Peace!
Peace!
This Tuesday June 22nd is World Interfaith Day. I would like to take this opportunity to create awareness of this day of unity and to use it as a platform for Malaysians to get know each other better. We are in a unique position where interfaith understanding can be practiced daily. We have the opportunity to live among Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus, Christians, Sikhs and etc.
Failing to make full use of this environment would be unwise and wasteful. I hope you find ways to promote this day; talk to each other, talk to your family, talk to your children and talk to anyone who is willing to share.
Here’s something on education :
Bhagavad Gita 4.38
“Verily there is no purifier in this world like knowledge.”
Buddha - Sutta Nipata
“A good, all-round education, appreciation of the arts, a highly trained discipline and pleasant speech; this is the highest blessing.”
Confucius
“If you are planning for a lifetime, educate the person.”
The Bible Matthew 7:7
“Ask, and it will be given you. Seek, and you will find. Knock and it will be opened for you.”
Quran 96.1
“Read in the name of your God!”
Guru Angad -Guru Granth Sahib page 139
"Salvation can only be gained by education and knowledge and not by futile acts or rituals."
Peace, anas
Improving Personal Study
ReplyDelete“Keep on asking, and it will be given you; keep on seeking, and you will find; keep on knocking, and it will be opened to you.”—Matt. 7:7.
THE invaluable treasures of wisdom and knowledge in the Word of God are for those who are willing to seek them. If you make no effort to study the Scriptures, how can you expect to find these treasures? How can you honestly claim that you value the good laws, upbuilding counsel and enlightening truths that God has put in his written Word? When Jesus said what is recorded at Matthew 7:7, he was speaking to people who valued highly the Word of his Father, not to people who think so little of it that they seldom if ever read it. If you are one who recognizes its worth, you will do what Jesus said. In prayer you will ask the Father, not once, but repeatedly, for instruction, knowledge and wisdom. You manifest your sincerity and earnestness when you “keep on asking,” as Jesus said.
Your request for instruction, knowledge and wisdom will be granted you if you go to the Scriptures and study them. As a door is opened for the person who makes the effort to knock on it, so the treasures of God’s Word can be opened, to your enjoyment and betterment, if you make the effort to seek them. No one else can do this seeking for you. The firmness of your faith and the deepness of your appreciation for Scriptural truth is related to the amount of personal Bible studying you do. Appreciation for what Jehovah God has done and for what he has promised to do must be maintained in order for one to walk in the way that is pleasing to him. It is the fire to Christian zeal, but that fire grows weak when Bible study is neglected.
Unless Bible study is maintained as a regular thing, the truths you learn will, in time, become hazy and your grasp on them weak. This can open the way for you to drift away from the faith. Warning of this, the apostle Paul said: “That is why it is necessary for us to pay more than the usual attention to the things heard by us, that we may never drift away.” (Heb. 2:1) You pay more than the usual attention to the truths in the Scriptures by reviewing them over and over again. This impresses them deeply upon your mind so they will not leave you as do things to which you give only casual attention. Review helps you to recall them in vivid clarity.
If you are a dedicated Christian, you have indicated by water immersion that you desire to follow the example of Jesus Christ by giving a witness to the truth. When he was standing before Pontius Pilate he said: “For this I have been born, and for this I have come into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth.” (John 18:37) You must know that truth before you can give witness to it. The better you know it the better you can use the sword of the spirit to tear down “strongly entrenched things” and to overturn “reasonings and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God.” (2 Cor. 10:4, 5) Religious falsehoods and erroneous reasonings that have become strongly entrenched in the minds of sincere people are not easily torn down. To succeed, you must learn how to use the Bible effectively, just as a good soldier of ancient times had to learn how to use his sword effectively.
As a Christian, the Bible is your sword. Have you worked with it so that it feels familiar in your hand? Can you deftly slash away the supports of false doctrines? Can you unerringly puncture arguments that are contrary to the truth? If you cannot, you need to work more with that sword by improving personal study of the Bible and by increasing your use of it in the ministry.
if only people will start to ask why ? why can they look at the basic objectives of all major religions ...the very basic principles that is doing good to people all around you ...make it a better world than the one you are seeing now ...
ReplyDelete..and put aside small often ritualistic, negligible, ancient and often culturally (at that time) influenced differences ...if only people are willing to go back to simple benevolence and just once in a while ask why and try to find a rationale answer ...
may all of use see things beyond what is put in forth to us through our teachers, guidance , books, enlightened ones, parents, friends and neighbours...
hey bro you said here:
ReplyDeleteGuru Granth Sahib page 139
"Salvation can only be gained by education and knowledge and not by futile acts or rituals."
but i cant find this in the Granth Sahib?