Our Roles Before Jesus

        In today's Gospel reading from John 3, John the Baptist said to his disciples, "I am not the Christ; I was sent before him. The one who has the bride is the bridegroom; the best man, who stands and listens for him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom's voice. So this joy of mine has been made complete. He must increase; I must decrease." So John regarded himself as the best man at the wedding. I guess we can take on the roll of flower girl or ring bearer. Rejoice!

**Power of the Holy Spirit*

        The Holy Spirit is gentle, but can be overwhelming too. When he permeates you with his peace, you want to rest in it forever. When he fills your heart, he sets it aflame with his burning love. When his joy moves your spirit, its sweetness is irrepressable and you desire to be totally crushed by it. I love my Lord, the Holy Spirit.

**Responsible for Our Own Journey

        We all have our free will to exercise. If God had forced us to believe in him, faith would have been unnecessary and become meaningless. The bottom line is that God has shown the way, but we ultimately choose our own journey.

*Heaven Is Good Reason

        If you think that the correct reason for believing in Jesus is that he is truly our God and Savior, you are right. I have not heard anyone say directly that he believes in Jesus because he wants to go to heaven. This is also a perfectly good reason. To want to go to heaven is not being self-centered, for heaven is exactly where our heavenly Father wants us to go, exactly why Jesus came to us to tell us in the first place. So, yearn for heaven and believe, and Jesus will take care of you.

**Evolving Lifetime Goal

        In my early days, I lived for this life. My goal, like almost everyone else's, was to do something to make a lot of money to achieve security and have a lot of fun in this world. (Wouldn't it be nice to win the lottery?) As I grew older, I became wiser and less myopic. I now finally see that the only worthwhile goal is to serve God, the God of Christ. It doesn't sound very glamorous, but it will get you to heaven. After all, it's only where you'll end up that counts. 

***God Most Personal

        Back when I first accepted Christ into my life, it was like after hearing a good story, I found it to be exactly what I needed to hear and decided to believe in him, not particularly feeling the presence of God in any way. Fast forward to the present . . . I know Christ as my Lord and God so intimately that he is more real to me than anyone I see or know now in the world – it is most personal knowing. When you and God are in each other, God becomes as real to you as yourself. I enjoy and love it!

*Our Role and God's Role

        Remember that we are not God and are powerless in changing people's hearts. We are to serve the Lord by bringing others to him for him to change their hearts.

**What God Thinks of You!

        One obstacle in our spiritual life is that we cannot totally accept ourselves yet. This shows that you still have that ego in you. But if you have a pure heart that God cares about the most, you should rejoice and not dwell on your imperfections. It is what God thinks of you, not what you think of yourself, that matters!

*True Abandonment to God

        I have heard people say that they don't worry and just leave everything up to God. Is this abandonment to God? True abandonment to God involves total detachment to all things, everyone else, and even yourself, so it goes a lot deeper. Since birth, each of us knows only our own self best. Therefore, transferring trust in yourself to trust in God would understandably be hard, but this is a fundamental, life-changing shift that will set you free to return to God in heaven! It is good to know that once you make that shift, God will make the rest of you way easy and a joy. Let's remember that in both Matthew 10 and 16, Jesus said, "Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it."

**Living on Borrowed Time*

       Time and space all belong to God. With God, time does not exist, for he is eternal. For us, you might say that we exist on earth briefly on borrowed time from God and if we remain obedient to him, we become eternal too after our earthly life ends. Basically, we do not own anything, but can be owned by God as his beloved sons and daughters. Then if we rebel against God, we get ourselves disowned by him in the end. It's all pretty straight forward.