2013-06-29

Living the New Christian Life in the Society - Mind map on Rom 13

Romans 12 covers living the New life within the Christian community. This Roman 13 covers living the new life in the secular world. We are to obey the authorities that God had appointed for our benefits  for good behavior and good testimonies. For those people in the society, we are to love them as loving others fulfills the commandments. Lastly, we are let the light of Christ that is in us to shine out through our conduct by being different from them, staying away from wild parties, sexual immorality, quarreling and jealousy. We are to seize this time while we still have the day light because the night shall come soon.
 The mind-map that captures the essence of Romans Chapter 13 is:


How do we let our light shine out in this world? 
It is seen in the ways we handle

  1. those in authorities and 
  2. those that are of equal or lower standing that us in the society. 
  3. how we behave in general.

Worldly wisdom encouraged people to take advantages of the systems and exploits the loopholes in the systems. The smart people are those who exploit the systems to the maximum without being caught. R.ich people are encouraged to hire tax consultants to minimize paying taxes to the government. They have registered business in tax havens to by pass paying taxes to their own nations. That's not the teaching of Paul here. We are to obey the authorities and pay whatever is dues to them. There are four things we should pay to those in authorities, taxes, revenues(fair prices or wages for goods and services rendered to us rather than using our strengths or connections to exploit them), respect and honor. Paul is talking more than money when he mentioned respect and honor. Do we treat our boss with respect and honor at all time. Some people said bad things and gossip behind their bosses. Such gossips about our bosses with our colleagues only show our bad testimonies. Even when our bosses make mistakes, we are still to give honor and respect, not because of anything else but because they are our bosses that God has put them over us for our good. We should not disrespect our bosses because we are smarter or older than them. We just trust and obey God's commandments.

For those that are our equal or lower than us, we are just to love them as God as love us and commanded us to love our neighbor as ourselves.  Loving them are expressed not just in words but also in deeds. Are we concern about them? What have we done for them? We must do these things just because God say so. We don't do those things with ulterior motive, even the motive to get them to come to church.  We even overheard them saying that when Christians invite you for lunch or dinner, they actually 'cheated' you because the lunch or dinner comes with a preaching session as the motive. We destroy their trust when do things with hidden ulterior motive.

While the people go for wild parties of drinking and sexual misconduct, we stay away from them. When people fight for promotion, gossip, or sabotage one another out of jealousy, we don't. We even help others to perform better than us when we can. We rejoice with those that get promoted, even promoted to be our boss. How can do such very different from them kinds of things? Because we have Christ in us and we know finally that it is God who promotes and take care of us.

Lim Liat (c) 30-6-13

2013-06-26

Living the New Christian Life - A Mind-Map for Romans 12

How to live the New Christian Life? Romans 12-16 tell and show us how. The overview is first given in Romans 12. It begins with our commitment to worship God with our present life as a living sacrifice,  followed by a transformed mind, and acknowledgement of our roles in the community of Christ's body, discovering and using our gifts to serve the community, and a set 'best practices' for living harmoniously with others. These are all captured in a mind-map for ease of understanding and remembrance.
Living the New Christian Life - Starting from Self and extending to the Community of Christ:

The Five-Steps:
  1. Commit to Worship God with our Life as a Living (not dead) Sacrifice.
  2. Transformed Mindset to Know God's Will and His Standards (not the world's standards).
  3. Knowing the we are all members of the Same Body of Christ. So we need to find out your role and God's calling of our lives. Our calling is related to our gifts.
  4. Discover and Use our God's given gifts/talents to serve the community. Serve with passion and consistency.
  5. Living well with others in the community - Overcome Evil with Good. 
    1. The Objective is Harmony and Peace with all.
    2. By Love, Goodness, Respect, Generosity, Hospitality, Sharing & Being with them in joy or in sorrow.
    3. The Principle of Overcoming Evil with Good. Converting any enemy to a friend with goodness and love towards them.
Lim Liat(c) 26-6-13

Updated mindmap 18-7-19

2013-06-13

The Ten Greatest Things in Life

I went to buy lunch from a Chicken Rice Shop today. The following calligraphy was displayed on the wall. It was about the ten greatest in life. Here are details with translation into English.



  • 人生最大財富是健康. Greatest wealth is health
  • 人生最大罪惡是不孝. Greatest sin is dishonoring parents
  • 人生最大禮物是寬恕. Greatest Gift is Forgiveness
  •  人生最大快樂是助人. Greatest Joy is helping others
  •  人生最大錯誤是賭博. Greatest Error is Gambling
  •  人生最大破產是絕望. Greatest Bankrupt is Hopelessness
  •  人生最大失敗是自大. Greatest Failure is Boastfulness/Pride
  •  人生最大佩服是上進. Greatest Respect is Progressiveness
  •  人生最大卑劣是欺人. Greatest depictable thing is Cheating
  •  人生最大笨蛋是吸毒. Greatest Stupidity is be a Drug Addicted

I was thinking that if those are the ten most important things in life, then there must be Bible verses that reflect that. So I also included the Bible verses and they are shown below in the mind map:

Hope you like it.