Peace of Jesus Christ be with you all.
I greet you all in the name of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
I hope this newsletter finds you in good spirit and health. I am really overwhelmed by the encouragement and prayer support rendered to me by you, as a fellowship, in establishing the Kingdom of God. However, I have realised that only a few people have the strength to share what they received from God with each other. In order to establish the habit of sharing, I tried to introduce many methods in our online bible study meetings, church fellowships, and house meetings. Nevertheless, the church still is not coming forward to grow in the habit of sharing their revelations and experiences with each other although they are eager in sharing their money. This is a ‘red flag’ which needs our attention. In Matthew 25:14 – 30 we see the parable about the talents which were given to people according to the will of the Father. Those who used it to multiply it were blessed, but the person who hid his talents lost what was given to him. In the same way, the purpose of the church is to share with each other what it has received from God. As a body of Christ, kindly keep praying for the people whom you have come across. If you are struggling with questions, such as, “For whom and what should I pray?”, then Matthew 5:44 is the best solution 43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, 45 that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.May the good Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ help you to be His children.
In the last few newsletters, we discussed about relationships. I am thankful to God for all His teachings we had in this topic, which enabled us to learn a lot of truth about relationships. In this letter, we are going to see a new topic, which is, the ‘Word of God’. Before the world was created, the whole world was filled with three components, which are, chaos, emptiness, and darkness. The same things even persist today in our lives and create a way for the devil to destroy us and affect our relationships. Let us discuss them below.
Chaos:
The meaning of Chaos is, it is a state of utter confusion. There are few questions which need to be answered in order for us to understand this topic. For example, if God is the creator, then how can chaos exist? And, why are we in chaos? It is very clear that chaos was destroyed by the word of God. We all know and believe that. However, it is important to understand that chaos will persist if we try to see the world without the lens of the word of God. When we do that, whatever we see will be out of focus and it will create great confusion in our lives. Our perception of anything will be right only with the word of God, else everything will be a confusion. Therefore, it is very important to bring our focus on these two words, i.e., ‘chaos’ and ‘word of God’.
The word chaos may reveal its nature in different forms. In few situations, it works like a cycle which does not have an end or a beginning. In other situations, it will create a situation where we do not know the problem nor the solution. For e.g., when we faced Covid-19, the whole world was in utter confusion, which means we were fighting against an unknown enemy. In addition to this, it also led to us doing things without any target and reason. We were desperately trying everything possible to control a problem. Though these are different but typical shades of chaos, we never think or relate these kinds of things to it. So, knowing the reason and solution for chaos will not only change our lives, but it will make the world a better place. We will see the first tool for chaos today.
- Deception:
The biggest strength of chaos is the subtle way in which it enters a person’s life. In order to keep up to certain standards in our lives, we need referral points. For example, if you want to keep your blood sugar under control then there is a referral point below which we must maintain our sugar levels. In the same way, when we buy a land, for the demarking of the boundary, we need referral points as well. In many situations, these referral points were stolen from our lives. The standard of living in our spiritual, moral, ethical, and physical lives were lost by us. Sadly, we are not even able to realise that we have lost it. This is the deception, and this is the beginning point of chaos. So, to ponder the reason for chaos, we need to understand the word, deception.
God created everything. In other words, He is the designer, and He is the only one who designs and engineers everything, whether we like it or not, and His design will be the only one that stands the test of time. For e.g., our need for water was planned by God to be met in the form of rivers, ponds, rains, and wells. This system, though it struggled at times, was able to stand the test of time. But man, in order to enjoy the luxury of water, started to dig deep borewells. Yes, it gave much comfort immediately, but after some years, now, we are facing another problem which is the bad effects of borewells. Due to borewells, water level is going down rapidly and even borewells are dried up. We may argue that we needed borewells due to lack of rainfall. However, it is important to remember that though lack of rainfall caused many fertile lands to become deserts and despite the situation repeating time and again in history, it never depleted our water levels. Till we humans introduced borewells, our water levels were protected. To make it simple, we lacked water when we did not have rainfall, but we were not destroyed because of the lack. Therefore, though modern day inventions give us quick fixes, they come with the heavy price of destruction as an unseen consequence. The deception is that we create short cuts to solve problems and deviate from God’s standards.
Let me explain this better through a witness that I experienced, especially with the water problem. I was the founder and managing director for a trust which is run for the benefit of struggling people in the society. The trust chose a place and built a small structure in a desolate area for this cause, where no one wants to live because it was a desert. But, God gave us a good water spring and we were enjoying the water supply. But in due course, the borewell dried up and even taking the submerged motor from the borewell itself became a great difficulty. So, according to our worldly knowledge, we dug two more borewells and did lots of renovations, but nothing worked. We still lacked water. However, in the back of my mind a small thought kept on lingering, and it was about repentance. Then, I started honouring that thought by praying for repentance which led me to receive revelations about the water issue from the Bible. The first revelation was from Genesis 17th Chapter where God opened the rock and gave the water to His people. This revelation fitted well with my situation because the place we chose for the mission was a rocky place, but God did perform a miracle for us by giving us water when we started. The reason why God did this miracle is explained in the 7th verse like this, “So he called the name of the place Massah and Meribah, because of the contention of the children of Israel, and because they tempted the Lord, saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?” It was very clear that the rebellion of the people of Israel was the reason behind their lack of water. In order to heal the rebellion, God performed this miracle but the people instead of longing for the healing, they focussed on the miracle and temporary solutions and chose to be more rebellious. Similarly, God gave water to our building as a miracle in the beginning, but we did not focus on it through the lens of repentance. Instead we kept believing that borewells are the solutions to our problems until God dried them up. This revelation stirred up my prayer for repentance more. Then, I received the second revelation following this one from the life of Isaac. In the book of Genesis, in the 26th Chapter, Isaac faced a problem with famine and scarcity of water. He had found a solution in his knowledge, but the Lord God denied it. When Isaac obeyed God’s voice, he was led by God and saw the deliverance in the 12th & 13 verses, “12 Then Isaac sowed in that land, and reaped in the same year a hundredfold; and the Lord blessed him. 13The man began to prosper, and continued prospering until he became very prosperous.” Therefore, these revelations helped me to understand that deliverance is not about problem solving but about being led by the Holy Spirit and remaining in His guidance. This submission will thwart all attempts of deception to open doors for chaos to enter our lives.
Therefore, to conclude, we can say that chaos enters a person’s life through deception. So, chaos and deception are directly related to each other. But if we make the choice to love the truth we will be protected from chaos and the truth will deliver us. So, let us pray to the Lord God for His mercy and grace so that we can be delivered from the deceptions in our lives.
May His Grace and mercy be with you.