Grain, Wine and Oil

In the 23rd Psalm in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, the writer describes God as Protector and Provider. The text, beloved by Jews and Christians alike, has often been set into music. For Christians, the image of God as a shepherd evokes connections not only with David but with Jesus, described as "the Good Shepherd" in the Gospel of John.

Recently I discovered the power pack from God in the 5th verse of this beautiful Psalm. This verse mentions of the Lord’s Table is Holy Communion and the oil that the Lord uses to anoint us is olive oil. These elements of the Holy Communion and the anointing oil can freely be found in the Old Testament as grain, wine and oil. However, these elements carry significant symbolic values of the sufferings of Jesus and these are the pointers that carry biblical value in pointing the believers to the Finished Work of Christ at the cross.

Psalm 23:5 ~ You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.

What a powerful verse this is. A resurrected life of abundant life is what the Lord had promised in John 10:10b. Psalm 23 is therefore the secret to divine granted abundant life in a Shepherd and sheep relationship.

Holy Communion and anointing oil are like medicine. These elements help us to believe the finished work of Christ progressively. We have this divine provision from our Lord, and we can eat and drink towards our health and prosperity that He had restored for us. We are to take good pleasure to look first to Communion and anointing oil before any other conventional provisions.

Grain – The Lord is our Bread and He offered His broken body to us as bread from heaven. In our nature world, the way we get bread from grain is to process it by sifting it, punching the dough and baking it at high temperature in an oven. These gestures are symbolic of the punishment Jesus Christ took on our behalf. During the process of making bread, the punching of dough has to be complete in term of force and time and Jesus, the way He sustained the sufferings were complete. He had totally absorbed all our punishments on His body.

Wine – The ways we get wine is to crush the grape fruit, trodden it and leave the fruit juice to be fermented. The crushing and troddening of these grape fruit also point to the suffering of Jesus and the colour of the wine has a symbolic value of Jesus’ precious blood.

Oil - The way we get oil is by crushing the olives. Jesus was crushed so that we can be healed. Crushing the olive fruit removes the bitterness and produces the oil. In the circular world, there are 3 pressings in the extraction of olive oil:-

The oil from the ‘first’ press is used for lighting the Holy Place. In substantial to Paul’s revelation, this first press serves to light us, as our body is the temple of God! In Gethsemane, it was the darkest era of darkness and distress, and Jesus was pressed until His sweat was mixed with blood, so that we may have light to see His truth spiritually.

The oil from the ’second’ press is used for medicine. Jesus was pressed the second time when He was scourged 39 times by the Romans soldiers so that by His stripes, we are healed!

The oil from the ‘third’ press is used for making soap. When Jesus was nailed at the Cross, His shed blood washed our sins away eternally!

All traditions in Christianity feature this Psalm prominently in funeral services. Hey, do we really need abundant life when we have passed on to be with Jesus? I think we need this Psalm more while we are still in the sheep pen (graceyard) instead of in the graveyard!

Wow... I want my cup to overflow in this graceyard! What do you say?

Religious Obligations

I just love this comic strip from Mick Mooney... Though we may live in different part of the world, from a different social background, brought up from a different culture..., it seems that we are walking through the same Christian path...

I'm convinced that this spiritual influence is from the same religious spirit, and this is happening in different parts of the Body of Christ! Therefore, if we are not of GRACE, we are of the work..., if we are not of FAITH, we are of the Law..., if we are not of the SPIRIT, we are of the flesh...!

If we are not being enlightened in GRACE and established in Jesus' RIGHTEOUSNESS, we will never understand what kind of message Mick is trying to bring across...

By Mick Mooney of Searching for Grace

Religious Obligations
By mick on September 25th, 2009

Pastor Moses often talks about how Christianity is not a religion, but John is a little confused. It seems Pastor Moses likes to the idea of Christianity not being a religion, but he’s still preaching about religious obligations every week?

An Epistle of Christ

Our Christian life is a life of rest, a total rest in Christ, for He had finished everything that God could think of at the Cross two thousand years ago. A divine exchange of life between God and men had taken place at the Cross where the sinful and hopeless life of men had been totally absorbed by Jesus and His sinless, anointed life had been freely lavished into this world. Whosoever believes in Him shall have this new life eternally. This is what Jesus had promised before the Cross. He said He came to give us life, a life more abundantly and He gave it all through the Cross.

As His believers, what can we contribute in living out this abundant life? Can a bankrupt man trying to live out this abundant life? Is there any instruction from the Lord that we can follow so that we can live out this abundant life?

Certainly cannot, how can a bankrupt man live out this abundant life? Jesus did not say He came to teach us how to live but He came to give us this abundant life. This abundant life is a spirit life. He caused us to born again in the spirit as a new creation, a creation that never existed during the six days of His majestic creation work.

We, as a new creation, we just need to believe that we are righteous simply because of the gift of the righteousness that Christ died to give us. Our soul will be at rest when we establish ourselves in Christ's righteousness. This rest will enable the Holy Spirit to write the law in our heart and He will cause us to live out the abundant life through us.

Hebrews 10:17 then He adds, "THEIR SINS AND THEIR LAWLESS DEEDS I WILL REMEMBER NO MORE."
Hebrews 10:16 "THIS IS THE COVENANT THAT I WILL MAKE WITH THEM AFTER THOSE DAYS, SAYS THE LORD: I WILL PUT MY LAWS INTO THEIR HEARTS, AND IN THEIR MINDS I WILL WRITE THEM,"

The best kind of Christian life to live is the life that we live out without our conscious of how we are going to live it. If we live our life conscious of how we are going to live, we ended up being religious and the outcome is self righteousness.

Recently, we came to understand of this Spirit led life happening in our midst. My wife, Penny had gone through a tough time in her office for the past two months due to the numerous closing of tender. Her working life then was quite stressful. After the closing of all these tenders, their office life was back to normal and a colleague who is quite new in the company, came to her and asked her whether she could know more about her God. Hey, this colleague of hers wanted to know more about Jesus…! Penny was surprised by her approach and introduced Jesus to her.

Though Penny does not know as much scriptures as I do, she does not share with people as much as I do, she does not pray as much as I do and she does not speak in tongue as much as I do, the Lord told me that she believes He is a good God. She trusts in His grace, the unearned and unmerited favour of God. She believes she is righteous because of what Jesus had done for her at the Cross. She believes and is resting His finished work.

Abundant life is not what we can do but what we believe and how we rest in our Lord. Just by believing and trusting in Jesus' goodness, He can write a beautiful epistle in our life.

2 Corinthians 3:1-3 (The Message)
Does it sound like we're patting ourselves on the back, insisting on our credentials, asserting our authority? Well, we're not. Neither do we need letters of endorsement, either to you or from you. You yourselves are all the endorsement we need. Your very lives are a letter that anyone can read by just looking at you. Christ himself wrote it—not with ink, but with God's living Spirit; not chiseled into stone, but carved into human lives—and we publish it.

Though I felt inferior after the Lord had revealed this truth to me, but He reaffirmed me by saying, "Son, you two are in one...!" Man..., this is the kind of righteous life that we should be living! An effortless life that lived through by the Holy Spirit. Indeed, we are an epistle of Christ, written not with ink but by the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of flesh, that is, of the heart!

We are where we are now, because of the kind of message we have listened before. We will be who we are in the future, because of the message we are listening to now...

Joseph Prince On DayStar

Pastor Joseph Prince is on Daystar, a Christian Television Network in Bedford, Taxes, magnifying Jesus' abundant provision of grace and the gift of righteousness.

Pastor Joseph Prince on Dayster

Only those who really appreciate grace, respect the Law...

Building The Kingdom

By Mick Mooney of Searching For Grace

I Know you Pastor Moses, next is fund raising!!!

The Kingdom Is Within Us
By mick on August 26th 2009


Luke 17:20-21
Once, having been asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, “The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is within you.

Church Orientation

Again, I can't help myself but to post this comic strip from Mick Mooney of Searching For Grace because I was from that sort of environment with the same obligations portrayed by Mick. I was wondering and wandering in that religious wilderness for 7 years, 7 perfect years! Wow... praise God it's 7 years not 40 years! Gosh... What a life...!

By Mick Mooney of Searching For Grace

Church Orientation
By mick on July 22nd, 2009

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28)

You have to love the good news (Gospel of Grace) of Jesus Christ. Through His perfect finished work upon the cross, we now enjoy the blessings of a relationship with God that does not depend on our religious performance, but upon His glorious grace!!

Unfortunately Pastor Moses (one of the characters in my comic strip) seems to have missed that point!

Wisdom Of The World

By Mick Mooney of Searching For Grace

Wisdom Of The World
By mick on September 7th, 2009

The more you love Christ, the more you love His church – that is His people. I love the church, I really do. I had somewhat of a tough time uploading this comic, because I know it will probably offend some people I love and care for.

So then why did I upload it you might ask. Good question. I’m doing it for the very reason that I love the church. I just want Brothers and Sisters in Christ stop for a few minutes, and think about what is going on. God calls the wisdom of the world ‘foolishness’, so why are we using it for our model of church organization and growth?

Until we stop to think, and actually give ourselves the permission to think about such questions, we can never learn from the Holy Spirit his way of Church organization and growth. It won’t look like the world’s idea of wisdom, it won’t be founded on worldly principles, rules and laws. It won’t look anything like a worldly corporate business model, but it will work, I’m sure it will.

God created the entire universe by His Spirit. He holds the whole universe together by His Spirit. With the same Spirit He can build, unite and grow His people (that is the church), but we have to be willing to let Him do it. If we keep trying to hold the church together by our amazing organizational skills, we’ll never experience the church being held together by God’s Spirit (that is by love, instead of structure).

Let’s all come to our Father as He desires, like children, and ask Him for advice about this whole topic. He will guide us into all truth, and He will help us as we continue searching for grace.

Blue skies,

Mick

Fruitful Tart

Today is Sunday, a beautiful Sunday! We wish to bless you all with this fruit tart overflowing with varieties of fresh fruit. May your week ahead be fruitful with His favor shining upon you.

Ingredients for tart crust:

250g flour
10g milk powder
70g caster sugar
170g butter
40g beaten egg

Ingredients for custard:

100g instant custard
700ml cold milk
varieties of fresh fruit

1. To make tart crust, combine flour, milk powder and caster sugar. Rub in butter until mixture resemble bread crumbs. Add in beaten egg, knead to forms dough.

2. Wrap the dough with plastic wrap, refrigerate for half an hour until ready to use.

3. Roll out enough of dough, place into mould.

4. Touch some flour on both thumbs, Press the dough. Tim off the edge.

5. Bake tart crust in oven @ 180 degree for twenty minutes.

6. Dress tart crust with instant custard and top with varieties of fresh fruit.

The No. 5 Jersey

In my early Christian life, I was always being taught to put Jesus No. 1 in my life. Under that sort of environment, I could only understand the life of Jesus when He was on earth serving His people and I have no idea of how His resurrection life is like. Nevertheless, the grace message has done a perfect job in bringing revival to my understanding of who the resurrected Jesus is.

After years of sitting under grace based and Jesus conscious ministry, I have totally forgotten about the idea of putting Jesus No. 1 in my life. From the comment given by my Pastor in my previous post (Do We Have To...?), his simple comment inspired me with a new insight on the rules of a football player in a football match.

I love to watch English Premier League and I know a bit of English football through the computer game called FIFA Manager. I am not going to tell you my favorite team because that is not important here… but I chose a particular team because they were computed to be rich and it was easy for me to buy good players and built my strong team. Anyway, my insight here is how we are going to position our players!


When we put Jesus No. 1 in our life, we are actually asking Jesus to wear the No. 1 jersey, and He is our Goalkeeper. Though we have the desire to put Him No. 1, we are actually restricted His movement within our own penalty box taking cares of all the penalties and free kicks. (The truth is, He had already taken care of all our penalties of sin and the free kicks because of our nonsense). Though we could never lose the match then, we have restricted Him in the box and we have to do all the defending and attacking ourselves. Mind you, that kind of match is tough and the score is hard to come… That is actually the scenario of my early Christian life when I put Jesus No. 1 in my life!

When we put Jesus to wear the No. 5 jersey, He is no more our Goalkeeper but our Midfielder, as He is now, always in the midst of us! (The penalties of our sins and the nonsense of our free kicks had all been exhausted by His body!) He is now no more restricted by the penalty box and He defends and attacks from box to box. He is the best defensive Midfielder as well as the best attacking Midfielder we can ever find. We can be assured that no one can go through His defense and we can rest assure that He can create the best chances up front for us to score. Whenever we miss in the defense, He will be there in time to clear the danger and whenever we score at the up front, He hugs us and we celebrate the goal together, as He credits the glory to us! This is the beautiful scenario when we don't let Him wear the No. 1 jersey but the No. 5 jersey... This is the beautiful fruit of a grace based, Jesus conscious Ministry.

That is why we can never put Jesus No. 1 in our life for we have been crucified with Christ and we no longer live, but Christ lives in us. The life we live in the body, we live by faith in the Son of God, who loved us and gave himself for us. For we are dead, and our life are now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, appears, then we also will appear with him in glory. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again. And if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in us, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to our mortal bodies through His Spirit, who lives in us and Christ in us, the hope of glory.

Wow… What an inspiration! Who say Christian cannot watch English Premier League?

Do We Have To...?

Do we have to put Jesus No.1 in our life? Hmmm... Interesting question. What is your opinion?

Crossing The Line

So what do you do after you have accepted Jesus as your personal Savior? Do you cross that line and go on to live out the righteous life you already have or you go back to depend on that two tablets of stone? When does it mean by crossing the line? Click on this video and find out...

Andrew Farley of The Naked Gospel

Hokkaido Poppy Seed Lemon Sponge Cupcake

Ingredient for Cupcake

125gm Melted Butter
250gm Sponge Mix
6 Eggs
Grated Lemon Rind
Poppy Seed


Ingredient for Custard Filling

100gm Instant Pudding
700ml Cold Milk
Lemon Juice

The Naked Gospel

Andrew Farley of The Naked Gospel

Sushi Queen

In Japanese cuisine, Sushi (寿司) is vinegar rice, usually topped with other ingredients, such as fish. What we are making here is actually called Makizushi (巻寿司), rolled Sushi. A cylindrical piece, formed with the help of a bamboo mat, called Makisu (巻簾). Makizushi is generally wrapped in Nori (海苔), a Japanese name for various edible seaweed.

After numerous attempt on making Sushi with different combination of ingredients, we finally settled down by using only cucumber, red carrot, crab meat, egg omelette, vegetarian dried bean curd and not forgetting our secret ingredient called Furikake Nori Katsuo Seasoning Mix!

To honor Penny with her effort in preparing these Makizushi, this "brand name" of Sushi Queen is given to identify her unique combo of deliciously prepared Makizushi...!

R1H1

What is this R1H1, Brother Alan? What do mean by R1H1? Is there anything to do with R2D2? Why not H1N1? No… R2D2 is from Hollywood. H1N1 is from the devil while R1H1 is from the Holy Word.

Well, this R1H1 is foreign to the world, and the world cannot accept it. How shall I put it…? This is a kind of energizer spiritually from the Lord to edify the body of Christ but we are seldom being told about this. The body of Christ has long been inoculated with this energizer ever since the day of Pentecost, way back in chapter 2 of the Book of Acts! By the way, this spiritual energizer is most effective in believers who are of righteousness conscious.

Before Our Lord gave Himself up at the cross, He promised in John Chapter 16 on the night of Passover that, when the Holy Spirit has come, the Holy Spirit will convict the believers of righteousness. Anyone under His voice then knew what that promise was about… and 50 days later when the day of Pentecost came; the Holy Spirit came suddenly like the blowing of a violent wind from heaven and filled the Upper Room where the disciples were sitting. These 120 Disciples saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.

By connecting these two events in the scripture together, we can see that speaking in tongue is the first magnified evidence of how the Holy Spirit convicts us of righteousness. Tongue is indeed, a spiritual gift from God for our edification. Tongue is given to edify our spirit man and when we pray in tongue, we are spiritually edified by the Holy Spirit in convicting that we are still the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. By confessing with the understanding of our mind alone is not enough because righteousness of God is spiritual and we need the impartation from the Holy Spirit for the evidential effect of righteousness in our spirit man!

When we have been firmly established in His righteousness, we will find that those verses mentioned in the Book of Proverbs in respect of righteousness are actually belong to us through His grace…

Proverbs
4:18 The path of the righteous is like the first gleam of dawn, shining ever brighter till the full light of day.
10:3 The LORD does not let the righteous go hungry but he thwarts the craving of the wicked.
11:30 The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life, and he who wins souls is wise.
12:28 In the way of righteousness there is life; along that path is immortality.
13:22 A good man leaves an inheritance for his children's children, but a sinner's wealth is stored up for the righteous.
18:10 The name of the LORD is a strong tower; the righteous run to it and are safe.
20:7 The righteous man leads a blameless life; blessed are his children after him.
21:21 He who pursues righteousness and love finds life, prosperity and honor.
23:24 The father of a righteous man has great joy; he who has a wise son delights in him.

We received this revelation while I was driving my wife back to her work place after our lunch last Friday afternoon … and the name of this spiritual energizer is none other than “Righteous One, Healthy One!”

What can H1N1 do to you when you are inoculated with R1H1 ?

Nemo Knows, Do you...?

Have you ever thought of those fishes in the ocean? Even though the water in the ocean is salty, the bodies of these ocean fishes are not affected by the sea water. Their fleshes are fresh and not salty. When we cook them for our meals, we still need to put salt to make them tasty. Hmmm… interesting right?

For all I can understand is that, these fishes are alive! They just live out their life as fishes in the ocean! Nobody ever taught them on how to be fishes in the ocean. They just have the ability to pursue life in the ocean because they are not rebellious. They obey the instinct given by the Creator!

Christians are the same. We are righteous because of Jesus’ Finished Work. This mighty divine exchange had already happened at the cross. If we are believers, we are new creations. As new creations, we just need to live out our righteous life, the abundant life given by our Lord.

We do not need to perform to deserve our righteousness anymore! To be radical, we don’t even need to be taught on how to live a righteous life; because the Holy Spirit is already in us convicting us of righteousness! If we are those Christians who still choose to perform to deserve our righteousness, we just promote among ourselves another form of religion. We are worst then those fishes in the ocean, as we are rebellious to our Savior. It is sad to see that majority of the body of Christ today still try to live like a Christian (be righteous) instead of living out their Christian life (righteous life)!

If those fishes are trying to perform to be fishes in the ocean, life will be tough and they will end up dying in the ocean. Look at those dead fishes. In order to prevent them from decaying, they are preserved through seasoning with salt. This kind of fishes is called preserved salted fish! We can try our best to preserve them, but they are dead, being seasoned with salt, laid under the sun to be dried and end up hanging in the grocery shop for sales. Salted fish do not have the life to choose for themselves what they want and where they want to be. They are just helpless and being manipulated.

If we are Christians and still trying to be a Christian, we are as good as those salted fish. Religious people will try to preserve us through their religious teachings, demanding our performance to be righteous. We are being seasoned by their legalistic salt, laid to dry on the stones and bound by our religiosity from choosing what we want and where to go. We are also helpless and live a manipulated life in a religious kingdom…

Our Lord loves to use natural things of this world such as fish, bird, bread, stone, serpent, fig tree, lilies in the field to teach the mystery of His truth. His grace is ever present and fully lavished in our midst. Out of His outrageous grace, He lavishes His Spirit to convict us of righteousness. We need to come to our senses and respond to His conviction that we are righteous by faith not by work. Only through our establishment in His righteousness then we can start to appreciate His grace!

Romans 5:21b ~ so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Grace can only reign in a believer who is Christ conscious and righteousness conscious. If we are still full of sin consciousness, we have fallen back into law and we end up trying to justify ourselves through our law keeping and self effort.

Galatians 2:16 ~ knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law; for by the works of the law no flesh shall be justified.

Once we can understand that it is all about His grace, we will start receiving His abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness and we will reign in life through this one Man, Jesus Christ.

I do not want to be a salted fish. I do not want to be a Christian being preserved and manipulated by religion. I want to be those fishes in the ocean knowing that they are fishes belong to the ocean and just following the instinct given by the Creator. I want to be a Christian knowing that I am forever righteous and live out the righteous life that my Savior had given me! He had come to give me His abundant life and He had told me that His sheep knows His voice! I just want to click on to His frequency of Grace and receive the abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness.

Even Nemo knows that he belongs to the ocean not aquarium… As for me, I know I belong to Jesus not religion. Hmmm... what about you? Nemo knows, do you...?

Uh Oh...

1 Corinthians 15:56 ~ The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.