Saturday, August 30, 2008

One_Minute_Bible_Verse


“ If i rise from the wings of the dawn , if i settle on the far side of the sea ”

Friday, August 29, 2008

When Tempted, Realize Your Vulnerability

Don’t carelessly place yourself in tempting situations. Avoid them.

Proverbs 14:16 (TEV)


When you’re tempted, keep your vulnerability in mind and work out ways to protect yourself. God warns us to never to get cocky and overconfident about our ability to handle temptation; that’s the recipe for disaster.

In fact, the prophet Jeremiah said, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure” (Jeremiah 17:9 NIV).

That means we’re good at fooling ourselves. Given the right circumstances, any of us are capable of any sin. We must never let down our guard and think we’re beyond temptation: “Don’t carelessly place yourself in tempting situations. Avoid them” (Proverbs 14:16 TEV).

Remember it’s easier to stay out of temptation than to get out of it. The Bible says, “Don’t be so naive and self-confident. You’re not exempt. You could fall flat on your face as easily as anyone else. Forget about self-confidence; it’s useless. Cultivate God-confidence” (1 Corinthians 10:12 MSG).

One final note from Scripture: “But remember that the temptations that come into your life are no different from what others experience. And God is faithful. He will keep the temptation from becoming so strong that you can’t stand up against it. When you are tempted, he will show you a way out so that you will not give in to it” (1 Corinthians 10:13 NLT)...Rick Warren


Thursday, August 28, 2008

အျမင့္ဆံုးေသာလမ္း


မိုးေကာင္းကင္သည္ ေျမၾကီးထက္သာ၍ ျမင့္သကဲ့သို႕၊ ငါ၏အက်င့္သည္ သင္တို႕၏ အက်င့္ထက္၎၊ ငါ၏အၾကံအစည္သည္ သင္တို႕၏ အၾကံအစည္ထက္၎၊ သာ၍ျမင့္၏။


ေဟရွာယ အနာကတၱိက်မ္း ၅၅ း ၉

က်မတို႕ရ႕ဲ စိတ္ဝင္စားမႈ႕ အားလံုးကို ပတ္ဝန္းက်င္မွာ ျဖစ္ပ်က္ေနတဲ့ အရာေတြက သိမ္းသြင္းဖို႕အရမ္းလြယ္ကူပါတယ္။ သတင္းေတြဖတ္ျခင္း၊ နားေထာင္ျခင္း၊ ၾကည့္ျမင္ျခင္းမွ၊ စီးပြားေရး၊ နိုင္ငံေရး မ်ားက က်မတို႕ ခႏၶာ၊ စိတ္အားလံုးကို ဖမ္းစား၊ ညိဳ႕ယူနိုင္စြမ္းရွိ ျပီး က်မတို႕ရဲ႕ စိတ္ဝင္စားမႈ႕ အားလံုးဟာ အဲဒီကိုဘဲ ေရာက္သြားတတ္ၾကပါတယ္။ တခါတရံ ထိုစိတ္မ်ားက က်မတို႕ကို စိတ္ဓာတ္ယိုယြင္းပ်က္စီးတတ္ေစပါတယ္။ ဒါေပမဲ့ က်မတို႕က ဘုရားသခင္ကိုယ္တိုင္ ေတြးသလိုဘဲ ရုိးရုိးေတြး၊ ျမင့္ျမင့္ၾကံျပီး၊ ဘုရားရဲ႕ နုတ္ကပတ္ေတာ္ မ်ားကို အာဂုံေဆာင္ထားၾကမယ္ဆိုရင္၊ က်မတို႕ စဥ္းစားေတြးေခၚမႈ႕မ်ားက ဤေလာကအရာမ်ားထက္ ပို၍ျမင့္ျမတ္ျပီး၊ ေကာင္းမြန္ေၾကာင္းကို နားလည္လာမွာျဖစ္ပါတယ္။

က်မတို႕ရဲ႕ စိတ္ပင္ပန္းျခင္း၊ ေလာကီ၏ဝန္ ဒုကၡမ်ားကို ေက်ာ္လႊားျပီး က်မတို႕ အသက္ရွင္နိုင္ပါတယ္၊ ဘာေၾကာင့္လည္းဆိုေတာ့ ဘုရားရွင္၏ ဂတိေတာ္ရွိသည့္ အတိုင္း၊ က်မတို႕၏ စိတ္နွလံုးသားမ်ား အားလံုးကို က်မတို႕ စိတ္ဝင္စားျခင္း၊ က်မတို႕၏ အဓိက တရားမ်ားအျဖစ္ သတ္မွတ္မယ္ဆိုရင္ေပါ့။ ေငြေၾကးအတြက္ ပူပန္ျခင္းမ်ားကို ဘုရားရွင္၏ ဂတိေတာ္ျဖစ္တဲ့ က်မတို႕ လိုအပ္ေသာ အရာမ်ားအားလံုးျဖည့္စြမ္းနိုင္ေသာ ဘုရားျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း ယံုၾကည္ျခင္းအားျဖင့္ေသာ္၎၊ က်မတို႕၏ ေၾကာက္ရြံ႕ ျခင္း၊ ေသျခင္းတရားကို စိုးရြံ႕ ျခင္း၊ မ်ားမွလည္း ဘုရားရွင္၏ ျပည့္စံုေသာ ခ်စ္ျခင္းအားျဖင့္၎ ေက်ာ္လႊားနိုင္မွာျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ဘုရားရွင္၏ အထြတ္အျမတ္၊ အၾကံအစည္မ်ားကို ေရႊးခ်ယ္ျပီး၊ သင္၏လမ္းခရီး၌ ခရစ္ေတာ္ကို လက္ခံပါ။ သင္၏နွလံုးသားတံခါးမ်ားကို ဖြင့္လွစ္ျပီး၊ သင္ေျခလမ္းမ်ားကို ျပဳျပင္၊ ဦးေဆာင္ဖို႕ ဘုရားရွင္ကို လက္ခံလိုက္ပါ။ သင္ဘုရားရွင္ကို လက္ခံျခင္းအားျဖင့္၊ သင္၏ အၾကံအစည္ေတာ္မ်ားနွင့္ ဘဝသည္ ျမင့္သထက္ျမင့္မားလာျပီး ေလာကကို ေအာင္ျမင္နိုင္မွာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္လို႕။

ဆုေတာင္းခ်က္။ ။ ။ ေကာင္းကင္ဘံံု၌ ရွိေသာမူေသာ အဖျမတ္စြာေသာ ဘုရား၊ က်မ၏ မျပည့္စံုျခင္းဘဝ၊ အျပစ္မ်ားနွင့္ ျပည့္စံုေသာမူေသာ စိတ္နွလံုးသားနွင့္ ကိုယ္ေတာ္ထံ ခ်ဥ္းကပ္ကာ ဆုေတာင္းပါ၏။ ကိုယ္ေတာ္ရွင္ဘုရား၏ ျပည့္စံုေသာ ဥာဏ္၊ အေတြး၊ အမူအက်င့္မ်ားျဖင့္ က်မကို လမ္းျပမူပါဘုရား။ က်မ၏ အတိတ္မ်ားကို ျပန္လည္ ဆင္ျခင္ေသာအခါ၊ ကိုယ္ေတာ္၏ အၾကံအစည္ေတာ္မ်ားသည္ တုနိုင္းမရသလို၊ စဥ္းစား၍ မမွီနိုင္ျခင္းကို သိျမင္ေစပါဘုရား။ က်မကိုအေကာင္းဆံုးလမ္းသို႕ ပို႕ေဆာင္၍ ေကာင္းၾကီးမဂၤလာမ်ားနွင့္ ျပည့္စံုေစပါဘုရား။ ခရစ္ေတာ္၏ အမည္နာမကို အမွီျပဳ၍ ေတာင္းေလွ်ာက္ပါ၏ဘုရား၊ အာမင္။ ။

When Tempted, Seek Support


You are better off to have a friend than to be all alone . . . . If you fall, your friend can help you up. But if you fall without having a friend nearby, you are really in trouble.

Ecclesiastes 4:9–10 (CEV)


When you’re tempted, reveal your struggle to a godly friend or support group. You don’t have to broadcast it to the whole world, but you need at least one person you can honestly share your struggles with.

The Bible says, “You are better off to have a friend than to be all alone . . . . If you fall, your friend can help you up. But if you fall without having a friend nearby, you are really in trouble” (Ecclesiastes 4:9–10 CEV).

Let me be clear: If you’re losing the battle against a persistent bad habit, an addiction, or a temptation, and you’re stuck in a repeating cycle of good intention–failure–guilt, you will not get better on your own! You need the help of other people.

Some temptations are only overcome with the help of a partner who prays for you, encourages you, and holds you accountable.

God’s plan for your growth and freedom includes other Christians. Authentic, honest fellowship is the antidote to your lonely struggle against those sins that won’t budge. God says it is the only way you’re going to break free: “Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed” (James 5:16, NIV).

Do you really want to be healed of that persistent temptation that keeps defeating you over and over? God’s solution is plain: Don’t repress it; confess it! Don’t conceal it; reveal it. Revealing your feeling is the beginning of healing.

Hiding your hurt only intensifies it. Problems grow in the dark and become bigger and bigger, but when exposed to the light of truth, they shrink. You’re only as sick as your secrets. So take off your mask, stop pretending you’re perfect, and walk into freedom...Rick Warren


Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Resist the Devil


Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

James 4:7 (NIV)


After we’ve humbled ourselves and submitted to God, we’re then told to defy the Devil. We don’t passively resign ourselves to his attacks. We’re to fight back.

The New Testament often describes the Christian life as a spiritual battle against evil forces, using war terms such as fight, conquer, strive, and overcome. Christians are often compared to soldiers serving in enemy territory.

How can we resist the Devil? Paul tells us, “Put on salvation as your helmet, and take the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.” (Ephesians 6:17 NLT).

The first step is to accept God’s salvation. You won’t be able to say no to the Devil unless you’ve said yes to Christ. Without Christ we’re defenseless against the Devil, but with “the helmet of salvation” our minds are protected by God. Remember this: If you are a believer, Satan cannot force you to do anything. He can only suggest.

Second, you must use the Word of God as your weapon against Satan. Jesus modeled this when he was tempted in the wilderness. Every time Satan suggested a temptation, Jesus countered by quoting Scripture.

He didn’t argue with Satan. He didn’t say, “I’m not hungry,” when tempted to use his power to meet a personal need. He simply quoted Scripture from memory. We must do the same. There is power in God’s Word, and Satan fears it.

Don’t ever try to argue with the Devil. He’s better at arguing than you are, having had thousands of years to practice. You can’t bluff Satan with logic or your opinion, but you can use the weapon that makes him tremble – the truth of God.

This is why memorizing Scripture is absolutely essential to defeating temptation. You have quick access to it whenever you’re tempted. Like Jesus, you have the truth stored in your heart, ready to be remembered.

If you don’t have any Bible verses memorized, you’ve got no bullets in your gun! I challenge you to memorize one verse a week for the rest of your life. Imagine how much stronger you’ll be....Rick Warren



Tuesday, August 26, 2008

We Move toward Our Focus


Run from anything that gives you the evil thoughts . . . but stay close to anything that makes you want to do right.

2 Timothy 2:22 (LB)


Have you ever watched a food advertisement on television and suddenly felt you were hungry? Have you ever heard someone cough and immediately felt the need to clear your throat? Ever watched someone release a big yawn and felt the urge to yawn yourself?

That is the power of suggestion. We naturally move toward whatever we focus our attention on. The more you think about something, the stronger it takes hold of you.

That is why repeating “I must stop eating too much . . . or stop smoking . . . or stop lusting” is a self-defeating strategy. It keeps you focused on what you don’t want. It’s like announcing, “I’m never going to do what my mom did.” You are setting yourself up to repeat it.

Most diets don’t work because they keep you thinking about food all the time, guaranteeing that you’ll be hungry. In the same way, a speaker who keeps repeating to herself, “Don’t be nervous!” sets herself up to be nervous! Instead she should focus on anything except her feelings – on God, on the importance of her speech, or on the needs of those listening.

Temptation begins by capturing your attention. What gets your attention arouses your emotions. Then your emotions activate your behavior, and you act on what you felt. The more you focus on “I don’t want to do this,” the stronger it draws you into its web.

Ignoring a temptation is far more effective than fighting it. Once your mind is on something else, the temptation loses its power. So when temptation calls you on the phone, don’t argue with it, just hang up!

Sometimes this means physically leaving a tempting situation. This is one time it is okay to run away. Get up and turn off the television set. Walk away from a group that is gossiping. Leave the theater in the middle of the movie. To avoid being stung, stay away from the bees.

Do whatever is necessary to turn your attention to something else.

Spiritually, your mind is your most vulnerable organ. To reduce temptation, keep your mind occupied with God’s Word and other good thoughts. You defeat bad thoughts by thinking of something better. This is the principle of replacement. You overcome evil with good (Romans 12:21).

Satan can’t get your attention when your mind is preoccupied with something else. That’s why the Bible repeatedly tells us to keep our minds focused: “Fix your thoughts on Jesus” (Hebrews 3:1 NIV).

“Fill your minds with those things that are good and that deserve praise: things that are true, noble, right, pure, lovely, and honorable” (Philippians 4:8 TEV).

If you’re serious about defeating temptation you must manage your mind and monitor your media intake. The wisest man who ever lived warned, “Be careful how you think; your life is shaped by your thoughts” (Proverbs 4:23 TEV)...Rick Warren


Monday, August 25, 2008

Defeating Temptation


Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

James 4:7 (NIV)


There is always a way out.

You may sometimes feel that a temptation is too overpowering for you to bear, but that’s a lie from Satan. God has promised never to allow more on you than he puts within you to handle it. He will not permit any temptation that you could not overcome. However, you must do your part too by practicing biblical methods for defeating temptation.

First and foremost, you want to refocus your attention on something besides the temptation. It may surprise you that nowhere in the Bible are we told to “resist temptation.” We’re told to “resist the devil,” and that is very different (James 4:7).

The Bible says we’re to refocus our attention because trying to resist a thought simply doesn’t work. It only intensifies our focus on the wrong thing and strengthens its allure. Let me explain:

Every time you try to block a thought out of your mind, you drive it deeper into your memory. By resisting it, you actually reinforce it.

Whatever you resist, persists.

This is especially true with temptation. You don’t defeat temptation by fighting the feeling of it. The more you fight a feeling, the more it consumes and controls you. You strengthen it every time you think it.

Since temptation always begins with a thought, the quickest way to neutralize its allure is to turn your attention to something else. Don’t fight the thought, just change the channel of your mind and get interested in another idea. This is the first step in defeating temptation.

The battle for sin is won or lost in your mind. Whatever gets your attention will get you. That’s why Job said, “I made a covenant with my eyes not to look with lust upon a young woman.” (Job 31:1 NLT).

And David prayed, “Keep me from paying attention to what is worthless” (Psalm 119:3a TEV)....Rick Warren


နွလံုးသား၏ အေျခခံရင္းျမစ္။

ဖတ္ရန္။ ။ ။ ဆာလံက်မ္း ၁၃၁

အကယ္စင္စစ္ အကၽြန္ုပ္ သည္ အမိ နို႕နွင့္ ကြားေသာ သူငယ္ကဲ့သို႕။ ကိုယ္စိတ္ကို ေျဖ၍ ုျငိမ္းေစပါျပီ။ အကၽြန္ုပ္ စိတ္နွလံုးသည္ နို႕ကြာေသာ သူငယ္ကဲ့သို႕ ျဖစ္ပါ၏။
(ဆာလံက်မ္း ၁၃၁ း ၂)

ဥေရာပနိုင္ငံမွာရွိတဲ့ ကယ္ဒီသယ္(Great Cathedrals) ဘုရားေက်ာင္းရဲ႕ ေဆာက္လုပ္ပံု၊ ဗိသုကာလက္ရာဟာ ရင္သပ္ရႈေမာဖြယ္ရာျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ဘာေၾကာင့္လဲဆိုေတာ့ မ်က္နွာက်က္က ေလးလံတဲ့ အတြက္ ေဘးက နံရံေတြက အေထာက္အကူကုိ ေပးဖို႕ အပိုခ်ဲ႕ထြင္ျပီး ေဆာက္လုပ္ထားရတာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။

က်မတို႕ဟာ အသက္ရွင္ေသာ ဘုရားသခင္၏ ဗိမာန္ေတာ္ ျဖစ္ၾက၏ ( ေကာရိႏၱဳၾသဝါဒစာ ၆ း ၁၆) လို႕ဆိုထားပါတယ္၊ ဒါဆိုရင္ က်မတို႕ရဲ႕ နွလံုးသား ခံယူခ်က္ အေျခခံ အေၾကာင္းဇစ္ျမစ္က အားနဲတယ္ဆိုရင္ေတာ့ က်မတို႕ဟာ ဒီဘုရားေက်ာင္းလိုဘဲျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ က်မတို႕ကို သင္းအုပ္ဆရာ၊ သူငယ္ခ်င္း၊ လိုက္နာရမဲ့ စည္းမ်ဥ္း၊ စာအုပ္၊ မိသဟာယ မ်ားကသာ မေထာက္ပံ မကူညီဘူးဆိုရင္ က်မတို႕ရဲ႕ ဝိညာဥ္ေရးရာ က်ဆံုးမွာ ျဖစ္တယ္။ ဒါေပမဲ့ အေနွာက္အယွက ္ျဖစ္ေလာက္ေအာင္ မွီတြယ္မထားရဘူးေပါ့၊ ဘာျဖစ္လို႕လဲ ဆိုေတာ့ လူသားမ်ားျဖစ္တဲ့အညီ က်မတို႕၏ စိတ္နွလံုးသားကို ထိမိလဲစရာ ျဖစ္ေစနိုင္လို႕ဘဲ။

က်မတို႕ရဲ႕ နွလံုးသားက ဘုရားသခင္နဲ႕ က်မတို႕ရဲ႕ တိုက္ရုိက္ထိေတြ႕၊ အဆက္အသြယ္ျပဳလုပ္တဲ့ ေနရာ၊ ရင္းျမစ္ေလးဘဲ။ ဘုရားရဲ႕ ေဒသနာေတာ္မ်ားကို ဖတ္မွတ္၊ နွလံုးသြင္းျပီး၊ က်မတို႕ နွလံုးသားတံခါးကို ဖြင့္လွစ္ထားဖို႕လိုပါတယ္။ က်မတို႕ နွလံုးသားတံခါးဖြင့္တာနဲ႕ ဘုရားရွင္ဟာ က်မတို႕အသက္တာကို ျပဳျပင္၊ ထိန္းေက်ာင္းသြားပါလိမ့္မယ္။

ခရစ္ယာန္ အသက္တာဆိုတာ က်မတို႕ နွလံုးသား အတြင္း၏၊ ဘုရားသခင္နွင့္ ဆက္ဆိုင္မႈ႕ကို ေဖာ္ျပျပီး ေယရႈခရစ္ ထံမွ ခြန္အားရယူလ်က္ တန္ခိုးေတာ္ကို ထင္ရွားေစျခင္းျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ က်မတို႕ရဲ႕ ရုပ္ရည္ ဘယ္လိုဘဲျဖစ္ျဖစ္ ဘုရားသခင္ဟာ က်မတို႕နွလံုးသားတခုကို အဓိကလိုလားပါတယ္။ ခိုင္မာတဲ့ နွလံုးသားျဖစ္ဖို႕ တည္ေဆာက္ၾကပါစို႕။ Joe Stowell

က်မတို႕ နွလံုးသားတံခါးကို ဖြင့္ရင္၊ ဘုရားသခင္၏ နုတ္ကပတ္တရားေတာ္မ်ားကို ျမင္ေတြ႕နိုင္ပါလိမ့္မည္။

Sunday, August 24, 2008

God's Restraint

Read: : Psalm 76 : 1 - 12

Surely the wrath of man shall praise You; with the remainder of wrath You shall gird Yourself.
Psalm 76 : 10

Augustine said that God " Judged it better to bring good out of evil, than not to permit any evil to exist." Thus God takes the worst evil that men and women can do to us and turns it into good. Even the wrath of ungodly men brings praise to Him ( Psalm 76 : 10 )

God has not promised that your life will be easy- indeed it may not be. But He has promised to sustain you in your struggle and uphold you with His mighty arm. If yo trust Him, He will empower you to make your way bravely through extraordinary difficulty with faith, hope, and love. The trials God permits in your life will lead to His praise and glory, if only you will abide in Him.

Furthermore, there will be a restraint and a respite. The Hebrew text is somewhat obscure in Psalm 76:10. Literally it reads, "Surely the wrath of man will praise You; the remnant of wrath (God) will bind." God will use men's wrath to bring glory and praise to Himself, but when that purpose id fulfilled He will then restrain it.

God will not allow you to be pressed beyond endurance. That is His sure promise. When the lesson has been learned, when the revelation of God's glory is complete and your soul has been tried and proven ... then God will raise His hand and save you. He will say, " No More." .... David Roper

When He leads through some valley of trouble,
His omnipotent hand we trace;
For the trails and sorrows He sends us
Are part of His lessons in grace. .... Anon.

In every desert of trial, God has an oasis of comfort.

Saturday, August 23, 2008

My Children Walk in Truth


I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth.

3 John 1:4 (NIV)


Being a pastor is one of the toughest jobs on the planet; but John, the disciple of love, says it can also be the most joyful: “I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth” (3 John 1:4 NIV).

Spiritual leaders must correctly teach God’s Word, confront false teaching before it spreads, proclaim the gospel to non-believers, pray for all people (including you and your family), and train and appoint leaders; and they must do this all while serving as an example of what it looks like when you’re maturing as a Jesus-one (see 1 and 2 Timothy; Titus).

Accordingly, the Apostle Paul says we should respect our spiritual leaders, overwhelming them with appreciation: “Hold them in the highest regard in love because of their work” (1 Thessalonians 5:13 NIV).

Disguised as the generic writer of Hebrews, Paul also says, “Obey your leaders and submit to their authority. They keep watch over you as men who must give an account. Obey them so that their work will be a joy, not a burden, for that would be of no advantage to you” (Hebrews 13:17 NIV).

You can make a big deal about obeying and submitting, but keep in mind that our overarching objective is to become one with Christ, who is one with the Father. In other words, we want our hearts and minds to line up with God’s heart and mind. We submit to God’s heart and mind, and we show our love for him when we obey him.

If a spiritual leader is walking toward oneness with Jesus, who is already at one with the Father, then it’s perfectly reasonable for us to move toward that same oneness with Jesus, meaning we swing into alignment behind our pastor.

From this angle, you can see the enormous responsibility a pastor has to keep in line with God and to encourage you to keep in line.

We live in the nasty now-and-now, so it’s all too easy, even for spiritual leaders, to slip into arguments over who gets to sit at God’s right hand when we all should be outdoing one another in heartfelt, humble service to each other (Matthews 20:20-28).

Pray for your spiritual leaders today, that they continue to walk in the truth, and let them know in some way that you want to bring them joy by walking in the truth with them (3 John 1:4 NIV)...Jon Walker



Friday, August 22, 2008

The Foot Washing God

Read: John 13 : 5

Jesus poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet.
John 13:5


Questions about God's existence often troubled H. A. Hodges, a brilliant young professor of philosophy at Oxford University. One day as he strolled down the street, he passed by an art store. His attention was gripped by a simple picture in the window. It showed Jesus kneeling to wash His disciples' feet.

Hodges knew the story recorded in John 13- God incarnate washing human feet. But suddenly the sheer meaning of that scene gripped the heart of this young philosopher. God - God! - humbling Himself to do that lowliest of tasks! He thought, If God is like that, then that God shall be my God! Seeing that painting was one of the circumstances that caused Hodges to surrender his life to the true God- the foot washing God.

We Christians sometimes take God's existence for granted. We believe what the Bible tells us about the eternal Spirit who never began to be and whose existence will never end. But we may wonder sometimes about His character. If He allows disaster, how could He also be kind and loving?

As we read John 13 thoughtfully, we see that God is the foot-washing God. His unfathomable, sacrificial love for us should cause us to surrender to Him too. ..... Vernon Grounds


All to Jesus I surrender,
Make me, Savior, wholly thine;
Let me feel the Holy Spirit,
Truly know that thou art mine. ...Van de Venter

No life is more secure than a life surrendered to God.

Thursday, August 21, 2008

Offering Sympathy Meets Two Human Needs


“As holy people . . . be sympathetic, kind, humble, gentle, and patient.”

Colossians 3:12 (GWT)


In real fellowship people experience sympathy. Sympathy is not giving advice or offering quick, cosmetic help; sympathy is entering in and sharing the pain of others.

Sympathy says, “I understand what you’re going through, and what you feel is neither strange nor crazy.” Today, some call this “empathy” but the Bible word is “sympathy.” It says, “As holy people . . . be sympathetic, kind, humble, gentle, and patient” (Colossians 3:12 GWT).

Every time you understand and affirm someone’s feelings, you build fellowship.

Sympathy meets two fundamental human needs: the need to be understood and the need to have your feelings validated.

Every time you understand and affirm someone’s feelings, you build fellowship. The problem is that we’re often in such a hurry to fix things that we don’t have time to sympathize with people. Or we’re preoccupied with our own hurts. Self-pity dries up sympathy for others.

There are different levels of fellowship, and each is appropriate at different times:

· The simplest levels of fellowship are the fellowship of sharing and the fellowship of studying God’s Word together.

· A deeper level is the fellowship of serving, as when we minister together on mission trips or mercy projects.

· The deepest, most intense level is the fellowship of suffering (Philippians 3:10; Hebrews 10:33–34). This is where we enter into each other’s pain and grief and carry each other’s burdens. The Christians who understand this level best are those around the world who are being persecuted, despised, and often martyred for their faith.

The Bible teaches us to “share each other’s troubles and problems, and in this way obey the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2 NLT).

It is in the times of deep crisis, grief, and doubt that we need each other most. When circumstances crush us to the point that our faith falters, that’s when we need believing friends the most.

We need a small group of friends to have faith in God for us and to pull us through. In a small group, the body of Christ is real and tangible even when God seems distant.

This is what Job desperately needed during his suffering. He cried out, “A despairing man should have the devotion of his friends, even though he forsakes the fear of the Almighty” (Job 6:14 NIV).....Rick Warren


Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Don’t Be Reluctant to Show Mercy


When people sin, you should forgive and comfort them, so they won’t give up in despair.

2 Corinthians 2:7 (CEV)


In real fellowship people experience mercy. Fellowship is a place of grace, where mistakes aren’t rubbed in but rubbed out. Fellowship happens when mercy wins over justice.

We all need mercy, because we all stumble and fall and require help getting back on track. We need to offer mercy to each other and be willing to receive it from each other.

You can’t have fellowship without forgiveness because bitterness and resentment always destroy fellowship. Sometimes we hurt each other intentionally and sometimes unintentionally, but either way, it takes massive amounts of mercy and grace to create and maintain fellowship.

The Bible says, “You must make allowance for each other’s faults and forgive the person who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others” (Colossians 3:13 NLT).

The mercy God shows to us is the motivation for us to show mercy to others. Whenever you’re hurt by someone, you have a choice to make: Will I use my energy and emotions for retaliation or for resolution?

You can’t do both.

Many people are reluctant to show mercy because they don’t understand the difference between trust and forgiveness. Forgiveness is letting go of the past. Trust has to do with future behavior.

Forgiveness must be immediate, whether or not a person asks for it. Trust must be rebuilt over time.

Trust requires a track record. If someone hurts you repeatedly, you are commanded by God to forgive them instantly, but you are not expected to trust them immediately, and you are not expected to continue allowing them to hurt you. They must prove they have changed over time. The best place to restore trust is within the supportive context of a small group that offers both encouragement and accountability....Rick Warren



Tuesday, August 19, 2008

A Mutual Dependency


I mean that I want us to help each other with the faith we have. Your faith will help me, and my faith will help you.

Romans 1:12 (NCV)


In authentic Christian fellowship people should experience a mutual dependency. This mutuality is the art of giving and receiving; it’s depending on each other.

The Bible says, “The way God designed our bodies is a model for understanding our lives together as a church: every part dependent on every other part” (1 Corinthians 12:25 MSG).

Mutuality is the heart of fellowship: building reciprocal relationships, sharing responsibilities, and helping each other. Paul said, “I want us to help each other with the faith we have. Your faith will help me, and my faith will help you” (Romans 1:12 NCV).

All of us are more consistent in our faith when others walk with us and encourage us. The Bible commands mutual accountability, mutual encouragement, mutual serving, and mutual honoring.

Over fifty times in the New Testament we’re commanded to do different tasks for “one another” and “each other.” The Bible says, “Make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification” (Romans 14:19 NIV).

You are not responsible for everyone in the body of Christ, but you are responsible to them. God expects you do whatever you can to help them....Rick Warren



To my Mom on my birthday!


August 19

Mom,

There have lot of words I didn't say;
There have lot of things I didn't mention;
There have lot of thoughts I didn't share;
There have lot of loves I didn't show you.

Mom,

Here is something I want you to hear;
Here is something I want you to know;
Here is something I want you to feel;
Here is something I want you to see;

Mom,

I'm whispering, that I love you;
I'm letting you know, I have troubles;
I want you to think, I can do it;
I want you to see my successes.


Mom,

Thank you for bringing me into this world, so I can feel the world;
Thank you for being there me, so I know I have somebody;
Thank you for your loves, so I over come every difficulties;
Thank you for your encouragements, so I can do everything;
Thank you for believing in me, so I can show you I'm able to do it;
Thank you for your prayers, so I'll be protected by God's love.

Mom,

I didn't say very often this
But I love you so very much.





ဝိညာဥ္ေတာ္လက္နက္စံု။

ထိုေၾကာင့္၊ ခဲယဥ္းဆိုးယုတ္ေသာေန႕ရက္ကာလ၌ ဆီးတားနိုင္သျဖင့္ ကိစၥ အလံုးစံုတို႕ကိုျပီးစီး၍ ခံရပ္နိင္မည္အေၾကာင္း၊ ဘုရားသခင္ျပင္ဆင္ေတာ္မူေသာ လက္နက္စံုကို ယူေဆာင္ၾကေလာ့၊
( ဧဖက္ၾသဝါဒစာ ၆ း ၁၃ )



ဘုရားသခင္သည္ က်မကို အဘယ္သို႕ေသာ္ ဒုကၡဆင္းရဲၾကံဳေသာ္ျငားလည္း မယိုင္လဲဘဲ မားမားရပ္ရပ္၊ ရပ္တည္ အသက္ရွင္နိုင္ဖို႕ ခြန္အားျပည့္ လက္နက္စံုကို ေပးသနားေတာ္မူပါတယ္။ က်မ၏နွလံုးသား၊ ဝိညာဥ္ မဆံုးရႈံး၊ မထိခိုက္ရေအာင္လည္း ကြယ္ကာေစာင္မေတာ္မူပါတယ္။ ဧဖက္ၾသဝါဒစာမွာ ပါတဲ့အတိုင္း က်မကိုဝိညာဥ္ေတာ္ လက္နက္စံုျဖင့္လည္း ဆင္ျမန္းေပးထားပါတယ္။ မွန္ကန္ျခင္းဆိုတဲ့ ခါးပတ္ကို ဝတ္ဆင္ေစလွ်က္၊ ေျဖာင့္မတ္ျခင္း ဆိုတဲ့ ပါရမီ ရင္အုပ္တန္ဆာကို ေပးလွ်က္၊ နုတ္ကပတ္ေတာ္၏ ျငိမ္သက္ျခင္း ေျခစြပ္ကိုစြပ္လွ်က္၊ အရာအားလံုးကို ေအာင္ျမင္ေက်ာ္လြားနိုင္ေသာ ယံုၾကည္ျခင္းဆိုတဲ့ အရာကို ခပ္သိမ္းေသာ လက္နက္တို႕ အေပၚ ထပ္ဆင့္ေလာင္းေပးသနား ယံုသာမက၊ ကယ္တင္ျခင္း သံခေမာက္ကုိေဆာင္းေပးျပီး နုတ္ကပတ္ေတာ္ကို ဝိညာဥ္ေတာ္ ဓားအျဖစ္ ေပးအပ္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ဘုရားရွင္၏ မွန္ကန္ျခင္း၊ ေျဖာင့္မတ္ျခင္း၊ ျငိမ္သက္ျခင္း၊ ယံုၾကည္ျခင္း၊ ကယ္တင္ျခင္းနွင့္ နုတ္ကပတ္ေတာ္ တရားမ်ားသည္ က်မကို ျပည့္စံုေသာ လက္နက္အျဖစ္ ေပးသနားေတာ္မူလွ်က္ က်မသည္ရန္သူေဘး၊ ဒုကၡေပါင္းေျမာက္ျမားစြာတို႕မွ လြတ္ေျမာက္ရေသာ အခြင့္၊ မယိုင္လဲဘဲ၊ မားမားမတ္မတ္ ရပ္တည္နိုင္ေသာ အခြင့္ကို ေပးသနားေတာ္မူေသာ ေက်းဇူးေတာ္ကို ခ်ီးမြမ္းပါ၏။ ေအာင္ျမင္မႈ႕ေပါင္းစံုကို ေပးသနားေတာ္မူမွာ ျဖစ္တဲ့ အတြက္လည္း ေက်းဇူးေတာ္ကို ခ်ီးမြမ္းပါ၏။ ဘုရားက်မကို တေယာက္တည္း လြတ္မထားဘဲ၊ က်မဘဝ၊ အသက္တာ၌ အခက္အခဲ၊ စာတန္မာနတ္၏ အေနွာက္အယွက္ အလံုးစံုတို႕မွ လြတ္ျငိမ္းခ်မ္းသာ ေအာင္ျမင္မႈ႕ျခင္း အခြင့္မ်ားကို၊ ေပးသနားေတာ္မူေသာေၾကာင့္ ကိုယ္ေတာ္၏ ေက်းဇူးေတာ္ကိုခ်ီးမြမ္းပါ၏။ က်မသည္ အရာရာကို ေက်ာ္လြား၊ ေအာင္ျမင္၊ ျငိမ္သက္ျခင္းကို ရရွိလွ်က္ ကိုယ္ေတာ္၏ နုတ္ကပတ္ေတာ္ျမတ္၌ ေမြ႕ေလွ်ာ္ရေသာ အခြင့္ကိုေပြ႕ပိုက္လွ်က္ အသက္ရွင္သြားနို္င္ပါ၏။ တပါးတည္းေသာ သားေတာ္ သခင္ေယရႈ၏ ျမတ္ေသာ အမည္နာမ၌ ေတာင္းေလွ်ာက္ပါ၏။ ။ အာမင္။

Monday, August 18, 2008

Authentic Friendships


But if we live in the light, as God is in the light, we can share fellowship with each other. Then the blood of Jesus, God’s Son, cleanses us from every sin. If we say we have no sin, we are fooling ourselves, and the truth is not in us.

1 John 1:7–8 (NCV)


In Christian fellowship people should experience authenticity.

Authentic fellowship is not superficial, surface-level chit-chat. It’s genuine, heart-to-heart, sometimes gut-level, sharing.

It happens when people get honest about who they are and what is happening in their lives. They share their hurts, reveal their feelings, confess their failures, disclose their doubts, admit their fears, acknowledge their weaknesses, and ask for help and prayer.

Authenticity is the exact opposite of what you find in many churches. Instead of an atmosphere of honesty and humility, there is pretending, role-playing, politicking, superficial politeness, and shallow conversation.

People wear masks, keep their guard up, and act as if everything is rosy in their lives. These attitudes are the death of real friendship.

It’s only as we become open about our lives that we experience authentic fellowship. The Bible says, “If we live in the light, as God is in the light, we can share fellowship with each other. . . . If we say we have no sin, we are fooling ourselves” (1 John 1:7–8 NCV).

The world thinks intimacy occurs in the dark, but God says it happens in the light. We tend to use darkness to hide our hurts, faults, fears, failures, and flaws. But in the light, we bring them all out into the open and admit who we really are.

Of course, being authentic requires both courage and humility. It means facing our fear of exposure, rejection, and being hurt again.

Why would anyone take such a risk?

Because it’s the only way to grow spiritually and be emotionally healthy. The Bible says, “Make this your common practice: Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you can live together whole and healed” (James 5:16 MSG).....Rick Warren



Saturday, August 16, 2008

ထပ္တူေသာ အမူအက်င့္

ဖတ္ရန္။ ။ ဧဖက္ၾသဝါဒစာ ၅ း ၁ - ၅

ထိုသို႕ သင္တို႕သည္ ဘုရားသခင္၏ ခ်စ္သားျဖစ္ၾကသည္နွင့္ အညီ၊ ဘုရားသခင္က်င့္ေတာ္မူ သည္နည္းတူက်င့္ၾကေလာ့။
( ဧဖက္ၾသဝါဒစာ ၅ း ၁ )

ို ညစာစားပြဲတခု၌ မိန္႕ခြန္းေျပာၾကားရန္ မိသားစုနွင့္ တကြတက္ေရာက္ရန္ ဖိတ္ၾကားခံေသာ အခ်ိန္ေလးတခုကို က်ေနာ္ဘယ္လိုမွ ေမ့လို႕မရနိုင္ခဲပါဘူး။ ညစာစားျပီးေတာ့ က်ေနာ့္သားေလး မက္က က်ေနာ့ အနားတိုးလာျပီး သား ေဖေဖ့ ေပါင္ေပၚထိုင္လို႕ရမလားဆိုျပီး ခြင့္လာေတာင္းပါတယ္။ က်ေနာ္သားကိုေပြ႕ျပီး က်ေနာ့္ ေပါင္ေပၚထိုင္ခြင့္ေပးလိုက္တယ္။

က်ေနာ္ သူစိမ္းေတြကို ရဲရဲတင္းတင္း မိတ္ဖြဲ႕စကားလက္ဆံုက်ေအာင္ လုပ္တတ္ေၾကာင္းကို သားေလးငယ္စဥ္ကတည္းက ၾကိမ္ဖန္မ်ားစြာ ေတြ႕ခဲ့ရျပီးျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ က်ေနာ္ဟာ လူမ်ားကို ခင္မင္တတ္သူျဖစ္သည့္ အားေလွ်ာ္စြာ၊ စားေသာက္ဆိုင္ကိုေရာက္တိုင္းလည္း စားပြဲထိုးမ်ား၏ အမည္ကဒ္ေလးကို ၾကည့္ကာ ဟဲလို ေက်ာ္ေက်ာ္၊ မဂၤလာပါ၊ ဒီေန႕အေျခအေနေကာင္းသလား ဆိုျပီးနုတ္ဆက္တတ္တာကို သားေလးက ေဖေဖ သားတို႕ကို အရွက္ရေစလိုက္တာ လို႕လည္း ရံဖန္ရံခါ ဖြင့္ေျပာတတ္ပါတယ္။
ဒါေပမဲ့ ဒီကေန႕ည က်ေနာ့ေပါင္ေပၚ ထိုင္ေနတဲ့သားေလးက ညစာစားပြဲ ဦးစီးသူကို လွည့္ၾကည့္ျပီး ဟဲလို ဂၽြန္၊ မဂၤလာပါခင္ဗ်ားဆိုျပီး နုတ္ဆက္ေနတာၾကည့္ျပီး က်ေနာနွင့္ ထပ္တူက်ေသာ အမူအက်င့္အတြက္ ဂုဏ္ယူ လိုက္မိပါတယ္။

ဒါကိုၾကည့္ျပီး က်ေနာ တမန္ေတာ္ ရွင္ေပါလုရဲ႕ အမွာစကားကို သတိယလိုက္မိပါတယ္၊ က်ေနာ္တို႕သည္ ဘုရားသခင္ျပဳမူေသာ အက်င့္အတိုင္း လိုက္လံက်င့္သံုးရမည္ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း သတိရေစပါတယ္။

က်ေနာတို႕ဟာ မိသားစုတခုရဲ႕ တူညီေသာ သ႑ာန္၊ အက်င့္မ်ားကို ထပ္တူျပဳမူျခင္းအားျဖင့္ က်ေနာတို႕ အသက္တာ အတိုင္းမဟုတ္ ေယရႈခရစ္နွင့္တူေသာ အသက္တာအတိုင္း ေလွ်ာက္လွမ္းၾကပါစို႕လို႕။ ။ .... Joe Stowell

O to be like Thee, blessed Redeemer,
This is my constant longing and prayer;
Gladly I'll forfeit all of earth's treasures,
Jesus, Thy perfect likeness to wear. ... Chisholm

ဘုရားသခင္၏ သားသမီးမ်ားသည္ အဖ၏ အမူအက်င့္အတိုင္းလိုက္ေဆာင္လွ်က္ ေအာင္ျမင္ျခင္းသို႕ ရရွိေစမည္။

One_Minute_Bible_Verse



“ give her the reward she has earned , and let her works bring her praise at the city gate ”

Praverbs 31 : 31

Friday, August 15, 2008

ၾကြယ္ဝေသာ ေကာင္းၾကီးမဂၤလာ


တေန႕တာအတြက္ က်မ္းခ်က္။ ။ အကၽြန္ုပ္တို႕ ေခါင္းေပၚမွာ သူတပါးကို စီးေစေတာ္မူျပီ။ မီး၌၎ ေရ၌၎ သြားရေသာ္လည္း၊ ေက်းဇူးေတာ္ေၾကာင့္ ၾကြယ္ဝျခင္းသို႕ေရာက္ၾကပါ၏။


(ဆာလံက်မ္း။ ။ ၆၆ း ၁၂)


က်မတို႕ အသက္တာမွာ ဒုကၡဆင္းရဲ၊ ေသာက၊ အခက္အခဲ ေျမာက္ျမားစြာၾကံဳေတြ႕ရမွာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ တခါတရံ လက္ေလွ်ာ့ခ်င္ေလာက္ေသာ အျဖစ္အပ်က္မ်ားစြာတို႕ ၾကံဳဆံုၾကရမွာပါ။ ဒါေတြကို ဘဝရဲ႕ စိန္ေခၚျခင္းလို႕မွတ္ယူ ယံုမက၊ ထာဝရ ဘုရားသခင္ဟာ ထိုအတိုက္အခံ မ်ားၾကားထဲက က်မတို႕ကို အေကာင္းဆံုး အသက္တာ၊ ၾကြယ္ဝေသာ ေကာင္းၾကီးမဂၤလာမ်ား ေပးသနားမယ္ဆိုတာကို အေမ့ဖို႕လိုအပ္ပါတယ္။ ဘုရားသခင္ဟာ က်မတို႕ အသက္တာမွာ က်မတို႕လိုအပ္ေသာ အရာမ်ားအားလံုး ရရွိေနဖို႕ အျမဲဘဲ ဂရုစိုက္ေနပါတယ္။ က်မတို႕ဟာ ေယရႈခရစ္ေတာ္ ၾကြဆင္းလာျခင္းေၾကာင့္ ၾကြယ္ဝေသာ ေကာင္းၾကီးမ်ားခံရျပီးျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ က်မတို႕ စိတ္နွလံုးတံခါးကိုဖြင့္၍ ဘုရားသခင္၏ ေကာင္းၾကီးမ်ားကို ခ်ီးမြမ္းၾကပါစို႕။ ထာဝရဘုရား၏ ဂတိေတာ္မ်ားကို ယံုၾကည္ျခင္းအားျဖင့္ လက္ခံယူၾကပါစို႕။ က်မတို႕ ခ်ီးမြမ္းသံမ်ားသည္ ဘုရားရွင္ က်မတို႕နွလံုးသားထဲ ဝင္ေရာက္လာဖို႕ နွလံုးသား တံခါးဖြင့္ျခင္းျဖစ္ေၾကာင္းနွင့္ က်မတို႕ကို ဘုရားရွင္က ၾကြယ္ဝျခင္းဆုေက်းဇူး ရရွိေစျခင္းေၾကာင္းကို ဆင္ျခင္ေအာင္းေမ့ၾကပါစို႕လို႕။။ ။။

တေန႕တာအတြက္ ဆုေတာင္းခ်က္။ ။

ေကာင္းကင္ဘံု၌ ရွိေတာ္မူေသာ္ အဖထာဝရျမတ္စြာေသာ ဘုရား၊ က်မသည္ရုိေသစြာျဖင့္ ကိုယ္ေတာ့္ထံပါးခ်ဥ္းကပ္ပါ၏၊ က်မရွိသမွ်ေသာ အျပစ္၊ အဆိုးဟူသမွ်နွင့္ အရာအားလံုးကို ကိုယ္ေတာ့္ေရွ႕ေမွာက္တြင္ခ်ေပးလွ်က္၊ ရွိသည့္အတုိင္း ကိုယ့္ေတာ့္ေရွ႕ေမွာက္တြင္ေရာက္လာ ခ်ဥ္းကပ္ပါ၏။ ၾကြယ္ဝေသာ အသက္တာ၊ နွင့္ အေကာင္းဆံုးေသာ လမ္းျပပို႕ေဆာင္မႈ႕မ်ားအတြက္ ကိုယ္ေတာ္ရွင္ဘုရားအား ေက်းဇူးေတာ္ ခ်ီးမြမ္းပါ၏။ ကိုယ္ေတာ္ရွင္ဘုရား နားေညာင္းေတာ္မူ၍ ခြန္အားေပးေတာ္မူပါဘုရား၊

အာမင္။



Life Together: A Shared Life


How wonderful it is, how pleasant, for God’s people to live together in harmony!

Psalms 133:1 (TEV)


God intends for us to experience life together. The Bible calls this shared experience fellowship.

Today, however, the word has lost most of its biblical meaning. Fellowship now usually refers to casual conversation, socializing, food, and fun.

The question, “Where do you fellowship?” means “Where do you attend church?” “Stay after for fellowship” usually means “Wait for refreshments.”

Real fellowship is so much more than just showing up at services. It is experiencing life together. It includes unselfish loving, honest sharing, practical serving, sacrificial giving, sympathetic comforting, and all the other “one another” commands found in the New Testament.

When it comes to fellowship, size matters: smaller is better. You can worship with a crowd, but you can’t fellowship with one.

Once a group becomes larger than about ten people, someone stops participating—usually the quietest person—and a few people will dominate the group.

Jesus ministered in the context of a small group of disciples. He could have chosen more, but he knew twelve is about the maximum size you can have in a small group if everyone is to participate.

The body of Christ, like your own body, is really a collection of many small cells. The life of the body of Christ, like your body, is contained in the cells.

For this reason, every Christian needs to be involved in a small group within their church, whether is it a home fellowship group, a Sunday school class, or a Bible study. This is where real community takes place, not in the big gatherings.

If you think of your church as a ship, the small groups are the lifeboats attached to it. God has made an incredible promise about small groups of believers: “For where two or three have gathered together in My name, I am there in their midst” (Matthew 18:20 NASB)....Rick Warren



Thursday, August 14, 2008

Objective-in-Jesus: Respect


Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves.

Romans 12:10 (NIV)

Respect means we see one another through our Father’s eyes; as eternal beings, chosen by God “for the high calling of priestly work, chosen to be a holy people, God’s instruments to do his work and speak out for him” as “heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ” (John 3:16; 1 Peter 2:9 MSG; Romans 8:17 NIV).

Our objective-in-Jesus is to consistently remember we’ll be sharing heaven with those in our small groups and congregations, even those we have difficulty respecting now. And God, in his wisdom, “put the body together in such a way that extra honor and care are given to those parts that have less dignity” (1 Corinthians 12:24 NLT).

We often miss this, but one of the simplest ways to show respect is to simply listen. We offer our presence and open our ears, listening to the hidden hurts and heartaches, the deepest dreams and desires of one another.

The truth is, the God of the universe listens to our prayers, which does serious damage to any argument that we’re too busy. Busier than God?

Jesus listened to those around him and he listens to us, which destroys any argument that our mission is too important to listen. Or, is our mission, or even our daily tasks, more important than Jesus?

Our objective-in-Jesus is to respect others enough to let them get the whole story out before we rush in to give an answer, or jump in to fix things, or just plain react to what we think instead of what is true (1 Corinthians 1:10). If you flip the coin, you know all you need sometimes is for someone to hear what’s on your heart.

Respect means we trust others, instead of assuming they’ll do it wrong, or that they won’t do it as well (Philippians 2:3).

In the school of Jesus, we learn to “excel in showing respect for each other” (Romans 12:10b GWT)......Jon Walker


Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Balancing your life


"Don't let the errors of evil people lead you down the wrong path and make you lose your balance." (

2 Peter 3:17, CEV)

Blessed are the balanced; they shall outlast everyone.

One of the events in the summer Olympics is the pentathlon. It is composed of five events: pistol shooting, fencing, horseback riding, running, and swimming. The pentathlete's goal is to succeed in all five areas, not just one or two.

Your life is a pentathlon of five purposes, which you must keep in balance. These purposes were practiced by the first Christians in Acts 2, explained by Paul in Ephesians 4, and modeled by Jesus in John 17, but they are summarized in the Great Commandment and the Great Commission of Jesus.

These two statements sum up what this daily devotional is all about - God's five purposes for your life:

1. "Love God with all your heart": You were planned for God's pleasure, so your purpose is to love God through worship.

2. "Love your neighbor as yourself": You were shaped for serving, so your purpose is to show love for others through ministry.

3. "Go and make disciples": You were made for a mission, so your purpose is to share God's message through evangelism.

4. "baptize them into …": You were formed for God's family, so your purpose is to identify with his church through fellowship.

5. "teach them to do all things …": You were created to become like Christ, so your purpose is to grow to maturity through discipleship.

A great commitment to the Great Commandment and the Great Commission will make you a great Christian.

Point to ponder: Balance is critical if you're going to fulfill the five purposes of your life.

Verse: "Don't let the errors of evil people lead you down the wrong path and make you lose your balance." (2 Peter 3:17, CEV)

What will you do about it: Take a survey of your life. Are you fulfilling all five of your purposes? What do you need to do to find balance in those five areas?

Prayer: Ask God to balance you. Ask him to shift your priorities and rearrange your life so that you're fulfilling your whole purpose...Rick Warren



Tuesday, August 12, 2008

We Need Models and Mentors


Join with others in following my example, brothers, and take note of those who live according to the pattern we gave you.

Philippians 3:17 (NIV)


For us to mature, we need models and mentors.

Many people make the mistake of thinking all they need to grow spiritually is God’s Word and prayer. But the truth is, we need people to help us grow.

Christlike character is built through relationships, not in isolation. There are many things God wants you to learn about life that you’ll never learn on your own. You’ll only learn them in community.

We always grow faster and stronger with living, breathing examples who can model for us what a purpose driven life looks like. We need more than explanations, we need examples.

Paul realized the power of a pattern when he advised, “Join with others in following my example, brothers, and take note of those who live according to the pattern we gave you” (Philippians 3:17 NIV). To grow, we need to see principles in practice. We need to see what beliefs looks like when they are translated as behavior in everyday situations.

When Paul would travel to a city to start a church, he would begin by simply living among the people. He was a “living Bible,” echoing the life of Jesus, where “the word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14 NKJV).

After Paul left a city, he would write back, “Keep putting into practice all you learned from me and heard from me and saw me doing, and the God of peace will be with you” (Philippians 4:9 NLT).

Who are your models for following Christ? Who are you watching and learning from?

Here’s a tougher question: Are you an example for anyone else? In elementary school, you probably enjoyed “Show and Tell.” As believers, we’re often better at “telling” than “showing.”

In today’s culture, the world desperately needs people who can show us how to love our spouse and make a marriage last, how to relate to our kids, how to do business with integrity, how to handle conflict in the way Jesus would. These are lessons we learn by watching others.

Not only do we need models to grow, we need mentors. Mentors are people who’ve followed Christ longer than we have and are able to share their life lessons. You’ve heard that it’s wise to learn from experience, but it is wiser to learn from the experiences of others. Life is too short to learn everything by experience! And some painful experiences can be avoided if you’re smart enough to learn from mentors in your church family.

Ask yourself this: “What’s been the greatest positive influence on my life?” Most likely it was not a sermon, seminar, or small group lesson. It was somebody who shaped your life through a personal relationship.

Can you see God’s wisdom in creating the church, a family full of mentors and models for our benefit?

That’s why being connected to a small group is so crucial to spiritual growth. It’s a regular opportunity to learn from each other.

Today, spend a few moments getting intentional about this. Write down the names of people in your church and small group that you’d like to learn from. Then identify what you’d specifically like to learn from them. Remember, they don’t have to be perfect to be a model or mentor.

To grow spiritually, you must also be willing to be a model or mentor to others. That may scare you but all it takes is being one step ahead.

People don’t expect you to be perfect – they already know you aren’t. What they want you to be is honest! So let them see your struggles, not just your successes. We usually grow as much from others’ weaknesses as we do from their strengths....Rick Warren.


Monday, August 11, 2008

8.8.88


မတင္ျဖစ္ခဲ့တဲ့ ခံစားခ်က္တရပ္၊ သူငယ္ခ်င္းေတြကို ေဝဌလိုက္တယ္ေနာ္။

နွလံုးခုန္သံရပ္၊ စကားမဲ့လို႕၊ ေတြေတြေလးေငး၊ အေတြးေတြက၊ အတိတ္ဆီကို တရိပ္ရိပ္နွင္လို႕၊ စိတ္အစဥ္က ေဆာက္တည္ရာမရနဲ႕ေပါ့။

သူငယ္ခ်င္းတေယာက္က ေျပာတယ္ ၈.၈.၀၈ တဲ့ လပ္ကီးေန႕စြဲတဲ့ေလ။
သူငယ္ခ်င္းရယ္ လြန္ခဲ့ေသာ နွစ္ ၂၀မွာ တို႕နိုင္ငံဒီလိုေန႕ေလးက လူေပါင္း ၃၀၀၀ေက်ာ္ ေလာက္ ေသြးေျမက်ခဲ့တဲ့ ေန႕ရက္ဆိုတာ မင္းသိရင္ လပ္ကီးေန႕လို႕ေျပာအံုးမလား ေမးလိုက္ခ်င္ေပမဲ့၊ စကားသံေတြက ဆြံအ လို႕ ထြက္မလာပါဘူး။

ၾသဂုတ္လမွာ ေမြးတဲ့သူက ထူးရင္ထူး၊ မထူးရင္ရူး ဆိုျပီး၊ ၾသဂုတ္လမွာ ေမြးသူကို လပ္ကီးလ သားသမီးတဲ့ေလ။ အရြယ္မတိုင္ခင္မွာ ေသြးေျမက်ခဲ့တဲ့၊ လူငယ္ေလးေတြကို သတိရ ရင္း သူတို႕ေတြအတြက္ ၾသဂုတ္လက လပ္ကီးလမွ ျဖစ္အံုးမလား ကိုယ့္ကိုယ္ကို ေမးမိတယ္။

အိမ္ေရွ႕မွာ စစ္ကားၾကီး ညၾကီးအခ်ိန္မေတာ္လာရပ္၊ အိမ္က သူကိုေခၚသြားတာ၊ သတင္းမၾကား၊ ဘယ္ဆီေရာက္၊ ဘယ္ေပါက္လို႕၊ ဘယ္လိုက္ရွာရမယ္မသိ၊ ေသဆံုးျပီတဲ့ဆိုတဲ့ သတင္းရမွ ေအာ္သူကအဲဒီကိုေရာက္ေနတာပါလားလို႕ သိရတဲ့၊ က်န္ရစ္သူ မိသားစုအတြက္၊ ၾသဂုတ္လက လပ္ကီးလ လား။

ဘဝတခုကို အေျခအေနတခုအျဖစ္သို႕ေျပာင္း ေျမလွန္လိုက္တဲ့ ဒီၾသဂုတ္လက ျမန္မာျပည္သားမ်ားအတြက္ ဘယ္လိုေျပာရမလဲဟင္... စကားလံုးရယ္ ရွာေပးပါကြယ္၊

ေျပာျပခ်င္တယ္၊ စကားသံေတြဟာ၊ သံစဥ္မဲ့လို႕၊ ရင္ထဲကေန ထြက္ကို မလာေတာ့ပါဘူး၊ ဒါေပမဲ့ေလ..... သူငယ္ခ်င္းတို႕ေရ နားလည္လိမ့္မယ္လို႕ထင္ပါတယ္ေနာ္............

Engineer at Work


While Peter was wondering about the meaning of the vision, the men sent by Cornelius found out where Simon's house was and stopped at the gate.

Acts 10:17 (NIV)


Praying on a rooftop in Caesarea, Peter, the apostle of stomp and snort, is hungry, and while he waits for his daily bread to be prepared, he seeks the everlasting bread of life (John 6:48). Deeply submerged in the presence of God, Peter sees a vision of food forbidden.

He recoils, saying, “Surely not, Lord! . . . I have never eaten anything impure or unclean” (Acts 10:14 NIV). A heavenly voice says, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean” (Acts 10:15 NIV).

Peter’s perplexed, but at the same time, God is working his plan. Across town is a centurion seeking the one true God. He is a Gentile; he is, in a figurative sense, food forbidden. But God says to look for a man named Peter; and Peter, still wondering what the vision meant, sees three men from Cornelius approaching on the street below.

The Holy Spirit says to Peter, “Simon, three men are looking for you. So get up and go downstairs. Do not hesitate to go with them, for I have sent them” (Acts 10:19-20 NIV). Peter follows the men to Cornelius’ house and finds a crowd already waiting to hear the good news of Jesus, the Christ.

Cornelius tells Peter that, four days before, God promised to send a messenger. In that instant, Peter knew he was the messenger and that the vision meant the gospel is for all people, even Gentiles.

And as Peter began to tell Cornelius’ crowd how to make peace with God, the Holy Spirit descended upon them all, even those who were Gentile.

Oswald Chambers described God as the Great Engineer, creating circumstances to bring about moments in our lives of divine importance, leading us to such divine appointments.

You’ve seen how God did this in the lives of Peter and Cornelius; will you watch now for how God engineers divine encounters in the life you can no longer call your own?....Jon Walker



Sunday, August 10, 2008

The Eye Of God

Read II Chronicles 16 : 7 - 14

The eyes of the Lord run to and from throughout the whole earth, to show Himself strong on behalf of those whose heart is loyal to Him.
II Chronicles 16 : 9

The Hubble Space Telescope has taken photos of the Helix Nebula. Some astronomers describe it as "a trillion- mile - long tunnel of glowing gases." At its center is a dying star that has ejected just and gas stretching toward its outer rim. Remarkable photos of it look like the blur iris of a human eye complete with eyelids. Because of this some have called it the " Eye of God."

Although this nebula is not literally the eye of God, the Scriptures do talk about God's gaze on our lives. The prophet Hanani said, " The eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show Himself strong on behalf of those whose heart is loyal to Him" ( II Chron 16 :9).

This proclamation of God's all-seeing eye was given in response to King Asa's reliance upon another ruler for military security. Asa seemed to have forgotten that it was the Lord God, not mere soldiers, who had given him past victories over his enemies ( 14: 11 -12). This spiritual disloyalty didnot escape the notice of God, who seeks to pour out blessing on acts of obedience to Him.

Although we cannot see the eyes of God, we can be assured that He sees us. His desire is to show Himself strong to those who are loyal to Him with their whole heart. .... Dennis Fisher

Precious promise God hath given
To the weary passerby,
On the way from earth to heaven,
" I will guide thee with Mine eye." ..... Niles

To know that God sees us brings both conviction and comfort.

Friday, August 8, 2008

Balancing your life



"Don't let the errors of evil people lead you down the wrong path and make you lose your balance."

(2 Peter 3:17, CEV)

Blessed are the balanced; they shall outlast everyone.

One of the events in the summer Olympics is the pentathlon. It is composed of five events: pistol shooting, fencing, horseback riding, running, and swimming. The pentathlete's goal is to succeed in all five areas, not just one or two.

Your life is a pentathlon of five purposes, which you must keep in balance. These purposes were practiced by the first Christians in Acts 2, explained by Paul in Ephesians 4, and modeled by Jesus in John 17, but they are summarized in the Great Commandment and the Great Commission of Jesus.

These two statements sum up what this daily devotional is all about - God's five purposes for your life:

1. "Love God with all your heart": You were planned for God's pleasure, so your purpose is to love God through worship.

2. "Love your neighbor as yourself": You were shaped for serving, so your purpose is to show love for others through ministry.

3. "Go and make disciples": You were made for a mission, so your purpose is to share God's message through evangelism.

4. "baptize them into …": You were formed for God's family, so your purpose is to identify with his church through fellowship.

5. "teach them to do all things …": You were created to become like Christ, so your purpose is to grow to maturity through discipleship.

A great commitment to the Great Commandment and the Great Commission will make you a great Christian.

Point to ponder: Balance is critical if you're going to fulfill the five purposes of your life.

Verse: "Don't let the errors of evil people lead you down the wrong path and make you lose your balance." (2 Peter 3:17, CEV)

What will you do about it: Take a survey of your life. Are you fulfilling all five of your purposes? What do you need to do to find balance in those five areas?

Prayer: Ask God to balance you. Ask him to shift your priorities and rearrange your life so that you're fulfilling your whole purpose.....Rivk Warren



Thursday, August 7, 2008

The Benefits of Being in God’s Family


Since you are his child, everything he has belongs to you.

Galatians 4:7 (NLT)


The moment you were spiritually born into God’s family, you were given some astounding birthday gifts: the family name, the family likeness, family privileges, family intimate access, and the family inheritance!

The New Testament gives great emphasis to our rich “inheritance.” It tells us, “My God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:19 NIV). As children of God we get to share in the family fortune. Here on earth we are given the riches of his grace, kindness, patience, glory, wisdom, power, and mercy.

But in eternity we will inherit even more.

Paul said, “I want you to realize what a rich and glorious inheritance he has given to his people” (Ephesians 1:18 NLT). What exactly does that inheritance include?

· First, we will get to be with God forever.

· Second, we will completely change to be like Christ.

· Third, we will be freed from all pain, death, and suffering.

· Fourth, we will be rewarded and reassigned positions of service.

· Fifth, we will get to share in Christ’s glory.

What an inheritance! You are far richer than you realize.

The Bible says, “God has reserved a priceless inheritance for his children. It is kept in heaven for you, pure and undefiled, beyond the reach of change and decay” (1 Peter 1:4 NLT).

This means that your eternal inheritance is priceless, pure, permanent, and protected. No one can take it from you; it can’t be destroyed by war, a poor economy, or a natural disaster.

This eternal inheritance, not retirement, is what you should be looking forward to and working for. Paul says, “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward” (Colossians 3:23-24 NIV)....Rick Warren

Wednesday, August 6, 2008

You Were Formed for God’s Family


God is the One who made all things, and all things are for his glory. He wanted to have many children share his glory.

Hebrews 2:10 (NCV)


God wants a family, and he created you to be a part of it. This is one of God’s purposes for your life, which he planned before you were born.

The entire Bible is the story of God building a family who will love him, honor him, and reign with him forever. It says, “His unchanging plan has always been to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. And this gave him great pleasure” (Ephesians 1:5 NLT).

Because God is love, he treasures relationships. His very nature is relational, and he identifies himself in family terms: Father, Son, and Spirit. The Trinity is God’s relationship to himself. It’s the perfect pattern for relational harmony, and we should study its implications.

God has always existed in loving relationship to himself, so he has never been lonely. He didn’t need a family—he desired one, so he devised a plan to create us, bring us into his family, and share with us all he has.

This gives God great pleasure. The Bible says, “It was a happy day for him when he gave us our new lives through the truth of his Word, and we became, as it were, the first children in his new family” (James 1:18 LB).

When we place our faith in Christ, God becomes our Father, we become his children, other believers become our brothers and sisters, and the church becomes our spiritual family. The family of God includes all believers in the past, the present, and the future....Rick Warren



Tuesday, August 5, 2008

What matters most


“Love means living the way God commanded us to live. As you have heard from the beginning, his command is this: Live a life of love.”

(2 John 1:6, NCV)

Life is all about love.

Because God is love, the most important lesson he wants you to learn on earth is how to love. It is in loving that we are most like him, so love is the foundation of every command he has given us: “The whole Law can be summed up in this one command: ‘Love others as you love yourself.” (Galatians 5:14, LB)

Learning to love unselfishly is not an easy task. That’s why we’re given a lifetime to learn it.

Of course, God wants us to love everyone, but he is particularly concerned that we learn to love others in his family.

Why does God insist that we give special love and attention to other believers?

Because God wants his family to be known for its love more than anything else. Jesus said our love for each other – not our doctrinal belief – is our greatest witness to the world.

He said, “Your strong love for each other will prove to the world that you are my disciples.” (John 13:35, LB)

In heaven we will enjoy God’s family forever, but first we have some tough work to do here on earth to prepare ourselves for an eternity of loving. God trains us by giving us “family responsibilities,” and the foremost of these is to practice loving each other.

The best use of life is love. The best expression of love is time. The best time to love is now.

Point to ponder: Life is all about love – especially for those in God’s family.

Verse: “Love means living the way God commanded us to live. As you have heard from the beginning, his command is this: Live a life of love.” (2 John 1:6, NCV)

What will you do about it: Practice being loving. Find a way to secretly serve someone in your church today. Don’t tell anyone about it except God.

Prayer: Ask God to help you make relationships your first priority....Rick Warren



Monday, August 4, 2008

Compromising on Love?


And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy.

Colossians 1:18 (NIV)


If our love for one another is not energized by Jesus, we’re doomed to slide from the promise of “All You Need Is Love” into the push and shove of “I, Me, Mine.” Our love can’t stop at “let’s just get along” because the deep and ancient God-love emerges, not from compromise, but from sacrifice.

And the first step of sacrifice is submission – not submission to one another, although that will often be required – but an uncompromising submission to the head of all us “one anothers”: Jesus, our Lord, our brother, and our King.

Jesus is the “head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy” (Colossians 1:18 NIV).

The ancient wisdom demands there be only one ruling mind – a mind that was there from the beginning, firstborn among the “one anothers.” This one ruling mind now operates within, providing us with a wisdom that passes all human understanding and connecting us to a deep, fathomless, supernatural love.

Submit to the head of our body, and he’ll show you how to love others with a deep Jesus-love. It is his power and his strength that will energize you to love even those, especially those, you find impossible to love.....Jon Walker



Sunday, August 3, 2008

One_Minute_Bible_Verse


“ Your world is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path ”

( Ps.119 : 105 )

Saturday, August 2, 2008

Seeing life from God's view


"What is your life?"

(James 4:14b, NIV)

How you define life determines your destiny. The way you view life is your life metaphor. It's your description of how life works and what you expect from it.

It influences your life more than you realize and determines your expectations, values, relationships, goals, and priorities.

To fulfill the purposes God has for you, you will have to base your view on the biblical metaphors of life. These are: Life is a test, and life is a trust.

Life is a test - God continually tests people's character, faith, obedience, love, integrity, and loyalty. Character is both developed and revealed, and all of life is a test.

When you understand that life is a test, you realize that every day is important. God wants you to pass the tests of life, so he never allows the tests to be greater than the grace he gives you to handle them.

Life is a trust - We are to be stewards of whatever God gives us. All we enjoy is to be treated as a trust that God has placed in our hands. The more God gives you, the more responsible he expects you to be.

If you treat everything as a trust, God promises three rewards in eternity: affirmation, promotion, and celebration.

If your life metaphor doesn't line up with God's, ask him to give you a new perspective - his.

Point to ponder: Life is a test and a trust.

Verse: "What is your life?" (James 4:14b, NIV)

What will you do about it: No matter what trials or tests face you today, thank God that he is using those things to build your character.

Prayer: Ask God to keep you mindful that every day is significant. Ask him to help you pass each test and be a good steward of what he's entrusted to you......Rick Warren