Thursday, December 29, 2005

Fruitfulness in the Kingdom of God

Been contemplating some stuffs these days. What does it mean to prosper in God or to be fruitful? Can someone be poor and yet prosperous and someone be going through barrenness and yet fruitful? The world sees fruitfulness in numbers, in tangibles, but in the kingdom of God, the bible says that blessed are the poor..it says blessed are those who hunger and thirst. It says that when we are weak He is strong, and that God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise and the weak things of the world to shame the strong. Paul came to the Corinthians not with eloquence but he came to them with weakness and fear. Our faith must not rest on men's wisdom, but on God's power. Why do christians feel condemned? It is often because they don't feel good enough or worthy enough to be called christians. As I contemplated these things for the past few days, I realise finally what it means that when we are weak He is strong. Precisely cos we are weak, then we have faith in a good God that He is strong enough to overcome our problems for us. Instead of us trying and using our own strength.
The bible calls us to repent from dead works...what are dead works? Works that are done out of our own strength..works that are not led by God. I wonder how many of us minister with our own strength and try to be fruitful by our own works...=dead works. Any work no matter how good, but not led by God is a dead work. And the danger of focusing on fruitfulness is this..that many ple try to be fruitful through dead works. When God doesn't prosper a certain thing, we plan many other activities that are human led. And although we acheive a so-called fruitfulness, all these are works of the flesh and of the carnal nature.
For those of us who are not "propspering" now, can we see that our souls are prospering as much as we grow through the moulding of our God, and by abstaining from interfering in God's work, we are trusting that He is great enough to intercede on our behalf? And that all things work for the good of those who love Him. All these are only meant for our good. We WILL see His hand over our lives and our situations! Don't give up! =)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

mmm.....just to say i had the exact same msg (para 1) today.. so qiao!
Felt/became aware of it during a pnw session. And it was affirmed by an amazing new cg mbr (new to e Catholic faith yet v inspiring Protestant guy)who verbalised it,
"Before joining this cg, i thot i could do everything by my own intellect and will, i.e. by my own strength, but everything collapsed."
mm... an ans to my troubles..

true.. 'dead works' are so meaningless n boring.. :P