God is more gracious than us....

Though many may say - what an obvious statement! But for me personally, it takes years and years of experience to realise that full well. IT takes years for me to realise how sinful - how dark - how selfish and self righteous I AM! I am too often less forgiving than how i was forgiven. I can only pray that God will perfect me and day by day i will learn how to forgive as He does. Forgiving and be merciful and gracious to other people is too hard for me and I am struggling to do it - but I WILL TAKE HEART. I don't want difficulty prevents me to serve the Lord - I pray that I won't fall because of challanges and temptations - and i Pray that other people that i know won't fall either.

What do i mean by being gracious?

Let me just take today for example, when i was doing Bible study prep. There was a question by a certain person that was raised during the prep. To me the question is too stupid to ask and too obvious to see! So i just answered blutnly without rethinking the fact that the questioner might never heard of the answer before (that's why he asked! duuhh!!).

Many times i'm too quick to judge and hate people for the wrongs that they did. Let me take another example (this time someone did it to me) - during youth group, I got a headache and on that day, the youth group was quite packed with newcomers. The headache really makes it hard for me to think of anything to say to newcomers, so i decided to go to a quiet place and just play the piano by myself. Someone got quite angry with me because it looks like i wasn't being helpful and welcoming to the newcomers. I choose not to give a reply and ignore the person.

From the example above i list 2 wrong example of handling a problem:
1. keeep that anger within your heart and telll other people of the wrongs that others had done (not even necessarily to you) in the past
2. keep quiet and stop yourself from telling the other person know how you feel and why you feeel that way

and as you can see i had committed both of these sins. But you know what, As my title says - God is much more gracious than us... Even after all these failings and sins that we've done, He is still in control. He choose to teach us through these wrongs - perfecting us.

That is why i pray that i will one day learn to be more and more like Christ. Christ never kicks anyone out (even peter who denied Him 3 times). He is not quick to judge and condemn - and even if he does rebuke us, He does it to save us - because He loves us. Not only that - whenever He rebukes, He is ready to forgive also and to help us go through these temptations and be there for us wheenever we are weak.

SO... let's be gracious to one another - as God is gracious to us even after all the many2 wrongs that we've done...