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BPGC-Ehpesians Birthdates! QiQi - March 17th Sherwin - June 8th ShaoNing - July 18th WeiSong - August 2nd Huey - August 27th LiuYi - August 28th Xueyun - September 7th BoHan - September 18th WeiXin - October 14th ZiXin - October 30th Christopher - November 28th JiBing - December 21st previous posts Automatic ‘A’ from God True & Better Another Day Without the Return of the King Glorifying God in All You Do Do what your hearts says? Nice wallpapers What not to wear? How would you answer? All I Have is Christ - An Animation the past July 2008 August 2008 September 2008 October 2008 November 2008 December 2008 May 2009 June 2009 July 2009 August 2009 September 2009 January 2010 February 2010 March 2010 April 2010 July 2010 September 2010 October 2010 November 2010 January 2011 February 2011 March 2011 April 2011 May 2011 June 2011 September 2011 People We (should) Know! :x Daune DeZhang Edna Eunice GeokLan HueyFen JieLing Johnson LiangFa Pengs ShaoNing SuLing Group blogs!
We talk... Our Updates & Thanksgivings! HueyFen - ShaoNing -TG:rain stopped aft for so long!! :) -TG:had time to catch up with secsch/jc friend (will share with the girls next time! -PR:final year project! able to ovecome laziness and procrastination, and rly work hard for the project. part 1 due in 2 weeks time and its graded 25%! Chris - Pengs -PR:Good health throughout CNY!! JiBing - WeiSong - Sherwin - LiuYi -PR:Study for God and let Him lead thru this year. YanYi - XueYun -TG:Thank God for new year. -PR:Everyone to have enough rest. QiQi - WeiXin - ZiXin -
Our Prayers requests JiaYan -Know what to do in future. -Work hard in bible study. -Faithful to work in church. Chris -Will meditate on God's Word daily. -Start to memorise verses. Pengs -Time management, as having holidays now. -Continue to stay close to God. JiBing -Able to know whats God's plan in life. WeiSong - Sherwin - BoHan - LiuYi -Art mock exam coming thurs -Wisdom in coping with all the subject -Take good care of own body XueYun - QiQi -Willingness to step out of comfort zone and get to know abt more ppl. WeiXin -Able to serve God with a willing heart. ZiXin -Discipline in not procrastinating. -Wisdom and strength from God for daily stuffs.
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Sunday, June 12, 2011 ( Rethinking Spiritual Growth @ 8:26 PM )  The gospel has me reconsidering the typical way we think about Christian growth: spiritual measurements and maturity; what it means to change, develop, grow; what the pursuit of holiness and the practice of godliness really entails. Let Grace Kill Your Natural Instinct In his 2008 movie The Happening, writer, producer, and directorM. Night Shyamalan unfolds a freaky plot about a mysterious, invisible toxin that causes anyone exposed to it to commit suicide. One of the first signs that the unaware victim has breathed in this self-destructing toxin is that they begin walking backwards—signaling that every natural instinct to go on living and to fight for survival has been reversed. The victim’s default survival mechanism is turned upside down. This, in a sense, is what needs to happen to us when it comes to the way we think about progress in the Christian life. When breathed in, the radical, unconditional, free grace of God reverses every natural instinct regarding what it means to spiritually “survive and thrive.” Only the “toxin” of God’s grace can reverse the way we typically think about Christian growth. It's What We Do When it comes to measuring spiritual growth and progress, our natural instincts revolve almost exclusively around behavioral improvement. But what’s at the root of this good and bad fruit? What produces both the bad and good behavior Paul addresses here? A Matter of Belief Every temptation to sin is a temptation, in the moment, to disbelieve the gospel–the temptation to secure for ourselves in that moment something we think we need in order to be happy, something we don’t yet have: meaning, freedom, validation, and so on. Bad behavior happens when we fail to believe that everything we need, in Christ we already have; it happens when we fail to believe in the rich provisional resources that are already ours in the gospel. Conversely, good behavior happens when we daily rest in and receive Christ’s, “It is finished,” into new and deeper parts of our being every day. Colossians 3:5-17 provides an illustration of what takes place on the outside when something deeper happens (or doesn’t happen) on the inside. Going Backward for Progress In Philippians 2:12, when Paul tells us to, “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling,” he’s making it clear we’ve got work to do—but what exactly is the work? Get better? Try harder? Clean up your act? Pray more? Get more involved in church? Read the Bible longer? Clearly, it’s not a matter of whether or not effort is needed. The real issue is Where are we focusing our efforts? Are we working hard to perform? Or are we working hard to rest in Christ’s performance for us? He goes on to explain: “For it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (2:13). God works his work in you—which is the work already accomplished by Christ. Our hard work, therefore, means coming to a greater understanding of his work. In his Lectures on Romans, Martin Luther wrote, “To progress is always to begin again.” Real spiritual progress, in other words, requires a daily going backwards. The Work of Belief Christian growth does not happen by working hard to get something you don’t have. Rather, Christian growth happens by working hard to daily swim in the reality of what you do have. Believing again and again the gospel of God’s free, justifying grace everyday is the hard work we’re called to. This means that real change happens only as we continuously rediscover the gospel. The progress of the Christian life is “not our movement toward the goal; it’s the movement of the goal on us.” Sanctification involves God’s attack on our unbelief—our self-centered refusal to believe that God’s approval of us in Christ is full and final. It happens as we daily receive and rest in our unconditional justification. As G. C. Berkouwer said, “The heart of sanctification is the life which feeds on justification.” Growth in Grace 2 Peter 3:18 succinctly describes growth by saying, “But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” Growth always happens “in grace". The truest measure of our growth is not our behavior, it’s our grasp of grace–a grasp which involves coming to deeper and deeper terms with the unconditionality of God’s love. It’s also growth in “the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” This doesn’t simply mean learning facts about Jesus. It means growing in our love for Christ because of what he has already earned and secured for us and then living in a more vital awareness of that grace. Our main problem in the Christian life is not that we don’t try hard enough to be good, but that we haven’t believed the gospel and received its finished reality into all parts of our life. Take the Focus Away from You Gerhard Forde insightfully (and transparently) calls into question the ways in which we typically think about sanctification and spiritual progress when he writes: Am I making progress? If I am really honest, it seems to me that the question is odd, even a little ridiculous. As I get older and death draws nearer, I don’t seem to be getting better. I get a little more impatient, a little more anxious about having perhaps missed what this life has to offer, a little slower, harder to move, a little more sedentary and set in my ways. Am I making progress? Well, maybe it seems as though I sin less, but that may only be because I’m getting tired! It’s just too hard to keep indulging the lusts of youth. Is that sanctification? I wouldn’t think so! One should not, I expect, mistake encroaching senility for sanctification! But can it be, perhaps, that it is precisely the unconditional gift of grace that helps me to see and admit all that? I hope so. The grace of God should lead us to see the truth about ourselves, and to gain a certain lucidity, a certain humor, a certain down-to-earthness.The more I focus on my need to get better the worse I actually get. I become neurotic and self-absorbed. Preoccupation with my performance over Christ’s performance for me makes me increasingly self-centered and morbidly introspective. The more I focus on my need to get better the worse I actually get. I become neurotic and self-absorbed. Preoccupation with my performance over Christ’s performance for me makes me increasingly self-centered and morbidly introspective. It Truly Is Finished By all means work! But the hard work is not what you think it is; the hard work is washing your hands of you and resting in Christ’s finished work for you. Progress in obedience happens when our hearts realize God’s love for us does not depend on our progress in obedience. The real question is: What are you going to do now that you don’t have to do anything? What will your life look like lived under the banner which reads, “It is finished"? Answer on Facebook. Labels: Assurance, Change, Forgiveness, Freedom, Gospel, Jesus, Sanctification, Sin, Spiritual health 0 comments |