the lesson of God's sovereignty and the lesson of the cross (1 picture + 1 experience with the Lord today)

And... I'm back to blogging at midnight ;) I mean, I finally found some time to do some blogging on the personal blog :) We had a school year 7-13 conference last weekend in Bower House, and praise the Lord - so many young ones attended, enjoyed the Word of God, enjoyed the activities, the food, the group time, the morning revival, the fellowship.... At the end of the conference we had the whole church in London meeting at Bower House, ending with some baptisms! Praise the Lord, Christ is Victor! He has won the victory - He defeated Satan, and He gained some young ones for His purpose! So many crossed the Red Sea to be one with the Lord!

1 Picture today - The British Library, the Entrance at Night

By now you already know that I don't post the most amazing pictures of London but the ones I take from time to time while walking about or visiting or going to some meetings with the saints... Here's a picture of the highlighted entrance of the British Library, located right between King's Cross and Euston Station. There's much to say about this place - the best way to know it is to pay a visit yourself! I went in once and there are some special exhibitions sometimes, there are collections, lots of manuscripts and other old books inside, including the old texts of the Bible, etc. Pretty cool stuff, especially if you're interested in books, reading, old manuscripts, the history, etc.

1 Experience with the Lord - the lesson of God's sovereignty and the lesson of the cross

This is just an addition and a continuation of the article I labored on in the morning - the details of Christ’s sufferings for us before He died: He was hated, reproached, mocked, betrayed. In the message for this week there's a short speaking concerning the lessons that David learned before and even after he became king. There were two specific lessons - the lesson of God's sovereignty and the lesson of the cross. First of all, when David was a young boy of 13 years old, Samuel the prophet came and anointed him as king over Israel - that was something amazing and dangerous at the same time. Amazing: wow, David, the youngest of his dad's sons, will be the king over the whole of Israel! Dangerous: there was a king over Israel already, and so when David was anointed as king, Saul (the current king) wanted to kill him!

David's story fascinated and puzzled me when I read it as a young man - if I were David and God told me + anointed me through His prophet to be king, I would "go and claim my throne!" But David waited for the Lord's time. Saul, the current king, ruled for a long time before David became king. Even more: Saul persecuted and chased David, seeking to take his life! Even though for a while Saul had David around him, made him a captain over some troops, and David was very successful for Saul, eventually Saul hunted for David all over Israel to kill him. Wow, if I would be David and the king would chase me around, I would have probably doubted God's word OR worse: I would have probably acted based on God's word and claim the throne + do what's necessary to get it!

But not David: he learned the lesson of God's sovereignty. He knew God is sovereign over everything, and He does things in His time. God's time is not our time necessarily, and He may not fulfill His promise and vision right now, when we want it. BUT He is Sovereign! If we settle this in our being, we will be at peace. All things in our environment, all the ones in our family, all the saints in the church life, the large or small number of saints around us, the people we study with or work with, the people we meet, etc - everything is sovereignly arranged by God for our good, for our perfecting, for our transformation, for God's purpose!

If we don't see and acknowledge God's sovereignty in our lives and in everything, we will struggle, we will fight to obtain what we want to / we think we should have, we will even doubt God's word and His promise... Sufferings especially and the not-so-pleasant-things that happen to us or come our way - in all these things we need to see that God is sovereign. If we see God's sovereignty, we will say AMEN to Him, and we will have hope, peace, and rest in Him

The second lesson we need to learn is the lesson of the cross. God allots us our own cross - and this is NOT the sufferings which results from our stupidity, our mistakes, or our exposure to unnecessary risk. No, there's a portion of sufferings, there's our own cross, which is allotted to us - and we need to take up our own cross with the power of resurrection. Whenever things happen, whenever suffering is here, we can exercise our spirit to bear the cross - the real application of the cross is in our spirit. It's not something outward, and it's not something "inflicted on us by others" - it's in our spirit, applied by The Spirit.

I am not there yet - as someone said, if you are fully perfected, God would rapture you... - but we are all learning these two lessons. We are learning the lesson of God's sovereignty and the lesson of the cross. 

What about you - Do you have an experience of the sovereignty of God in your life or your situation? Did God show You that even in your messy and intermixed / complicated situation, He is sovereign? Would you like to share something of YOUR experience? [please do, as a comment to this article]

Baptizing a Brother into the Triune God - One Meaningful Thing I Did Today (30-day challenge)

Wow, it's almost midnight, and I just got home from the wonderful home meeting with the saints in East London's place! The best thing to do on a Friday night after a full week, in spite of your tiredness, is to get yourself into a home of the saints and just BE there! When your body is presented as a living sacrifice for the church life (Rom. 12:1), you will get the benefit of being revived, refreshed, renewed in your mind, supplied in your whole being, strengthened into your inner man, and filled with life! I mean, how can one still be tired and down when all the saints enjoy the Lord while singing,

So why not open up and call His name, O Lord! / Find your spirit where His grace has been outpoured! Call His name / Taste His grace / Exercise before His face! / He's longing and yearning, / He's hoping and waiting / He's ever desiring / For you to turn to Him!

HE KNOWS your deepest thought - your every situation! He understands your heart, He knows your history! Wow, there's nothing in His way - He's just waiting for you to say, Lord Jesus, My wondering heart I give to You! Once we open, we give our heart to Him, He comes in and makes His home in our heart - He strengthens us with power through His Spirit into our inner man! And so here it is,

One Meaningful Thing I Did Today - Baptizing a Brother into the Triune God!

Baptism - in the Poland camp 2011

I have never met this brother, but the Lord in His sovereignty has arranged that a brother who is now in the hospital would have a friend, and this friend of his wants to receive the Lord and be baptized! I don't know how the Lord does it, but He's definitely the best at being God and arranging everything for His economy! So this new brother came to our home meeting tonight and we knew, He Wants To Receive the Lord and Be Baptized! So we just enjoyed the Lord, spoke the gospel, called on the name of the Lord together, and put our brother into the water!

To be saved is so simple - you just need to call on the name of the Lord! This person that I have never ever met, through believing into the Lord, became my brother in the Lord IN AN INSTANT! Regeneration is instantaneous! Then, as the Bible clearly says, "He who believes and is baptized shall be saved"(Mark 16:16), we took our brother and we put him into the Triune God! We baptized him into Christ, into the Body of Christ, into the death of Christ, and into God Himself! It is such a privilege to be there, where the Lord receives an offering, a real sacrifice, a saved sinner through grace who gives himself and his whole being, his whole life, and his future to the Lord!

What a wonderful decision - to believe into the Lord and to be baptized! To cut off the past, renounce the old man, by publicly declaring that you love the Lord and you want to follow Him from now on! Into the water goes the old man, and he stays there; out of the water comes a new man, a new brother, in the newness of life! I am continually amazed at this simple yet wonderful principle of the divine life - it is real, it happens before our eyes, and we're in it by being in the church life! When we heard that this brother wants to get baptized, another sister ALSO got baptized - a new beginning, a river-crossing, a leaving back all the doctrines and forms, everything of the old, and being brought into the newness of the Body of Christ!

You've gotta love the church life! You've gotta love the Lord! You go to the meeting sooo tired, barely making it there, and you are strengthened within by your singing, opening, fellowshipping, calling, praying... by your inward turning to the Lord! And then, after you're brought to your mingled spirit, you never know what happens next - all you know is that you're one with the Lord, and you're watching Him doing it all in you, for you, and even as you! What a way to have the "real party" on Friday night! Praise the Lord for the church life - filled with babes and sucklings, those who learn through lots of mistakes and failures to Praise The Lord! Praise the Lord for bringing us into His Kingdom! [this article is STILL being edited...]