{"id":1367,"date":"2017-01-28T01:28:00","date_gmt":"2017-01-27T17:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/potterdreams.com\/clay\/?p=1367"},"modified":"2017-01-28T01:28:00","modified_gmt":"2017-01-27T17:28:00","slug":"all-men-are-liars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/potterdreams.com\/clay\/all-men-are-liars\/","title":{"rendered":"All men are liars"},"content":{"rendered":"

Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom<\/strong>, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence. ~Col 3:23<\/em><\/p>\n

Not at all! Let God be true, and every human being a liar<\/b>. As it is written: \u201cSo that you may be proved right when you speak and prevail when you judge.\u201d ~Rom 3:4<\/em><\/p>\n

I guess, we all are pretty good at this.<\/p>\n

Today is a New Year Eve, when Chinese celebrates with a Reunion Dinner. It is a festive season and a lot of delicious food around. We all are supposed to be happy and jolly, isn’t it?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

When we all sit down around the table and began our conversation. Suddenly, my elder girl burst up in anger, to everyone’s astonishment. She kept on that for awhile before she calmed down and stopped. So the dinner started with a bad tone, and for awhile, everyone kind of careful in what they said.<\/p>\n

Later on at the end of the dinner, one of the family member commented that my elder girl had an anger issue. She needed a lecture on how to manage her anger. I did not say anything.<\/p>\n

Later on, the whole thing just dawned upon me, that we all are pretty good at putting on mask. We behave in certain ways, while actually inside, we are of another kind. If I rewinded the whole day, my girl was not the only one who had anger issue. At least most of the people sitted on the dining table tonight, had outburst of anger once during the day. And if we want to be honest with ourselves, some people may be so good at hiding it, that despite being angry, we could hide in underneath. What is the difference anyway?<\/p>\n

And probably for the first time in my life, I just realised how false we are without even we realised it. As everyone went to sleep, and I woke up to wrote about this, I passed the kitchen, and there I saw the dishes are not washed, the cups were left unwashed, and the water left not drained down. All these were never happened before for proud Chinese\u00a0ladies that took pride in cleaning up dishes before tomorrow. She does not know rest (even Sabbath), and always have good reasons to justify the actions of cleaning up as soon as the dinner had ended.<\/p>\n

And one could brushed all those good reasons under the carpet, with just one sentence, “this is just once a year”.<\/p>\n

The words of Jesus kind resonated so clearly with me, when he rebuked the Pharises of their hypocrisy. They were so good in observing the Law (e.g. not working on Sabbath day), that they were blinded to see doing good on Sabbath brings delight to God. We can be so good bluffing ourselves that we become blinded from the truth, assuring ourselves that we are allright, while actually we’re sick.<\/p>\n

I simply cannot understand, if one could easily dismiss God’s commandment to rest on the Sabbath with a lot of practical excuses as why one cannot rest and must do certain things (e.g. cleaning up the dishes after dinner). Then one Chinese New Year, once a year, suddenly all those practical excuses could be broken, just because there were\u00a0superstitious. Isn’t that make us a hypocrite? For the sake of something precious to us, we will break all rules. As long as the rule is good for us, we will keep it.<\/p>\n

While my daughter outburst of anger shows the world of her character, tonight has taught me more lesson on human’s heart than many teachings. My girl may have anger issue, so do all of us. In fact we may have greater problem than her, for she did not mask it under disguise. We who are older, could easily hide our emotions underneath and still appear good from the outside.<\/p>\n

Just because we do not burst out in anger over a dinner table, does not mean we do not have issue with our hearts. Today, I had issues with my lips and my heart. Jesus makes it very clear, that we all have issue in this. We are good at keeping the letter of the law, yet failed miserably at keeping what’s the heart of the law.<\/p>\n

For out of the heart come evil thoughts\u2014murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander.<\/span><\/span> These are what defile a person; but eating with unwashed hands does not defile them.\u201d ~Mat 15:19-20<\/span><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

If God had to audit our hearts, I am sure we all would admit that we are guilty. And that’s probably the beauty of little children. Tonight she confessed to me that she told a lie. I was heartbroken in the inside. It was late at night, today was a festive day, and she confessed her sin. Our deal is she would get a spank for dishonesty.<\/p>\n

She did it out of the work of the Holy Spirit I believe, who convicted her of her sins. Yet, I would still commended her for her admitting it. And I was glad that we all chose to obey God. I pray that she would come clean inside out as God has promised. And I would like to pray also for myself and everyone, that God deal with my hypocrisy and all the falsehoods in my life. “Father please forgive us for our hypocrisies and delighting in falsehood instead of truth. Please have mercy on us.”<\/p>\n

Let the little children<\/b> come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it. ~Luk 18:17<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence. ~Col 3:23 Not at all! Let God be true, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,100,22,103,38,39,40,52,59],"tags":[132,151,187,205,244,314],"class_list":["post-1367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family","category-fatherhood","category-heart","category-honesty","category-luke","category-mark","category-matthew","category-psalm","category-romans","tag-children","tag-dinner","tag-gospel","tag-hypocrisy","tag-new-year","tag-truth"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1505,"url":"https:\/\/potterdreams.com\/clay\/a-dinner-invite\/","url_meta":{"origin":1367,"position":0},"title":"A Dinner Invite","author":"clay","date":"May 25, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"This morning, one my colleagues invited me for a dinner. 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Both\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blessedness"","block_context":{"text":"Blessedness","link":"https:\/\/potterdreams.com\/clay\/category\/truth-vs-lies\/blessedness\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":459,"url":"https:\/\/potterdreams.com\/clay\/first-moments\/","url_meta":{"origin":1367,"position":2},"title":"First Moments","author":"clay","date":"May 29, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Well, writing this for various reasons\u00a0 Some for memory keeping, the others for those who wants to know, and also others to know that i've kept her well :p The list is not exhaustive, but at least it covers the minimum\u00a0 The first 2 weeks, the following has happened: 1.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "In Relationship"","block_context":{"text":"In Relationship","link":"https:\/\/potterdreams.com\/clay\/category\/lifes-stages\/in-relationship\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":965,"url":"https:\/\/potterdreams.com\/clay\/the-2-5\/","url_meta":{"origin":1367,"position":3},"title":"The 2.5","author":"clay","date":"March 19, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"My wife call it a rare occurrence, when our eldest girl hit 2.5 and our youngest girl hit 2.5. 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