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Book of Mark

Mark 2: 1-12

Mark 2: 1-2
A few days later, when Jesus again entered Capernaum, the people heard that he had come home. They gathered in such large number that there was no room left, not even outside the door, and he preached the word to them.

Note:
What makes people drawn to Jesus?
I think there are many occasions whereby when a big crowd were drawn to Jesus. I think there are few possible reasons why so many people are drawn to Jesus. One of them is they know Jesus is capable to meeting their physical needs (i.e. food, sickness, disabilities) and Jesus always do it (also for free!).

Another reason could be they see Jesus is very different spiritual leader compare to the normal rabbi, teachers of the law, Pharisees or Saducees. This is because Jesus walk the talk and thus able to speak with authority. He spoke and taught with conviction. People tends to pay more attention and respect when someone teach or preach with conviction compare to just to teach or preach by mind and knowledge alone. I guess these are the two main reasons why Jesus always attract the crowd to follow him.

It is just like the best doctor in the world who always travel around to heal people (for free!) and at the same time being the best pastor in the world, who is an example in every area and help people spiritually.

Mark 2: 2-4
They gathered in such large number that there was no room left, not even outside the door, and he preached the word to them. Some men came, bringing to him a paralyzed man, carried by four of them. Since they could not get him to Jesus because of the crowd, they made an opening in the roof above Jesus by digging through it and then lowered the mat the man was lying on.

Note:
They didn’t make excuse.
They could give an excuse “We can’t help our paralyzed friend because there is no room left for him.”. Instead they try all the ways to help their friends.

Have I try all the way to get help or help others both physically and spiritually?

They are proactive.
They didn’t wait passively for Jesus to come to their paralyzed friend. They went to Jesus. They are proactive.

Am I proactive in getting help spiritually? Do I go to Jesus proactively or wait for Jesus passively to help me?

Mark 2: 5-12
5 When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralyzed man, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”. Now some teachers of the law were sitting there, thinking to themselves, 7 “Why does this fellow talk like that? He’s blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?”

Immediately Jesus knew in his spirit that this was what they were thinking in their hearts, and he said to them, “Why are you thinking these things? Which is easier: to say to this paralyzed man, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up, take your mat and walk’? But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” So he said to the man, 11 “I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home.” 12 He got up, took his mat and walked out in full view of them all.

Spiritually needs is more important than physical needs.
Jesus first forgive his sin (v5) and then He heals him physically (v11-12). This make me thought of a verse and I found it at 2 Corinthians 4: 18, “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”. “What is seen” is considered as physical while “what is unseen” is considered as spiritual.

Categories
Tips Macam-Macam

Penipuan taktik – Beware of what you SMS

This is how it works. Firstly your wallet or purse got stolen. Then, the theft try to guess your spouse’s handphone number from browsing the contact list from your handphone. Once done, the theft sms your spouse with something like, “Honey, I have forgotten our CIMB bank account PIN. Can you sms me?”. When your unaware spouse receive it, your spouse immediately sms back with the PIN. Once the theft got the PIN, the theft withdraw all the money.

Lesson 1: If you lost your wallet or purse, immediately contact the bank to freeze or block your account. The longer you take to do this, the higher the risk you get.

Lesson 2: Sometimes, we might not realize that our ATM card got stolen. In this case, never sms/whatsapp confidential data like PIN or password even to your closest one. Instead, call that person directly and encode that PIN or password where only your spouse can decode it. Example, you call back and say, “The password is ‘Our wedding day’ “.

Categories
Articles

The Term Fall Away

Sometimes we hear people use the term “fall away” in church, referring to those who left church. I think that is not a suitable term because maybe, they went to another church. Since we do not proclaim that we are the only true church, we should not judge another church. This means we should not say much on whether they fell away, wondered away or still faithful to God. The more appropriate term we should use is they are no longer a member of our church. I think we learnt this before, just that we can forget about it. 🙂

Categories
Articles

The Beauty Of Second Greatest Commandment

Matthew 22: 39 – And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’

Mark 12: 31 – The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.

God’s Word is so brilliant, practical, realistic and achievable – “Love Your Neighbors”. Who are your neighbors? In my opinion, my neighbors are the people in my circle of daily life. My neighbors can be my real neighbors who stay next door. My ‘neighbors’ also can be the people around my life, example my parent whom I stay together with, my colleagues who sit around me, my team in workplace, my church group, my church small group, my Saturday futsal kakis and etc.

Imagine if the verse changed to “Love every single one in your church” or “Love every single one in your country”. If a church is just 10-15 people, maybe that is still possible. But what if the church is about 400 people? How is it possible to think about 400 people all the time or on regular basis? God knows that we sure got ‘neighbors’ unless that person works alone at his home and stay by himself in one island.

Since ‘neighbors’ can be so plentiful. So, I divide it into two categories. One category is the ‘regular neighbors’ in your life. Another category is the ‘irregular neighbors’. Regular ones are those you meet regular or daily. Irregular ones are those you don’t know when you will bound into them. Since you don’t know when you will meet those irregular neighbors, I think we should give priority to focus on the regular neighbors first.

Categories
Information Technology (General)

How to make your Gmail look ‘cleaner’?

Wanted to removed some of the Gmail features which you are not using? If you are using Firefox browser, then you can do so by going to Firefox’s “Tools > Add-ons” and search for Stylish. Alternately, you can go to the direct link, https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2108/ to add Stylish into your Firefox.

Once you have successfully add/install Stylish into your Firefox, you will be able to see something like below:

Then, click the “User Styles” icon, which is just besides the “Plugins” icon.

Then, click “Write New Style” button.

At the “Name” textbox, I put “Remove Gmail Invites”. You can put your own name. But at the content, you need to put these codes:

@namespace url(http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml);

@-moz-document domain(“mail.google.com”) {

/* HIDE CHAT AND INVITE BOXES */

.nH.s, .nH.pY {
display: none !important;
}

}

Click Save button. Go back to your Gmail to see the suprise!