2 Corinthians 4 March 21

wa

Hey guys! Felt glad to talk to a bunch of my friends... and yesterday, my parents went to their group meeting, and it turned out to be the burger place that the grade 12s went to or a little outing (that Billy missed, hahahah)... and it so happens that I had the best burger yesterday at home. Legendary. But the sad thing is that I've got myself a research paper to finish today since I'm a big loser like that. Anyway...

Verse 3 seemed to interest me, considering it presents a hypothetical situation for a non-believer. God is open to everyone who believes or even to those who don't believe, but ultimately it comes to a matter of choice - decision-making. If Christ might be veiled - covered - unknown, it's veiled to those who are perishing. And in modern context, we're talking about the non-believers. The reason why I call myself a Christian is because I acknowledge God is in my life and is my awesome saviour from so many of the things that happen in this world. If God wasn't here, and if Christ didn't come for that one cross, where would we be headed? Would there be a point to coming to Church? There wouldn't. For me, Christ defines PURPOSE. And really, without him, I would say comes ABSURDISM - no purpose to live in this world - no hope. It's a scary thing to imagine, but definitely it's reality. And I'm sure everyone's experienced living without God for a while... it sucks. Now, think about that for someone else who hasn't experienced God... where will their life be headed? That's what came to me.

The Clay Jar analogy was interesting. The way I would say this is that something precious is stored in something so worthless or even cheap. It's not the jar that's really the important part, but what's inside. Imagine the jar would be closed, locked somehow that whoever tries to open the jar fails and doesn't notice the valuables inside. What if a person threw that away? Definitely, verse 18 makes this point so clear. 'So we do not focus on what is seen, but what is unseen; for what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.'

This verse is so true. Things that we can see are just temporary - they have a limited lifespan. Sure we can buy a nice phone, like a BlackBerry, but in the next few years, the value plummets and becomes something so worthless. And so much of our thoughts are towards our own selfish desires... things that aren't even worth living for. But we think they are, just because they're fun. If these things weren't fun at all, they wouldn't be so interesting to do, right? But our attention should be diverted to the important things in life... I'm going to make an analogy on this in the randoms section soon! I guess it goes back to Romans 12:2, saying that we shouldn't conform to the patterns of this world, but to have our mind renewed by the spirit... that we shouldn't follow what others are doing and focus on the less important things in life, but rather look at the big picture - God is present. God is hard to see. But God is there... with the best plan in mind.

Take care.

Julian.

I'm back~~~ And Jennifer, why did you call me today???
Anyways, it's been a long time, but it's good to be back.
Besides my argument with teachers, my day was pretty good today.

This passage was pretty much about us, Christians, acknowledging Jesus' and God' powers and how great they are, no matter where you look at things.

4: The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
First of all, why is the first 'god' is lower cased??? It's not like the publishers/editors who wrote the Bible made a mistake, 'cause usually, it's pretty accurate, so why is 'god' lower cased??? It almost seems like it's referencing the other gods(i.e. Buddha, Ala, etc) and it's saying that those gods are like a roadblock for non-believers of Christianity, and they will never be able to see the light of Christ, our Lord. I think that maybe this is the reason why believers of different gods have a hard time listening and talking about their god with Christ because whatever the other gods have done, it's what Christ has done and He is like the main branch of all the other idols.

16: ...Thought outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.
This lead me to think about what Christians do everyday. I mean, we pray everyday, we ask for forgiveness everyday, and yet, even though we know a little about Christ, we don't bother sharing it. It's like we are never changing, Spiritually, but physically, we are changing everyday. Day by day, we exercise our bodies to the point where it sweats the most, yet our heart is nothing but a source and it doesn't change, it just stays the same. Perhaps this is the reason why some Christians don't fully believe and have faith in God. Many have experienced God' doing and have seen how powerful he is, but for some of us, we are either being forced to do so, or we do have faith, just not as much. Most peops say that Christianity is not a religion, it's a relationship, and in order to be in a relationship with God, we have to, HAVE TO, have faith in God and believe that he is with us, then Christians will see that they are changing everyday, both Spiritually and Physically.

I know I've been away, but mock my word, I will keep doing devos. Love y'all~

7 We now have this light shining in our hearts, but we ourselves are like fragile clay jars containing this great treasure.[b] This makes it clear that our great power is from God, not from ourselves
i like this verse because it reminds us of how we shouldnt be boasting about ourselves, yet we should be boasting abuot God. we only have our talents and gifts that make us unique and great in others' eyes because God has given them to us. All in all, it just winds down to god. everything that is good in this world winds down to God. We are only the fragile clay jars and servants of God that hold this great power.
so if you held a dusty old jar, filled with dhining gold on the inside, we wouldnt show off the jar would we?! wed show off the gold that's inside. and this is what we have to try to do. To remember that we are only the fragile clay jars that hold God's brilliant light.
i think this is a good verse to remember, it reminds me to be humble and thankful
yeuuppp
sooooo today it was determined that i suck at softball.... mostly. i can bat though! hehe hopefully ill get betterrr!
it was so hard to wake up today morningg D: sigh

i didnt know!! :S i was in practicee and left it on the benchh o.O in my folder... soooooo someone mustve fiddled with my phone? i dunno bahaha sorry!

Oh, okays. I thought you were mad at me for not doing devos, so I rushed home, finished homework, and went to finish my devos...........-.-"
This is embarrassing.

So this chapter was very interesting in terms of how we should change our perspective of the physical world. Many of our sunday school lessons have been about how we should store our treasure up in heaven, because the material things will only last so long and all those hours sat during those lessons came back to me while reading this chapter. A lot of this chapter talks about how we are to be tested and put on trial for our faith, and it does happen everyday, from starting a conversation about it to supporting missionaries. This chapter really made me think about if I'm ready to be put on trial. Jesus was tested in many ways, more than the average Christian, and he triumphed over every one and eventually overcame our sins. When we are put to trial, it may mean our physical death, but the idea is, if we start storing our eternal goods in heaven, it wouldn't be a hard decision to give this up. The trials might be seemingly small and simple like evangelizing to a small group of people, or being open about our faiths, but I think we should try our best to withstand the trials given us.

Sorry for the short devo, but I barely got anything from the chapter.

Glad you're back Paul, keep it up.

Thanks, Jules. <-NO HARD FEELINGS INTENDED, JUST A NICE NICKNAME ;D
Everyone was pissing at me, especially the female vocalist, *cough*Esther*cough* and today, I thought Jennifer was going to piss at me, so I rushed home. x.x

wallah

2 Corinthians 4

17 For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.
In the present right now, the things we do are natural for us and we do them daily. In this passage, its saying that the sins that we do are bringing us MORE glory and more closer to God by outweighing the others. I think this means that if we sin, eventually we will break down and WANT to be in Gods hands. I think this is because God wants us to feel the pain that HE felt when he gave up his only son. We sin and sin and sin but never ask for forgiveness. Im guessing that eventually something bad will happen to us and we will repent and want to be safe in Gods hands

18So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary but what is unseen is eternal.
This verse is pretty straight forward. The things that the naked eye is able to see will not last forever. One day the world WILL come to an end but the thing unseen will still exist. The unseen is God. If we love him and treasure that he gave up his son for us, we will become unseen in the afterlife. If we continue to disobey him, we will stay seen and not have eternal life for we are not believers.

EZ

18 So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

Hey guys, So I really liked this verse and I wanted to share my thoughts on it ahah.
We all tend to fix our eyes on what this world has to offer up but we must fix our eyes on the unseen. Which in this case is Jesus. We fix our eyes on sin and everything else in our world. It was written earlier in this verse that Satan resides in this world. There's the verse down there!


4 The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God

The God of this age, our world, is Satan and he misleads us and we fall into it. But the bible is telling us to focus on not the things of this world but of the things unseen. This applies to every single one of us because we focus on our world a lot more than we really should. I liked the last part of verse 18, where it states that what is unseen is eternal. Nothing in our world is forever. Our world is just temporary but the togetherness with God is real and it is forever. We shouldn't stray towards the things that are just temporary and especially things that pull us apart from God.

S'what I got! hahahha
Have fun on your 2nd day of school guys!

I took the best nap today. Omg I was falling asleep in class -.-

soooo for today's devo, one of my favourite chapters in the bible
I think I did a devo on this before... Last year? But since then the same message has really stuck with me!
Basically we are all jars of clay, and as we grow more and more in faith, the jar of clay starts to crack and a light coming from the inside starts to shine outwards through those cracks. This light represents The holy spirit. As we grow spiritually, others are able to see the holy spirit that is within us!
My mentor said this to me, and it Made me cry hahaha it's actually such an amazing!
I pray that you will all be jars of clay am that others will be able to see your light shine!

LOOOOL (:
wheeva Paul, I'm always superrr niiiceee. HAHA

7b in order to show that the supreme power belongs to God, not to us.
This verse. Just something to remember.

Guys, I have a test tomorrow and I didn't even sleep last night.. at all. I'm tireed and I can barely think straight. Sorry. I'll try and read this one again and see if I get anything else tomorrow.

Night!