Biblical Reflections and Love Poems of EFREN DLC AGBULOS
Copyright2002,2008,2009,2010 by
Efren de la Cruz Agbulos
(Manila, Philippines)
e-mail: tagailog178@yahoo.com.ph
The Gospel
Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the GOSPEL which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand; By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain. For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures:
[Paul, writing to Christians @ Corinth, 1 Cor. 15:1-4]
If worship were to give us freedom it should be because it was a stand against false, empty, external religious rituals that oppress man rather than glorify God.
If it is not an unrelenting voice echoing the just demands and moral primacy of the righteous Creator, and instead compromise as debatable the foundational precepts that have proven their worth and relevance in the hearts and conscience of men, we would remain a captive, a slave to what we abhor, and unable to grasp that we have to offer a sacrifice of what we ourselves value in a place where God has chosen to make them holy.
The meaningfulness of our lives should not be shaped by deficiencies when comparing them to what in our minds are riches and privileges which are rightfully that of a child of God’s.
We are to be transformed by what we have in answer to our needs, even if what we possessed could barely make both ends meet, because then our faith is renewed, our hope is made sure, that even in times of want we could extract something good and beautiful, and to learn the lesson perfectly that the supporting and guiding hand of God is needed in every situation, even in times of plenty.
There is no substitute for God in creation.And if we tried to remove God from the equation of life and matter, we would be left with nothing but ourselves above lesser intelligent beings.With man at the helm, a fine-tuned universe could not have been justified; the diversity in unity of life would have been unthinkable, given the fact that he couldn’t even control his own passions; and man would not have recognized even his own existence because by then he would have thought of himself as God, whereas in his thinking there is no God.
If rebellion is not already in full bloom whenever we doubt God’s abiding love and concern for his people, specifically when it has to do with the basic elements for survival or instant gratification, and after encountering God’s goodness despite that unfounded clamoring, it surely is starting to take root in our hearts.To question God’s sovereignty when he is not nearby in a manner we would want him to, deprives us of a moral center and leaves us in a state of wandering in the wilderness of unbelief, which results in a meaningless, aimless pilgrimage.
Avarice, bribery, unlawful gain, extortion, in a common sense quite acceptable in societies that have been cultivated by the evolutionary dogma of ‘survival of the fittest,’ are actions that should be observed by a Christian, watching out for the possible occurrence of these at any given time in the future, marking personalities and situations with an intensive and prolonged investigation at a distance, even before they get an initial foothold into our lives.
To do this, we have to isolate any reason for and source of corruption that we may stumble upon, for the purpose of continued watchfulness, to protect ourselves from injury, because the superabundance that a wrongful financial gain might bring us is essentially a greater, deeper loss.
What on earth are we here for if we don’t know what we are here for?
There has got to be some reason for the universe and for all living beings, and this raison d'ĂȘtre will actually set us free from the quagmire and the tangled web of self-centered existence because behind this purpose is the truth!
Graciously, there is only one underlying principle for all things, including those that could not be seen, and that is ‘the pleasure of the Creator.’With this perspective two facts become obvious: that God created us and saved us through Jesus, the Christ, both things we cannot do for ourselves.
But isn’t God being selfish here?Not at all; on the contrary He is setting the path to the fountain of joy, the pleasure of the good land, the peace of fulfilled love, all of which to be found by the redeemed, by walking a path with the Son of his love, a life continually yielding fruit of every good work in the name and for the glory of God.
Much can be said of a Christian’s character, whether as a testimony before God or as a witness before men.While we view and practice prayer as an instrument of communion with the Lord, it is, on the other hand, a personification of the believer’s new nature, peculiar only to a child of God.
A believer magnifies the Fatherhood of God, honors His name above all, looks expectantly to the earthly reign of Jesus, the Christ, acknowledges the sovereignty of the Creator, relies on Him for his most basic needs, concerns himself with the needs of others, hides not his sins before the Throne of Mercy, forgives others when they ask forgiveness for their sins, recognizes that the strength of God’s Spirit is the only weapon in his arsenal against the forces of darkness.
Our character is our strength, if only it would emanate as the Lord teaches us how to pray.
Have we not noticed that what God was willing to give us were things that would benefit us as well as other people, especially the brethren? In our persistence in prayer, the Father is willing to give us His Spirit at all times, by whose influence we are enabled to act with righteousness, judging ourselves first, and bear the good and appropriate fruits of our lives and our profession of religion.
Love is always expressed for a purpose.In man, the end of God’s love is our salvation from sin, its penalty, influence, and power.God so loved us that He sent His Son to earth, and the Lord Jesus so loved us that He gave His life that we may gain ours.The Lord did for us what we could not have ourselves achieved.
And there lies the beauty of love, when it serves as the vehicle of a rationale that gives to the object of the affection what he cannot otherwise acquire or attain.
To find good and meaning in both plenty and want is undeniably an evidence of the presence of the Lord Jesus in our lives, and we in Him.The Christian experience is not always a bed of roses, but oftentimes it could also be a bed without the roses, if there is a bed at all.In this life we have no other advantage but the love of God, and the Lord Jesus giving us the power to find contentment and purpose in any condition we might find ourselves in.
As the dust clears from the conflict of contending faiths, the uniqueness of Christianity will rise to the top like cream.
While subjects of the world’s religions depend on the principle of weights and balances, the followers of the Lord Jesus are firstly sought and called, then kept for and by God, those who continue unmoved in their faith, kept in prison by faith, preserved and protected from doctrinal error in a fortress of pure dogma, and be faultless and without spot at the end of days.
At the beginning there were only the man and the woman.And the Lord God called the man.
Worship is first and foremost the responsibility of the father, as the head of the family, to inculcate in his offspring.As he is instructed from the Scriptures, in turn he becomes the source of religious instruction in the home.Majority of domestic upheavals could be traced from negligence of this mandate.This role is non-transferable, and cannot be delegated to the woman.
Those who love God here and now can expect one thing sure from the Lord: that He would cause all the influences and circumstances in the believer’s life that is geared toward his response to the invitation of imitating the Lord Jesus to work together for that good purpose.
And for that we respond with the confidence of a conqueror over all obstacles and personalities and powers that would hinder us from becoming more and more like the Lord Jesus.
There are things and events in this world, in this life, that can be explained and answeredonly by the revelation of God in the Scriptures, by way of conversation: the believer with his questions, his doubts, his anxieties, approaches the Lord of the Bible, and by faith receives an answer, a spiritual truth that the learning of the world cannot give.
The Sadducees were out to trap the Lord Jesus with a question with a legitimacy that has been overburdened by any stretch of the imagination, and the answer to which was non-existent in their prejudiced line of thinking, and with all malice, on the same day the parable of the wedding banquet was spoken to them, the same day the Pharisees went out to trap Him in His words, the same day, without respite from the controversial.And so it is possible to approach God with a complexion of religiosity, in worship, in pleadings of prayer, but carry with it more intrigue and unbelief, which will eventually be exposed, possibly that same day.
Are we bringing a legitimate concern before the King of kings?The Lord would not want to expose us, for sure, be that our intent is for our enlightenment.He wants to answer our questions of even a temporal nature with the relevancy of the spiritual.
Title: “Go and make a careful search for the child”
Every so often we seek the Lord, secretly, under the pretense of worshipping Him, but only for personal interests.Do we really think we can approach God this way?Well, Herod did.That’s why he was not given a guiding light, and the joy of finding the Lord was bestowed on those who had sought Him openly and without fear, were not ashamed to bow down in worship, and had brought with them gifts.
Do we really think we can approach God empty-handed?Well, Herod did.
No one can attempt to own the whole world by way of rejecting the idea that the Messiah had to suffer, and a disciple has to suffer after Him also, and not lose something better, which is the prospect of eternal bliss.
Denying God may bring temporary relief from persecution, even exempt us from the shame and agony of a lingering death on a cross, but at a cost which would far exceed the value of gaining the whole world, if that were possible.
Who decides where we should be and what we should be doing on the first day of the week?We could argue all we want but the fact remains that the answer is “God”.The Lord chooses those who are to worship him, and He had also chosen the day when worship should occur.This has been the pattern since the end of the initial creation, and the determination that a week would consist of seven days.We have no right to that day except to reverence God, and to rest our bodies from six days of work.
A wrong perception of God can lead us to ignore His directions, however plainly they had been laid out; a misconception of God’s plans might induce us to follow Him halfheartedly.This occurs when the Christian makes himself the object of religious worship, instead of denying himself for the sake of the gospel, so when the Lord requires of us to take up our crosses, and follow Him to the place of execution, how many would heed?Perhaps we would even end up denying knowing Him.
Never mind if they possessed them or not, but people have the idea what to look for and expect from a Christian. It could be some sort of an irony that an unbeliever, who is aware of what comes naturally from man: the works of the flesh, knows that a child of God must be loving, joyful, a peacemaker, longsuffering, generally good-mannered, faithful, gentle, and self-controlled. What links us to God is His Spirit in us. What defines us to the world is its fruit in our lives.
The real value of money rests in what it represents and what it is intended for.Money stands for the legitimacy of the work/service and the product that generated it.Therefore, the bills in our pockets and in the bank correspond to our character as a person.Surely a farmer has a different source of his money than a bank robber or a corrupt government official.
The same principle goes for the ministry.Money engendered through the gospel and for the gospel is representative of a minister who continues to grow in holiness and contentment, while earnings gained through the gospel for personal enrichment symbolize a preacher who has lost authority to minister the Word, having wandered from the faith, and is surely on his way to destruction.
Such a dramatic even as the descent of an angel from God, and the rolling away of the stone, and the commotion which ensued, and the general confusion among the guards, and not one of the disciples was present to witness the immediate aftermath of the Lord’s resurrection. Only unbelievers were there present, although not in an antagonizing way, but bound only by their duties.And it is to the guards’ credit that the truth about everything that had happened was conveyed, definitely to the writer of this gospel, although initially to another group of unbelievers, this time to those who had an axe to grind against the Lord Jesus, the chief priests.And here the conspiracy to waylay the truth was conceived and initiated.
God, in His great mercy and wisdom, does reveal the majestic, the out-of-the-ordinary even to unbelievers, and sometimes to unbelievers alone, as in the case of the guards securing the Lord Jesus’ resting place.To the finite mind, this would have been an unacceptable procedure of handling a delicate piece of evidence, what with the fact that everything depended upon it for the certainty of
what we claim to believe in.
But such is the nature of God’s truth: it cannot be sent out without being revealed to those for whom it was intended, even if it had to be conveyed by those who oppose it with their lives.
Oh, the brevity of existence, where the longest term for man is one of the shortest on earth. To add to that already fragile hold on life is the uncertainty of its substance, its form, its direction, like a mist or a cloud.
Both length and essence are not on the side of the sojourner. And yet it is not relevant to know what the next day holds, for as long as we are in the Lord’s bidding, very soon to-day becomes tomorrow.
“Betrayal” is a word that can never stand alone.It is always preceded by weakness in character, and followed by compromise.It is an act pregnant with selfishness and avarice.But, as in the case of Judas Iscariot, his assumed gain for his dark scheme was the mere common value of the meanest slave.
Whenever we hand over our reliance in God, in the form of His control over our lives, it is always in exchange for something else, which we deem the Lord has denied us: like wealth, or fame, or influence.While in reality that compromise will earn for us but fleeting things that even a slave would never find valuable at all.It just isn’t worth it.
At the end of the day, it’s either we are at table with the Lord at a farewell supper, or we are out there in the depths of a still, dark night.
God doesn’t have to grow in stature, and there is none we can contribute to make Him reach maturity.In fact, as we draw nearer to the Lord Jesus, it becomes clear to us that we and our ministries are dispensable, and would come to an end sooner or later, while the glory of God is ever reaching new heights.
The Lord in forgiving us, restores us into the joy of our salvation
We can only appreciate forgiveness if we have experienced forgiving others when they transgress against us. Is it sufficient to clear the other person's slate, but refuse to restore our former fellowship with him [I am speaking of a truly repentant sinner]? How can we keep and value the lighter deal of someone who had done wrong, had been forgiven [when we know that receiving forgiveness comes with the promise not to transgress again], and restored back to fellowship, when we have not played the difficult part of the oppressed party, and nurtured the hope that the other person would not commit the same offence again? The Lord would only bestow upon us what we would be willing to dispense to others also, so we would appreciate the importance of not sinning again, thereby truly cherishing the restored relationship.
