The Bonus

there once were a group of people who talked a lot about God's gifts to humanity..everything was a gift from God..and they are right in saying that everything we have is due to God's grace..however, and we all know there is a big "but" behind this..they wanted to show that God would only act as human beings thought was good..and chose to ignore other parts of God's character..they were like the man who looks through a narrow slit in the wall and sees the elephant's trunk, and to him, the elephant is the trunk and nothing more..

today, i'm gonna talk about tasting God's bonus a little bit..in the book of Judges, we find God's people in God's promised land, the land of blessing and rest..God took His people through hell and high water literally to bring them to this land..and everything else from the time they entered the land was to be God's blessing, peace, rest and bonus..

but God's people took for granted God's blessing and turned to serve their idols..the Baals and Ashtoreth of their neighbours..and of course God, Israel's father, was very very angry..so much so that he sent evil rulers to judge and oppress His people..

of course, God was so merciful that He raised judges from amongst His people to free Israel from the judgement that God Himself had passed on them..now, we are different from the Israelites..in Jesus, God's Spirit lives in us and we are not stubborn and disobedient like those people..we have true peace with God and God forgives us when we sin..He is no longer angry with us and does not judge us like those stubborn Israelites..the Promised Land and God's bonus in that land point us to Jesus..God's greatest blessing and Promise for us..and as a result, if we have Jesus, everything else is really secondary..if i have a family, it is God's bonus..if i have a wife, it is God's bonus..if i have a great career as an Architect or Lawyer, Accountant or Doctor..it is God's bonus..if i have nothing, still i am blessed because God has given me Jesus..

you see, God's bonus only makes sense if i have God's greatest blessing, Jesus..without Jesus, every bonus is just rubbish and counted as loss..that is what Paul says..

and now, for the punchline application: why participate in ministry? why bother about a conference like SPRTE or a mission to Japan which takes away time from my family and my best frens back home in Singapore whom i want to go on holidays with, to some exotic beach resort with some diving thrown in for good measure?after all, a little bit of water sports never did any harm..why spend time away from family over Christmas? and why the heck should one try to care for God's people when my own needs are hardly met and i don't feel like it and i want to be the happy and comfortable?

Jesus is God's greatest blessing to me.the rest is a bonus..i'm living on borrowed time..should not we have gospel priorities and kingdom concern?should we not give of ourselves just as Jesus gave of Himself? Brendan and Aaron and Emmerie encourage me at this point..they're not FOCUS helpers or ministers..they're not that close to the members of NCS who are so keen on SPRTE which is really an Aussie thing, organised for Aussie Christians..they dun have an obligation to come..yet they do..why? Kingdom living..who's really our king?