Mar 2, 2021 | Wens Pen
Hello Everyone
The perfect host. Growing up, our home was always a buzz with guests from known friends to strangers off the street. Our mother was the perfect host. She put a special touch on all she did to welcome people into our home. There were always flowers on the table, a candle burning, the table was set with her finest china, charmingly placed on her best lace tablecloth, coloured glasses to compliment the setting, a towel on the bed with a small gift, more flowers and a welcoming smile for those who passed through her doors. She was the perfect host. Our guests always left feeling blessed and with the warm imprint of our Mum’s kindness upon their hearts. People always wanted to come back to our home.
God is also the perfect host. Colossians 1:21-22. There was a time when we were strangers to God, living in the squalors outside the Kings gates. We were not participants at His extravagant banquet table in His royal home. In fact, we were not only strangers to God, we were unqualified and offensive to Him. Yet we arrogantly hurled abuse at Him in our independent states and told Him to take His “holy ham” and eat it on His own at His kingly table, all the time curiously wondering what it would be like to dine in the Kings palace, because deep down we felt lost and hungered for an invitation. Our pride kept us prisoners of the earthly streets; urchins of the fallen god; impoverished and incapable of escape. We were filthy in God’s sight and unable to ever meet His standards as acceptable guests. But God, is a benevolent King and in spite of our contemptible states, He sent His invitations out into the common place with His precious son who sacrificed everything to make sure all of humanity were issued with an invitation that would welcome them home and treat them as though they had never offended the Host. Every one of us; sinful beggars on the streets, unworthy recipients, received this stately invitation and were invited in. His invitation was free, and it was far more than just a one-time seat at his banquet table. The invitation included being accepted as heirs to dwell in His Kingdom home without the requirement to contribute a thing to our stay; just to personally acknowledge His rightful role as King when we accepted His invitation. The person who paid for this invitation for us was Jesus, the perfect Son of the perfect host. You and I are the beneficiaries of His hospitable, gracious, and generous invitation. There will never be an invitation like this invitation where we get to dwell and dine in the presence of God our King and maker. When we accept His invitation, He will keep us in His home, treat us as His adopted children and extend to us His inexhaustible love and acceptance, bestowing upon us all the benefits of being part of His treasured family. God is our perfect host.
So, friends, get your host on today.
Best days to come.
Wen
Feb 24, 2021 | Wens Pen
Hello Everyone
Our small hand in God’s mighty hand becomes a powerful instrument for influencing and impacting the Kingdom as we join our hand with the most powerful hand in the universe. Isaiah 41:13. When we read about the many heroes of the faith, in each story we see them partner with God, placing their small hand in God’s mighty hand, which resulted in God doing extraordinary things with ordinary resources. In every instance where God asked these heroes to do something unconventional, the end result was phenomenal. As they each stepped up and placed their small hand in God’s mighty hand, God miraculously advanced His purposes and moved the redemptive story forward. Take Moses; God tells him to take his staff, lift it up and the Red Sea waters would part, allowing the Israelites travel on a dry sandy seabed to escape the bloodthirsty pursuit of the Egyptian army. The Israelites were no longer slaves and their captors were upgraded to the status of “deceased” after the torrent Red Sea waters swallowed them up. Then there’s David who takes a sling and five small stones and annihilates a taunting giant who falls and shakes the ground with the thunderous force of an earthquake. Goliath is then upgraded to the status of “defeated” and literally loses his head. And what of Joshua? God gives Joshua the peculiar battle strategy of marching his army around the walls of Jericho for seven days, with priests playing their trumpets, all giving a mighty vocal roar on the seventh day and just like that, the fortified city walls crumble and become rubble on the ground. The citizenship of Jericho was transferred to God’s people and the Canaanites were upgraded to the status of “disinherited”. Each one placed their small hand in God’s mighty hand and the unconventional acts became phenomenal acts of God. Should the Red Sea have parted just because Moses held up his staff? No! Should Goliath, dripping in his suit of armour have been knocked out of the fight from one small sling and a stone? No! How does a fortified city wall crumble because an army marches round it, blowing their trumpets and letting out a great shout? Theses shifts from the unconventional to the phenomenal were because each one placed their small hand in God’s mighty hand, and the spiritual realm shifted, strongholds were torn down, God’s purposes were enacted and God was on display as the God above all Gods.
It is quite miraculous to think that we get to join hands with the Hand that fashioned and formed the universe. It is also somewhat inconceivable to think that God who is so great would even want to use our small hands for His mighty purposes, as He engages us to move His redemptive story forward and towards the close of the age. Yet we are invited to place our small hand in God’s mighty hand. God then takes what is unconventional and transforms it into something phenomenal. Think about what can happen when we place our small hand in God’s mighty hand. What strongholds can be broken? What opportunities arise where God is showcased as the one true God. What person can be influenced to turn their face to Jesus? What prayer can be answered? What word can be spoken that will encourage others? What shifts can take place in the spiritual realm when we place our small hand in God’s mighty hand? There is a string of endless possibilities that can lead to miraculous transformations. God still parts the waters of trouble, He takes down the taunting giants of fear and crumbles walls to open the wide fields of our destiny, when we place our small hand in God’s mighty hand.
So, friends, get your hands in God’s hand today.
Best days to come.
Wen
Feb 16, 2021 | Wens Pen
Hello Everyone
Bragging about our Daddy. I was recently walking through my local parkland and as I passed two little girls playing, I could not help but tune into their conversation. One little girl was proudly bragging about her daddy, giving credential after credential about her hero dad. Not only did this little girl brag about how wonderful her dad was and how much he loved her, she boasted about how good he is at cricket and his job and how he can lift heavy things and build things out of Lego. The list was endless. According to her description, no other father could ever hold a candle to her daddy. This little girl had pinned a supreme badge of super dad on her daddy’s shirt and nothing was going to stop her bragging and boasting about him as her undefeated champion. She painted such an incontestable picture of her daddy that I found myself thinking, I really want to meet this dad.
I was reminded that we also have a Daddy; a Dad who holds the position of unrivalled, unflawed, ultimate, Father. He permanently takes out the award of Father of the Universe with incontestable credentials. 1John 3: 1. I wonder if we are found bragging about our Daddy the way this little girl did? Are we boasting about our Father whose very heart pulsates with perfect love for His children? Are we bragging about His credibility and His character credentials? Are we unashamedly telling people our Daddy loves us unconditionally, accepts us unreservedly, holds our hurting hearts in His merciful hands, teaches us, equips us to reach our God-given potential, listens to our chatter, hears our cries, wipes our tears, makes us smile, speaks into our pain, comforts us, tells us stories from His special story book, keeps us company, protects us, fights off our tormentors, leads us, believes in us and showers us with gifts. Oh, and then He crowns us daily with His goodness and drapes His robe of righteousness around us. He trumps all other fathers because He holds the position of perfect Father. We get to brag about our Daddy because He is really good at His job and He hold so many hats. He is an artist who exquisitely paints the sky at sunset for us every day in gloriously, blended colours. Every night He captivates us by stretching out the sparkly stars like a string of diamonds in His hands. Every morning He lights the day by lifting up the sun and every night He hangs the moon out as a beautiful bright light in the darkened sky. We are bragging about our Daddy because He is so talented at making things. He creates life, making people and animals and lots of enchanting creatures. He is the Grand Gardener and the flowers He plants for us transform into bouquets of popping colour. Our Daddy has created the most beautiful home for us, and He has promised us that one day we will go and live in His eternal mansion where He has paved the streets with gold. God is everything and more that our earthly fathers aren’t, and He outstrips the best fathers on earth. We boast about our Daddy when He earnt His stripes as our ultimate Father by sacrificing Himself when He came to our rescue after that nasty enemy tried to snatch us from His hands. He loves us so much He was willing to die for us and every single day our Daddy autographs our lives with his love, writing over our lives in His Royal blood ink and marking us as His. Now that’s a Dad worth bragging about and as we are bragging about our Daddy, perhaps we will find that others will want to meet our Dad and find Him to be an irresistible Father.
So, friends, get your brag on today.
Best days to come.
Wen
Feb 9, 2021 | Wens Pen
Hello Everyone
“I found you.” Don’t you just love the sound of children playing hide and seek? The little giggles, the whispers, the intentional noises, all designed to reveal their hiding spot. Why is that? Because deep down, every person wants to hear the words “I found you”. Everyone wants to be found. We want someone to hear our little whispers and the noises we make, longing to hear those words “I found you.” The desire to be found presupposes the fact that we have lost our way and remain in hiding to conceal our lostness; we have lost the sense or our true humanity, our identities have been shattered and our lives have been adrift like a cork bobbing around on an expansive ocean, with no marker to provide direction. So, we hide the same way Adam and Eve did in response to original sin. The act of hiding is a pattern of our fallen state. We cover up who we really are and wear masks to hide the cracks. We pull in the loose threads, hoping that our frayed lives will hold together. Yet, as much as we instinctively hide, we also long to be found. So, all the time we are hiding and trying to fit ourselves into the confined spaces that conceal our dislocated states, we are making those intentional “noises”, hoping that someone greater than ourselves will locate our hiding place and declare “I found you”.
As in the game of hide and seek, the person who is looking for the one hiding, is continuously searching, and coming closer to where the child is hiding. In the realm of life, that person is Jesus. Luke15:4-6. He is able to find us. He listens to the cry of our hearts and our desire to recover our true identity and purpose. He moves towards us and seeks to come closer and closer. He locates us and declares “I found you”; “you no longer need to hide”. In response to finding us, He puts us back together, restores our humanity, affirms us as His image bearers and reinstates our purpose. Think of the joy and the squeals of excitement when we find our kids in those games of hide and seek. They are not upset or disappointed to be found. They erupt with delight. When Jesus comes into our lives and says “I found you” there is not only relief, there is great delight because when He finds us. Jesus not only declares ‘I found you”, he keeps locating us for the rest of our days until we find ourselves fully restored in his in His eternal presence in the great mansion of heaven and although there will be a million rooms to hide, we will never need or want to hide again.
So, friends, “be found” in Jesus today.
Best days to come.
Wen
Feb 2, 2021 | Wens Pen
Hello Everyone
Jesus invades and pervades in our brokenness and mess. It is hard to image Jesus, the eternal, King of all Kings, Creator of all, the only holy, pure, and perfect person, who dwells in unapproachable light (1 Timothy 6:16), entering into the mess and brokenness of our humanity. Yet it is into that very space that Jesus invades and pervades. In fact, Jesus went to astonishing lengths to invade our ruptured world and to bring hope to our contorted humanity. He left the limitless expanses of His dwelling and the perfect, untainted community of the Trinity and invaded the time-bound dimensions of our blemished world and the mess of our brokenness. In John 1 we read about the identity and credentials of Jesus. In pondering the immensity of this reality, we are left a gasp as to the depths of love that caused Him to take such radical measures not only to invade our mess but to pervade in it.
In reading the story of Jesus throughout the Gospels, we see the impact of Him invading our world and the sacrifices He made to redeem the treasures of His creation. We realise that His miraculous invasion through the incarnation, led Him to the undeserved, brutal, and agonising place of the cross where He became utterly broken on our behalf. Yet His victorious resurrection, means He also pervades. In other words, Jesus did not only invade our mess to teach us a few good moral lessons, only to die on the cross to end the story. His invasion and resurrection guaranteed His ongoing pervasion in our lives as He permeates, transforms, and restores us to His original creative design. Through the invasion of Jesus, we get a glimpse of our true humanity and a glimpse of life as God intended it to be lived. The reality that Jesus invades and pervades brings a solace to our souls; that somehow in all our offensiveness to this perfect Saviour, through this extreme act of love we always have hope because His invasion also guarantees His pervasion.
So, friends, get your “Jesus invades and pervades” on today.
Best days to come.
Wen
Jan 27, 2021 | Wens Pen
Hello Everyone
Harvest from hardship. In the fields of life, it seems we have unconscious expectations that we will always reap ‘premium crops’ and ‘abundant produce’ when it comes to harvesting our best lives. Deep down we aren’t necessarily anticipating many of the difficulties that come our way in life. We traverse our fields being somewhat sensitized to the small noxious weeds of hardship that pop their heads up, seeking to choke the nutrients of quality out of our lives. We hit a pothole here and there and keep moving forward with our blinkers on and forget that Jesus says, we will have trouble in this world and some of those potholes will turn into deep furrows of heartache (John 16:33). What we expected to reap from life does not eventuate. Yet in God’s economy there is an expectation that we can always harvest from hardship and those crops can turn out to be our best harvests ever Why is that? Because what precedes the statement that Jesus makes about trouble is that He gives us His peace and what follows it is He declares He has overcome the world. There’s a harvest right there.
As we continue in this season of the pandemic and the everyday troubles of our lives, we must embrace a different understanding of harvest. God’s intention is always abundance. That was His intention in original creation and His desire for us to flourish has not changed. Yet we live in a world that experienced a catastrophic impact on the abundant life God first created, when sin spoiled the harvest. So, when Jesus reminds us that we will have troubles in this world, the idea of abundance does not preclude hardship, because Jesus is always restoring us to His original creative purpose as He harvests the good and the difficult experiences in our journey. With the hope set before us in Jesus, it is possible to harvest from hardship.
So, before we all go throwing out the sheaves that include sadness, heartache, or suffering, we can co-labour with our Master, Jesus, who harvests all things and turns them into abundance. As we remain planted in our fields, no matter whether we are experiencing growth from a sun-kissed season or we encounter the elements of difficulty, we can always harvest from hardship when we allow Jesus to gather every fruit of our lives and bring a harvest that is miraculously and always abundant.
So, friends get your “harvest” on today.
Best days to come.
Wen
