It is very humbling indeed to know that we have been made righteous not by our good works but by the cleansing blood of Jesus. It is also humbling to be made aware that we Christians are perhaps the worst sinners who are dependent on God’s grace to continue living. While we were still living sinful lives, Jesus had always been watching us being too stubborn to repent, holding fast to deceit, and living with sin as determinedly as a horse rushing into battle. He was angry with the way we conducted our minds and actions. He was heartbroken because we did not live the way that He ordained, yet He still extended His grace for us to be saved from damnation.

In Jeremiah 8: 4—6, we see God in His tenderness, expressing His yearning for sinners to realize their wickedness and turn to Him. Since their consciences were seared with the defiling touch of sin, He sends His word to them through the prophet Jeremiah. His word is like fire that burns away the perishable layers of sins from a soul that was made to live eternally. It is like a hammer that shatters the hardest rock of sin into pieces, even pulverizing it into nothing. Given God’s intolerance of sin, He could have easily killed the sinner and arranged for a better person to be born. Instead, He goes into the painstaking affair of cleansing a sinner’s heart and transforming him into a new person. The amazing thing is He remembers his sins no more and even allows him a place in heaven.

That is the undisputed grace of God. He reaches out to sinners with a father’s heart. He bothers to discipline us and touch our hearts even if our sins had left dirt and scars on His hands. He holds no record of our sins. He even welcomes us into His presence as adopted children, fully legitimate to inherit the spiritual blessings of His kingdom. This is too profound for me to grasp fully in my heart and mind given my human limitations. While we sometimes scream for retribution to fall on the sinner for his ugly crimes, God screams for repentance to come from the sinner and He will forgive and forget his crimes. No other person is capable of such grace; not even the ‘gods’ of ancient folklore possess such amazing grace. The grace of God is undisputed.

Many years ago, a representative of a major religious organization in Singapore convinced me that the church was only favourable for the wealthy class, as seen in scores of luxury cars driving in and out of churches every weekend. He said that the poor have no place in the church as they get neglected. That made me believe that Jesus was a God for the rich people only.

In that same year, I explored Christianity as a pre-believer and discovered that the things said by that man were lies. The rich, middle-income, and the poor worshipped Jesus together in an old and humble-looking cinema theatre. There were blue-collar workers, white-collar workers, students, and the elderly. All of them mingled together like one big family – I didn’t get to experience this wonderful unity in the organization where that representative came from.

The church, it seems, is not only for the rich. Whether rich or poor, all men and women are equal in the eyes of God, for God looks at the heart, but not the outward appearance (1 Samuel 16: 7). The story of a great feast invitation in Luke 14 breaks the perception of the kingdom of God as a snobbish enclave for the wealthy.

A rich man organized a great feast one night and invited many to attend his grand celebration. Those invited must have been the wealthy class, because they could afford to buy land and cattle. This was a kind of premium membership extended to them. To the rich man’s dismay and utmost disappointment, all of them refused to participate and they gave excuses such as tending to their land, oxen, and newlywed wives. It is not certain whether those excuses were genuine, but one thing was for sure: The invited guests did not value the dinner host, but were instead more occupied with their own matters.

With much indignation and refusing to let his dinner preparations go wasted, the rich man invited all the poor, maimed, lame, and blind people from all the streets, lanes, highways, and hedges of the city. These were the people who were forgotten by the society. While business went on as usual, they were neglected in the darkest fringes of the society. Yet the rich man deemed them worthy to join him in the great feast. Why should they refuse? A ten course meal awaited them. The great dining hall welcomed them into its comfortable abode. The rich man gave to them freely and took great care of them with warm hospitality just as he would do for any guest.

God’s kingdom is like that great feast and its dinner host. It is not for people who think too highly of themselves, who think that their lives’ needs and cares are more valuable than God. They feel full with their ‘treasures’ and claim that they do not need God. God’s fellowship has no place in their lives. But the kingdom of God is for those who realize that they are incomplete and imperfect. It is for those who know that life is more than academic pursuits, money-making, earthly pleasures, and even charity. It is for those who seek God because they are in need of being lifted up from spiritual poverty.

God – the Creator of the universe, Maker of your being, Giver of success, and the Healer of diseases – extends the premium membership for us to be His children. There is always space for more, so He tells us to spread the word and fetch all that are in need so that they may also have a share in His glorious presence. He eagerly invites all who are hungry.   

Disappointment. We are familiar with this feeling when someone lets us down by failing to fulfill a promise or by not acting in our expectations of his/her character. Sometimes when we get disappointed with a person, we may patch up, mend our differences and adjust our expectations; or we may just lose faith in that person and let the relationship grow cold with the passage of time.

We even get disappointed with God – a being whom we cannot see and touch physically. Because we have invested tremendous faith in believing He-who-is-not-seen, our disappointment with Him would feel seemingly greater than with anybody. We get disappointed with God when our prayers go unanswered and promises were not fulfilled. Where was God when your loved one passed away abruptly, exam grades gone poor despite hard work, job opportunities slipped through your hands for months, terminal disease struck you or your next-of-kin? When C.S. Lewis’ wife passed away a few years after they got married, he wrote, ‘[If you] go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you feel? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. And after that silence’ (A Grief Observed).

Remember the time when Jesus told His disciples that they would be given power from heaven (Luke 24: 49)? If that was so, then why were Stephen stoned to death, Paul executed, Peter crucified upside down, and John exiled on Patmos? How did He respond to the news of Lazarus’ death? He tarried a few days before going to his funeral. Is that what a friend is supposed to be like? He preached love, gentleness and mercy, but when a woman of Canaan begged Him for help, He called her a dog.

God’s answer to our disappointments with His is this: ‘My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts’ (Isaiah 55: 8—9). With regards to the instances mentioned, we understand God’s intentions when we adopt a higher perspective – a bird’s eye view – as we read the scriptures. We see that His promises and miracles were not always performed immediately as we have expected of Him. Rather, they happen at His timing because He had a higher purpose. As for the martyred saints, even though Jesus did not rescue them from mortal death, we know that they had been saved from eternal Death and now they reside with Him in heaven.

There is something that God prioritized above fulfilling promises and answering our prayers. He wants us to have faith in Him – the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen (Hebrews 11: 6). Without faith, it is impossible to please Him and therefore a life full of frustration. Faith in God is not about having confidence in our prayers and fasting. It is also not about willing Him to do things for us. Faith is about having a resilient confidence in God’s being. He never promised that we would not have trouble, but He promised that He will always be with us at all times. He understands our pain and loss because He had participated in such sufferings of a mortal life. He calls Himself the Comforter, Healer, and Counsellor because when troubles come, we will need His comfort, counsel, and healing and He will provide them.

How ironic it is to breed resentment to feed our disappointment with God when we have always acknowledged Him as our Sovereign Lord. He is the sovereign one, the ruler of all, master of the mandate of heaven. Yet He gently invites us to rediscover His character and continue to have faith in Him – even grow our faith in Him – in the midst of disappoint. Jesus assures us that before we call, He will answer, and while we are still speaking, He will hear (Isaiah 65: 24).

Jesus invites you to have faith and believe that all things work together for the good of those who love Him (Romans 3: 28), even though you may be sorely disappointed with Him. A preacher said, ‘Faith is acting like it is so, even when it’s not so, in order that it might be so, just because God said so.’ Jesus calls us to have faith like King David, a faith that says, ‘Even though I am walking through a valley of the shadow of death, Your rod and staff comfort me.’ Even though bad things happen, I will trust God. Even though I cannot see His goodness, I will trust that He is good. Even though I feel that His presence is far from me, I will trust that He is with me. Even though things do not happen as I want them to be, I will trust that God has a greater plan for me.   

Have faith. Trust Jesus. Always.

The world is filled with ugliness as its people confuse the roles of masculinity and feminity. Husbands hammer their fists on their wives and hurl verbal abuse at them. Same-sex couples cuddle each other in their secret confines. Boyfriends manipulate their partners for sexual gratification. Men lay back passively while their female partners get frustrated from initiating almost everything. Each gender claims to be stronger and better than the other. This is not to be.

Gender roles get confused because the dust-covered, moth-eaten pages of the Bible had been left forgotten and untouched for too long. To understand God’s special design for the man and woman, we need to return to the beginning where the creation of mankind began. God removed a rib from Adam and used it to create Eve as Adam’s female counterpart. He did not create an Alex out of it; He made female for male to have a holy union – a partnership in which they would live together to glorify Him. In the words of bible commentator Mathew Henry, ‘Eve was not taken out of Adam’s head to top him, neither out of his feet to be trampled by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected by him, and near his heart to be loved by him.’

God made man and woman to be equals who are respectful of each other. For couples, they are to share mutual affections for each other, rather than decay in a one-sided relationship where either of them is passive. As such, husbands are to ‘render to his wife the affection due her, and likewise also the wife to her husband’ (1 Corinthians 7:3). Furthermore, one gender cannot claim to be more superior than the other, for just as ‘woman came from man, even so man also comes through woman [in childbirth], but all things are from God’ (1 Corinthians 11: 11—12).

If only the world was more aware of the specific masculine and feminine roles that God had set apart, there would be a decline in spousal abuse, homosexuality, date rape, and other gender inequality issues. You and I can start to make a change by setting ourselves as examples of gentlemen and godly ladies so that healthy relationships can thrive and bring hope to the destitute and conviction to the erroneous. Men, embrace your masculinity; women, embrace your feminity, and be honoured that you have this divine opportunity of being the gentlemen and virtuous ladies that God created you to be.