the importance of Forgiveness…

{ April 17, 2010 @ 10:30 } · { Uncategorized }
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Am back to writing after quite some time now, dunno what kept me away but was away indeed. Sorry to those who were waiting for me to write (I believe that accounts to countable few :D ).

Well, now am I back with something stimulating or what, indeed I am and the Lord lead me to write what I feel about “Forgiveness”. It’s one of the things mentioned in the bible that seems very difficult to follow. After all how can I forgive someone if he/she has wronged me, it’s absolutely not possible, is it not, we are humans and we find it difficult to not look at what wrong has been done and feel remorseful about it. It’s our sentiments and no one, absolutely no one has the rights to play with it or harm it, right?

This is how we normally feel when we have been wronged by someone, a close one or a stranger, well some people can even not forgive God because they feel he put them in that particular situation and hence He too deems to fall in the not forgiven radius.

So to carry on with this subject lets break it into pieces to better understand it.

  1. How can someone be wronged?
    Well if another person or individual says or does something that breaks my heart or makes me feel bad or uncomfortable, theoretically that person has WRONGED me. Simple isn’t it? Now let’s go on to the next question.
  2. Why would anyone try to hurt another person?
    There could be many reasons – an unstable mind, jealousy, pride, ego, fanaticism, and whatever else. I don’t think we humans generally need a reason to hurt our fellow humans; we somehow manage to do it every now and then. But now what constitutes a wrong that is not forgivable in our eyes, again this depends from person to person. Some people forgive easily while some don’t, can we classify wrongs in terms of degrees of intensity? I don’t think we can, because it varies from individual to individual. And it won’t be right saying that this kind of wrong can be forgiven and that kind can’t be, won’t it? A wrong is a wrong and it should not be forgiven, correct? Let’s leave this here and get back to it a lil later and move to the next question.
  3. What is forgiveness?
    Forgiveness is that act where you tell the person who wronged you that you have not taken the hurt to heart and are ready to move on with things and not to keep anything against that person. ( This is my explanation, not Wikipedia or co)
  4. Why should I forgive?
    At the face of it there is actually no reason to forgive someone as there is no reason for someone to hurt another person. Simple? So far I dealt with this topic from a Human point of view, now moving on to the point of view on what most of my writing is based, The BIBLE.

 

So what does the Bible have to say about the above four aspects? For the How, it’s pretty much the same as in a general parlance, while for the Why, the answer is that the person who does so is obviously not working and doing things according to the Will of God and looks to do things with his/her selfish motives and in the bargain ends up causing a lot of collateral damage and leaves God with a lot of repair work to do. Now you may ask what about a person with an unstable mind, he/she doesn’t even know who God is, but I don’t think that is the case; as an individual soul, he/she certainly knows his/her creator. So their soul being as able as an able looking person’s soul is able to make the choices and chooses to follow God’s will or not. Even the unstable person acts on those same negative emotions – greed, anger, lust, pride, jealousy etc; as is the case with a person with a stable mind. I hope I have proven my point, it’s not what is on the Outside that makes a person who he/she is; it is what is on the Inside. Again I don’t think I can furnish any scientific proof for what I am saying, but after all my writing is based on Faith not Science.  This is how I believe it could be, and surely it doesn’t have to be this way, just my point of view of things in earth.

Coming to what the Bible has to say about Forgiveness, it shows that Forgiveness is the most beautiful act a man can perform towards his fellowmen and is illustrated very perfectly when Jesus, dying on the Cross asks God to forgive man because we did not know what we were doing. Here was this man Jesus, being tried, mocked, grilled and killed for nothing evidently wrong and what does he do in return, he pleads for Forgiveness and doesn’t rebuke or stay in remorse.

So why did Jesus choose to Forgive? You could say he could do that because was God in the form of man and hence had more control on his feelings. But sorry to say, even though he was God incarnate, he was as much a man as you or me. He felt everything we felt, he could think like we think, but what made him different was that he dint choose to feel or think what HE wanted to think, but he chose to feel and think what GOD wanted him to, thereby enabling God to work his magic in the lives of the people around Him. There is also the example of the apostle Stephen who was stoned to death by the radical Jews for proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus, and what were his dying words? “Forgive them Lord because they know not what they do” – even he echoed the same words of Jesus showing how much he loved God. You may argue that Jesus was God so he could forgive easily, but then Stephen was not, he was Human like you and I and he CHOSE to FORGIVE. And there are many examples of normal human beings who have chosen to forgive those who wronged them in turn opening avenues that they wouldn’t have even dreamed of.

This brings us to the question of “Why should we forgive?”, well the reason being that by doing so we allow God to work in our lives and the lives of those who wrong us. See the basic story of the Bible is about the fall of man to his redemption though the blood of Jesus and Un-forgiveness is one of the main stumbling blocks man has to overcome to receive God’s eternal blessing and life. What did Jesus’ act of Forgiving us do? It made God move in our lives and show us the road to Salvation which all of us deserve to receive. Had Jesus rebuked us for killing Him would this have been possible, well of course not and his death on the Cross would have been meaningless. In the same way when we Forgive someone who has wronged us (no matter what the wrong is) we enable God to move in both our lives and weave his magic and make both parties capable of Salvation. On the contrary, if we choose not to Forgive we somehow kinda bind God from doing anything in our lives and both the parties continue to live away from God. Yes, it’s true that if you have un-forgiveness in you, you are blocking the blessings of God to come into your life and the life of your loved ones. So not only the person you don’t forgive will suffer, you and your dear ones too may suffer the consequences.

This might sound very confusing and difficult to understand and follow, but why do you even try to understand, leave these matters in the Hands of God and let Him do what is best, after all he is the Creator and should he know what’s best for his creation instead of his creation trying to analyze things and end up worsening the situation. A good analogy would be that of a Computer Application and a User, if the application is programmed to Save data at regular intervals to avoid any data loss and then one day this User decides to tweak the application and somehow manages to undo that functionality and closes the application without saving it, what would be the result? Obviously he would end up losing all the data he entered. In the same way God has made things to be in a certain way and when we go against that, there would obviously repercussions pertaining to that.

So, LET GO AND LET GOD control your life and chart your path to Salvation.

TO ERR IS HUMAN, TO FORGIVE IS DIVINE!

FORGIVE AND LIVE!!!!

Choose to Love??

{ March 29, 2010 @ 09:50 } · { Uncategorized }
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well havnt written for almost two months now :0…the lord hasnt given me anything much to chalk down actually….and my hiatus will continue for some more time i assume…but in the meanwhile my sister influenced from my blogging wanted to contribute something to the world to read…so here i am presenting a write up that came to my sisters mind…sit back and read along :)

Note: This is also based on our Christian Faith :)

What should influence our choices? A strong logical mind or a loving heart? Can Love influence the choices we make?

These are questions we need to answer so that we lead life with a true conscience. Many people choose to accept Christ as their savior and believe that they are saved by just gathering with like minded people and indulging in Praise and worship, reading the bible and feel that they will be redeemed. But to me I feel leading a Christian life is lot more than that, one should not just read the bible rather understand the bible and personify one’s life the way Christ lived. There are many who lose themselves in trying to find ways in which to authenticate the Bible as the one and only true Book of God. Well, good my brother but how are you leading your own life, are you leading a true Christian life or a farce one?

When we choose to lead a true Christian life (CHRISTIAN- refers to “adherence with Christ”) one needs to figure out whether he need to come to the Lord with strong logical mind or a true loving heart.  To me Christianity is not a part of one’s life rather it is the way that one has to live. Jesus Christ is the ultimate role model one could look up to. Rather than us arguing about how he led a human life, we need to look at the message that he always conveyed to humanity. When asked by his disciples as to which is the most important commandment. He said, to “Love God with all your heart and to Love your neighbor as you love yourself”. What does this imply; it clearly implies that the way to living a true Christian life is to be an embodiment of “LOVE”. Many could argue that it is easier said than done; do you think it is so? The bible shows us that God sent his only son in flesh and blood not only for our redemption but also to show us how we need to lead our lives. He showed us that living in flesh, having the free will and walking in Faith is not an impossible task to do.

We are always at the fork of choices. I can choose to give charity either with fear that I am following what is expected by others or just because I love to give unto others. This fork of choice can be narrowed down to one clear path by choosing to do everything out of Love. It didn’t take much effort for Mother Teresa to lend a helping hand for she did everything with love for the needy. Similarly we too need give up our egoisms, self-centeredness and unforgiving heart and fill ourselves with the love for doing things for others and thinking about others so as to enjoy a true Christian life.

Hope you’ll had a good read…until the Lord leads to me to write something its adios for now :) …but let me mention that for sometime now i have been thinking abt this aspect called FORGIVENESS…;)

Choices – continued…

{ February 4, 2010 @ 10:00 } · { bible, choices, deception, discipline, fallen angels, freewill, God, hell, Life, satan }
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With this post I plan to delve a little deeper into this aspect called “Choice” and leave it to you readers to decide and see if this makes sense to you or not and whether it may be applicable to your life.

Statutory Warning: What I am going to write may be disturbing to some readers, reader discretion is recommended. And I don’t intend to make fun or mock anybody, but am just trying to present another point of view and your views on this regard are well respected by me. :)

In my previous post I was talking about the importance of choices and their impact on you and your near and dear ones. Now let us see what exactly these impacts could be. Some people say I was “born” like this, meaning if there is something that is particular to them (sexual orientation, body defects etc.), they say the statement I just mentioned. Now how true do you think it could be, could I be the way I am cause I was born like that or could it be so because of the choices made by me or the people in and around me? Can you blame God for the way you are, as most of like to do?

So I wonder how people very easily tell that they were born like this and hence can’t do anything about it. The bible states that “God made Man in His Image”. What does this mean? It means that we are created to be perfect, disciplined beings following the order that our creator has designed for us.

I would like to emphasize my view with an analogy. Here I relate our Creator to that of a software programmer. One day he creates a program which is perfect and runs without any error on the platform that it is created for, he creates a guide and lists all the dos and don’ts for that program’s perfect functioning.  Sometime later another individual, ignoring the guidelines runs this program on an un-compatible platform. What do u think will happen…? Obviously, the program may end up throwing errors. Can we blame the software programmer for this? Of course not, he created the program with specifications and guidelines and if we are trying to run that program ignoring those specifications, then we are to be blamed only.

Similarly for us humans, God did create us perfect with some set guidelines so as to sustain our perfection. But through the course of history, man has lost his perfection, his charm, his beauty…wonder why? I leave it to you to wonder why. :)

Imagine if we humans had not turned from the set  guidelines and would have followed them to their last bit, we probably would have been in a place that we could call paradise; men living for many years, no wars, no hate, no discrimination – only peace, prosperity and love.

So, why do you think we have come to this current state, of course, it is because of the choices we and people near and dear to us have made and are making.So,who is making us take these wrong choices and fall time after time, any guesses…? The obvious answer is SATAN, that deceiver who made man fall for the first time (ADAM & EVE) and continues to do so to this very day. And why would he want to do so? I believe he does this so as to take us along with him to the place God prepared for Him and his band of Fallen Angels, HELL.

Today we are made to feel that everything we do is fine because it gives us satisfaction at the end of it. We neglect to see what God’s view on this is and we are mostly unaware of his guidelines that would enable us to live a more perfect life. Not everything that is satisfying to me is acceptable in the eyes of God. I might derive great pleasure and satisfaction in sleeping around with women, now this might be acceptable to many liberal thinking minds in our world but not at all to God, not because he is not happy with me feeling satisfied but because He is a God who looks at things from the bigger picture, meaning He keeps everyone’s feelings in mind before deciding what to do. So what may seem ok to me, because from my point of view everyone is happy, might not actually be the way it is and actually I might be causing hurt and harm to many. God can clearly see this and so asks us to abstain from such things and we think that God doesn’t care about our sentiments and feelings.

So we can see that making the right choices can help our world to become a better place, but then how do we know we are making the right choice. The answer is clear and simple – follow God’s word and when in doubt “Consult with God” and pray that he helps you in your decision making.

This topic is very vast and I can go on writing on it…but this is it for now…will take this up in my later posts…till then ciao! :)

choices

{ January 6, 2010 @ 21:43 } · { adam and eve, bible, choices, cross, deception, forbidden fruit, freewill, Jesus Christ, knight in shining armour, lies, Life, satan, truth }
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making-a-choice

Choices, this is something we come across and have to make more often than not in our lives. We choose our career, life partner, investments, things we do, etc. Sometimes we choose correctly and sometimes not. We express emotions over the choices we make, either we laugh or we cry and so on. But why do we have to choose? Why can’t the right things just happen? Why do we have to sometimes end up making the wrong choices?

The answer is “Freewill”, because God has created us in his image and hence we have been given the option (freewill) to choose what we have to or want to do. It is freewill that lead Adam to “disobey” God and eat the forbidden fruit and as a result of that we, his descendants, have to bear the burden of making the “CHOICES” that help us proceed with our lives on this earth. The bible tells us that Adam chooses to “disobey” God’s command, but did he do this deliberately or was he coerced into committing the act.

If we read the bible it clearly states that Satan (in disguise) first convinces Eve (Adam’s wife) to eat the fruit who in turn convinces Adam to take a bite of the fruit. So what do we see here, we see that man doesn’t naturally choose to disobey God, we do so under the influence of Satan lies that makes us feel that what we are doing is best for “US”. Yes this is what Satan uses in most cases; he lures man into believing that the act that he/ she is going to do best suits Him/ Her, the man.

And we in our everlasting quest to satisfy our desires and wants heed to this lie of Satan and end up sinning and falling short of God’s love. But something we don’t realize in this bargain is that we are directly or indirectly influencing or impacting the lives of the people around us – our family, relatives, friends etc. We really can’t judge whether our choices leave a positive or negative impact in these people’s lives, only God and time will tell.

So what do we do? Is there no way through which we can be certain of making positive choices? Well the answer is- there is a Way and the Way is Jesus Christ. Meaning that is when we look at Jesus’ life we see that he never made a selfish choice ever, he dint do anything for his benefit, whatever he said and did was for the Glory of God and to benefit “WE” his children\ followers\ etc. He came into this world, lived, died and rose from the dead to show us an example as to what heavenly and Godly living is all about, why? Because we are created for that kind of a life not the one we are currently living. He had many chances where he could have made a selfish choice (when Satan tempted him in the desert) and escape from what he had to go through (when he felt like giving up dying on the Cross and ask God to take his misery away), but he dint He rather chose to follow God’s will and be crucified so that WE may live with God and Him forever.

And just by doing something on those lines, not necessarily dying on the Cross, but thinking about everyone not just yourself when you make a choice can result in a choice with a positive impact. So take out the selfishness from you and learn to be a more compassionate decision maker, Choice maker :-)

hell

{ November 23, 2009 @ 21:51 } · { bible, deception, fallen angels, gehenna, hades, hell, satan, sheol, Uncategorized }
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hell logoHell – sheol, hades, naraka, Gehenna are some names of how this place is called in different languages in the world. But they mean the same thing, a place of desolation where the soul wanders without much purpose and with a lot of suffering, remorse etc. But what is this place and where is it and how do we get there and can we escape/ avoid this place?

Almost all religions in the world define hell quite similarly and ask its believers to try and avoid getting there. So is it a physical, tangible place like the earth? Maybe, maybe not – some say it’s under this earth or probably another planet or something.

There are theories that it is a place of fire, probably why some people think it is at the center of the earth (cause of molten lava found there), and others say it a place where everything is cold and desolate, probably like a some far off planet or something.

Now coming to what this blogs primary motive is, i.e. to show what the bible has to say about the things I am talking about. According to the bible hell is certainly a physical, tangible place where souls that are wicked and have not been pure in the sight of the lord will BURN FOR ETERNITY, GNASHING THEIR TEETH AND FOREVER THIRSTING FOR WATER BECAUSE OF THE EXTREME HEAT. It says this place was actually built for the DEVIL and his band of FALLEN ANGELS.

This is quite deep, because it means that this place was never built for US – then why are we going there. Well the plain and simple answer is because the devil has made it his prerogative to take all mankind into the burning fire to suffer with him. But what enmity does he have with us that he wants our doom.

Well, if he has any enmity it is only with us. The bible says that before he became the devil (Satan) he was an archangel (Lucifer) in heaven serving God Almighty. Angels are heavenly beings created to serve God and Man and an archangel is the head of these heavenly beings. So as God had created man in his image and likeness, he placed us above the angels. This was not taken well by Lucifer and started a revolt in the heavenlies. He loved God but felt jealous that man was placed above him and he had to serve man too and since then has been on a mission to prove to God that man is not worthy of such status and that God made a mistake by creating man.

So since then he and his band of fallen angels have been roaming the earth trying everything possible on earth to take mankind away from their Creator. I don’t think I will be wrong in saying that Religion is the handiwork of these jealous angels causing confusion in our minds as to what is right and what is wrong because there are so many right now. And every religion sounds right from its perspective. The bible warns us to be aware that Satan can disguise himself as the Angel of Light and show us a new way to reach God and mislead mankind.

Every human being is given a choice to choose between heaven and hell, between good and evil, between following God or turning away from him and many other such things. And we reach our final destination based on these choices. Do you know that the devil may have a say in your choice and is deceptively making you choose the path he wants you to choose? Well its true and I will cover just that in my next post, till then ciao and keep thinking – your destiny is in your hand, choose wisely.

what is more imp – life, death, or life after death????

{ November 16, 2009 @ 09:32 } · { bible, death, evolution, Karma, Life, life after death, Moksha, rebirth, reincarnation, truth, Uncategorized }
{ Comments (2) }

We all come into this world and one day go out of this world…but have we ever thought about what it all meant, why are we living this life and why do we have to die? Why do we have to either live this life or if we live this life, why should we die???

Am sure many of you have asked this question….so what is this life all about…evolutionists would say it is all part of evolution…we keep evolving and hence we live and die and all that jazz….well i’m not much into evolution, so forgive me if i’m wrong :D …..and then there are those who believe that it’s all Karma….we continue living lives, either as humans or any other living being until we can attain moksha and get out of the cycle of life…and then be what i’m not too sure anyone knows….but u wont die, u become immortal…so evolutionists would never know or want to know what would happen after death…the body will decompose they would say…and those who believe in the karma/ moksha theory would say u will bear the consequences or ur actions in ur next life or escape the circle of life and become immortal and just be somewhere….

Now coming to the point, as i said earlier i dont really associate with either of the theories…my school of thought comes from the Bible which has a different take to all this…it clearly says that “And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment – Hebrews 9:27“…the word clearly emphasizes that we are given a single existence to lead a fulfilling life based on which, we are judged. There is no reincarnation/rebirth for us to say that we have a second chance or this life is unimportant besides, each of us living in this humanly body is indeed given a Soul (which we refer to with different names like – inner-self, consciousness, the voice on the inside etc.)…our body acts as a frame or home in which the Soul lives…and when we die our body decomposes but our Soul continues to exist…

So…what happens to this Soul??? Karma theorists faintly highlight the fact by stating that the Soul suffers the consequences of our actions in the present life…like if we kill an animal, we may have to live the life of that animal in our next birth…but the Bible clearly states, as in the earlier quoted statement that after we die, we face Judgement…What is that? Yes, like the karma theory the Soul would be judged according to the actions it has done in its time on this Earth…so what?

Well according to the Bible if ur actions are bad, then u dont get a rebirth based on ur action but are condemned to eternal suffering in Hell…

What is Hell?? How can i avoid it? Is there no hope for a sinner like me? How can I correct the wrong i’ve done???….you may be asking these questions in ur mind…the answers are in the Bible and in black and white…wanna know what the Bible has to say….stay tuned to this blog for more on this topic….until then starting thinking :)

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