Back to blogging after the weekend...

Just returned home from school... after a day of classes, lunch, chit-chat with Seng Mui...

I am blogging before Ben's parents come over to help me with my car (it needs to be moved to the workshop - coz the battery's gone flat).

I started reading the Book of Galatians yesterday.

In Galatians, Paul warns the churches in Galatia against false gospel teachings that weighed down the people unnecessarily and caused them to be enslaved to the old traditions and law that they were used to before their new life in Christ (i.e. you need to be circumcised to be saved). Subsequently, he exhorts the Christians to live lives of freedom in Christ...

I like what he said in Gal 5:

vs 1, 6 - "...It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery...For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love..."

vs 13-16: "You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge in the sinful nature, rather, serve one another humbly in love. For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: 'Love your neighbor as yourself, if you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other. So I say, walk by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature..."

Love is a big-time imperative. And no, I am not talking about the mushy love... which makes you feel all nice and gooey inside. It is loving when it is truly difficult. It is having compassion on even those who are extremely annoying, unappreciative and hurtful. People whom you wish that you could wipe off the face of this earth. (In the case of someone I know, people whom he wishes he could fling up into the moon, if he had some super powers :P - For this reason, I am so glad that he is a normal human being, with no super powers...)

Love is about dying to yourself.

I will probably take a lifetime to learn what it really means to love.

I am not sure if you could tell that I am a Christian, if I did not say a word. I just hope that my frequent moments of impatience, irritation and annoyance never show up on my face. (Ben always says that he can tell though - and he is usually right :P Oh yeah.) Obviously, I still have a lot of room for growth in my faith.

In fact, without the Holy Spirit, it would be utterly impossible to love unconditionally, like Christ did.

And without our commitment to walk by the Spirit, it would be impossible to live the life of freedom and abundance Christ meant us to have in Him. What would it be like to be Christians with no love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control in our hearts, I wonder?

My insides would be all knotted up in conflict, I believe.