ART OF WAITING

Ain’t it irritating?!!  When you really, really are waiting for something/someone, and nothing happens? I once read a writing of Scott Hicks about “The past is present – getting back to the basics”. He wrote e.g. about how the modern time people just CAN NOT wait. Everything should happen right now, preferably yesterday!

When I became a believer I made the major mistake of asking God to teach me  patience: don’t ever ask that!   Nowadays I’m begging Him, that my school of patience would let me go for a holiday…  

You see, it’s because God’s time is just a tiny wee bit different from our time. When we live a thousand years, God has barely moved on for 24 hours. I mean this actually is in the Bible, believe it or not. That’s why “Jesus comes soon”: in God’s schedule Jesus rose to Heaven about two days ago… Think about if we would have to wait for the next dawn for a thousand years… Or in the morning, when you would be going out for work, you’d say to your better half: “honey, I’ll be home around 550-600 years“… THINK ABOUT THE PAYCHECK YOU’D GET!!!!!   

But hey, God’s really teaching us His schedule and timing so that we will be willing to give our schedule to Him. The show goes on when we don’t “morose” too much, trust me!      

IS EVERYTHING ALLOWED?

Some time ago I happened to think of the things that could be an obstacle to baptizing a spiritually new born person. It’s quite a long time ago, but there was a person who wasn’t baptized  because he wouldn’t quit smoking.   Have you ever been in a situation like this? Do you know someone who has? I wanted to know what the Bible says about it. I want to emphasize that I’m not preaching to anyone here, I just want to point out what I understand the Bible teaches about this thing. 1.Cor. 6:12 says: “Everything is permissible for me”—but not everything is beneficial. “Everything is permissible for me”—but I will not be mastered by anything.” That’s it honey: everything is permissible except if it has control over you! You can not serve two masters, that is: your flesh (evil)  and God (good) . So, what do tobacco, alcohol, porn, and drugs e.g. do? They enslave you, they take control over man’s/woman’s own will very easily!

 2.Peter 2:19 says also, that “They promise them freedom, while they themselves are slaves of depravity—for a man is a slave to whatever has mastered him.”  (Here Peter ment the false prophets and false teachers of the Word, who lived by and were controlled by their own desires. So it’s the matter of fleshly desires. )

So, I let myself come to the conclusion, that anything that enslaves us or takes us away from the presence of God and keeps us from searching Him, is a sin. It doesn’t matter what the stimulant is, whether it’s tobacco, alcohol, porn or whatever. It should go without saying, that a born-again person (wether or not he/she is already baptised) should make a clear separation from it.

I can see that I’m not able to solve this matter in a watertight way using my current Bible knowledge. Should a person, that wants to be baptised, be baptised even tho he/she still smokes, for example? Does the Bible say somewhere clearly, that this shouldn’t  be done? In a case where the person who wants to be baptized refuses even to consider about quitting these “entertainments”, I think it’s perfectly justified to advice the person to rethink his or her motives. Besides, baptism does not save you, only faith in Jesus Christ does that. Actually baptism is a symbolic act where the believer professes his/her fait and symbolicaly buries his/her old being with Christ and rises up as a new creation.

I think, that when one goes to be baptized, he/she should have it clear at this point what belongs to Christian life and what doesn’t. If it’s not clear, how can even the baptism be clear to him/her??? The purpose of it all is to declare that you have abandoned what is old and you are receiving a new being, NEW LIFE!!! It might sound lousy, but hey:

it’s all in the Big Book!     

BEAUTIFUL DANIEL

Yep. It’s 5 to 2 at night. What am I doing up? Dunno but I just couldn’t sleep. I just read about the book of Daniel and for the first time I realized how beautiful the last verse of it is.I believe it’s God talking to Daniel there, saying like this: “As for you, go your way till the end. You will rest, and then at the end of the days you will rise to receive your allotted inheritance.” (This is the NIV.) 

God had shown all these visions and revelations to Daniel about the time of the end concerning the whole wide world, the destruction and agony and then, the final sentence of the book is especially meant for Daniel alone: “As for YOU“. Those words must have been a treasure for Daniel’s heart! You have to read the whole chapter 12 or even 10-11 in order to catch the point. Be blessed guys!

HUMOR IN THE BIBLE???

Oooh yes honey! I’m sure you’ve also learned to know the ascetic side that is sometimes connected with religious thinking: “push your smile to some place else when we’re talking about SUCH a serios issue like salvation!”       But there’s humor even in the Bible, at least I’ve let myself understand that there is. I remember when I noticed this for the first time, I just had to laugh out loud! (Yep, I do remember it because it’s not that long ago: I’ve just reached the spiritual age where I’ve learned to wriggle out from my spiritual diapers. So I’m in my best defiant age!  )

 There are many funny (I mean really in the humor way of funny!) stories and verses, but I just LOVE the story about God telling Sarah that she will be pregnant at the age of 90!

 Gen. 17:15-17,19,21 “God also said to Abraham, “As for Sarai your wife, you are no longer to call her Sarai; her name will be Sarah. I will bless her and will surely give you a son by her. I will bless her so that she will be the mother of nations; kings of peoples will come from her.” Abraham fell facedown; he laughed and said to himself, “Will a son be born to a man a hundred years old? Will Sarah bear a child at the age of ninety?”  19 Then God said, “Yes, but your wife Sarah will bear you a son, and you will call him Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him.  21 But my covenant I will establish with Isaac, whom Sarah will bear to you by this time next year.’”

 Gen. 18:10-15 “Then the LORD said, “I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife will have a son.” Now Sarah was listening at the entrance to the tent, which was behind him. Abraham and Sarah were already old and well advanced in years, and Sarah was past the age of childbearing.

So Sarah laughed to herself as she thought, “After I am worn out and my master is old, will I now have this pleasure?” Then the LORD said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh and say, ‘Will I really have a child, now that I am old?’ Is anything too hard for the LORD ? I will return to you at the appointed time next year and Sarah will have a son.”

Sarah was afraid, so she lied and said, “I did not laugh.” But he said, “Yes, you did laugh.”

 Ha-ha! That is so funny: Sarah is a wringled faced, 90 year old granny, who must have had earned great respect among people just for her life experience. Then comes the Heavenly Daddy and Sarah suddenly changes to Daddy’s Girl  , who behaves as if she just would’ve been caught with a cookie jar in her hands!

BEING HURT AND BITTER

Some time ago I realized a BIG thing about forgiving. Actually I’ve personally been in the process of forgiving concerning two or three persons for like… 2-3 years. It’s easy to say “you’re forgiven”, but when you feel hurt enough it is yet another thing to forget…

Perhaps you, too, have had a situation in life when you have lugged something along for a long time. Something, that has like a stranglehold on your heart. But getting hurt is also a devil’s trap.        BTW, John Bevere has written a very good book about this subject:  “The Bate of Satan“. REALLY good book! But no more about that, I’ll tell what I realized from the Bible.

In Matthew, chapter 18 there’s a story about Servant, who owed King a great amount of money. The time of payment came and Servant begged, that King would give him credit and that he would not sell him and his whole family. Guess what King did: he said “I forgive you the whole sum”! Servant left and when he got outside he met Colleague, who owed him. So Servant went and put his hairy hands on Colleague’s throat. Servant demanded him to pay the debt, that was only a  fraction about what he himself had just been forgiven for. Servant made Colleague put to jail though Colleague had asked for mercy. Okay, King heard about it, got furios and threw Servant to a hard detention.

So what was my great attention? I AM THE SERVANT! ALSO YOU ARE the Servant!! And who’s the King? Well JESUS, of course. We have been forgiven for so much, ALL of our sins, that we really shouldn’t have any reason to demand payment from any of our “Colleagues”.

To really forgive someone is sometimes a process that takes years. But it is absolutely attainable. It is worth trying for your own sake.

WHAT IS A GOOD, CONCRETE WAY?

It’s boring just to wait for the morning when you’d notice, that you really have forgiven. You can actively aim to it while waiting. (And it’s very likely that the morning of forgiving will never come if you don’t consciously make the decision.) The thing you can do is to forgive in your will-life. Inspite of how much it hurts, pray for those who have done you wrong and hurt you. Even ask them for more than yourself. Ask that God would draw them closer. Say it out loud: “I want to forgive him/her”. (You CAN say it, I know.) It can take a little time (or then not, the times are in God’s hands) but eventualy you’ll see that you are able to bless the person/persons for whom you had been so terribly bitter. Bitterness really rots the bones and it will eventualy corrode your mind and heart and spirit and soul. Be careful with it. Do not agree to be its slave, as it will take you entirely before you know what hit you.

CHAT WITH GOD

 I will tell you an example about what kinds of little “distinctions” God sometimes does in the middle of our everyday life.   God is awesome… I was at a “can gig” with both of my kids on Friday. This time we were in childrens’ afternoon care center. Well, “the lady in the club” came to pick us up from home and just as we got there, to the center, I realized I had forgotten a roombox called De l’Amour at home. I was fretting about it to the lady, because up untill now I’ve really taken care that I have everything with me when I put up an exhibition or visitation… I said to the lady that especially the roombox I forgot would have been necessary to have there! It tells about the almighty love of Jesus Christ, the love that He feels for us. In this particular roombox there’s a daisy which petals said only “loves”, “loves”, “loves”, “loves”… (You know this “he loves me, he loves me not, he loves me -thing”)

Well, this was a thing God had arranged, I mean that I forgot the roombox… The lady in the children’s club gave me the keys of her own car and said “well you still have time to get it from home”… So off I went. When driving, I noticed that the lady had a tape player in her car and there was a tape in it. I would’ve liked maybe to listen to some music, but first I took the tape out from the player to see what it was and guess what: it was a speech by Eliina Heinonen (and evangelist) and the subject was “I LOVE, I LOVE NOT, I LOVE, …”!!! I mean…. WOW! I was like jumping up and down at my seat in the car going “YEEEEIIII!!!! Thanks Jesus, you’re awesome!”

This kinds of things are exactly about God talking to us. But it’s very often that we simply don’t notice it, especially in the beginning of our life together with Christ. It could be that you just can’t consentrate enough to find out about “Godlish” (God’s “language”).

Lady, Jesus wanted to tell especially to you, that He loves you MORE THAN ANYTHING!!! You are the apple of His eye, He does not leave you alone for one step! He has your life, HE WILL TAKE CARE OF YOU!

Lord didn’t leave me without a reward either… I’ve wished for many days that someone would bring me tulips. Like last time when I was at the store I was admiring the bouquets but didn’t have money to buy any. I then said to Father “would you send me a bouquet of tulips with someone?” And you know what: on Friday after the gig in the afternoon care center was finished this same lady in the center wanted to thank me and my kids and she HANDED ME A BOUQUET WITH TWELVE TULIPS IN IT!!! WOW!!! Don’t we have a living God or what?! There’s absolutely nothing of a kind that would be away from His awareness, not the lightest request or sigh. Thank you Father, you’re wonderful.

FORGIVE, ALSO TO YOURSELF

I’ve already written about how leaving a sin made things happen in my life. There’s something I didn’t remember to add and it’s very, very important.

Don’t stay tossing and turning in the thought about  a sin that you’ve already been forgiven by God! To get rid of something that you feel is sin, just simply 1. take it to the Lord. If it involves another person, 2. take it to him/her that you fell you’ve done something to and when he/she has forgiven you 3. LEAVE THE THING BEHIND because God won’t remember it either!

Remember also, that when you’ve asked for forgiveness from someone and if he/she is not able to forgive, the problem really isn’t YOURS anymore. You can do only so much to make things right, but if the other party feels to have been so hurt that he/she can not get over it, you can “hang on” just to a certain point.

So don’t punish yourself anymore after God has forgiven you, MOVE ON HONEY! 

HOW TO BE SAVED?

John 14:27 (Jesus said: ) “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”

Have you ever wondered about how to get that peace that some people seem to have? I was looking for that peace for years. I was asking people that I knew where religios “how hard must I yell and cry before God hears me , how bad of a situation in life must I have  before He gives me the peace I’ve been searching for so long?” If you want to know how to get saved, it’s right here, read on!

NO ONE HAD TOLD ME HOW EASY IT IS TO BE SAVED AND GET THE PEACE!

The Gospel is a very, very simple thing but people have made it just too difficult. It’s like God loves you/ Jesus came/ Jesus died for your sins/ Jesus rose up from the death and went to heaven/ you can receive His grace and salvation as HE IS YOUR REDEEMER.

SO HOW DOES IT WORK THEN?

it’s simple as a cow’s fly! Like this: Romans 10:9-10 “9 That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.”  

REMEMBER!

that as John 14:6 says: “6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

So what’s this then? It means that everyone has to remember this: it does not matter at all how noble deeds you’ve done or how funny, loving and “what-ever-cool”-guy you are: IF YOU HAVEN’T CONSCIOUSLY GIVEN YOUR LIFE TO JESUS CHRIST AND TAKEN HIM INTO YOUR LIFE YOU WILL NOT HAVE THE ETERNAL LIFE IN HEAVEN WITH FATHER! Jesus Christ is your only chance but I can guarantee that He is worth taking the risk.

“DO I NEED TO DO SOMETHING?”

You just need to understand that JESUS IS AN EXISTING, REAL PERSON and that HE LOVES YOU WITH EVERYTHING HE HAS! If you wanna have the peace that only Jesus can give and the Salvation to the eternal life together with Him, you just

TELL IT TO HIM.

Immediately when you’ve told Jesus that you’d like Him to take your whole life and that you want to open your heart to Him and as you ask for forgiveness for your sins, ALL YOUR SINS WILL BE FORGIVEN AT THAT INSTANT and FROM THAT MOMENT ON YOU BELONG TO JESUS ja YOU ARE A CHILD OF GOD. You can be 100% sure that you will get to know God as a Person after this decision. I also want to give you a warning: don’t be afraid that the life as a believer would be deadly boring as the speed can be wild at times!

It’s very easy, if you’d like to do it right now. Just pray in your own words somehow like this: Jesus. I believe that you’re the Son of God and that you died on the cross for me. Forgive all my sins Jesus. I’m asking you to come into my life and take it into your hands. Thank you, Jesus, for the Salvation and life that I’ve got from you! Amen.

THAT’S IT!!!! YEEEEHAAAA!!! YES! After you’ve become a believer it’s very, very important that you’ll go some place from where you’ll get friends to help you get started with your brand new life. If there is e.g. a born-again church in your town I recommend you’d go there. (They won’t eat you, at least not without biting thoroughly! )It’s very important that you won’t be left by yourself wondering about all the new things but that you’ll get a good start with your believing. Patricia King is a marvellous servant of God, you have to take a look at her site Extreme Prophetic. She’ll get you started as well!

 

 

“IT’S A SIN”

I guess it was during the ’80′s… Pet Shop Boys sang a tune called “It’s a sin“… Little did I know during those days about the way I’ll approach that song in 2007…

Sin sounds old-fashioned and boring, doesn’t it? Well, yeah, you’re right. But it is a real, existing thing. It is a binding thing. It is a concrete thing. And when you give your life to Jesus Christ it sure doesn’t mean that you’d be off the hook just like that. Bible says in 1.Peter 5:8-9 “Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. 9Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of sufferings“. So as believers we also have to keep an eye for It.

I’ve been thinking about the role of sin in a believer’s life:

after having given one’s life to Jesus and being baptized in water and the Holy Spirit, how deep can sin go into us? Well, it sure goes as far as we let it to. You see, God HAS given us the other true cliché: the free will. Free will is something that functions in us from the day we are born and it never stops whether we are believers or not. Even though it’s true that ALL the sins of our past life are wiped away through the blood of Jesus, we still can keep the door open for the devil and it sure doesn’t miss the opportunity! It will step back into any area of our life. This is what happened to me a couple of years ago…

THE POWER OF SIN

 1.John 1:6-10 says: “6 If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. 7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. 8 If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives”.

So the “power” of sin is in secrecy. OK. To make it short, this was my situation a couple of years ago: I lived in sin that nobody else knew about. (Mind you that I’d received Jesus only one year before…)  The Holy Spirit talked about it many, many times but I was looking for loopholes. I thought it was ok, because I wasn’t doing any harm to anyone. I met the stop during the last week of the year 2005. I met God’s prophet who practicaly THREW that thing at my face, she said: “GOD SAYS THAT THIS IS A SIN !” She told me very clearly what it was and I got scared!!! No one knew about it and this prophet named it a sin immediately! You bet I got “from Father’s hand”, so to speak, and that sin was left behind right there and then!

So what was the impact of the true repentance? Well, my life took some G I A N T  L E A P S with God after that. And I do mean these leaps affected also my material life, not only spiritual. It is so amazing to realize how BIG GOD we have!

The devil saw that I was serios when I left that sin but of course it tries to offer it back to me. How can I resist it? I can resist it with the name of Jesus and so can you! Just remember that ALWAYS when you give up of something that is important to you, GOD WILL GIVE YOU SOMETHING BETTER AND THIS IS NOT JUST LETTER PUT IN A ROW!!!

I just want to remind the believers too how important it is to keep an eye on the road and look at our life through the Christ’s cross.

GOOD DAY. WOULD JESUS BLOG?

Hi Y’all. This blog is the sisterblog to my Finnish Piispan Kioski. That means that I’ll write all the same stuff, TWICE… These ”diaries” have two main purposes: to help myself grow spiritually and to wake someone else up from the hibernation.          

A long time ago I read something like this: if Jesus was on earth now, would He blog? What would He blog? Or wouldn’t He blog after all? I remember someone said that Jesus would drive a HD if He was here; I bet He would! For some incomprehensible reason people seem to think that Jesus is just a bun eating fella, who only blessed and understood. Wrong! Jesus was the MOST RADICAL GUY at His time (and still is, btw!) who didn’t bow anybody else but God. Oh how many times He got furious, e.g. in the temple when He threw out the people and the market stalls. So… Yeah, I guess Jesus would even blog. Maybe.