As Catchfire 2012 approaches in less than a month, I decided to take a look back and reminisce on my Catchfire 2011 experience, one aspect of which was being asked to be part of the Catchfire Writers pool and getting the inspiration from the Lord to write the article that was shared on the Catchfire website last year.
This is the article which served as my personal reflection for Catchfire 2011 which hopefully was transformed into a communal reflection as people came to read and reflect on it.
CATCHFIRE 2011:
ONE KING. ONE
PEOPLE. ONE MISSION.
One King
1
Chronicles 29:11 says “Lord, you are great and powerful. Glory, majesty and
beauty belong to you. Everything in heaven and on earth belongs to you. Lord,
the kingdom belongs to you. You are honored as the One who rules over all.”
These
words breathe life into what every Christian feels in the very depths of his
soul – the Lord is the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords and He deserves our
worship. The psalmist declares “Worship the Lord in the splendor of His
holiness (Psalm 96:9). We must never lose the splendor and majesty of the Lord
in our very being. We are surrounded by countless evidences of His royal
presence and remain in awe of His greatness and beauty. He is worth the praise
and thanksgiving that we give Him because, despite His being a King, He was the
one who reached out to us by giving His one and only Son to save us from the
clutches of sin and inviting us to a loving relationship with Him. Imagine a King
going against all protocol that the world has put in place and inviting us to
be a part of His kingdom, a part of His family.
”Therefore,
since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and
so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming
fire”
(Hebrews 12:28).
Indeed,
we give thanks to the Lord of Lords and the King of Kings for consuming us with
His fire, a fire that envelopes our lives and moves us to choose Him over the
world every day.
One
People
Yet, even
if this invitation to be part of His family has been extended to us in love,
day in, day out, we find ourselves rejecting this invitation by living our
lives our own way. Yet, even if we let him down because of the choices we make,
He remains steadfast in loving us. He
remains faithful, even if we are faithless, because He cannot deny Himself (2
Timothy 2: 13).
Thus,
we learn to open ourselves to the different manifestations of His faithfulness
in our lives...
He
leads His flock “to paths of righteousness for His name’s sake” (Psalm 23: 3b).
This leads to our lives being filled with purpose and direction.
Because
Him, we lack nothing and our cup overflows (Psalm 23: 1, 5b). We
realize how generous the Lord has been in our lives despite the many times we
turned our back on Him.
And
even if we face trials and difficulties, we fear no evil because the Lord is
always with us (Psalm 23: 4a). We become stronger and more courageous as we
face trials that come our way knowing that the Lord is by our side.
“God
created us for this: to live our lives in a way that makes him look more like
the greatness and the beauty and the infinite worth that he really is. This is
what it means to be created in the image of God.” (John Piper)
The
chorus of the song “In Your Loving Presence” brings forth the yearning
to praise and honor the One true King and the desire to abide always in His
Presence.
We will praise You, Lord
For Your goodness and mercy thrive
We will exalt Your name, our God
In Your loving Presence we will
abide
This
desire to abide always in His Presence is what motivates us to respond daily to
His invitation to be a part of His kingdom, to be as 1 Peter 2: 9 – 10
proclaims: “But
you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special
possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of
darkness into his wonderful light. 10 Once you were not a people,
but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you
have received mercy.”
One Mission
The
realization that we are His chosen people, God’s special possession, inspires
each one of us to strive daily to obey and do His will and to please Him in the
way we live our lives.
For
freely I have received blessing upon blessing
So
freely I should give everything that I am
That
I may live a life worthy of You, Lord
Pleasing
You in every way
Bearing
fruit in every good work
Giving
thanks to You day after day.
Indeed,
we have received so much from the Lord! And how else can we respond but by
standing up in faith for Him who loved us unconditionally?
Each
day the Lord blesses us with opportunities to share the goodness and
faithfulness we have experienced in our lives to all others around us -- in our
families, in our workplaces, in our daily circumstances, and even through our social
media, like Facebook and Twitter. As
Christians, we recognize that the Lord
has called us to be “in the world but not of the world”, to be examples of people
living radical lives of faith, hope and love so that others around us may be
brought out of the darkness the world has enveloped them in and live freely in
the light and love of the Lord, our King and God.
We pray
that we, as One People, shall commit to pursuing this One Mission -- to bring to others the Good News that we are all
called to a loving relationship with Christ, our One true King.
