New Life Community

We'd like to think of Jesus as a loving God, one who left the 99 to find us, comfort us and carry us. While that is true the Bible also showed a different side of Jesus - one that we are uncomfortable with, one that demands a lot of changes from us and how we live our lives. 

Reconcile the sovereignty of God and the choices of men - in the most uncertain circumstances, we need to reconcile that God is sovereign, he is in control, and he is love - this understanding is crucial in helping us avoiding unnecessary anxiety in life.

The main pursue that we should have is to live like Christ, more than just knowing about him and his works. We go through Mark 1 to see how did Jesus affect so many lives and what are the foundation of His ministry, that should be our foundation too. 

We skewed the definition of blessing with getting what we want and the desire of our heart (or flesh). Jesus takes this heads on in sermon on the mount, in which he brings upside-down Kingdom principle by letting know that blessings actually reserved for those who are in bad seasons. 

When God calls us as his masterpiece, he knows exactly our weaknesses and our strengths, our past and our future, our failure and success - yet he chooses to love us unconditionally. This love and acceptance propel us to live our lives the way it meant to be, to learn from every mistake, to study, and to become a better version of ourselves every day.

We can see and face our situation better if we adopt God's point of view. We can do it by studying through the Bible, through Holy Spirit, and through our experience.

If we see through eyes of the Creator, we will treat and value others as He does. Knowing that we are accepted and loved would change how we live our lives.

When we are redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ, we no longer owned by sin but by the truth. We are not a servant, the word doulos means we are into a new kind of slavery, becoming a slave of truth. This slavery could be the best thing that could ever happen to us. 

Sowing is an important habit to kick start fruitful cycle in our lives. We can only have balanced and fruitful if we keep on sowing and not focusing solely on hoarding. 

We are always worshipping something, but the trap is to project ourselves as God worshippers while we live our lives worshipping something else. This week we dig what does it mean to worship God in Spirit and Truth.

Praying is a crucial habit for us believers. What's even harder than committing time to pray is to pray with the right heart and the right mind. We dig some of the principles when we want to restart and improve our prayer lives.

Fasting is about suppressing our flesh, yet we fast asking for things of the flesh. The real spiritual practice of fasting involves more than just not eating and asking what we want and more about tuning our heart and mind to His. 

Jesus showed some spiritual practice during his time on earth - one that we usually overlooked with all the media and distractions around us today. Solitude is not about us asking what we want, but more about meditating and pondering the Words that come alive before us. 

Sometimes we stuck as we cannot release forgiveness. The Bible voices a strong foundation on forgiveness, especially on why we are enabled to forgive, when should we forgive, and how to do it. 

Many people seems outwardly active whole inwardly they are stuck. Stuck people cannot pursue sanctification and tend to slide back into their old lives. As Christian, we need to bear fruits, bear good, and many fruits consistently. 

There are seasons in life - a time for everything that we have little to no control. Knowing what season we're in helps us to bear, whenever we feel stuck in life.

Stagnant situation could happened as we stop obeying God, and makin excuses for what we want to do. This all the while we are actually missing our purpose to repent, and rule

Stagnant - at some point, in any aspect we will find ourselves stuck. One of the major contributors is the devil's temptation and accusation. When we play to the liar's tune, we will find our mindset and characters stops growing.

Hypocrisy came from underlying issues that we usually don't deal with. Insecurity, the need of projecting a false outward image, and fear of failure can drive us to live a whitewashed life.

We learn how to live freely, confessing our wins and weakness and leave denial, be authentic with our true design, and be credible with our commitment even when no one's looking.