Thursday, December 28, 2006 . 3:06 PM
Well this entry came alittle late haha. The whole weekend was so busy for me. Fri nite was spent decorating our xmas carnival stall. And had a late supper with cell grp after decorating. ALbert and i made some interesting theories from observing pple. Most of the pple in the cell grp are younger than us. ONli 4 of are older, ie 24-26 years old. And out of these 4, one is still studying, another one a teacher still in NIE. Apparently, some of them thought that we were pretty efficient on the day, they thought we will take whole day to decide and debate abt the decorations n stuffs, like we used to in jc. Amazingly, both albert and i tot we were damn slow. Mayb it's the fact that we are used to the pace of working, and we usually wanna settle things asap not like even drag a little...
Sat was spent having driving lessons, mopping more floors and then going to tend the xmas carnival stall. Till 4pm, we went to Holland V again for dinner. We made a loss, meaning we didn't sell all the icecreams away but it's ok bcos we actually bought the icecreams and then sell off..so in a way we are donating to the charity..this event was for the charity.
Sunday itself morning was normal sunday service.Cell grp had lunch in crystal jade,reserved the time slot before hand to make sure we all have seats. And monday was xmas service. We have continuously seen each member of the cell grp for 4 days...and yes..we are pretty sick of each other aldy.haha. Xmas was gd. Was a gd get together in small ways, as a long time missing in action fren came back to church, and we happened to meet our sunday school teachers, who used to teach us from sec 1-4. It was really a time of reminiscence..thinking back the days...
This yr's christmas is rather meaningful to me, as besides celebrating Jesus' birth, there was actually a new whole revelation of the significance of the celebration, of Jesus' birth, which i've never experienced before.
There's something that i wish to share.. and it's in very simple layman terms.
A big man approached a group of sheeps wanting to hug them but the sheeps were petrified by his size and ran away. Logical rite? Why did God have to b a human? And in the form of a baby? Some pple finds such a story illogical. But there are yes many reasons why. And i won't b able to tell u all the reasons bcos im not GOd..but to my understand..in simpler terms ...these are the reasons
In our human understanding, GOd seems too big for us to know, too big for us to get close, we are generally afraid of GOd. But noone would b afraid of a harmless baby isn't it? We always think that if we were to b christians, we will have to do the right things...b super holy or GOd is just waiting to catch u doing the wrong things n punish you. But that's not true. But wat God desires is that He can b with you, loving you instead of picking on you. We don't become super holy by being christians or we become gd pple by being a christian but GOd transform us from within, inside to make us have more love and compassion for other pple (but that's a sidetrack and we can talk abt that another time) So anyway, since God desires to love us and be with us, but we find him too big and scary, the logical way is for Him to not appear so big. Haha... which is baby Jesus Himself.
The other reasons would be..since God created us and made life the way it is, Jesus will enter this world as all his other created beings enter. Many times, we say things like ' you don't understand one lar pls..ur not me..u don't know wat i go thru or what i feel' to other pple...inconciously we say the same to God, thinking that he doesn't understand bcos he's too 'godly' and up there to understand...but again that's not true, to prove that wrong, Jesus who is divine is also a human. What im trying to say is..bcos Jesus is both divine and human, and came, born and grew up as a human,tempted like a human,able to experience hunger and tiredness...He's trying to tell u that in every way he understands our needs. And for watever suffering that we go thru in life, he understands bcos he suffered more than any of us..he carried the burdens of human's sins. So we can go to God and say even if noone understands, I know He knows and understand and feel our pains.
'For we do not have a High Priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are -- yet was without sin'(Hebrews 4:15).
Yap that's all.
Anyone wanna know more abt GOd can contact mi. :p
ANyway, the following passage is taken from RBC website. Take time to read thru..i didn't put everything here, so as not to confuse non christians..i gez. =)
How could Jesus be both God and man at the same time?
It's undeniable that the incarnation involves mystery beyond human understanding. How could the eternal, infinite God, Creator of all things, become a finite being with human limitations and weaknesses? While we cannot understand it, the Bible clearly asks us to believe it. Scripture declares that Jesus, the Messiah, is both truly God and truly man.
Jesus Himself clearly declared His preexistence and deity when He said:
I tell you the truth, . . . before Abraham was born, I am!(John 8:58).
In Mark 2:1-12 Jesus proclaimed His authority to forgive sin, and in Matthew 25:31-46 , Jesus declared that He will judge the world. His enemies understood the significance of these claims. They said:
Why does this fellow talk like that? He's blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone? (Mark 2:7).
Consequently, they wanted to crucify Him, specifically on the charge of blasphemy. They said:
We have a law, and according to that law He must die, because He claimed to be the Son of God (John 19:7).
And when His enemies required Jesus to state whether or not He was the Christ, He replied:
Yes, it is as you say, . . . But I say to all of you: In the future you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven (Matthew 26:64).
While numerous passages throughout the New Testament refer to the deity of Christ, many also refer to His humanity. For example, in the first chapter of his Gospel, the apostle John declares both the deity of Christ1 and His humanity.2
Through His Son, God entered into the suffering of His creatures. He even experienced their temptations:
For we do not have a High Priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are -- yet was without sin (Hebrews 4:15).
While recognizing the paradoxical nature of the claim that the Second Person of the Trinity, the eternal Son of God, became truly human, we cannot deny the truth of this event without rejecting the plain meaning of Scripture. Philippians 2:5-11 tells how Christ voluntarily gave up the independent exercise of His divine attributes. He did this to be the great High Priest "who has been tempted in every way, just as we are" (Hebrews 4:15). Somehow, the Word became flesh, voluntarily taking up a role subordinate to that of the Father.
One of the strongest statements in Scripture about the incarnation is found in 1 John 4:2-3:
This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world.
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