“Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your
hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.” – Psalm 43:5 NIV
We often hope for specific things to happen in our lives,
such as receiving good results from exams or job interviews. Because of this,
we, sometimes, cannot concentrate on anything else and just wish things to
happen for the best. Nevertheless, if they did not go as we expected, we
believe that whole life is ruined and we think that there is no point of living
our lives anymore unless we find other things to pursue on, in order to have
our satisfaction come alive again. I watched Korean drama for a little while
and there was an example of having no hope in the drama. The boy falls in love
with the girl but this girl does not like the boy. Because of this, he would
not eat anything, due to the fact that he is so desperate and kind of obsessed
over the girl, I believe.
However, the truth is that every satisfaction that we have
right now is only for temporary unless our satisfaction is God. 1 John 2:15-17 urges us not to love the
world nor things in the world since the world is going to fade away with the
worldly satisfaction that people crave, but for those of us who pleases the
Lord is going to live forever. The main reason that whoever pleases Him lives
forever is that God is the source of the eternal life (John 3:16-18; John 11:25-26).
Therefore, we need to put God as our ultimate satisfaction, such as wanting to
know (John 17:3), pursue Him (Hebrews 11:6), believe in Him (Proverbs 3:5-8) and wanting to do His will
until the end of the age (Matthew 7:21). This is how we are designed
because we actually have been created by God (Genesis 1:27). In fact, everything belongs
to God and for Him (Colossians 1:16-20). This is probably the
reason that Colossians 1:21-23 states, “Once you were alienated from God and were
enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now he has reconciled
you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight,
without blemish and free from accusation—if you continue in your faith,
established and firm, and do not move from the hope held out in the gospel…”
May the God of hope fill you with
all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by
the power of the Holy Spirit. (Romans 15:13)
I have known Colossians 1:15-23 quite well but once the
burden of theological mind-set was upon me, I felt I needed to remove that
burden by downloading one of the Pokemon games that I never played before and
by praying before God. Suddenly, that burden was removed right away after I had
done those things. Nevertheless, after a while, I just deleted the game. The
main reason for this is that my life was not centred in Jesus Christ. I
realised this when one of my favourite worship songs came up in the church,
which was “Jesus At the Center” by Darlene Zschech. As soon as I listened one
of the worship songs that I have on Spotify after I deleted the game, the
presence of the Lord was hovering within me and I thought the burden of
theological mind-set was the way that God was disciplining me through the
Spirit (Hebrews 12:4-11). Yesterday night, since
this devotional takes two days to complete, I have decided that I should stop
from watching television as well. The main reason for this television usually
makes me tired and I thought ‘if I am tired from watching television, how can I
focus on Jesus Christ and do His will?’ These do not mean that every followers
of Jesus Christ should ban games and television. I have banned them because I
might lose my focus from Jesus Christ because of them.
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a
great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin
that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out
for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the
joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at
the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition
from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. (Hebrews 12:1-3)
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