Kinh thánh: Phục truyền 11: 1-3, 8-9, 18-21, 26-28, 32

Câu gốc: GIÓP 36: 11 – Nếu chúng vâng nghe và phục sự Ngài, thì các ngày chúng sẽ được may mắn, và những năm chúng được sự vui sướng.

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BEGINNING NEW YEAR IN LUCK

Bible: Deuteronomy 11: 1-3, 8-9, 18-21, 26-28, 32

Main verse: JOB 36: 11 – If they obey and serve him, they shall spend their days in prosperity, and their years in pleasures.

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We have heard of many disasters recently, and that makes us think that we are so lucky and fortunate to still be living today. In the beginning of the Lunar New Year, Asian people always wish each other to be lucky the whole year. Everyone wants to be lucky and God also wants us to be blessed, but God is Just so He also requires us to satisfy His requirements first before He blesses us. Lucky for us, we have the Bible to discover the secrets of how to be blessed constantly by God.

If you have the Bible, please open it and read verse 11 in chapter 36 of the book of Job. It’s our main verse for today to know how we can be blessed for the new year and for the rest of our lives.

The secret of getting blessed is expressed in two parts: First, to obey God’s instructions in the Bible and secondly, to serve Him faithfully.

Obeying God’s instructions means we should remember all of His commands, teachings and standards that set forth for His children and then live accordingly. We don’t have time to go through all but certainly we remember most of them. Whenever a person wants to please God, they will try their best to learn about God’s commands and live by them.

As a reminder, we should again read the Ten Commandments because they are the basics for all of God’s rules for mankind.

The second part is to serve God. This is the part that I want to explain a bit more today. Serving God means to do something in His name in order to glorify Him and show that we have a strong faith in Him. Doing something also includes prayers, although we only sit in one place and pray.

And we all know that when we serve God, we will become tired. It’s inevitable. Like workers who go out in morning to work with strength, but come back home tired after a long day at work. It’s natural. Likewise, we will feel tired after serving God awhile. That’s why we must ask for energy from the Holy Spirit to serve God.

COLOSSIANS 1: 29 –

Christians should always rely on the Holy Spirit to serve God. We cannot rely only on our own strength, talents and abilities. If we did, we would not be able to please God or remain faithful to the end. Human strength is limited while the power of the Holy Spirit is unlimited and forever.

In reality we have seen many talented sisters and brothers in Christ who served God, but for some, as soon as they felt tired, they lost their interest and left the church. We should rely on God’s power through the Holy Spirit to serve Him to the end.

We should remember that as we serve God, it’s going to be hard. God’s way is quite opposite to mankind’s way and when we serve God and follow Him, we are living against the human way of life

GALATIANS 5: 17 –

We have always been ridiculed, mocked and harassed, even to the extent of persecution. That’s also the reason that make our exhaustion when serving God increase tenfolds, but we thank God that He has blessed us with the power of the Holy Spirit to endure to the end.

When we serve God, we are like a person who bikes uphill or drives a car into a narrow and dangerous street. We have to try harder, push higher and be on alert the whole time. That’s the reason we need the power of the Holy Spirit.

To conclude, as we want to be blessed by God and as we obey Him and serve Him to be rewarded with God’s blessings, we will face many obstacles and hardships. We will still be in constant danger because of the wicked world, but if we rely on God’s mercy and the power of the Holy Spirit, we will overcome them and be blessed by God.

JOB 36: 11 –

We will be blessed by a loving God, Who died for us on the cross. Our days on Earth will be blessed and we will be blessed in all aspects of our lives. We can even be blessed the whole year, but how? If we think about both big and small fortunes we have during our days, then we will understand how God has blessed us. There are many example in real life.

There are many people who will question what we are talking about. Many of them will argue that unbelievers also have a prosperous life without God’s blessings. Now if we read the verse again and pay attention at the end of it, we will see that God not only blessed the one who obey Him and serve Him, but God also blessed him with happiness.

JOB 36: 11 –

As we have known and we can read it on daily news, there are many people who have fame, money, privilege, power, but they don’t have real happiness in their lives. They have broken families and marriages. They abused drugs and alcohol. Many of them died of drug overdose, or by suicide. What they have are not blessings. They are just some vanities that Satan uses to deceit mankind and to temp people into sins.

In contrary, the blessings that God has given us including real happiness and contentment that other people cannot find them on their own.

PROVERBS 10: 22 –

May God give us wisdom and determination to follow the secret that reveal in this verse in order to be blessed by God for the whole New Year 2020 and for the rest of our lives until we see the Lord Jesus Christ face to face. May God give us much more power of the Holy Spirit so that we can follow Him faithfully and serve Him steadily form now on until the victory day. Amen.