Find your idol

When we think about idol, we often think it's about statue; a sculpture that representing a person, or an animal or an event. As Paul in Colossians 3:5 put it bluntly. - Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry.

"The human heart is a factory of idols…Everyone of us is, from his mother's womb expert in inventing idols.” John Calvin,

They can be anything, praise of men, money, job, career, relationship, status, sport, movies, food, ministry, family, kids, spouse, acceptance, leisure, anything 'good', all of them are not 'idol' but they become idol when our heart cling to them not God, as if we have them we become more valuable, if we don't have them we become less valuable, like 'something is missing'. We are the only one who knows our idol, so we can't simply says to our fellow, that is your idol !!!. Although they can somehow indirectly or directly reveal our idol heart within.

Let us find our idol, and humbly admit it in front of God merciful, full of grace, He will replace our idol heart with Himself, like a woman at the well, Jesus answered, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."

At the end we can says - "God, You are more powerful, more beautiful, more enjoyable, more satisfying, more thrilling, more delightful, more everything compare to whatever in this world", it's a life time war againts our heart, that will always have a tendency to produce idol.

Nuh mendapat Kasih Karunia

Kita tentunya tahu kisah mengenai Nuh, bahkan kalau kita sudah menjadi mengikuti sekolah minggu dari usia yang relatif muda, kisah mengenai bahterah Nuh tentu sudah tidak asing di kuping kita, bahkan jika kita belum percaya ataupun sudah percaya di usia yang beranjak dewasa kisah Nuh ini pernah terlintas dalam pikiran kita.

Kita tahu kejadiannya adalah bahwa, Tuhan merencakan kemusnahan manusia melalui air bah, tapi ada satu keluarga yang Tuhan selamatkan, yaitu keluarga Nuh. Nuh diberitahu untuk membuat bahtera karena Tuhan akan membanjiri bumi dengan air bah. Terpikir dalam benak saya apakah mungkin Nuh menolak untuk membuat bahtera dan akhirnya rencana Allah gagal karena semua manusia tidak ada yang selamat? Atau memang sudah pasti Nuh akan membuat kapal karena Nuh adalah orang yang taat kepada Tuhan? Apakah ketaatan Nuh bisa kita peroleh juga? Atau bisa kita usahakan?

Kejadian 6:9 tentu sudah jelas mengatakan bahwa Nuh adalah seorang yang benar dan tidak bercela di antara orang sezamannya, dan Nuh itu hidup bergaul dengan Allah, pertanyaannya adalah apakah karena hal tersebut maka Allah menyelamatkan Nuh dan keluarganya, jika memang hanya Nuh yang hidup bergaul dan tidak bercela mengapa keluarganya juga diselamatkan, apakah memang ada rencana Tuhan supaya ada keturunan dari Nuh sehingga manusia dapat diselamatkan di dalam Yesus Kristus?

Tentu tidak, Nuh tidak ada berbeda dengan kita, bukan karena kita hidup bergaul dengan Allah maka Allah memilih kita, Allah memilih kita tanpa ada syarat apapun, karena kita ini tidak bisa memilih yang baik dan yang berkenan kepada Allah, seperti Agustinus mengatakan kehendak bebas manusia adalah hanya membuahkan kejahatan semata-mata, walaupun melakukan kebaikan - motivasi dari dalam lubuk hati kita adalah jahat.

Hal ini dibukakan dalam ayat sebelumnya, Kejadian 6:5 bahwa kejahatan manusia besar di bumi dan bahwa segala kecenderungan hatinya selalu membuahkan kejahatan semata-mata. Apakah Nuh tidak termasuk dalam kelompok manusia tersebut, tentu masuk, jadi Nuh adalah orang yang berdosa sama seperti saya dan saudara. Kemudian ayat 8 dikatakan, "Tetapi Nuh mendapat kasih karunia di mata Tuhan", karena kasih karunialah Nuh dipilih bukan karena apa yang telah dilakukan, tapi Tuhan, menurut kehendakNya memilih Nuh untuk diselamatkan.

Jadi jika Anda selama ini berpikir kita harus seperti Nuh, menjadi orang benar, tidak bercela dan hidup bergaul dengan Allah supaya kita 'diselamatkan', maka kita diselamatkan bukan oleh kasih karunia lagi, tapi hanya oleh perbuatan kita. Justru karena kita diselamatkan oleh kasih karunia maka Nuh, saya dan saudara dapat dibenarkan, hidup tidak bercela dan bergaul dengan Allah.

God has done the best

God has done the best in us for His Glory, not the rest - so do your best - AT

Why am I so interested in me?‏

The good news for spiritual needs is
that our sins are forgiven, we are adopted as children of
God through faith, and we are given eternal life. The
good news for psychological needs is that Christ fills us
with identity, significance, personal respect, and selfworth.
He makes us feel good about ourselves. But is
that really the gospel? Doesn’t the gospel, in a very real
sense, obliterate our preoccupation with ourselves,
equipping us to be preoccupied with loving God and
others? Is it possible that looking for self-worth or
significance is a fundamentally misguided goal? Should
we be asking other questions such as,
“Why am I so interested in me?”

Edward T. Welch
The Journal of Biblical Counseling • Volume 13 • Number 1 • Fall 1994 - Page 28

35 X-Ray Questions for the Heart

1. What do you love? Hate?
2. What do you want, desire, crave, lust, and wish for? What desires do you serve and obey?
3. What do you seek, aim for, and pursue?
4. Where do you bank your hopes?
5. What do you fear? What do you not want? What do you tend to worry about?
6. What do you feel like doing?
7. What do you think you need? What are your 'felt needs'?
8. What are your plans, agendas, strategies, and intentions designed to accomplish?
9. What makes you tick? What sun does your planet revolve around? What do you organize your life around?
10. Where do you find refuge, safety, comfort, escape, pleasure, and security?
11. What or whom do you trust?
12. Whose performance matters? On whose shoulders does the well being of your world rest? Who can make it better, make it work, make it safe, make it successful?
13. Whom must you please? Whose opinion of you counts? From whom do you desire approval and fear rejection? Whose value system do you measure yourself against? In whose eyes are you living? Whose love and approval do you need?
14. Who are your role models? What kind of person do you think you ought to be or want to be?
15. On your deathbed, what would sum up your life as worthwhile? What gives your life meaning?
16. How do you define and weigh success and failure, right or wrong, desirable or undesirable, in any particular situation?
17. What would make you feel rich, secure, prosperous? What must you get to make life sing?
18. What would bring you the greatest pleasure, happiness, and delight? The greatest pain or misery?
19. Whose coming into political power would make everything better?
20. Whose victory or success would make your life happy? How do you define victory and success?
21. What do you see as your rights? What do you feel entitled to?
22. In what situations do you feel pressured or tense? Confident and relaxed? When you are pressured, where do you turn? What do you think about? What are your escapes? What do you escape from?
23. What do you want to get out of life? What payoff do you seek out of the things you do?
24. What do you pray for?
25. What do you think about most often? What preoccupies or obsesses you? In the morning, to what does your mind drift instinctively?
26. What do you talk about? What is important to you? What attitudes do you communicate?
27. How do you spend your time? What are your priorities?
28. What are your characteristic fantasies, either pleasurable or fearful? Daydreams? What do your night dreams revolve around?
29. What are the functional beliefs that control how you interpret your life and determine how you act?
30. What are your idols and false gods? In what do you place your trust, or set your hopes? What do you turn to or seek? Where do you take refuge?
31. How do you live for yourself?
32. How do you live as a slave of the devil?
33. How do you implicitly say, “If only…” (to get what you want, avoid what you don't want, keep what you have)?
34. What instinctively seems and feels right to you? What are your opinions, the things you feel true?
35. Where do you find your identity? How do you define who you are?

We want it too much…

The evil in our desires typically does not lie in what we want, but that we want it too much ~ John Calvin

What is wanting it too much? It is...we become resentful when we don't get what we want or what we ask, also we become paralyse when we lose what we have in possession. ~ it can be anything, praise of men, money, job, career, relationship, status, sport, movies, food, ministry, family, kids, spouse, acceptances, leisure, anything 'good'. - AT

Charo Washer's Testimony - Paul Washer's Wife

There is nothing wrong

There is nothing wrong to gain a lot of money, but there is something wrong to keep them as if they are my treasure, not God. AT

We are miserable...

"Self-salvation through good works may produce a great deal of moral behaviour in your life, but inside you are miserable. You are always comparing yourself to other people, and you are never sure you are being good enough. You cannot therefore, deal with your hideousness and self-absorption through the moral law, by trying to be a good person through an act of the will. You need a complete transformation of the very motives of your heart."

Reason for God - Tim Keller

Days without internet

I'm excited about coming up - days without internet, it's such a hard decision to be made, so much satisfying just from surfing the web, find this, find that, explore and access pretty much all of information on the web, been really exhausting. Exhausting when I open more than 15 tabs of firefox, 3 chrome or more, and other applications in the background. My brain most of the times overloaded with gibberish information, I don't think it's very useful, at least for my spiritual life, something that I wish to be an entertainer turned out to be a destructor. In the end of the days internet couldn't satisfy me.

So my days are coming, my days without internet...are coming very soon (at least outside office hours) - I wonder whether I will become more stupid or more clever.

I can spend hours and hours surfing the net and feeling okay for not praying and not reading the bible. It's breathtaking, I hope and pray, that I will find enjoyment, satisfaction in Christ Jesus. Days without Internet, are coming. I will still try to share about my pilgrim's experiences in this stranger world occasionally during my work hour.

Life is not as simple as it looks

The more we want to become like Jesus, I believe there will be more that not going along with us, I'm wondering if God actually put those people around us to proof our new-birth and to shape us, so we can be faster to become like Jesus in His perfection? - I believe so, He is sovereign in all things, even in 'bad' things that we don't want those things to happen in our life.

But there are some friends who will stand for us, to correct us, to encourage us, to cherish us, to love us - but when (not if) they fail -- yet we still have Jesus as our Friend, that will always be giving us strength to love not just our friends but to love our enemies (someone that hates us).

It's breathtaking, if God was going to judge us based on every acts that we took, we are definitely going to the hell. No question to be asked. But, that kind of 'understanding' can lead us to hell as well if we don't pursuit for holiness and pursuit to love one another as a proof of our new-birth.

Everyday when I wake up in the morning, I know that this life is not as simple as it looks. It's a war-time against my flesh.

God is in control

From the smallest particle dust to the universe God is in control, why should we believe more (or believe less) in the Zodiac which based on stars in the sky that usually deceive and lure most of people to believe the creation rather than the Creator?

Google Sky

Excerpt from DesiringGod.

There's a great quote from Spurgeon about dust motes. You may not even know what a dust mote is, but when I get up in the morning in my room, there's a window to the side of the bed, and a beam of light will be shining through it at certain times of the year when I get it.

Now when I look through the dark I see nothing. But when I look through the beam I see the dust in the room. It's flying around, and I say, "I'm breathing that stuff!?" Yes, you are. And Spurgeon says that every one of those particles is keeping its position and moving through the air by God's appointment.

John piper on Spugeon

Suffering for the sake to be like more Christ

Yesterday I read short article by Joni Earecskon Tada, it is such a heartfelt experience by her through her suffering - becoming a blessing for her and for everyone and to the Glory of God.

Here's her testimony in Larry King show


There must be a reason why we suffer, that is to be like more Christ (we won't suffer only when we are like Christ in His Perfection, that is in heaven). No matter what are your circumstances, we must believe, in all things (that includes 'bad' things) - is for our good - our good is not always happiness, is not always healthy life, is not always wealth, is not always comfort - our good is to be more like Christ as the image of Creator. Roman 8:28-29.

I encourage you to view the video, and listen to her story. It's been such a blessing to my life.

Reflection of Two Prodigal Sons

In reflection of Jesus' Parable about two 'prodigal' sons and a Father.

* The younger brother has disobeyed his father.
* The elder brother has never disobeyed his father,

What are the odds? Why the younger brother being accepted, and why the end of the story hang on the elder brother? Jesus use this parable with love and compassion so the pharisees and scribes will come into repentance and be saved by His Grace. Did younger brother accepted by his father because he repented? Nope, he repented after being accepted by his father.

"But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him."

We are saved by grace only, therefore we shouldn't say like the elder brother said: "Look, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command, yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might celebrate with my friends..." We almost always say to God, Lord, I've done this for You, why do I still suffer?

Do I obey God today just because I want to get what so called 'self-justification' and to get for ourself something 'good' ? Or we obey God because we know we have been accepted by God through the work or Jesus Christ.

As Tim Keller said -
Religion operates on the principle of ‘I obey—therefore I am accepted by God.’
The basic operating principle of the gospel is ‘I am accepted by God through the work of Jesus Christ—therefore I obey’

Ant

Bau sekali

Hari ini pulang dari kantor seperti biasa masuk ke gerbong kereta yang sangat padat sekali. Tidak biasanya saya mencium bau aneh, namun hari ini terasa menyengat sekali, ternyata ada 1 pasang bule dari dekat terciumlah bau yang tidak menyedapkan di hidung, berulang kali saya menahan napas, tapi tetap bau itu sudah teresap sampai di otak.

Seringkali, saya berpikir kitapun yang dengan mudahnya berusaha menghindari ketidaknyamanan, karena merasa diri kita terusik dengan bau tersebut, ataupun di lain waktu terusik dengan kritikan-kritikan orang lain yang membuat seolah-olah harga diri kita jatuh, maka kita akan berusaha menghindar. Bagaimana dengan Tuhan, bukankah dosa itu sangat buruk sekali, bukankah Dia yang tidak pernah berdosa dijadikan dosa karena kita? bukankah Dia yang 'nyaman' di surga dibuat tidak nyaman di atas kayu salib?

Hari ini kembali diingatkan bahwa kita tidak berbeda dengan orang-orang lain di dunia ini, kita semua adalah manusia berdosa tidak sepantasnya kita menganggap lebih dari orang lain, karena apa yang kita dapatkan itu adalah cuma-cuma, yaitu oleh kasih karunia. Jika kita mendapatkannya dengan cuma-cuma adakah hal tersebut seolah-olah kita memilikinya karena usaha kita atau karena kehebatan kita, secara teori tidak, namun seringkali secara praktis iya, sering kali kalau kita tidak hati-hati kita akan jatuh di dalam dosa 'merasa' lebih baik dari orang lain. Kita bukan lebih baik dari orang lain. Kita hanyalah orang yang sama buruknya namun diselamatkan karena Kasih Karunia dalam Yesus Kristus.