Why BGV?

BGV stands for Blessed Grateful Victor which is my pen name for this blog. Blessed because without God's blessing I will not be where I am today. Grateful is what I intend to be everyday (hence my other blog a Heart of Gratitude Praise Journal) for every of God's blessing. With His blessing and my gratitude, I will be victorious every day!

New versus Old

When one is born again after trusting Jesus Christ as his Saviour, there is a new nature created in the image of Christ. This is the New Man, filled with spiritual insight and strength because of the Holy Spirit who now resides in him. But the Old Man, the sin nature of each one of us is still there as it can only be removed if we are apart from the physical body we now have.
Hence daily it is a constant battle of the New Man vs the Old Man in us. The New Man has victory if we listen and do the will of God daily. But if we listen to the temptations of the evil one and obey them, we lose and the Old Man in us wins.
Thanks be to God for the victory that we have in Christ who now cancels our sin nature and replaces that with His pure nature.
SIN is, as the middle letter represents, the 'I' nature - self-centred, egoistic and proud. 
CHRIST now replaces our SIN nature when we trust and submit to Him. Notice that the I is still there, as trusting Christ does not make us a robot but we are still unique in our person-hood. But now the I does not occupy the centre position but is subsumed in CHRIST as He lives in us through the Holy Spirit.

WANTED: New Wineskins

All of us who have received the Lord Jesus as Saviour have the New Wine of the Holy Spirit. This new wine enables us to live victoriously as conquerors through our faith. Sin is no longer our master but Jesus is our New Master. But yet some of us are defeated in our daily walk because we still try to keep the new wine in old wineskins. These old skins are akin to old habits and traditions that do not help us and often hinder us in our growth. Old skins especially surface when believers come from Christian homes being products of earlier generations of believers. The "DO NOT"s and "CAN NOT"s of traditional or conservative Christianity can stifle the Holy Spirit's work in us if we are not careful.
May the Lord help us to have our minds and hearts opened to see His new wineskins for us so that the New Wine of the Spirit can be poured into and out of. May we not brand everything that we do not understand as "heresy" or the "wrong gospel" without coming to the Lord and asking Him to reveal His ways to us.

Persevering Faith in Times Like These

The times we live in increasingly show the myriad attacks of our common enemy.
But God is on the throne and He and He only sovereignly rules and reigns.
We need to have perseverance through these times to endure to the end.
We need faith to believe that ALL things will work out for good if we believe and trust in our Good God.
We need persevering faith that will take us through the most difficult of situations one step at a time.
THANKS BE TO GOD who gives us the victory through His Son Jesus Christ!

Common Enemy

Expanding on the last blog, about having the propensity to evil, where then does evil come from?
We all have a common enemy, the devil or satan. He and his minions are out to destroy all that God has created.
Hence before we begin to attack one another, we need to first ascertain what is the root cause of the conflict. In fact most of human conflicts have their root cause in demonic activity.
Jesus said, "The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full." The thief is the devil who is out to steal our peace, kill our joy and destroy our lives but God through Jesus has come to give us PEACE, JOY and LIFE to the fullest.
Let us then turn to Jesus and stand united against our common enemy.

Propensity to evil

I was reflecting on God's grace and mercy and realised that without His redemptive transformation in my life, I would have spiralled into a life of decadence and self-destruction.
All of us, if we are honest enough, knows how much our hearts are prone to evil.
All of us know that the only thing that separates us from people who murder, steal, rob and do wicked things, is that they act on the temptation to do these things while we don't.
But all of us have that propensity to do evil.
All of us are sinners needing forgiveness and cleansing.
All of us need a Saviour. Who then can save us from such evil?
Thanks be to God who gave us His Son Jesus Christ as the complete solution to our needs!

Kai Xing

The Chinese word for Happiness is Kai Xing which literally means "Open Heart".
It is very apt as no one can truly be happy without opening one's heart to someone or something.
A person whose heart is closed due to past hurts can never truly be happy. Only Jesus can do 'open heart surgery' in the soul of a person to heal and transform so as to bring real happiness and joy.
May you open your heart to Jesus the Healer today so as to receive His joy.

ABCDEFGH

Admit we are sinners unable to save ourselves. Let us run to God's way of salvation given as a gift through Jesus Christ.

Believe we need Jesus Christ, the Son of God, to save us. Let us surrender our lives to Him who will give us a new and eternal life.

Confess that we have receive God's forgiveness and acceptance through putting our trust in His Son. Let us daily keep short accounts with God, asking Him for forgiveness when we sin and allowing the Holy Spirit to change us from inside out.

Decide that we follow Jesus everyday of our lives. Let us faithfully trust and obey Him in all things which will work out for our good and for His glory.

Enter into all that God has for us in this life and beyond. Let us walk in His ways that we may show those yet to believe what it means to have eternal and abundant life in Christ.

Faith - we do all things in faith and through faith in the Lord who helps us. . Let us exchange our fears with faith and believe that our God is greater than all our fears and anxieties.

Grace - we were saved by grace and now live in grace. Let us draw strength from the Lord's grace which is sufficient for each day of our lives and move out of our comfort zone to embrace all He has for us.

Heart - we need to guard our hearts that it remains soft and pliable like clay for God to mould us and shape us to be like His Son. Let us ask God for a heart that seeks Him and a heart that is like His.

Unconditional

As I contemplate on this word "unconditional", I remembered how the Lord saved me years ago.
Truly His LOVE was unconditional.
Born into a family that had no history of believers, I first came into contact with the Living Christ when I was 13. Why me and not my other siblings? Why me and not my cousins?
The joy of knowing He died for me to save me was immensely liberating. But fellowship with other believers was short-lived as my parents were against it.
Without fellowship, my faith grew cold and for a while I drifted and slid back into my old ways. The world's temptation loomed larger and more attractive each day. I was sucked into the lies of the evil one.
But THANKS be to God who broke through 6 years later when I was 19 to reveal how His love and His holiness cannot let me stay the same but can change me from inside out.
All these years since that day have been filled with His guidance and help. Nothing beats walking in fellowship with our Mighty Creator!

TGFF

THANK GOD FOR FRIDAY
Without Good Friday we would not have Resurrection Sunday - our Hope of Eternal Life with God.

Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came to do what no man can do.

He died to pay for our sins and rose again to give us the gift of eternal life. All we need to do is to believe Him.

May the Lord Jesus through the Holy Spirit enable us all to share God's plan of life and salvation to those He brings in our path.

You don't know when..

I am reminded recently of the truth that your life is not in your hands. God holds your life and the length of it.
My mother passed away quickly recently. One moment she was having breakfast with me and the next she slipped into eternity to be with the Lord.
Hence for all of us: be always ready to meet the Lord. Do what He has assigned you to do one day at a time.
Plan that you may live long but live each day as if it may be your last.

Miracle in Egypt

God is at work even if we aren't. May His Kingdom come soon.
A Muslim man in Egypt killed his wife because she was
     reading the Bible and then buried her with their infant baby
     and an 8-year old daughter. The girls were buried alive! He then reported to the police that an uncle killed the kids. 15 days later, another family member died. When they went to bury him, they found the 2  little girls under the sand - ALIVE!
    The country is outraged over the incident, and the man will
      be executed at the end of July.
    
     The older girl was asked how she had survived and she
     says:- 'A man wearing shiny white clothes, with bleeding
     wounds in his hands, came every day to feed us. He woke up
     my mom so she could nurse my sister,' she said. She was
     interviewed on Egyptian national TV, by a veiled Muslim
     woman news anchor. She said on public TV, 'This was none other
     than Jesus, because nobody else does things like this!'
    Muslims believe Isa (Jesus) would do this, but the wounds mean He really was  crucified, and it's clear also that He is alive! But, it's also clear that the child could not make up a story like this, and there is no way these children could have survived without a true miracle.

New Decade - What's in store?

2010 is not only the beginning of a new year but a new decade. What's in store for this decade? Is the Lord coming this decade?
For sure, the signs of His coming is increasing in regularity and number.
As Scripture records, "The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed."(Rom 8:19). The Lord is waiting till the last of His called ones who respond in faith to come into His kingdom then He will return to establish His dominion.
What about you, dear reader? Are you ready to meet Jesus Christ, the Lord of lords and the King of kings? He loves you, died for you and rose again so that you can have eternal life with Him. Have you asked Him to take control of your life so that you can truly live? If not, why don't you ask Him today?
Just pray, "Dear Lord Jesus, I believe you died for my sins and rose again so that I can receive eternal life when I put my trust in You. Please forgive my sins and I now release control of my life into Your Hands. Help me to grow to know You and love You more till the day I meet You face to face. Thank You."
If you have sincerely prayed the prayer above, now go and tell what you have done to another Christian friend and ask him/her to help you settle into a church so that you can be in fellowship which is essential for growth.
If you do not know any, write a comment on this blog and let me know so that I can help you.
May the Lord Jesus open your eyes and heart to see and know Him this new year and decade.