This past week was crazy with family stuffs, friend stuffs, and more baby issues. My two year old daughter was bullying the other kids today at church and things just went downhill fast. Mommy was extremely tired from the previous day’s activities and so we had to go at it alone today for Sunday worship. This along with my parent’s lunch with my siblings and significant others. This really put a dampener to my day. More talk of weddings as well as having to deal with other issues.
So it was around 8PM that I was having my pity party (partly due to fatigue and I think mostly with my spiritual condition) that my wife told me to stop it. I asked her to pray for me and also with me. It was then that we began our worship service. We sang “All Hail the Power of Jesus Name” and ”A Mighty Fortress” and prayed. It was a good reminder of the greatness of our God and how he is our strength.
Verse 2 of A Mighty Fortress:
Did we in our own strength confide, our striving would be losing;
Were not the right Man on our side, the Man of God’s own choosing:
Dost ask who that may be? Christ Jesus, it is He;
Lord Sabaoth, His Name, from age to age the same,
And He must win the battle.
Is a good reminder that it is not in our strength that we confide, but it is in Jesus Christ. He is our strength… the author and perfecter of our faith and the one who we fully rest in.
We continued our reading of Revelation 2. We looked at the church of Ephesus and Smyrna.
To Ephesus he says: “Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love. Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first.” And to Smyrna he says: “Do not be afraid of what you are about to suffer. I tell you, the devil will put some of you in prison to test you, and you will suffer persecution for ten days. Be faithful, even to the point of death, and I will give you the crown of life”
To Ephesus, they were commended for being doctrinally pure but they had forgotten their first love. We asked each other how it was like when we first became Christians, when we first experienced the love of Christ. It was sweet. We were on fire and read the scriptures, we thirsted and longed for it. But it was also within fellowship and we loved the people we were with as well. The commentaries said it could have been that they were not loving one another which meant they were not loving Christ. I think this is evident with our church and with us as individuals. The passage to Smyrna was really pertinent today as I felt down. It was a reminder that Christ has overcome this world and that this church will face persecution. It is only in having our eyes set on Christ will we be able to endure it.
We prayed for this coming week and for family and friends.
We concluded with Glory to God (chinese version).