kosarajuraj

Simon Peter asked him, “Lord, where are you going?” Jesus replied, “Where I am going, you cannot follow now, but you will follow later.” Peter asked, “Lord, why can’t I follow you now? I will lay down my life for you.” Then Jesus answered, “Will you really lay down your life for me? John 13:36-38 The propelling force behind Peter’s denial wasn’t his lack of faith. Otherwise he wouldn’t have made the claims he did. It was his overestimation of his faith. He believed he was ready to die for Jesus. But he wasn’t, and Jesus knew it. So Jesus said the unthinkable: you can’t follow me. But it wasn’t. Jesus knew exactly what He was doing because He knew the exact measure of Peter’s faith. Peter had initially followed Jesus. Peter had followed Him on the water. But he wasn’t ready to follow Jesus to the cross. Peter wasn’t ready to follow Jesus everywhere. Not at that moment. You’re not ready to follow Jesus everywhere either. Not at this moment. Peter walke...

Hindsight is always 20/20. Yet while we are in a particular situation, we tend to make things out to be what they aren’t and infer wrong meanings. We kick ourselves, thinking, If only I had known then what I know now. Like the word "fatigue" frequently shows up in the headlines, preceded by a host of adjectives. Congress suffers budget fatigue. Sports teams lose because of travel fatigue. Trains derail because of driver fatigue. Soldiers face battle fatigue. Trusts and Non-Charitables go unfunded because of donor fatigue. There was even a report recently about young people suffering Facebook fatigue. All these reports -- and more -- are accurate. We are a society of tired people in a tired world. What's more, simply by believing what we had seen, no matter our background, history, race, or education, we could restore our long-lost connection with the Kashmiri Pandits. I am all the more curious to know about the strong linkages that exist between Saraswat Bra...

God never promised that we would be exempt from affliction; rather, suffering is part of our lot in a fallen world. However, there is hope because, though He does not always deliver us from suffering, He promises to deliver and transform us through it if we rely on His resources instead of our own. In such times of suffering, we can know for sure that we are not alone. In the midst of our pain, God promises to never leave us or abandon us. Therefore, when we grieve, we do not grieve like the world does; we grieve with hope, knowing that God is often revealed most clearly in the midst of our trials. God will never despise us or hide his face from us. When we cry for help, He will hear and will enable us to endure. The certainty of His companionship in the midst of our afflictions allows us to view them as a means to a greater end. Our suffering is accomplishing something in us, forging within us the character of the One in whose image we are made. Because of Christ, eve...

                                             (Pic:telegraph.co.uk) Geoffrey Taylor Bull (1921–1999) was a Scottish Christian missionary. Bull was born into a family with conservative evangelical beliefs. At 15 years old, he was baptised and received into the fellowship of a group of Christians meeting in "New Testament simplicity".This group was of the Plymouth Brethren persuasion. His original ambition for a career was to enter banking, but by 1941 he became absorbed with missionary work in Central Asia. It may be that Bull was inspired by the ministry of George W. Hunter, who died in 1946 after long years of isolated missionary labours in China. After World War II, the elders in his Brethren assembly agreed to commend him to work full-time in Central Asia. In March 1947, Bull and George N. Patterson (1920-2012) went to China, travelling deep into the int...

I remember the day I gave my life to Jesus. It was in the early nineties. It’s a while ago now. It wasn’t a wishy-washy thing for me. It wasn’t a case of – Oh yeah, I guess I believe. I deliberately – by God’s grace – gave my life to Jesus. But … for the first year or so, even after that, I was kind of shy about what I’d done. I didn’t really want to tell a whole bunch of people about it. To be honest, I was afraid I’d look like a bit of an idiot. However it all changed when I started reading the Word a lot. The word started speaking to me. And , as God became more real to me and I began to follow Him more closely, He changed my life and my outlook, and my priorities began to change.  Christ met all our needs on the cross. By making us a part of His family, He gave us a sense of belonging. When He died in our place, He affirmed our value. And by coming to live His life through each believer, He gives us the ability to live a victorious, obedient l...

Let’s not try to outsmart God. It is the message of the Cross that saves and God’s chief means of glorifying Himself is through simple, common believers who have been graciously redeemed by Him. We need to hear and heed the words of Paul: “For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, ‘Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.’” (1 Cor 1:26-31) The Lord wants our minds to be pure and useful for the tasks he has planned for us. It ...

Is fear causing you to hide from somebody today? Your boss? Your husband or wife? Your strong-willed child? Your grouchy co-worker? When God asked Adam, '..."Where are you?", he replied, "I hid...I was afraid"...' (Genesis 3:9-10 NLT). And we've all been hiding from things ever since. We hide behind forced smiles, agreeable words we don't mean, and social rituals we detest. Or worse, we hide behind things we do believe but don't express because we are afraid of what people might think or say. We try to avoid the pain of confronting someone, and the emotional energy we're afraid we'll have to invest in cleaning up afterwards. We have two simple options when afflictions strike. We can moan about our fate and give up, or we can face it boldly and make the best of it. God grants us the power to become more than conquerors, if we will only choose to use it. Unbelief is the root of our struggles and so our fight is a fight ...

When we do not bring forth His fruit—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (per Galatians 5:19)—but bring forth immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these (Galatians 5:19), it is because we have broken faith with Him and are in the state of infidelity of the highest order. What generally causes us to distrust Christ and leads us to break faith with Him and run to the arms of another is the fact that we often think that we have a better way. We think that, somehow, God really doesn't have our best interests at heart.  It did not good to sit idly by while others made all the decisions. Peace and safety were worth speaking out for. What is worth defending, if not peace? We live in a world of war and fighting. Battlegrounds pop up in every nation of the world. Rip-off experts ...

One of the great tragedies of the Christian life is that if we fail to enter into a relationship with God that is born of the Holy Spirit, we are left with a religion, not a relationship. Many a person today lives with an intellectual belief in God, but without a relationship that is based on two-way communication. This is the greatest tragedy of all. It's like having a brand-new car but never having the gas to run it. It can't move you anywhere. It only looks pretty, but one cannot enjoy the ride or smell the newness inside. Since the fall, we have all imitated our first parents. We have tried to usurp God's right to control His creation. We have demanded the right to control our own destinies, our own moral judgments, our own decisions. People often use the phrase “like father, like son” to refer to family resemblance. When people see my likeness in my kids, it pleases me. God wants His children to bear His image and likeness, too. The Bible says, “You w...