိမိကိုးကြယ္ရာဘာသာ ဘုရားထံမွာ
ျပည္သူ႕အေရးကို ေရွးရႈျပီး၊ တိုးတက္၊ ေကာင္းမြန္ေသာ နိုင္ငံၾကီးျဖစ္ေအာင္ စြမ္းေဆာင္နိုင္ျပီး၊ ပညာေရး၊ စီးပြားေရး၊ လူမူေရး၊ ဘာသာေရး အစစ၊အရာရာကို အေကာင္းဆံုးျပဳျပင္ ေျပာင္းလဲေပးျပီး၊ ေခတ္မီွတိုးတက္ေသာ နိုင္ငံေတာ္သို႕ ဦးေဆာင္နိုင္တဲ့ ေခါင္းေဆာင္ျဖစ္လာေစဖို႕ ဆုေတာင္းၾကရေအာင္လို႕ ေမတၱာရပ္ခံလိုပါတယ္။

First Family!

How important is family? So important that God had one before he had us.

“Then God said, ‘Let us make people in our image, to be like ourselves.’” (Genesis 1:26) Ever wonder who God is talking to here?If you could hear me talking to myself sometimes, you would hear me use the plural, as in: “Let’s do this or let’s do that.”That’s not what’s happening here, however. God is speaking of the parts of himself that make up the whole of who he is.This is God as three in one – God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Together, they make up one God; separately they form three personas operating as one.

So when God made us like himself, he didn’t make just one of us, he made many that we might learn to relate to one another the way God relates to himself. That we might become one as he is one.This is the ultimate non-dysfunctional family – what we will realize in heaven, but get a glimpse of here on earth.

Christ’s goal for us is that we would be one with God and one with each other – multiple personalities operating and relating as one being.This is why being part of an extended family is a part of discovering who we are and why we are here.

So don’t ever sell this one short.Family is not something we have to put up with for a while; it is an integral part of our identity.This flies in the face of one of Western culture’s most enduring myths – the myth of the supreme individualist. It’s an image idealized in our movies, especially the westerns of John Wayne and Clint Eastwood and the spy adventures of James Bond.

God was a family before he made us, so this must be pretty important. Family has always been an important part of who we are.It’s imbedded in our very nature.No one can exist alone unto himself – even God.We were made to interrelate.We not only need each other, we were made for each other.This is an important part of our purpose for being.

So forget trying to go at it alone. No one’s that tough, except for maybe Clint Eastwood, but that’s only in the movies.....John Fischer

A Hedge Of Thorns

“Therefore, this is what I will do: I will block her way with thorns; I will enclose her with a wall, so that she cannot find her paths.” Hosea 2:6 (HCSB)

*** *** *** ***

We run from God; He calls us back. We hide from God; He seeks us out. We chase false gods; He reminds us He is the One True God, and He guards us jealously.

In order to illustrate his faithfulness and patience with us, God chose a prostitute named Gomer. Many men came to see her, but then one came, not to use her, but to marry her.

He was a prophet from God; a holy man committed to pure and righteous living. He came saying God wanted him to marry her. You can imagine the shock, the laughter – and the mixed-up feelings.

But it wasn’t too long before Gomer returned to her old lovers and old friends; however, God told Hosea to always go after her and bring her home – just as God forgives us and brings us home to Him.

Even though Gomer thought, “I will go after my lovers … (Hosea 2:5),” God blocked her path with a “hedge of thorns,” a spiritual wall He placed around her so she could not find her way back to those sinful relationships. (Hosea 2:6)

We can pray a hedge of thorns be placed around those in rebellion, but the same prayer can also be used as a “hedge of protection” for loved ones in vulnerable situations. For instance, asking God to place a hedge of protection around a child vulnerable to developing some wrong relationships, ones that may cause him to stumble or that may stall her Christian growth.

It is this hedge of protection that Satan points to when demanding God allow him to sift Job. The enemy couldn’t get to Job because God had placed a hedge around him. (Job 1:8-11)

What does this mean?

· You are protected by God – God places protection around you (although that does not mean you won’t encounter hardship). Pray a hedge of protection for yourself, asking God to guide you decisions and steps.

· Pray for your spouse, children, others – Pray this hedge of protection around you loved ones, friends, or any one else God suggests. Get quiet with God and ask him to identify the fears and vulnerabilities present and pray through those issues. “And do not bring us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. [For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.]” (Matthew 6:13 HCSB)

Pray for the prodigals – God says he blocked Gomer’s path with thorns, so she would come back to Him, just as He is faithful to take us back when we return from the far country. (Hosea 2:5b-7 HCSB)....... Jon Walker

A Mere Human View

Jesus turned to Peter and said, ‘Get away from me, Satan! You are a dangerous trap to me. You are seeing things merely from a human point of view, and not from God’s.’” Matthew 16:23 (NLT)

*** *** *** ***

Jesus says we should think like He thinks – with a heavenly perspective above and beyond mere human thinking.

This doesn’t mean we become mindless robots; rather, our thoughts should begin to match the thoughts of God as His Spirit works within us, helping us to look at people and circumstances from his perspective: “From now on, then, we do not know anyone in a purely human way. Even if we have known Christ in a purely human way, yet now we no longer know Him like that.” (2 Corinthians 5:16, HCSB)

We set our minds on the things of God and abandon self-absorbed thinking: “Set your minds on what is above, not on what is on the earth.” (Colossians 3:2, HCSB)

Thinking like God means –

· We trust His guidance and no longer rely on our own understanding.

· We allow God to interpret the facts, since He knows the whole truth.

· We measure our thoughts against God’s Word and God’s character.

· We take ungodly thoughts captive and bring them before King Jesus.

We can’t change the way we think without His help. We must allow Him to renew our minds, acknowledging our need for His help as we bring our thoughts in line with His. We allow the Holy Spirit to guide our thoughts so God can guide us toward what to say and what to do.

This is why obedience and trust are such an important aspect of loving God. He wants us to dance in perfect step with Him – so much so that our heart, soul, strength, and mind will keep perfect time with His own steps. God is calling us to love Him with everything we’ve got in order for us to become like Christ, Who first loved us, wholly and fully.

What does this mean?

· Ask, “What would Jesus think?” – If you want to develop the mind of Christ, you need to begin thinking like Jesus. His thoughts were focused on the Father; He was in constant conversation with the Father. Jesus was self-forgetful, thinking more of others than Himself.

· Jesus understands your struggle – Jesus told Peter, “… You are a dangerous trap to me. You are seeing things merely from a human point of view, and not from God’s.” (Matthew 16:23, NLT) If seeing things from a human point of view, rather than God’s point of view, is a dangerous trap for Jesus, how much more is it a dangerous place for us to be? But, this also means Jesus understands your struggle to get your eyes on the things above.

· Question to consider: What thoughts roam your mind that you already know should be taken captive for Christ? Ask Jesus to help you “round them up,” so you can place them at His feet.

· Be encouraged – Jesus confronts Peter about his way of thinking, not to condemn him, but to teach Him the ways of God. God knows you can’t do this alone and that is why He’s placed the Holy Spirit within you to transform your mind into the mind of Christ....... Jon Walker

Jesus Or The Boat?

“But the boat was already over a mile from land, battered by the waves, because the wind was against them.” Matthew 14:24 (HCSB)

*** *** *** ***

Jesus needed time to refresh and so he sent his disciples on ahead, across the Sea of Galilee in one of their fishing boats. But storms sweep across this inland sea like tornados that emerge from nowhere.

And now the disciples were in a fight with the Goliath-like forces of nature. Some of the disciples were fishermen. They understood the danger, and so they fought the storm long and hard, but made little headway.

It was three o’clock in the morning, that no-man’s-land time of day when you haven’t yet escaped the night, but you still haven’t crossed into morning. It’s the kind of time when you wonder if you’ll even make it through until sunrise.

The Golan Heights , rising from the water like a wall within a quarry, are hard to distinguish against a sky so dark and drench. They’re over a mile from shore, and the water is transforming into an evil presence, so deep and so menacing.

And just then, someone on the boat yells, “Look! What is that? It looks like a man, but it just can’t be.” Before he’s even finished saying them, his words disappear into the wailing wind. But no one has to say anything else. All eyes are on this ghostly figure walking toward them like an incarnation of the storm!

And then Jesus says, “It is I.” (v. 27)

What does this mean?

· Jesus or the boat? – When faced with such a situation, where is the safest place to be? In the boat or in the arms of Jesus?

· Jesus peace – Logic tells us we’re safer in the boat; but the Bible tells us we’re safer in the arms of Jesus, the Lord and Master over the storm. He offers a peace that passes all understanding..... Jon Walker

မာက်ဴရီျဂိဳလ္

ဧျပီလ ၂၃ ၊ ၂၀၀၈ ခုနွစ္ ဗုဒဟူးေန႕ ညေနခင္း ေန၀င္တရီေရာ အခ်ိန္နွင့္ မိုးစုန္းစုန္း မခ်ဳပ္ခင္ ၾကားကာလ ကၽြန္မတို႕ ကမၻာေျမၾကီးမွ ျမင္ရရန္ အလြန္ခက္ခဲေသာ္ အက်ယ္အ၀န္း ( - ၁.၆ ) အရြယ္အစား ရွိျပီး ၾကည္လင္ေသာ ေကာင္းကင္ယံ၌ ထြန္းလင္း ေတာက္ပဆံုးေသာ Sirius ၾကယ္ထက္ အနည္းငယ္ ေတာက္ပေသာ မာက်ဴရီျဂိဳလ္ၾကီးကို သာမာန္မ်က္စိျဖင့္ ေတြ႕ျမင္နိင္မွာ ျဖစ္ပါသည္။



မာက်ဴရီျဂိဳလ္အား အမည္နာမ ( ၂ ) မ်ိဳးျဖင့္ခဲြျခား ေခၚဆိုနိင္ပါတယ္။ ေနထြက္ခါနီး အခ်ိန္တြင္ ျမင္ရပါက အာပိုလို ၊ ေန၀င္ျပီး ေနာက္ပိုင္းတြင္ ျမင္ေတြ႕ရပါက မာက်ဴရီဟု သက္မွတ္ပါသည္။ ဧျပီလ ( ၃၀ ) ရက္ေန႕တြင္းလည္း ထိုမာက်ဴရီျဂိဳလ္အား ( ၈၅ ) မိနစ္တိုင္တိုင္ ေန၀င္ျပီးေနာက္ ျမင္ေတြ႕နိင္မွာ ျဖစ္ပါသည္။ ကမၻာအရပ္ရပ္မွ ဘေလာ့ဂ္ဂါ အစ္ကိုေမာင္နွမအစ္မမ်ား ေစာင့္ေမွ်ာ္ၾကည့္ရႈ႕နိင္ရန္ သတင္းေကာင္း ပါးအပ္ ပါသည္ရွင္။

Little Faith + Big God = Huge Results

The boy’s father said,] “. . . If you can do anything, do it. Have a heart and help us!” Jesus said, “If? There are no ‘ifs’ among believers. Anything can happen.” No sooner were the words out of his mouth than the father cried, “Then I believe. Help me with my doubts!”
(Mark 9:22-24, MSG)

*** *** *** ***

Is it possible to be filled with faith and doubt at the same time? Yes!

You can have faith that God wants you to do something and still be scared to death. Courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is going ahead and doing what you’re called to do in spite of your fear.

You have to begin with the faith you already have: it may be just a little, but you start there. A beautiful example of this is the story of the man who brought his sick son to Jesus in Mark 9. Jesus looked at the man and said, “I can heal your son. If you will believe, I will heal him.”

The father then makes a classic statement: “Lord, I do believe. Help me overcome my unbelief.”

Have you ever felt like that? “Lord, I have some faith. But I also have some doubts.” This man was filled with faith and doubt, yet despite his honest doubts, he went ahead and asked Jesus for a miracle. And he got his miracle – Jesus healed his son.

No matter how weak or how frail you think your faith is, it’s enough. It’s enough to get you through what you’re facing, and it’s enough to complete the vision God has planted in your heart.

Matthew 17:20 says, “If you have faith as small as the mustard seed . . . nothing will be impossible to you.” (NIV) That’s not a lot of faith; in fact, it’s just a little faith. But what else does that verse teach? “If you have faith as the mustard seed, you can say to the mountain, ‘Move’ and it will be moved.”

Mustard seed faith moves mountains. Don’t get this reversed. We like to read this verse backward. We want it to say, “If you have faith like a mountain you can move a mustard seed” – as if it takes enormous faith to do a very little task.

God wants you to start with the faith you have, and based on the example of the mustard seed, you don’t need a whole lot of faith to do great things for God. You just need a little.

What does this mean?

• Everybody has faith – You had faith this morning when you ate your cereal – faith that your spouse didn't put poison in your granola! You had faith when you sat down in your computer chair – faith that it wouldn’t collapse.

• Everybody has faith; the difference is what you put your faith in – Sometimes people will say they don’t want to go to church or make a commitment to Christ until they understand it all. Believe in this trustworthy equation: Little faith + Big God = Huge results. You take your little faith, “Lord, I believe! Help me with my unbelief!” You put it in our big God, and then he’ll show you how he works out huge results....... Rick Warren
  

စာေရးရက်ိဳးနပ္ပါျပီ။

က်မတို႕ရဲ႕ ကမၻာေျမ

ႏွစ္စဥ္နွစ္တိုင္း ဧျပီလ (၂၂) ရက္ေန႕ကို ၁၉၇၀ ခုနွစ္မွာ စတင္ခဲ့တဲ့ ေခတ္သစ္ ပတ္ဝန္းက်င္ လႈပ္ရွားမူ႕ရဲ႕ နွစ္ပတ္လည္ အျဖစ္ ျပဳလုပ္က်င္းပ ပါတယ္။ အဲဒါကို ကမာၻေျမၾကီးေန႕ လို႕သတ္မွတ္ၾကတာ ယခုခ်ိန္ထိတိုင္ေအာင္ပါဘဲ။

ဝက္စကြန္ ( Wisconsin)ရဲ႕ အေမရိကန္လြတ္ေတာ္အမတ္ ေဂေလာဒ့္ နယ္လ္ဆင္ ( Gaylord Nelson) မွ အေမရိကန္ရဲ႕ နိုင္ငံေရး သမိုင္းေၾကာင္းမွသည္ ကမာၻ တခုလံုးသိနားလည္ေအာင္ တင္ျပေဆြးေႏြးခဲ့ရာမွ စတင္ခဲ့ျခင္းျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ စီးပြားေရး လုပ္ငန္းရွင္မ်ား ပိုင္ဆိုင္ေသာ စက္ရုံၾကီးမွ ဓါတ္ေငြ႕၊ေလာင္စာ၊ အညစ္အေၾကးမ်ား၊ စည္းမဲ့၊ကမ္းမဲ့ စြန္႕ပစ္ျခင္း၏ ရလာဒ္ဆိုးမ်ားမွ ကိုလ်စ္လွ်ဴရႈေနေသာ လူမ်ားကလည္း ပတ္ဝန္းက်င္ ထိန္းသိမ္းေရး အေၾကာင္းမ်ားကို ေျပာေသာျငားလည္း ညေနခင္းရဲ႕ သာမန္ သတင္းတခု အျဖစ္သာ နားေထာင္ေလ့ရွိပါတယ္။ ထိုသို႕ေသာ အေျခအေနမွ ၁၉၇၀ ခုနွစ္မွာကမာၻတခုလံုးက ပါဝင္လႈပ္ရွားလာခဲ့ျခင္းျဖစ္ပါတယ္။

ဧျပီလ (၂၂) ရက္ေန႕မွာ သန္းေပါင္း၂၀ေလာက္ရွိတဲ့ အေမရိကန္ျပည္သူလူထုက လမ္း၊ ပန္းျခံ၊ ခန္းမေတြမွာ က်န္းမာေရးနဲ႕ ညီညြတ္ေစတဲ့ ပတ္ဝန္းက်င္ကို ဘယ္လိုဘယ္ပံုတည္ေဆာက္ရတယ္ဆိုတာကို လက္ေတြ႕ျပ၊ ပါဝင္လႈပ္ရွားမႈ႕မ်ား ျပဳလုပ္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ေျမာက္ျမားစြာေသာ ေကာလိပ္၊ တကၠသိုလ္မ်ားကလည္း ပတ္ဝန္းက်င္ ညစ္ညမ္းမႈ႕မွ ရရွိနုိင္ေသာဆိုးက်ိဳးမ်ားကို တင္ျပ၊ လႈပ္ရွားမႈ႕မ်ားတြင္ ကိုယ္တိုင္ပါဝင္ခဲ့ ပါတယ္။

ေလာင္စာဆီယိုမႈ႕၊ သဘာဝေတာေတာင္ ဆံုးရႈံးျခင္း၊ ဓါတ္ေငြ႕ညစ္ညမ္းမႈ႕၊ ေနအိမ္မ်ားမွ ေရစီးေမွ်ာမႈ႕ စသည္တို႕သည္ သဘာဝ ေလာင္စာ၊ တြင္းထြက္မ်ား၊ ကမာၻေျမၾကီးတခုလံုးကို ပ်က္စီးေစပါတယ္ ဒါကို ထိန္းသိမ္းျပီး၊ ျပန္လည္အသံုးခ်နိုင္ဖို႕ အေၾကာင္းအရာမ်ားကို တင္ျပ၊ ရွင္းလင္းျပခဲ့ၾကပါတယ္။ နယ္လ္ဆင္ ကိုယ္တုိင္ကလည္း အရပ္သူမ်ားကိုခ်ီးျမွင့္တဲ့ ဆုတံဆိပ္မွ (Presidential Medal of Freedom ) အျမင့္ဆံုးဆုတံဆိပ္ကို ခ်ီးျမွင့္ျခင္းခံရခဲ့ပါတယ္။

၁၉၉၀ ခုႏွစ္မွာ ကမာၻေျမၾကီးေန႕ဟာ ကမာၻ တဝွမ္းထိေအာင္ က်ယ္ျပန္႕ခဲ့ျပီး၊ နိုင္ငံေပါင္း (၁၄၁) နိုင္ငံ ပါဝင္တဲ့ လႈပ္ရွားမႈ႕ၾကီးျဖစ္ခဲ့ ပါတယ္။ စြန္႕ပစ္ ပစၥည္းမ်ားကို ျပန္လည္ အသံုးခ်ျခင္းဆိုတဲ့ အရာက ၁၉၉၂ ခုနွစ္ ကစတင္ေဆာင္ရြက္ေနၾကတာ၊ ဒီေန႕ဒီခ်ိန္ထိတိုင္ေအာင္ပါဘဲ။

အေမရိကန္ သန္းေခါင္စရင္းအရ ၁၈၀၀ ခုနွစ္မွာ ကမာၻတခုလံုး လူဦးေရ ၁ ကုေဋရွိခဲ့တယ္၊ ၁၉၂၂ ခုနွစ္မွာ ၂ ကုေဋ၊ ၂၀၀၀ ခုနွစ္မွာ ၆ ကုေဋရွိေနပါျပီ၊ ဤအေျခအေနအရ ဆိုရင္ ၂၀၅၀ ခုႏွစ္တြင္ လူဦးေရေပါင္း ၉ ကုေဋ ျဖစ္လာေတာ့မွာပါ၊ ျပီးေတာ့လူတေယာက္စီဟာလည္း သဘာဝေျမၾကီးမွ သယံဇာတ၊ တြင္းထြက္ပစၥည္းမ်ား ကို ၁၉၅၀ ခုႏွစ္မွာ လူတေယာက္ သံုးခဲ့တာရဲ႕ ၂၅% ဘဲသံုးရေတာ့မွာျဖစ္ပါတယ္၊ က်မတို႕ရဲ႕ ေနာင္လာေနာက္သားေတြ အတြက္က်မတို႕ဘယ္လို၊ ဘာေတြ ျပင္ဆင္ထားသင့္ပါသလဲ။ ေကာလိပ္ပညာသင္စရိတ္၊ မဂၤလာေဆာင္စရိတ္၊ အိမ္ဝယ္ေပးဖို႕စရိတ္ ေတြစုေဆာင္းေပးေနတဲ့ ခ်ိန္မွာ သန္႕ရွင္းေသာ ပတ္ဝန္းက်င္၊ ေရ၊ သဘာဝ ဓါတ္ေငြ႕၊ ေလာင္စာဆီ၊ ဓါတ္စာျပည့္ေသာ ကမာၻေျမၾကီး ကိုခ်န္ထားေပးနိုင္ေအာင္ လုပ္ဖို႕မေမ့ရင္ဘဲ အိပ္ေရးပ်က္ခံျပီး ဤစာကိုေရးရက်ိဳးနပ္ပါျပီ။ http://green.yahoo.com/earth-day ဒါေလးကို လက္ေဆာင္အျဖစ္ေတာ့ ခ်န္ထားလိုက္တယ္။

ပိုလီဂမ္မစ္ (Polygamist)

FLDS ဘုရားေက်ာင္းဝင္း

FLDS အမ်ိဳးသမီးမ်ား ( ဂါ၀န္ရွည္မ်ားျဖင့္ )

ခုတေလာ အလုပ္လုပ္လည္းဒီစိတ္၊ သြားလည္းဒီစိတ္၊ တနုံနုံနဲ႕ ရင္ထဲမွာ ကလိကလိ ျဖစ္ေနလို႕ မေနနိုင္ မထိုင္နိုင္ ဒီေၾကာင္းေလးကို ေရးလိုက္ျခင္းျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ အေမရိကန္္၊ တက္ကဆက္ျပည္နယ္၊ အလ္ဒိုရာဒို ျမိဳ႕မွာ ျဖစ္ပြားခဲ့တဲ့ အေၾကာင္းေလးပါ၊ ဘေလာဂ့္ဂါ ေမာင္နွမေတြ စိတ္ဝင္စားလိမ့္မယ္ လို႕ယံုၾကည္ စြာျပန္လည္ လက္ဆင့္ ကမ္းလိုက္တာပါ။

ေနာက္ပိုင္းတက္ကဆပ္ (Texas) ျပည္နယ္က၊ အလ္ဒိုရာဒို (Eldorado) ျမိဳ႕ေလးမွာ မိန္းမ( ဇနီး အျဖစ္ေသာ္၄င္း) ေျမာက္ ျမားစြာယူလို႕ရတဲ့ ဘာသာေရး အသင္းတခုက အသက္မျပည့္ေသးေသာ္ အမ်ိဳးသမီး (၁၈ နွစ္ေအာက္) ေတြကို အသက္ ၅၀ ေက်ာ္ အဖိုးၾကီးမ်ားနဲ႕ လက္ဆက္ေပးျခင္းမ်ား လုပ္ေနၾကပါတယ္။ တခ်ိဳ႕ကို မိဘမ်ား ကိုယ္တိုင္က လက္ဆက္ေပးတာပါ။ မိဘစကား၊ ဘာသာေရး ေခါင္းေဆာင္ေတြရဲ႕ စကားကို မလိုက္နာတဲ့သူေတြက အသင္းေတာ္ကိုဆန္႕က်င္ျပီး၊ ေကာင္းကင္ဘံုကို မေရာက္ဘူးလို႕ ခံယူထားၾကတယ္။

အဲဒီဘာသာေရး အသင္းၾကီးက ဘယ္လိုပံု ဘယ္လိုနည္းနဲ႕ တက္ကဆပ္ျပည္နယ္ကို ေရာက္လာသလဲဆိုရင္ လြန္ခဲ့ေသာ ေလးနွစ္ေလာက္က အလ္ဒိုရာဒိုျမိဳ႕၊ ရွက္လီခ်ယ္ (Schleicher County) ေက်းရြာကို ဂါဝန္ရွည္ဝတ္ေသာ အမ်ိဳးသမီးမ်ား၊ ေရွးေခာတ္ဆန္ေသာ အဝတ္မ်ားနွင့္ အမ်ိဳးသားမ်ား၊ ကေလးမ်ား ေျပာင္းေရႊ႕လာၾကပါတယ္၊ ယူတာနဲ႕ အာရီဇိုးနား ျပည္နယ္ဘက္ ကေနေျပာင္းေရႊ႕လာၾကတယ္လို႕ ဆိုပါတယ္။ ယူတာျပည္နယ္မွာ အမ်ားဆံုးျဖစ္တဲ့ မာမြန္ ဘာသာေရးဂုိဏ္းမွ ခြဲထြက္သြားၾကသူမ်ားလို႕ ဆိုၾကပါတယ္။ မာမြန္ေတြက လူတေယာက္ မိန္းမ ေျမာက္ျမားစြာယူတဲ့ စံနစ္ကိုလက္ကိုင္ထားတာေလ၊ အစိုးရကိုနယ္ေျမ သတ္မွတ္ေပးဖို႕ေတာင္းဆိုတယ္၊ ဒါကို အေမရိကန္ အစိုးရကလည္း မိန္းမေျမာက္ျမားစြာ ယူတဲ့စံနစ္ကို ဖ်က္သိမ္းဖို႕ ျပန္လည္ေတာင္းဆိုျပီး နွစ္ဘက္ သေဘာတူညီမႈ႕ကို ၁၈၉၀ ခုနွစ္ မွာရယူ ဆံုးျဖတ္ၾကတယ္၊ ဒီလိုလုပ္တာကို မွားတယ္လို႕ ယူဆသူမ်ားက သပ္သပ္ခြဲထြက္ျပီး တက္ကဆပ္ျပည္နယ္ဘက္သို႕ ေရႊ႕ေျပာင္းသြားတယ္လို႕ဆိုပါတယ္။ မိန္းမေျမာက္ျမားစြာယူျခင္းက အေမရိကန္ရဲ႕ တရားဥပေဒနဲ႕ ဆန္႕က်င္ပါတယ္၊ တရားဝင္ကြာရွင္းျပီးမွ ဆိုရင္ေတာ့ ေနာက္တေယာက္ကို လက္ထပ္လို႕ ရတာေပါ့။

လူဦးေရ ၂၈၀၀ ခန္႕သာရွိတဲ့ ေက်းရြာေလးက ေဖာ္ေရႊစြာနဲ႕ ကိတ္၊ ပန္းျခင္းမ်ားနဲ႕သြားေရာက္ မိတ္ဖြဲ႕ခဲ့ေပမဲ့ လူသစ္မ်ားဟာ တုန္႕ျပန္မႈ႕ မရွိသလို၊ လာေရာေနွာျခင္းလည္း မရွိၾကဘူး၊ ဧကေပါင္း ၁၇၀၀ ေက်ာ္ရွိတဲ့ နယ္ေျမမွာ သီးသန္႕ေနၾကပါတယ္။ အဲဒီေဒသက ဒီလိုနယ္ေျမေတြကို သားေကာင္ေတြပစ္ခတ္ဖို႕၊ ထိန္းသိမ္းဖို႕၊ ကိုယ္ပိုင္လမ္းသြယ္ေတြေဖာက္ဖို႕၊ အပန္းေျဖစခန္းမ်ားေဆာက္ဖို႕ ဝယ္ယူလို႕ရပါတယ္။ အရင္ကလည္း ဆီကုပဏီေတြက ဒီလိုဘဲလုပ္လာၾကတာ၊ သူတို႕က ကိုယ္ပိုင္လုပ္ငန္းလုပ္ဖို႕လို႕ ဆိုၾကေပမဲ့ေနာက္မွ သူတို႕ရဲ႕စစ္မွန္တဲ႕ ရည္ရြယ္ခ်က္ကို ေက်းရြာကလူေတြသိၾကတာေလ။ ဒါေၾကာင့္အသစ္ေရာက္လာေသာ လူအုပ္စုၾကီးကလည္း ဧကေပါင္းေျမာက္ျမားစြာကို ဝယ္ယူနိုင္ခဲ့တာေပါ့။ အိမ္ေဆာင္၊ အေဆာက္အဦးမ်ားကို ျပင္ပ ကအင္ဂ်င္နီယာေတြကို ေခၚယူျပီးေဆာက္လုပ္ ေနထိုင္ၾကပါတယ္။
ဒီလိုသီးသန္႕ ဘယ္သူနဲ႕မွလည္း သြားေရာက္ေရာေနွာျခင္း မျပဳဘဲ ဘာသာေရးဂိုဏ္း Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints or FLDS ( အေျခခံက်ေသာ ေယရူအသင္းေတာ္၏ ယေန႕ေခတ္ကာလ ပေရာဖက္မ်ား၊ အက္ဖ္အလ္ဒီအက္စ္) တခုအေနနဲ႕ သီးျခားကမာၻ တခုလို ေနလာခဲ့တာ၊ ဧျပီလ ပထမပတ္ထိေအာင္ ပါဘဲ။ အေမရိကန္ အစိုးရအေနနဲ႕ကလည္း ဝင္ေရာက္ဖက္စြက္ျခင္း မျပဳဘူး၊ ဝါးေဆာ(ေနာက္မွ အခြင့္ၾကံဳရင္ ေဖာ္ျပပါအံုးမည္) အေရးကလည္း ျဖစ္ခဲ့ဘူးတာကိုး၊ အဲဒီလို အျဖစ္အပ်က္မ်ိဳး ထပ္အျဖစ္မခံနိုင္ေတာ့ဘူးေလ။

ဧျပီလ ပထမပတ္မွာ အေမရိကန္ အစိုးရနဲ႕ အက္ဘီအိုင္ (FBI) တို႕က အက္ဖ္အလ္ဒီအက္စ္ ျခံဝင္းကို ဝင္စီး၊ အထဲမွာရွိေနတဲ့ ကေလး ေပါင္း ၄၁၆ ေယာက္ကို ျခံဝင္းက်ယ္ၾကီးကေနျပီး မိဘမ်ားရဲ႕ ရင္ခြင္မွ အစိုးရရဲ႕ အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္မႈ႕ေအာက္မွာထိန္းသိမ္းထားလိုက္ပါတယ္၊ အေၾကာင္းရင္းက အသက္မျပည့္ေသးေသာ္ မိန္းကေလး တဦး (၁၆ နွစ္) က နယ္ေျမမွာရွိတဲ့ အေရးေပၚဖုန္းလိုင္းကိုေခၚ ပါတယ္၊ သူမရဲ႕ အသက္၅၀ ရြယ္ လင္ေယာက်ာ္းက နွိပ္စက္ေနတယ္ဆိုလို႕ပါ။ (ဒါေပမဲ့ အဲဒီဖုန္းေခၚသူ ကေလးမကို ခုထိရွာမေတြ႕ေသးပါဘူး။ )
ကေလးေတြက သံုးပံု နွစ္ပံုက အသက္ေလးနွစ္ေအာက္မ်ား ျဖစ္ျပီး က်န္တဲ့သူမ်ားက ၁၇နွစ္ ေအာက္မ်ားျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ကေလးေတြကိုအေမဘယ္သူလဲ ဆိုေတာ့ ဖခင္ျဖစ္သူ၏ ဇနီးအားလံုးကို အေမဟု ေခၚျပီး၊ က်န္တဲ့ ေယာက္်ားမွန္သမွ်ကို ဦးေလးလို႕ ေခၚေနတာေၾကာင့္ ဘယ္ကေလးက ဘယ္သူ႕ရဲ႕ေသြး ဆိုတာေျပာဖို႕ အခက္ေတြ႕ေနတယ္လို႕ တက္ကဆပ္ျပည္နယ္၊ တာဝန္ရွိလူမူဝန္ထမ္းမ်ားက ဆိုပါတယ္။

ဧျပီလ ၁၄ရက္ေန႕ကေတာ့ တရားရင္ဆိုင္ၾကပါတယ္၊ တဖက္က မိဘမ်ားနွင့္ ေရွ႕ေနမ်ား၊ တဖက္က အစိုးရ လူမူဝန္ထမ္းမ်ားနွင့္ ေရွ႕ေနမ်ား၊ ေရွ႕ေန အေယာက္ ၁၀၀ ေလာက္စုရုံးေနတဲ့ တရားခြင္ၾကီးက အေမရိကန္ျပည္ရဲ႕ ပထမဆံုးနဲ႕ ဆူညံပြက္ေလာ အရုိက္ဆံုး တရားခြင္ၾကီးျဖစ္ခဲ့ ပါတယ္။ တရားသူၾကီးခ်ဳပ္ကိုယ္တိုင္က ေတာ္ေတာ္ ကိုထက္ျမက္ျပီး ပိုလီယိုေရာဂါေၾကာင့္ ခုခ်ိန္ထိ၊ ေျခေထာက္ကို သံစြပ္ျပီး ေလွ်ာက္ေနရတဲ့သူပါ၊ အေကာင္းဆံုးျဖစ္ေအာင္ စီရင္ခ်က္ခ်မယ္လို႕ ဂတိျပဳလိုက္တဲ့ သူပါ။ တနလၤာေန႕ကေတာ့ ကေလး၊ မိဘ အားလံုးရဲ႕ ဒီအင္ေအ ကိုယူျပီး၊ ဘယ္သူက ဘယ္သူနဲ႕ သက္ဆိုင္တယ္၊ ဆိုတာေတြကို အရင္စစ္ေဆးမယ္လို႕ဆိုလိုက္တယ္။ ဒီ အေတာအတြင္းေတာ့ သက္ဆိုင္ရာ အစိုးရ၊ လူမူဝန္ထမ္းေတြကဘဲ ကေလးေတြကို ေစာင့္ေရွာက္ရမွာျဖစ္တယ္။ မိဘေတြအေနနဲ႕ ကေလးကို ျပန္လည္ေခၚယူခြင့္ ရွိမရွိ ဆိုတာကိုေတာ့၊ ဒီအင္ေအ အေျဖရမွဘဲ၊ ကာယအားျဖင့္ ေသာ္၎၊ စိတ္ဓာတ္အားျဖင့္ေသာ္၎၊ နွိပ္စက္ခံရျခင္း ရွိမရွိ ဆိုတဲ့အေပၚ မူတည္လိမ့္မယ္ လို႕ ေျပာၾကားထားပါတယ္။ အေျဖရဖို႕ဆိုတာကလည္း တလေလာက္ေတာ့ၾကာအံုးမွာျဖစ္ပါတယ္။

တရားခြင္ အျပန္

သာမန္အားျဖင့္ေတာ့ ဒါဟာသတင္းတပုဒ္ပါဘဲ၊ ဒါေပမဲ့က်မရင္ထဲမွာ ေအာ္ျပီးေမးလိုက္ခ်င္တယ္ အေမလုပ္တဲ့သူမ်ားကို။ ေယာက်ာ္းျဖစ္သူမ်ားက ေကာင္းကင္ဘံုကိုေရာက္ဖို႕ မိန္းမေျမာက္ျမားစြာယူျပီးထား၊ ဒါကိုျဖည့္စြမ္းေပးျခင္းအားျဖင့္ သူတို႕က ေကာင္းကင္ဘံုေရာက္ေရာလား၊ ကမာၻဦးက်မ္း ၃း ၁၆ မွာေဖာ္ျပထားတာ ကိုလြဲမွားစြာ ဆြဲသံုးေနၾကတာလား၊ ေမြးလာတဲ့ ကေလးမ်ားဟာ အိုင္ကရူ ၂၅ ရဲ႕ေအာက္ကေန တက္မလာတာကိုေရာ သတိထားမိရဲ႕လား၊ ကေလးမ်ားဟာ အေဖတူျပီး အေမကြဲတဲ့ ညီအစ္ကို၊ ေမာင္နွမ အေယာက္၂၀ ထက္မနည္းရွိေနၾကတာကိုေရာ အမွတ္မွရၾကရဲ႕လားလို႕ေလ၊ ဘာသာေရးဆိုတာကို ခုတံုးလုပ္ျပီး၊ ကိုယ့္စိတ္ဓာတ္ အာသာေျဖေနၾကေသာသူမ်ား လို႕ဘဲ ေအာ္ေျပာလိုက္ခ်င္ေတာ့တယ္။ အေမရိကန္ ျပည္ေထာင္စုၾကီးက လင္ေယာက်ာ္း မရွိဘဲ ကေလးေမြးလို႕ရွိရင္ ေထာက္ပံ့ေၾကးမ်ားေပးတတ္တာကို အလြဲသံုးစား လုပ္ေနၾကတာလား။ ေျပာၾကေပေတာ့ အျမင္ေတြ။

Trust Me, I’m A Reporter

တမန္ေတာ္တို႕သည္ သက္ေသခံ၍ သခင္ဘုရား၏ ႏႈတ္ကပတ္တရားေတာ္ကို ေဟာျပီးမွ၊ ေယရုရွလင္ျမိဳ႕ သို႕ျပန္သြားရာ၊ ရွမာရိရြာ မ်ားတို႕၌လည္းဧဝံေဂလိ တရားကို ေဟာေျပာ၏။ တဖန္ ထာဝရ၏ ေကာင္းကင္ တမန္ သည္ ဖိလိပုအား၊ သင္ထ၍ ေယရုရွလင္ျမိဳ႕မွ ဂါဇ ျမိဳ႕သို႕ သြာရာ ေတာလမ္းတြင္ ေတာင္မ်က္နွာ သိ္ု႕ သြားေလာ့ဟုုဆိုသည္ အတိုင္း၊ ဖိလိပုသည္ ထ၍ သြားေလ၏။ ထို အခါ အဲသေယာပိျပည္ကို အစိုးရေသာ မိဖုရားကႏၵက္ထံ၌ ဘုန္ၾကီးေသာ အမတ္ျဖစ္၍ ဘ႑ာေတာ္ရွိသမွ်ကို အုပ္စိုးရေသာ အဲသေယာပိျပည္သားတေယာက္သည္ ကိုးကြယ္ျခင္းအလိုငွါ ေယရုရွလင္ျမိဳ႕သို႕သြား၍ ျပန္စဥ္တြင္မိမိရထားေပၚ၌ ထိုင္လ်က္ ပေရာဖက္ ေဟရွာယ၏က်မ္းစာကိုဘတ္ေလ၏။ “And they stopped in many Samaritan villages along the way to preach the Good News to them, too. As for Philip, an angel of the Lord said to him, ‘Go south down the desert road that runs from Jerusalem to Gaza .’ So he did, and he met the treasurer of Ethiopia , a eunuch of great authority under the queen of Ethiopia . The eunuch had gone to Jerusalem to worship, and he was now returning. Seated in his carriage, he was reading aloud from the book of the prophet Isaiah.” Acts 8:25b–28 (NLT)

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There is an old joke among journalists about a beginning reporter sent to do a story about a town meeting. He comes back a few hours later with sooty smudges on his face, and he tells his editor that there’s nothing to report about the meeting.

The editor asks why, and the young reporter says the meeting never took place because the town hall burned to the ground. And wiping the soot from his face, he says, “Some of us barely got out with our lives!”

He’d missed a story far more important than the town meeting because he didn’t yet understand the need for a reporter to be flexible. Journalists must be willing to drop everything they’re doing at a moment’s notice in order to chase after a new story that comes with a higher priority.

As Jesus-people, we need to develop a similar flexibility. We can plan and prepare, but when God tells us to head in a different direction, we should set aside our agenda and join God where He’s calling us to work.

In the case of Philip, he was on the way back to Jerusalem with some of the other disciples, and every town they stopped in along the way, people were coming to know Jesus. But God told Philip to take a different route, and in his obedience, he found God already working within the treasurer of Ethiopia .

What does this mean?

· Plan, prepare, but remain flexible – When God disrupts your plans, His agenda takes priority over your own. Ask God to give you discernment in these moments and to help you develop obedience. Thank God for His patience because He knows you’re learning and growing.

· Flexibility is part of growing into Christlikeness – ^“Then Jesus replied, ‘I assure you: The Son is not able to do anything on His own, but only what He sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, the Son also does these things in the same way. For the Father loves the Son and shows Him everything He is doing, and He will show Him greater works than these so that you will be amazed.” (John 5:19–20, HCSB)

· The Holy Spirit will teach this flexibility – Working from inside of you, the Holy Spirit will guide you as you move forward in faithful flexibility. “When the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all the truth. For He will not speak on His own, but He will speak whatever He hears. He will also declare to you what is to come.” (John 16:13, HCSB)

· Be encouraged – God is for you, not against you....... Jon Walker

The “God-Chip” Empowerment

ဆုေတာင္းေသာ အခ်က္ဟူမူကား ဝိညာဥ္ေတာ္ အားျဖင့္ သင္တုိ႕၏ အတြင္းလူကို ခြန္အားနွင့္ ျမဲျမံေစ၍။ ( ဧဖက္ၾသဝါဒစာ ၃း ၁၆)

“I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will give you mighty inner strength through his Holy Spirit.” Ephesians 3:16 (NLT)

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God empowers you to successfully do everything he asks to do. He gives you abilities to use in service to others, and he transforms you inwardly with a growing desire to serve others.

The Holy Spirit within gives you the ability to tune into God, to hear him, to listen to him – and to talk with him. Please hear this: he didn’t create you for failure; he created you to succeed with the Holy Spirit energizing your abilities and empowering your efforts.

Perhaps you’ve noticed the small stickers on many computers that say, “Powered by [‘this-brand-of’ chip].” In a sense, you have the “God-chip” powering your life as a follower of Christ; you are empowered by the one and only, Holy God, who’s placed his Holy Spirit within you.

God designed you to succeed, but only when you’re dependent upon him. Without him, you simply will not succeed in the things God calls important and calls you to do. With him, you’re guaranteed to succeed in all he’s called you to complete.

What does this mean?

· Trust God and succeed – In order to succeed at your God-mission, you need to trust God; in other words, believe in faith that he will empower you to succeed. Tell God your fears and ask him to replace them with faith.

· Inner strength comes from God – “I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will give you mighty inner strength through his Holy Spirit.” (Ephesians 3:16, NLT)........ Jon Walker

Wash And Rinse Faith

သခင္၊ သခင္ဟု ငါ့ကို ေလွ်ာက္ေသာသူတိုင္း ေကာင္းကင္ နိုင္ငံေတာ္ သို႕ဝင္ရလိမ့္မည္မဟုတ္။ ေကာင္းကင္ဘံု၌ ရိွေတာ္မူေသာ ငါ့ခမည္းေတာ္၏ အလိုကို ေဆာင္ေသာသူသာ လွ်င္ဝင္ရလိမ့္မည္။ "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in Heaven. Matthew 7:21 (NIV)

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Good afternoon, Mr. Watson, it’s so good to see you again. How is the washing machine working out for you? What’s that? Let me make sure I understand: You’re saying it isn’t working properly!

Okay, okay, no worries – here at the Appliance and Bible Application Center, we pride ourselves on being able to support our customers. So, tell me what’s wrong. Ah, there’s the problem, Mr. Watson. Your expectations are too high!

When you push the “start” button on any of our washers, the machine only follows that command, maybe, half the time. The fact that your washer follows your directions almost 59 percent of the time is absolutely amazing. It simply isn’t going to get any better than that, and really, Mr. Watson – (whispers) we shouldn’t expect too much from these washers.

Now what else is happening? Oh, right, I’ve got it – the owner’s manual says the spin cycle will always follow the wash and rinse, but you washer isn’t paying attention to “the book.” It just follows whatever sequence it wants to – oh my, so sometimes the spin cycle occurs before the clothes are even wet.

I guess, Mr. Watson, you could say the machine is sinning with its spinning! Well, yes, I meant that as a joke. Listen, I have to be honest and tell you we’ve found almost two-thirds of our washers admit they’re doing wrong when they are obedient to your commands of how to wash a load of clothes; and even though they can look at the owner’s manual as well as you or me, not very many of them will actually change what they’re doing in order to function properly.

Okay, Mr. Watson, I’m so glad I could explain everything to you. Excuse me for asking, but is that a mustard stain on your shirt? (whispers) I’m not sure your washer will serve you well with a stain like that. You may want to send that out to the cleaners.

Okay, thanks for coming by. We’ll see you next time!

What does this mean?

· The Creator’s Design – Washing machines are designed to wash. If they fail to do that, then they are being disobedient to their design and their designer. The only way to fulfill their purpose is to be obedient to their design and to deny anything that keeps them from fulfilling their purpose.

· Ask God to show you any areas in your life where you are disobedient to Him because you’re not obedient to your design. If you’re continually exhausted and stressed, it may be because you’re trying to be someone you weren’t designed to be, or you may be working at something you were never designed to attempt.

· Tell God you’ll be obedient – but also ask Him to guide you to the place of consistent obedience. “God, please help me to develop a strong, rock solid trust in you.”..... Jon Walker

A Risky Obedience

“Risk your life and get more than you ever dreamed of….” (Luke 19:26 MSG)

In order to obey God, you need to take risks.

Risk is the substance of faith because it requires you to take Step 1 before you see Step 2. Risk compels you to action, even when there seems to be no guarantee of what will be on the other side of your choice.

But it’s those risks, large and small, that God uses to stretch you from living by sight into living by faith. By taking the risk of following God, you move from a life of independence and self-direction into a life of godly dependence and Holy Spirit direction.

The irony, as we struggle with the risks associated with faith, is that we take a greater risk by remaining independent of God than we do when we take a step of faith that seems to be risky.

If we believe what we say we believe, then, regardless of what we see on the other side of our risk, the reality is God is there. What seems to be a no-guarantee situation actually comes with the greatest guarantee of all – a God-guarantee – that he is on the other side of our choices, working all things out for the good (Romans 8:28), with plans to help us and not to hurt us (Jeremiah 29:11).

· With a God-guarantee, you can enter into a risky obedience as you do things that are impossible unless God gives you his strength to do them.

· With a God-guarantee, you can enter into a risky obedience as you love other believers so deeply and so richly that you prove to the world a disciple of Christ is a reflection of God’s great love.

· With a God-guarantee, you can stretch to love your neighbors as you love yourself.

· With a God-guarantee, you can enter into a risky obedience as you change your priorities to match the priorities of Jesus.

· With a God-guarantee, you can stretch to love your neighbors, knowing they live throughout all nations where you’re to go and baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything Jesus commanded believers to do.

What does this mean?

· Safe outside the boat –I have a drawing of Jesus walking on the water during a storm; the disciples are cowered in a fishing boat. I look at it and ask, “Where is the safest place to be?” The obvious answer seems to be “the boat.” But the truth is, the safest place in that storm is standing next to Jesus. We only think the boat is safer.

· Safest steps – Work toward seeing faith steps as the safest steps you can take. What seems like a risk is actually a step supported by the one, true, all-powerful, all-knowing, awesome God, who is wiser than the best of man’s wisdom and stronger than the best of man’s strength.

· Live faithfully – As Rick Warren says in The Purpose Driven Life, if what you are doing doesn’t require faith, then you are living faithlessly. Ask God to reveal where you are living without faith, and trust him to gently guide you toward the place of risky obedience.......Jon Walker

Give Flowers Or A Life-Long Love?

“But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice.’ For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.” Matthew 9:13 (NKJV)

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He cradled the roses in his left arm like a running back carries a football ( U.S. ). He debated with himself over which would be best: a solitary rose or a dozen roses wrapped with baby’s breath. He went for the dozen, thinking the more, the better when you’re trying to tip the scales back toward the “nice guy” side.

So he carried 12 deep-red roses just on the edge of a beautiful bloom. They’d cost him plenty, but that’s the price you have to pay when you let someone down. Today was their anniversary. There were dinner plans, a night of romance, whispered words, tender kisses.

A wonderful, “sweet dreams are made of these” night – that he forgot. Forgot because he was under pressure at work to complete a project; forgot because he needed to do well, not just because of ambition, but because he needed a promotion. The money was tight, and he wanted to be able to support his family in a better way.

The roses were a huge expense, but it was a necessary sacrifice to make it up with his wife. He owed her more, but this could be the start of earning his way back into her favor.

Now imagine you are the one carrying the roses and you’re bringing them to Jesus. You’re offering the roses as a “sacrifice” to compensate for your bad behavior, for your sin.

But Jesus says he doesn’t want the roses, not if they’re delivered with the intention of making up for your mess up. He says, in effect, “I want your surrendered heart. I’d rather have your surrendered and obedient heart instead of a heroic sacrifice meant to earn my forgiveness and love.” (God may call you to some heroic sacrifice, but the difference is doing what God says to do as an act of obedience, not an offering of guilt.)

In Matthew 9:13, Jesus is referring to Hosea 6:6 – “For I desire mercy and not sacrifice, And the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings.” (NKJV) He wants our love and obedience; He wants us to be one with His agenda. He’d rather have our lifelong love than a dozen roses.

Eugene Peterson suggests it could be explained this way: “… ‘I prefer a flexible heart to an inflexible ritual.’” (Matthew 12:7, MSG) The sacrifice Jesus wants is a contrite heart, flexible and obedient, wholly and totally surrendered to Him.

What does this mean?

· Give God your flexible heart – You can’t make God love you more and you can’t do anything that will make Him love you less. You are already forgiven; it is a gift that Jesus already paid for through His death and resurrection. Ask God to guide you into developing a flexible heart. Give God your heart, surrendered and submitted to Him.

· Consider Psalm 51 – Read through Psalm 51, where David comes before God to confess His sin with Bathsheba. David understood that God didn’t want a “guilt offering”; rather, He wanted to create a clean heart within David.....Jon Walker

“It Is Finished”

With a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last. The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. Mark 15:37-38 (NIV)

When he had received the drink, Jesus said, “It is finished.” With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. John 19:30 (NIV)

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When Jesus died on the cross, his work of redemption was complete. Matthew, Mark, and Luke say he gave out a loud cry as he died, but John adds the detail of what Jesus said in that moment: “It is finished.”

Jesus, a carpenter most likely familiar with buying and selling, used a business term that could be rendered, “Paid in Full.”

It is finished. It is paid in full.

Jesus completed the work required to bring us back into communion with God. No other work is required. We cannot do anything to further the work of Jesus, and, even if we somehow could, there is no need to do so.

The picture is this: Jesus, having completed his mission, gives a victory shout. It’s a shout emerging from his joy – not an “I’m glad this is over” but more like a good and faithful son hearing his father say, “It’s done, well done!”

Jesus responds with this glorious shout, “It is finished!” The victory is won; the captives are free to come home.

Then to signify that this singular path to peace with God was now open, the “curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom” (Mark 15:38, NIV; see also Matthew 27 and Luke 23).

“For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross” (Colossians 1:19-20, NIV).

What does this mean?

· It is finished – The work of Jesus Christ was complete and finished on the cross. There is no other redemptive work required to make peace with God.

· The father heart of God – My focus in the “Jesus in Hell” devotional was on the father heart of God. God loves you from the bottom of his heart, and his heart is bottomless.

· Separation from God – The gospel writer, Mark, reported “at the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, ‘Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?’—which means, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’” (Mark 15:34, NIV) From this, it would appear Jesus was, briefly, separated from the Father. If you believe in the reality of hell, as I do, or if you see it as a figurative expression, the real horror is eternal separation from God. The work of Jesus created a bridge across that separation, allowing us to make peace with God and to cross into eternity with him (Colossians 1:19-23).

· Jesus holds the keys – The Bible says Jesus descended into the place of the dead, most likely to proclaim his victory over death and sin (Matthew 12:40). On the morning of his resurrection, Jesus told Mary, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet returned to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God’” (John 20:17, NIV). He later told John, “I hold the keys of death and Hades” (Revelation 1:18, NIV). Jesus, and Jesus alone, holds the resurrection power that bring us into eternity with God.

· Prayer for Devotionals – God is leading me to spend more time in prayer over these devotionals. As you think of it, would you also pray that I say only what God wants me to say, and that I write in such a way that God’s truth is always clear? My desire is to be a faithful teacher of biblical truth in order to push us, myself included, closer to the heart of God.....Jon Walker

A Toddler’s First Steps

And climbing out of the boat, Peter started walking on the water and came toward Jesus. But when he saw the strength of the wind, he was afraid. And beginning to sink he cried out, “Lord, save me!” Immediately Jesus reached out His hand, caught hold of him, and said to him, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” Matthew 14:29–31 (HCSB)

*** *** *** ***

The disciples are over a mile from shore as a violent storm moves across the Sea of Galilee . All eyes are on a ghostly figure walking toward their boat. And then Jesus, walking on the water, says, “It is I.”

Bold and brash, Peter says, “Lord, if it is you, then command me to come to you on the water!”

Jesus tells Peter to come, and so the disciple steps out of the boat. He’s actually walking on the water toward Jesus! But then he remembers the storm, and he looks around at waves that seem to be taller than his own height; he hears the wind howling like a freight train coming down the track.

He begins to sink into the stormed-battered sea, over a mile from shore, several feet from the boat, but within arm’s length of Jesus, who catches hold of Peter, keeping him from sinking.

Jesus says, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?”

How do you read the words of Jesus? Do you hear them as an angry rebuke, or do you hear as if they were said by a loving father, who’s just seen his small child walk for the first time?

What does this mean?

· Jesus is for you, not against you – Can you imagine a father, watching his child walk for the very first time, becoming angry because the young one stumbles and falls after just two steps? The father is for the child, encouraging each new step, ready to catch hold of the baby if she/he starts to fall. Jesus wants you to succeed when you step out in faith. He is pleased when you take steps of faith, no matter how small.

· In faith, believe Jesus is for you – Your next step of faith may be to believe, in faith, that Jesus is for you as you step out of the boat of self-reliance. If you struggle to believe Jesus is for you, and not against you, ask God to show you why? What are the roots to this perception of God-against-you? I believe, Lord; help my unbelief.

· Jesus is there to catch hold of you – If your faith falters, Jesus will reach out his hand to steady you. (Matthew 14:29–31, HCSB)..... Jon Walker

Is Jesus Capable To Manage Your Life?

“He has rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son He loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” Colossians 1:13–14 (HCSB)

*** *** *** ***

It’s been my experience that whenever there is a change of leadership, people get nervous. It could be a new boss replacing another, bringing in a different set of procedures to replace the ones that are well-worn and familiar.

It could be a change of leadership in the government. Will the new people in power change things for the better or for worse?

When Jesus pours His Spirit into our hearts, it represents a change of leadership. Before this Jesus-event, we’re in charge, making decisions independent of God; after this Jesus-event, God is in charge and we make decisions dependent upon Him. During this Jesus-event, we confess, “I can’t; God can.”

Paul describes this change in leadership as a transfer from the Devil’s domain of darkness into God’s “Kingdom of the Son He loves.” In one realm, the Devil is the despot; in the other, Jesus rules with love, redemption, and forgiveness. (Matthew 11:30)

When this transfer takes place, we face a choice: Will we submit to the God’s leadership or will we continue to make decisions based on how we did it when we were aligned with the renegade régime.

What does this mean?

· God works in you – Before you ask God to help you answer the questions below, remember that God is for you and He works within you. You are a work of His own hands, His masterpiece, and He is creating you anew to do the good things He planned for you long ago. (Ephesians 2:10, referencing NLT)

· Is Jesus capable? – Ask God to guide you as you ask these questions of yourself:

§ Do you believe Jesus is capable to lead your life?

§ Do you believe Jesus is willing to lead your life?

What does your behavior say about your beliefs? – Based upon your answers, how should you change the way you think and/or the way you behave in order to align with your beliefs? If you don’t believe Jesus is capable or willing to lead your life, ask God where that uncertainty comes from, and ask Him to help you believe. “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief” (Mark 9:24 NKJV)......Jon Walker

The Forgotten Gift

“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem , in all Judea and Samaria , and to the ends of the earth.” Acts 1:8 (HCSB)

*** *** *** ***

One day a disciple of Jesus receives one million dollars as a gift, designated to help the poor. The disciple is thankful for the gift and begins making plans for a ministry to those in need.

A year goes by, and the gift-giver returns, joyfully asking, “Tell me how you used the gift to serve God. Have people come to know Jesus through the ministry you were able to start with the money?”

Confused, the disciple of Jesus asks, “What gift?”

But as the words tumble off his lips, the disciple remembers the gift of one million dollars. He’d placed it in a bank account, and then, due to the tyranny of the urgent, he’d completely forgotten about the gift.

Disappointed, the gift-giver gently says, “I gave you the gift to help other people. When you received the gift, you also accepted the responsibility for sharing the gift with others. The gift is still there; go use it for ministry, my friend!”

When we become believers, we’re filled with the Holy Spirit. (Acts 2:1, 4) God places this gift – this Holy Spirit power – within us so we can be his witnesses in “ Jerusalem , in all Judea and Samaria , and to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 1:7-8, HCSB)

God gives us the gift of the Holy Spirit to energize our faith-walk and to allow God to work through us to love and serve others. If we don’t lean on the Holy Spirit, it is like receiving a gift we never use, or that we hide away.

What does this mean?

· God sees to your success – God didn’t just give you an assignment and then leave you to figure it out on your own. He sent the Holy Spirit to empower you. Jesus said, “And look, I am sending you what My Father promised. As for you, stay in the city until you are empowered from on high.” (Luke 24:49, HCSB)

· This Holy Spirit is Jesus in you – “Nevertheless, I am telling you the truth. It is for your benefit that I go away, because if I don’t go away the Counselor will not come to you. If I go, I will send Him to you…. He will glorify Me, because He will take from what is Mine and declare it to you.” (John 16:7, 14, HCSB)....... Jon Walker

Developing Confidence By Losing Confidence

“I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.” Philippians 4:13 (NASB)

*** *** *** ***

The secret to living with confidence is to be confident in God’s compassion and power. He is the Almighty and everlasting God, and his power and compassion are unlimited. We gain confidence by developing confidence in God and letting go of confidence in ourselves.

When we think we have to do it on our own, or when we think we are doing it on our own, we stand on an uncertain foundation, like the man who built his house upon the sand. No matter how confident we are in ourselves, eventually the rains will come, washing away our self-confidence.

But when we have God-confidence, we know – deep down – that we will always be able to approach God’s throne of grace boldly with confidence – knowing “we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it.” (Hebrews 4:16, NLT)

With God-confidence, we know we are loved and accepted by God; we know we are created and shaped by God; we know we have talents and skills given to us by God, and by understanding our true position in Christ, we can be confident that God is with us always, even unto the ends of the earth, even when we open our mouths to speak.

In faith, we can be confident, knowing God’s power is there, trusting God makes it possible for us to do “all things through Him who strengthens me.” (Philippians 4:13, NASB)

What does this mean?

· Transfer your confidence to God – Believe he is “working in you, giving you the desire to obey him and the power to do what pleases him.” (Philippians 2:13, NLT) Compare your track record to God’s and see which of you has proved to be more trustworthy. If you believe your confidence should still remain with you, ask God to help you dig deep to uncover why you believe that way. He is never upset or surprised by such honesty.

· Trust God’s Spirit is working within you – Ask God to develop within you a confidence that his Spirit will give you a supernatural power to preach good news to the poor, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives, and to release prisoners from the darkness. (Adapted from Isaiah 61:1-3)

· Why God-confidence is important to you – You may be thinking, “There’s something I’d really like to do, but I don’t think that I can do it.” This kind of thinking may keep you from even trying, but if you’re confident in God – and what he can do through your life – then there’s every reason to move forward, and no good reason to stand still.

· If you had God-confidence, how would the next few days of your life be different?...... Jon Walker

Love Is Fruit, Not Root

“We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love other believers.” 1 John 3:14 (GWT)

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Our love for others is the fruit, not the root, of our relationship with God. The Apostle John taught that our love for others emerges from our relationship with God, that anyone who is born of God and knows God will love with the love of God. (1 John 4:7, NLT)

In a sense, you could say the process of sanctification – the movement toward becoming like Jesus – involves the Eternal One’s love cleaning the clutter you’ve stuffed into the cupboards hidden inside you. God strides confidently through the dust and the grime that builds up because of our sin, and he throws open the shades and wipes down the windows until we “shine like stars in the world.” (Philippians 2:15, HCSB)

As God scrubs our insides with the cleansing blood of Jesus Christ, we pass from “death to life.” (1 John 3:14) We are transformed from people who are selective in who and how we love into people who, energized by God’s spirit, love one another abundantly and unconditionally.

In faith, we love with the love of God, and in our slow and stumbling walk toward spiritual maturity, we learn that what matters is “faith expressing itself in love.” (Galatians 5:6, NLT)

What does this mean?

· Express your faith with love – We reveal our faith when we express it as love, extending God’s unconditional love to all people, even those who are difficult to love. We express our faith with love, not by the rules we keep.

· Let God love through you – No matter how loving you try to be, you will eventually run out of love when you try to love in your own strength. Let God’s unlimited, unconditional love energize you.

· Ask for a deep “Jesus love” – Ask God to help you receive and then share his unconditional love. Name someone you specifically have trouble loving and ask God to develop in you a deep “Jesus love” for that person – a love based upon God’s strength and not your own. ....Jon Walker

Burned-out on Religion

Then Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke fits perfectly, and the burden I give you is light.” Matthew 11:28-30 (NLT)

*** *** *** ***

Jesus might have asked: “Aren’t you tired and burned-out on all that religious stuff? Look, come walk with me, and I’ll help you recover your life – your real purpose – and even though it will require some hard, very hard work, you’ll be energized by it because you’ll be living life to its fullest. You’ll be doing exactly what my Father created you to do, and more importantly, you’ll be exactly who I want you to be.”

In taking on the Jesus-yoke, he is asking us to join the school of Christ . In ancient times, when a student studied under a specific teacher, it would be said that the student took on the teacher’s yoke; the student was yoked to the master.

Within that context, consider these words from Jesus: “Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke fits perfectly, and the burden I give you is light.” (Matthew 11:29-30, NLT)

Jesus says, by walking with him, we’ll learn how to walk with God. We don’t learn from afar; we learn from a caring and committed teacher-student relationship – caring and committed on both sides.

The Christian walk is not a lesson in how to run off doing things for Jesus while we ignore him. Our Christ-walk is a journey with Jesus, where he is very personal and specific about our growth and spiritual maturity.

What does this mean?

· Are you tired? – Jesus will teach you how to find rest in God, not a rest absent of stress, but the rest that results from believing in God’s faithfulness. Ask God to show you what blocks you from believing fully in his faithfulness, and then ask him to break those blockages down.

· Are you confused? – Join Jesus at his school of Christ , and watch him, listen to him, ask him to renew your purpose.

· Ask to be teachable – Tell Jesus you want to be yoked to him, and that you want to learn from him. Ask him to keep your heart teachable.

In Pursuit Of Fairness

“The Lord is merciful and gracious; he is slow to get angry and full of unfailing love.” Psalm 103:8 (NLT)

*** *** *** ***

My kids are obsessed with fairness. They argue over who gets the biggest piece, who gets to play the computer game longest, who gets to sit next to the window. I suspect your children or the children you know are the same way.

One night during dinner, my kids were arguing over who would get the last slice of pizza and out popped the oft repeated phrase, “That’s not fair!”

Okay, it had been a long day and I was tired, so I looked at my children and said, “Fair! You want fair? Since you didn’t pay for the dinner, you shouldn’t get to eat. Are you sure you still want fair?”

But, honestly, it’s not just the kids who argue over fairness. I’m sure this doesn’t happen at your house, but sometimes my spouse and I argue over what is fair – who will change the baby’s diaper, who should make dinner, who gets to drive the “good” car.

This obsession over fairness seems to be in the human DNA: “Let me have the bigger slice;” “let me have the better salary;” “let me get away with it this time.” After all, it’s only fair, right?

We make the same arguments with God. We plead for fairness when we’re really asking for special treatment. But the truth is, God can say to us in true fairness, “I’m a Holy God and you’ve done some very unholy things. Fair would mean I can stay angry at you forever. It would mean I can punish your for the horrible things you’ve done and I can give you every bit of what you deserve. Are you sure you still want fair?”

But God, in his compassion, is not like that at all. David, the ancient poet/king, sang this song of God: “The Lord is merciful and gracious; he is slow to get angry and full of unfailing love. He will not constantly accuse us, nor remain angry forever.” (Psalm 103:8–9, NLT)

When David sings about God’s “unfailing love,” he uses a Hebrew word that implies God is in loving pursuit of us. Yahweh chases after us with such persistent grace that he refuses to let us get away. His pursuit is energized by his compassion, not only feeling what we feel, but also with the intent to help us: “He has not punished us for all our sins, nor does he deal with us as we deserve. For his unfailing love toward those who fear him is as great as the height of the heavens above the earth.” (Psalms 103:10–11, NLT)

While we’re in pursuit of fairness, God, knowing fair will mean our inevitable destruction, remains in compassionate pursuit of us.

Communicating Compassion:

· Yahweh’s unfailing love – God’s compassion flows from his unfailing, undying love for you. His love for you is so vast it extends from the earth to the heights of heaven, and his compassionate pursuit of you brings Jesus from heaven’s heights to an empty tomb on earth. If you truly trusted God’s unfailing love, how would you live your life differently? Ask God to guide you to a place of true trust.

· Do a Fairness Flip – Start practicing compassion by flipping the angle of any fairness argument. In other words, say, “You, my friend, can have the bigger piece of cake.” “Let me change the diaper again.” “Because of your addictions, you may deserve to live on the streets, but God has shown me compassion, and I want to extend the same compassion to you.”

· From fairness to unfailing love – As God develops compassion within you, he will bring you to a place where you’ll need to give up the “argument of fairness” and replace it with unfailing love. God is patient, so don’t panic or beat yourself up. Ask God to guide you toward unfailing love. .... Jon Walker

Lavish Compasion

First of all I want to let all my readers know, this post if from " Daily devotional from purpose driven life". Due to my lack of knowledge about computer, I didn't write for two days. I hope everybody will forgive me for that. Manang ni ngai hpe hkum pawt yaw.

“So he got up and went to his father. But while the son was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion. He ran, threw his arms around his neck, and kissed him.” Luke 15:20 (HCSB)

*** *** *** ***

Being a prodigal means you’re wastefully extravagant. Look up the word in the dictionary and you’re likely to see a picture of the prodigal son sitting in the mud sharing a meal with pigs – the four-legged kind. He’s dining with swine because he’s blown through his entire inheritance and only has some tattered clothes to show for it.

Yet, the older brother in the story argues that the father is the real prodigal. He complains that his father is being wastefully extravagant with his inconsiderate little brother. You can imagine what he might be thinking:

“First, this boy takes off with his inheritance, showing no concern for the family; then, when he comes back flat broke and smelling like a pig, our father starts giving him even more – like the best robe, a ring restoring his status as son, and now…Can you hear them? The old man is throwing the biggest bash of the year for my irresponsible little brother!”

What does this mean?

· The younger brother squandered God’s compassion – He asked for his inheritance, and then, “Not many days later, the younger son gathered together all he had and traveled to a distant country, where he squandered his estate in foolish living.” (Luke 15:13, HCSB)

· Give some honest thought to how you might be squandering God’s compassion. Ask God to show you any areas, and as you confess them, receive his compassionate forgiveness.

· The older brother resented God’s compassion – When his father sought him out and asked him to come join the celebration, “The son said, ‘Look how many years I’ve stayed here serving you, never giving you one moment of grief, but have you ever thrown a party for me and my friends? Then this son of yours who has thrown away your money on whores shows up and you go all out with a feast!’” (Luke 15:29-30, MSG)

· Is there a part of you that resents God giving compassion to someone else, perhaps someone who’s hurt you deeply, or someone who you see squandering his/her life? This is a painful question to answer honestly, but it is important for your spiritual growth. Give you resentment to God, receive his compassion, and then ask him to give you a godly compassion for those people.

· The father lavished God’s compassion – Without even waiting for the prodigal to finish his prepared-in-a-pigsty speech, the boy’s father responded with lavish, extravagant compassion: “The son started his speech: ‘Father, I’ve sinned against God, I’ve sinned before you; I don’t deserve to be called your son ever again.’ But the father wasn’t listening. He was calling to the servants, ‘Quick. Bring a clean set of clothes and dress him. Put the family ring on his finger and sandals on his feet.’” (Luke 15:21-22, MSG, italics added)

· From the older brother’s point of view, their father was being wastefully extravagant by giving even more to the youngest son, who, no doubt in the older brother’s mind, would just waste more. But the father was compelled by God’s compassion, not reacting to the sins of the youngest son. ........John Walker.

Nest In The Greatness!

April 6, 2008.

The Lord God.......put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it. (Genesis 2:15)

In his historical novel Chesapeake, James Michener tells the story of multiple generations living near a marsh. One character, Christ Pflaum, is introduces as a restless 13- year- old sitting in class waiting for summer break. But when the teacher reads a poem by Sidney Lanier, the boy's heart is stirred.

As the marsh-hen secretly builds on the water sod,
Be hold I will build me a nest on the greatness of God;
I will fly in the greatness of God as the marsh-hen flies
In the freedom that fills all the space 'twixt the marsh and the skies.

When Chris grew up, this poem motivated him to work tirelessly to preserve the precious wetlands and the wildlife he loved.

The poem's words stir the heart because they use nature as a spring board of praise to the Creator. But, unfortunately, our living planet can be neglected and exploited. God's mandate to Adam has been passed on to all believers. " The Lord God.... put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it" (Gen.2:15). The words tend and keep mean " to cultivate as servants."

We are to care for and guard God's creation as responsible stewards. ...... Dennis Fisher

The natural world that God has made
Must not be used at whim;
We serve as stewards of His earth,
Responsible to Him........ D.De Haan

To mistreat God's creation is to offend the Creator.

နားေညာင္းေတာ္မူေသာ ဘုရား (၂)

ဧည့္သည္ေတြကို ျမန္ျမန္ေလး အျပီးစား ခိုင္းလိုက္တယ္၊(ေျပာခ်င္တာ မေရာက္မွာစိုးလို႕) အားလံုးလည္း အာရွအစာဆိုေတာ့ စားၾကတာ တဝတျပဲဘဲ၊ ဧည့္သည္ တခ်ိဳ႕ျပန္ ေပမဲ့ မ်ားေသာအားျဖင့္ ရွိေနေသးတယ္၊ က်မက တနာရီေလာက္ ကားေမာင္းျပန္ရမွာေလ၊ ေမာလည္းေမာေနျပီ ျပန္ေတာ့မယ္ဆိုေတာ့၊ အင္း စိုက္ထားတဲ့ ေငြေတြတြက္ေပးအံုး၊ ခ်က္တခါတည္းယူသြားအံုးတဲ့။ (အၾကားခ်င္ဆံုးေပါ့) က်မကကိုယ္စိုက္ထားတဲ့ ေငြေတြတြက္ေပးလိုက္တယ္၊ က်မရဲ႕လုပ္အားခက ထည့္မေရးေပးလိုက္ဘူး၊ က်မအခ်ိန္ေတြ တြက္ျပီးေပးပါေစေပါ့၊ ခ်က္တေစာင္ရျပီးျပန္လာတယ္၊ က်မၾကည့္မေနေတာ့ဘူးေလ၊ အိမ္ေရာက္ေရာ ဖြင့္ၾကည့္လိုက္ေတာ့၊ အာ.... စိုက္ထုတ္ထားတဲ့ ေငြေတြအတြက္ဘ ဲေရးေပးလိုက္တယ္၊(ေရးတာက ေနာက္တေယာက္ပါ)၊ အင္းသူတို႕ အခ်င္းခ်င္းနားလည္မႈ႕ လြဲယံုမက၊ လုပ္ေပးတဲ့သူအတြက္ လုပ္အားခမရ။ ဒုကၡ က်မဘယ္လိုေျပာရမလဲ၊ အားနာတယ္၊ ေတာင္းရမလား၊ အီးေမးလ္နဲ႕ဘဲ ေျပာလိုက္ရမလား ဘယ္လိုစေျပာမလဲ ျပာယာခတ္ျပီ၊ အရမ္းေမာထားေတာ့၊ ရ ရမွာေပါ့ ကိုယ့္လုပ္အားခ။

က်မ မစဥ္းစားတတ္ေတာ့ဘူး၊ ေျပာရမွာလည္း အရမ္းအားနာတယ္၊ ဘုရားဆီဆုေတာင္းယံုမွ် တပါး၊ သူတို႕သတိယပါေစေပါ့၊ မနက္ဖန္ က်မကို တေယာက္ေယာက္ ဖုန္းေခၚလာပါေစ ဆုေတာင္းတယ္။ စိတ္ထဲေတာ့ ရုိးရုိး ရြရြ ဘဲ ေနထိုင္လို႕ မေကာင္းဘူး။ မနက္အလုပ္လည္း စိတ္မဝင္စားနိုင္ဘူး၊ ဆုထပ္ခါထပ္ခါေတာင္းေနမိတယ္။ ကိုးနာရီေလာက္လည္းေရာက္ေရာ၊ က်မဖုန္း ဒီဒီ ဒီ တဲ့(vibrate) လုပ္ထားတာ၊ ေခၚလာသူကို မၾကည့္မိဘူး၊ မအားလို႕၊ နားၾကပ္ထဲကဘဲ နိပ္လိုက္တယ္။ ဟဲလို.... ဟာေမွ်ာ္ေနသူပါလား၊ ေက်းဇူးဘဲ ဘုရားလို႕ အၾကိမ္ၾကိမ္ ဆိုမိတယ္။

က်မ ဒီမနက္ တေရးနုိးေတာ့စဥ္းစားတယ္၊ တခုခု မွားယြင္းေနလားလို႕တဲ့၊ မင္းေပးတဲ့စရင္းမွာ မင္းလုပ္အားခ ထည့္မထားတာ ခုမွ ေသခ်ာၾကည့္မိလို႕တဲ့၊ ဒီေန႕ သို႕မဟုတ္ မနက္ဖန္လာခဲ့မယ္၊ လာေပးမယ္တဲ့။ က်မ ယံုၾကည္ေသာဘုရားက အေသးအဖြဲက အစ က်မတို႕ ဆုေတာင္းသံကို နားေညာင္းေတာ္မူတယ္ေလ။ ဘုရားေက်းဇူးေတာ္ကို အၾကိမ္ၾကိမ္ ခ်ီးမြမ္းမိတယ္။ ဘုရားက က်မတို႕အတြက္ အစဥ္အျမဲ ရွိေနပါတယ္၊ က်မတို႕လိုအပ္တဲ့ အရာကို ေတာင္းခံ၊ ခိုကိုးဖို႕သာ လိုပါတယ္။ ဘုရားမတတ္ နိုင္တဲ့အရာ ဘယ္အရာမွ မရွိပါဘူး။ အစဥ္သတိယ ေအာင္းေမ့လွ်က္ ဘုရားထံ ခိုကိုးဖို႕သာ လိုအပ္ပါတယ္။ "ေတာင္းေလာ့ေတာင္းလွ်င္ရလိမ့္မည္၊ ( ရွင္မႆဲ ရ း ရ )"

နာမေတာ္ျမတ္၌ ....... လားရႈိးသူ

Words of Life

April 5, 2008.

Lord, t whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. John 6:68.

In his book Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, Neil Postman warns us of the danger of a world of information overload. He reminds us of a chilling futuristic vision- Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, which describes a world thoroughly flooded with information. But that data is manipulated so that none of it has any significance.

A glance at the Internet or a magazine rack hints that we are living in just such a culture. We're drowning in a sea of information often marketed by the unscrupulous. We need discernment to choose wisely whom we will listen to.

In John 6, Jesus delivered His " I am the bread of life" message ( v. 66). They chose to stop listening to the voice of Christ. When Jesus challenged His disciples as to whether they would also walk away, Peter wisely responded, " Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life" (v.68).

In a world swamped with confusing and contradictory information, we can, like Peter, turn to Christ for wisdom. He cuts through the words of confusion with words of life...... Bill Crowder

There's so much wisdom to be learned,
So many ways for me to grow,
Lord, I would listen like a child,
And learn what You would have me know...... K. De Haan

If you want to be wise, listen to Jesus.

ကၽြနု္ပ္၏ ေရြးခ်ယ္မႈ႕။

ဧျပီလ ၄ ၊ ၂၀၀၈

အေၾကာင္းမူကား၊ ထာဝရဘုရားသည္ ပညာကို ေပးေတာ္မူတတ္၏။ နားလည္နိုင္ေသာ ဥာဏ္သည္ ႏႈတ္ကပတ္ေတာ္အားျဖင့္သာ ျဖစ္တတ္၏။ သုတၱံက်မ္း ၂း၆

ကၽြန္ပ္၏ သူငယ္ခ်င္း ခရစ္စတီးနားသည္ သူ၏ ကားအေဟာင္းကို ေန႕စဥ္ ျပန္လည္ မြန္းမံ၍ အသံုးျပဳရ ေကာင္းနိးနိး ။ သို႕မဟုတ္ ကားအသစ္ ၀ယ္ရ ေကာင္းနိးနိး ဟု စဥ္းစားေနမိသည္။ သူမ ပိုင္ဆိုင္ေသာ ေငြေၾကး အတိုင္းအတာ ပမာဏကို တိက် ေစ့စပ္စြာသံုးခ် တာလည္းျဖစ္ခ်င္ေနရွာတယ္။ ဘုရားရွင္ရဲ႕ ဘုန္းေတာ္ကို ထင္ရွားေစခ်င္တာက ပထမေပါ့။

ေငြေၾကးကို အသံုးျပဳရာမွာ ဘယ္လို၊ ဘယ္ေလာက္၊ ဆိုတဲ့အရာက အခက္ခဲဆံုး ေသာဆံုးျဖတ္ခ်က္ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ တခါ ေအာင္ျမင္ေသာ သာသနာျပဳဆရာဘီလီဂေရဟမ္ (က်မတခိ်န္က်ရင္ သူ၏အထၳဳပတၱိကို ေဖာ္ျပပါအံုးမည္) က "ေငြကိုေသခ်ာ တိက်ေစ့စပ္စြာ သံုးတတ္ေသာသူသည္ အျခားေသာ အရာမ်ားတြင္ပါ တိက်ေစ့စပ္မည္ ျဖစ္သည္" လို႕ ေျပာခဲ့ဘူးပါသည္။

ကၽြန္ုပ္တို႕ဟာဘုရားအလိုေတာ္အတိုင္း ေငြေၾကးကို ပညာရွိနည္းျဖင့္၊ အေကာင္းဆံုး၊ အမွန္ကန္ဆံုး သံုးစြဲတတ္ဖို႕လိုအပ္ပါသည္။ အထူးသျဖင့္ ဘုရားအလိုေတာ္ အတိုင္းလိုက္ေလွ်ာက္၊ လိုက္နာဖို႕က အေရးၾကီးဆံုးျဖစ္ပါသည္။ သင္သည္ဘုရား၊ ဘုရားနွင့္ သက္ဆိုင္ေသာသူအား ေပးကမ္းစြန္႕ၾကဲျခင္းျပဳေန သလား၊ ( ၁ ေကာ ၁၆ း ၂) ။ မိသားစုကို ေကာင္းမြန္စြာျပဳစုေနသလား (မိမိအိမ္သူ အိမ္သားတို႕ကို မျပဳစုေသာသူမည္သည္ကား၊ ယံုၾကည္ျခင္းတရားကို ျငင္းပယ္၏၊ ၁တိေမာေသ ၅ း ၈)၊ ေငြေၾကး၏ အေစခံမျဖစ္ေစဖို႕ သတိျပဳရမည္ (ရွင္လုကာ ၁၆ း ၁၃)။

အဓိကနွင့္ ပဓါန ကိုခြဲျခားသိျမင္၍ သံုးစြဲတတ္ပါေစ။
ဘုရားထံမွ ပညာခြန္အား ေတာင္းခံ၍၊ လမ္းျပမႈ႕ကို ရယူပါ။
ဘုရားထံ အလံုးစံုကို အပ္နွံ၍ ဆံုးျဖတ္ပါ။
ဆံုးျဖတ္ခ်က္ အလံုးစံုတို႕သည္ ဘုရားနွင့္ ပိုမိုနီးကပ္လာေစဖို႕သာျဖစ္ေစပါ။......Anne Cetas

When you're facing a decision
And it seems a daunting task,
Trust the Lord for true discernment...
He'll give wisdom if you ask...... Hess

ဘုရား၏ အလိုေတာ္အတိုင္း လိုက္ေလွ်ာက္ေလေလ၊ ဘုရားနွင့္ ပိုမိုနီးကပ္လာ၍၊ ေစာင္မ မႈ႕ကို ပိုမိုခံရေလ ျဖစ္သည္။