The Journey: Your Support 14.7.2018

Group of business people putting their hands working together on wooden background in office. group support teamwork agreement concept.

Today’s feeling was like a roller coaster ride to me. In the morning I had several dreams which gave me support for the morning and the afternoon. I was in great shape then, as I felt God’s mental and physical SUPPORT to me. However, it was a different scenario at night. The pressure and worries were building up, strongly, and this emotional invasion was some attack that I had not felt for a long time. My commitment to writing one blog post in two days was beginning to crumble, because of the worries, as today midnight will be the deadline to finish writing a blog post. I was about to give up and call my close friends, though few, to look for support. During this difficult period, I knew that God was with me, but I still felt the lonely feeling I hadn’t felt for quite sometime. Then I read one of our fellow bloggers’ blog post, about we have to follow strictly Jesus’s teachings, daily, continuously, and realize that Jesus was the perfect example of the way we should adhere to. Instantly, I switched on the computer and continued my writing journey, again, writing this blog post, with energy and enthusiasm. The fellow blogger’s blog post had given me the support that before only God has given me. I could not, until now, realize that support from fellow bloggers can be that rewarding, also. Then I switched on the music and listened to the music that in the past gave me a victory against the evil side of emotions. And I knew that presently there was another overwhelming victory against the evil side, in my mind.

Thank you, fellow bloggers. You all not only gave me a strong lift to let me have my confidence and energy again, and more importantly to again remind myself that my commitment has to be met, whatever challenges, difficulties, temptations, and excuses. A job has to be done. To our fellow bloggers who are writing for and with God who has given us our writing abilities, do not be disheartened. Remember that God will be with you, and if anyone of you are in difficulties or need any support, you can write a comment to me, and I will try to write an inspiring piece to help you. I am sure other fellow bloggers will be happy to do the same also. Again, we have to remember to continue our writing, because God is giving us the inspiration and the experiences. Do not disappoint Him. We have a job to do. And we are doing for and with Him.

The Journey: Writing Part Three

Women holding a pens writing a notebook. Recording concept

Today I am going to talk about “Continuous Writing”.

Today after work around 1:45pm, I went to a library to continue to do my writing for and with God. I was still committing to my goal of writing one blog post in two days, but I told myself that if I had enough idea or inspiration, I would exceed my target by writing one blog post in one day. And the idea or inspiration, that were gifts given by God, enabled me to continue to write my piece today.

Fast forward to around 2:40pm, and I was inside the library, sitting in a comfortable chair, and prepared to continue to write my piece today. Not having any specific expectation, I was only armed with the “fighting heart” to my writing. Then I started my writing. And immediately I knew what was to come for the next twenty minutes. I was typing at a very fast pace, and the idea just came up as I was writing all along. The idea was clearly, I believe, from God, because I felt the special “pop-up” that went to my mind, like a white bird flying and arriving at my mind. Not having any doubt, my strong faith told me that the idea would continue to arrive at my mind, as long as God willed the inspiration.

As I was writing in a very fast pace, I was only doing a fast draft of the blog post, with the idea that came along. Some of the words, phrases may be repetitive, but the new idea, new words just flowed along so I kept writing long passages without stopping. Once I had an idea, I continued to write down. Then once I had another idea, I continued to write down. And for the next twenty minutes, I was writing in a very fast pace and continued to do so with God’s idea, I believe.

As I had continued to write along, when was the time I had to stop writing? How would I know when was the time I could stop writing, knowing that my idea for today had run dry? I did not think of this scenario all along my writing, as I knew that I would be led by God. After writing, with concentration, for 20 minutes, I then suddenly had an instinct, telling me that it was time to stop. And at the same time, I remembered that this morning I had a dream that supported this. I knew I had made the right decision to stop today. I then went home. And after sleeping for a while, I started to do my planning for the next eight days.

The Journey: Writing Part Two

Heart bokeh background

Patience, Bible teaching, perseverance and fighting heart, are today’s topics.

We are always fighting a battle against Satan and his armies of evil individuals. They constantly attack us and tempt us to sin with their evil intentions. Their major attack is to cause fear and confusion in our mind. By doing that, we may occasionally feel bad and worried, and will, therefore, affect our everyday life and work. Have you, at any time in your career life, faced some emotional pressure that made you miserable and wanted to escape by asking for a day off while you were working?

Satan’s powerful influence on us is not only to causing fear and confusion in our mind which affects our daily life. His most powerful attack is his tempting attack, which makes us sin. And it affects our relationship with God. And the attack of Satan usually falls on those who are good and have a strong relationship with God, including children. It is most depressing, especially for younger kids, who do not have a good foundation of Bible knowledge. Their innocent thoughts and actions, who may be wrongly misled by Satan and his armies, will cause a long period of challenges to the kids’ life development, before their seemingly transformative full recovery.

However, remember that before Jesus’s preaching, He was led to be tempted by Satan. Therefore, it would be normal that our kids will be tempted in their early stages of life. The difficult thing is we have to know how to actively stand guard, help them to know what is right and wrong, and influence them to be firm in their commitment, to strictly follow Jesus’s teachings. This is important for responsible parents to teach their kids regarding those that they need to know: The truth.

Working for and with God is one of the important topics. Again we have to try to explain to every child that is related to us. The foundation. The establishment. Matthew 25:14-30 teaches us that we are entrusted with different amount of bags of gold from God and we are accountable to Him. How we define the gold differs from one another, but we have to refer strictly to the Bible, trust our heart, and our responsibilities.

Your responsibilities may be to raise up a teenager, spreading the gospel to others, and writing a blog to collectively change the world to a better place. We, writers, just have to use our gift, which is given by God, to work for and with Him. And we need to do it with perseverance and the “fighting heart.” However, we may be tempted by Satan along our journey. Sometimes we are psychologically not ready. Other times we may want to do other things instead of focusing our effort on our present work. And that means after knowing your accountability to God, every moment counts, during your writing. We have to believe that opportunities and times may be occasional, but God will give us more responsibilities if we are faithful. My sharing today is that my schedule is to write at least one blog post in two days. Is it enough? By committing one blog post each day? It’s your choice. Your choice to be faithful.

I had great pressure yesterday and today before and when writing this blog post. Do you have your unique experience to share?

The Journey: Writing Part One

Woman's hand writing on a notebook with a pen on a wooden desk.

Yesterday, I talked about being good and faithful to God in our writing vocation, and He will put us in charge of many things, and share His happiness.

I believe in our writing journey, we need a writing gift, idea, and relevant experiences. Not having these qualities, we cannot write a piece that can attract people’s attention, or keep our audiences to follow along with our writing journey. However, we have to know that all these things are given by God. We cannot control the timing of the writing “awakening,” and we cannot just think up an idea by ourselves. Everything, including our gift, idea, and experiences, is inspired and led by God. What we can do is to be good and faithful to Him, then He will give us more responsibilities.

My recommendation in my blog post yesterday was that we should set up a goal, such as my resolve to writing at least one piece in two days, and stick to the schedule whatever the challenges, temptations, and excuses. After committing to God about this goal yesterday night, and actually wrote the relevant piece, I soon found out that, I believe, God had replied to my faithful attitude. He gave me a “writing awakening,” this morning, through a dream.

By saying it was an awakening means, I believe, that He told me of a potential “target audience.” By definition, when we write a blog post, we are writing to a certain number of readers, but do they belong to some of those “target audiences” that, I believe, may be uniquely willed by God?

We all have emotions, we will experience difficulties and downturns in our lives. This is not something we can control. We may experience the loss of our family member, or go through financial difficulties, or some tragic events in our life. What you need is to have “faith” in God, despite the difficulties. There is a saying, “Be calm, and do your best.” Don’t be disheartened. Don’t lose hope. Don’t allow Satan to emotionally affect your job for and with God. Stick to your schedule, write a blog post with perseverance, and be faithful to Him. He will reward you with more responsibilities.

We writers have an important job to do on earth, for and with God. Have a strong “Faith”, and you will be faithful, to Him. I have done my part to write two pieces in two days, will you? And I have felt the emotional instability when I was writing this piece today, have you?

The Journey: Writing: 7.7.2018

Photo of womans hands with pen signs contract

Yesterday I talked about “fighting heart.” And my resolve to produce at least one piece of writing in two days with total dedication and commitment to God at the highest standard. But how does “fighting heart” helps you in your writing journey?

Matthew 25:14-30 talks about how a master, according to his three servants’ abilities, entrusted them with bags of gold to work for Him. This master and servant relationship is similar by nature to the relationship between us, as writers and God. We have to know that it was God who created us and gave us the abilities. His will includes entrusting us with different responsibilities, big or small. We have the obligations to perform, and He expects us to produce. The main important point of this parable is to be good and faithful.

Being good is a big topic and I will not elaborate much on this blog post. But generally, being good is to follow Jesus’s teachings and parables. To love God wholeheartedly, and love our neighbours as we love ourselves. We are also expected to do good to others, and serve others rather than be served. How can we writers be good? We can, we just have to have the mentality to write for and with God. We may be from different countries and different culture. We differ in our writings in topic, purposes, strategies, and style, but we should have one common goal, that is we write for and with God. If you have this mentality, then every experience and topic that you write will have the effect of contributions to glorify God on earth. Whatever the topic, whether they are traveling, food and drinks, can be powerful influencing writings to make our world a better place or encourage people to know God.

Being faithful is a personal decision on how to structure our writing life. A choice to consistently write a piece of writing, with “fighting heart.” This is similar to the fact that faithful and loyal workers often perform overtime to make sure their jobs are done. Winners usually have the fighting heart to perform, and strong will to achieve at a reasonable cost. For us, we can set ourselves a target, an achievable and a realistic one, and commit to fulfilling this goal. In my case, the target is at least one blog post in two days. We then need to stay focused on the matter at hand, and actually write the piece before the decided time frame. This is what I call “faithful”, to God, in our writing vocation. There will be temptations, distractions, and excuses to not do according to our schedule. Remember we are not accountable to ourselves, or our family anymore. Instead, we are accountable to God, and so not meeting the deadline disappoints Him.

What are the advantages or rewards to be a “good and faithful” writer? Matthew 25:23 tells us that if we are good and faithful, God will put us in charge of many things, and share His happiness. Every good writer will improve his or her writing skills and mature along with his or her unique journey, but guess what, our writing development is lead by God. How fast you learn about wordings, style and strategy, and your writing “awakening” are all decided and led by Him.

I had explained before in my previous post, our writing journey or career will be a successful one, a sure journey. But it depends on how we define the word “successfulness.” We may not be able to have more than ten thousand followers for each of us, but the fact that we can influence just one reader, and change his or her life to the better, we are already successful writers. And guess what, since all our writings are on the Internet, our writings may influence other people in the next ten to fifty years. The success of a writer, therefore, is not based on the number of followers, or the number of books he or she can sell, but knowing that we have done our best and write for and with God, who is our true boss.

In this way, every writer is a winner, just that we have to believe in God, and be good and faithful to Him. God has already given you the gift and skill of writing, the arena is now set as a result of the internet in this generation, do you want to be a winner? You can, everyone can be.

The Journey: Fighting Heart: 6.7.2018

Red paper hearts isolated on white

Today I am going to talk about “fighting heart,” the main characteristic of successful people, in whatever vocations they pursue.

This morning was an average working day. I started working, as usual, at 9:30am. And this was my second working day after the Bible study on Wednesday afternoon, and you can see the post here which I posted previously The Journey: Bible Study: 5.7.2018. Just to recap on my Bible study two days ago, an elder from a church and I talked about the motto and “knowledge”: “God is our true boss.” And having endured Satan’s temptations and my involuntary fall into the hate system in yesterday working hour, I successfully defended against the assault from the evil side with God’s help. The “knowledge” enables me to convince myself that “that” is the real driving power behind me, that is to do my work for and with God. I realize that every second is a time to work for and with Him, and every second I have to perform to my best effort.

As a result, today while I was working, I kept telling myself, “James, do not be lazy, I have to work diligently and perform to my best effort, for God on earth”. That means I have to put in all, my energy, my mind and my effort into my job, all the time. This is what people called “fighting heart”. The “fighting heart” is not the human drive which propels people to spend long hours on the job. This is not the worldly status and wealth drive which seduce people to sacrifice his time for money. This is the true drive to work for and with God. The love of God which encourages us to sacrifice our time for Him. And the big picture that He created us, entrusted His bags of gold to us according to our ability and expect us to work for and with Him. Please refer to Matthew 25:14-30.

Therefore, today, I had a great morning, for a limited time. I returned to my comfort zone after a certain “working totally for God, as He is my boss” time. I wouldn’t call I was lazy, but just that I was not performing my work with enough “fighting heart.” The fighting heart, if I perform, represents my will, my drive and my dedication to work and perform a duty with single-mindedness devotion to God. 100% commitment. Total loyalty. This is probably the most important characteristic of a winner, who spend long hours practising and uncompromisingly perform his work with the highest standard.

To train myself the “fighting heart” is not easy as well, as up to now, for a duration of twenty years at work, I did not always have the fighting heart all this time. But here today it was different. I have a mission now. I have a clear choice. And I have hope. The hope that I know I am not working for only myself or families, I am now accountable to God now. There is no excuse to be lazy, or not having the fighting heart. I must train myself, or God will give my bags of gold to others. On the other hand, if I perform well, He will give me more responsibilities in the future, which I consider my greatest honour, to work for and with Him.

In order to train myself to have the fighting heart so as to be accountable to God, I need to make sure that I set a target and achieve it, whatever the cost, following Jesus’s teachings. I am given the “gift” of ideas that I believe is inspired by God, and my many dreams and unique experiences. I need to make sure that I can deliver, one piece of blog-post in two days, at a minimum. Whatever the distractions. Whatever the difficulties. And whatever the temptations. I have to meet my target at least for the next few months. We will see.

The Journey: Bible Study: 5.7.2018

cross

Why is it important to read the Bible? What are the rewards for studying the Bible? Many people may have different experiences, and their experiences are unique to them. And today I am going to tell you my story yesterday.

Recently, I have been studying Matthew 25:14-30. And I have spent several hours talking about this topic with one of my church friends and my employer who between them have many years of reading the Bible. Matthew 25:14-30 tells us about how a master, according to his servants’ abilities, entrusted them with different amount of bags of gold, to work for him. The first two servants had been faithful, and they made some extra gold for the master. As a result, the master was pleased with them. However, the third servant hid and returned the same amount of gold back to the master, and the master was therefore angry with him.

Yesterday I was talking to one of my church friends, who is an elder in one of the churches. We do not meet regularly, as we are both busy, but I treasure our times together. I could say that the happiest days of my life are those days that I study Bible with Him. So going back to my topic, 1) Why is it important to read the Bible? and 2) What are the rewards for studying the Bible?

First of all, while we discussed and looked into the Matthew 25:14-30 passages, we came to a conclusion: We do our job for God, not for money or for our families. And who is our real boss? Yes, God is our true boss. As taught in this parable from Jesus, the master, which is God, expects us to work diligently and use our best effort to make different contributions, for people in our world. If we have the “gifts” but do not use them, we are in trouble. God will be unhappy with us.

Having realized this principle, we can then turn to my experience today, at work. During my morning work, I kept thinking, involuntarily, of an unfortunate incident in my past. At that time I had been mentally abused by other people, and nobody gave me a hand, or told me, or helped me. The recalling of my miserable events today made my mind full of hatred. I kept thinking, why nobody helped me, and such, and I knew I could not control myself, and I was in the Hate system. However, someone did give me a hand and help me today. Guess who? Yes, it was God. In a way, He led me to have a Bible study yesterday, He led me to understand that He is my boss. And so before this morning at work, I was fully armed with this “Knowledge:” namely God is my boss. And so while I was thinking of my past, and also when Satan constantly tempted me to fall into the hate system, this “Knowledge” actually saved me from Satan’s assault.

My thinking was, as God is my boss, who created me and gave me the abilities, why should I complain? Why should I be hateful to others, knowing that what He gave me will surely bear fruit in the future, as long as I am good and faithful? If He did not think my ability was up to a standard, He won’t entrust me with the bags of gold in the first place. So this is a sure journey, the point is to be good and faithful, which means to follow the teachings of Jesus and do the job with loyalty. I firmly believe it was He who guided me to know the principle and influenced my mind to break Satan’s bondage, all in two days. Without the Bible study yesterday, I would not have the will and God’s words, to fight this war.

Secondly, something encouraging happened while I was studying the Bible with the elder friend yesterday in a restaurant. A middle-aged woman approached and talked to us. We first noticed her smiling when we were talking and soon she spoke to us. She told us that she was also a Christian and we then had an around 5 minutes of initial conversation about our religion and our strong belief. Apart from talking to us, she even gave me a present, which was an antique cross. Guess what, after going back home after the Bible study session, I dreamt of meeting her again next week, the first dream I had after meeting her and the first dream in the night.

My point is not about making a new friend or receiving a present from her when studying the Bible, but actually the support of our Christian and Catholic fellowship. As we believe in God and do the will of Him, we are all in a family. If I am in need, people will give me a hand. We will help each other, we will not be alone, anymore. So have you started studying the Bible and believe in God? If not, act now. Your whole life will be transformed and blessed.

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