DAY 819 - Your labours for Jesus are not in vain (請按此處收聼廣東話Cantonese podcast click here)

                              Today's Reading: Revelation 14:6-13

** If you would like to learn a simple and good way of Daily Devotion method please read my “Count Down 5” from my Devotion on Fire blog:

http://bishopsilas.blogspot.ca/2009/08/count-down-5-subject-shifting-devotion.html

To use this simple and good way of Daily Devotion method please click this link:

 .Subject Shifting Devotion.pdf

Please click this link to read Revelation 14:6-13

English(ESV): https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation 14&version=ESV

Chinese: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=启 示 录 14&version=CUV

Bible Study

     What do you need if you are facing death? Do you think the Gospel can help you to go through that kind of fear and darkness? This passage is to give answer to those questions.
 

Let's take a look at what Bishop N.T. Wright says (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N._T._Wright ) :

    

      This is ‘the gospel’, the ‘good news’, for those who live under ‘Babylonian’, monstrous, rule.  First, God the creator is at last going to sort everything out (verse 7).  Second, Babylon is fallen, after all her efforts to make the nations drunk with her own immoral wine.(verse 8)  Third, God’s judgment will be just, thorough and complete (verses 9-11).

     All this is, in this sense, ‘good news’ for those who have lived in a world of horror, torture and squalor.  God is going to sort it all out!..

     John is eager, anxiously eager, to prevent any of Jesus’ followers being sucked down into that dark whirlpool of wrath.  Their part is to be patient, obedient and faithful, knowing that death itself has been defeated, so as to become now a source, not of curse but of blessing.  Their labours in the present, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15.58, are not in vain (verse 13).

N.T. Wright. Revelation for Everyone. Louisville,KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011, p.131.

      For those Christians who are in Northern Iraq facing the threat of a genocide, or those who are facing with immense suffering, they need this ‘good news’ desperately. For most of us thinking that we are safe and secure, living a connected lifestyle but a disconnected life,  we need this 'good news' desperately also. The worst thing that can happen to Christians may be that they are living in Babylon, the sin city, without knowing they are in Babylon. Do you think it can happen to you?

Let's have a time to be still and give the Holy Spirit space to speak through the passage we have just read. Offer this time up to Jesus as you listen to him, while listening to "Gabriel's Oboe":  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmax47l2hLU

Spiritual Journal

    The title I heard from Jesus today is: Your labours for Jesus are not in vain

    What I receive today is a time to pray for those who are in deep sufferings, especially those people who are facing a genocide in Northern Iraq.

    At the same time, today is a time for us to re-examine ourselves whether we are living a connected lifestyle but a disconnected life. If we are, then we might be more dangerous than those Christians who are facing death. Why? Because "their labours for Jesus are not in vain". Jesus is Lord. Jesus reign. Jesus is going to sort it all out! And when they died for Jesus, they will be in heaven praising and worshipping God with the heavenly hosts right away!

    The problem is us. If we are living a connected lifestyle but a disconnected life, then we are living in Babylon without knowing we are in Babylon. That's eternal death! That's the worst!

     How do we know whether we are in Babylon or God's Kingdom? If you don't even know how, then you must be living in Babylon!  
  

Dear Lord Jesus,

Help us to be able to follow you each day that we live in your Kingdom and not Babylon. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.

Please click this link to worship with us -

從心合一

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJWZQyLzDRQ

10,000 Reasons (Bless the Lord) Matt Redman

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXDGE_lRI0E

You may choose to follow my other daily blog: 

Daily Devotion on Fire 2(2 years plan -One year New Testament, one year Old Testament): 

http://bishopsilas2.blogspot.ca/

Daily Devotion on Fire (3 years and 3 months plan, one chapter a day to finish reading the whole Bible): 

http://bishopsilas.blogspot.ca/

Break.Build (40 days daily devotion- For Renewal or First Step for new Christians): http://www.breakbuild.blogspot.ca/

Emmanuel330 (40 weeks First Step Bible Study): 

http://emmanuel330.blogspot.ca/

This blog:

Discipler 123 (Daily devotion using N.T. Wright's NT for Everyone as source)

http://discipler123.blogspot.ca/

Rev. Nicky Gumbel's daily devotion: Bible in One Year

http://www.htb.org.uk/bioy