Exodus 10

Bible Passage: Exodus 10

Previously I posted about one of my greatest fears, cockroaches.  

I remember a scene from the movie “The Mummy” when the lead character and his wife entered a dark cave. When he lit up a match, they discovered that every inch of the walls and ground of the cave was covered with roaches.  

Imagine that awful situation but of a much larger scale. Because of Pharoah’s hard heart, God sent armies and armies of locusts to terrorise the land of Eygpt (Ex 10:15).  

It was because of Pharoah’s unwillingness to humble himself (Ex 10:3) that led to such disastrous consequences. The ten plagues failed to stir up any morsel of remorse in him.  

Similarly for us, we have to bear the consequences of sin if we are not humble before others, and most importantly, before God.  

Recently, I fell short of my expectations in an area of church work which I thought I was improving on.  

To my dismay, after my “abysmal performance”, just when I was feeling lousy and full of negative energy, someone came up to me and pointed out my mistakes. That was something I was not at all happy to hear, and I had to bite back a response which would be very rude and unbecoming of a christian.  

After I got home, I complained to a fellow brethren online(whom i always rant to, thank you for your patience=P), how upset I was by that person’s remark.  

In retrospect, reading back on the childish words that i typed vigorously, I realised i was not at all humble enough to accept comments or criticisms. At that time, I felt that I had good reasons to defend myself.

Talking to another brethren after that also helped put things into clearer perspective.  In whatever we do, even when working for God, criticisms will bound to come our way.  

Satan works hard round the clock, and is constantly attacking people of the church. If we are not watchful, sin creeps into our hearts before we know it.  

Sometimes we unknowingly feel pleased with our abilities, or even compare ourselves with other doing the same area of work.  

We might feel we have more interesting teaching methods than other RE teachers, or we are more musically inclined than others, or we are more active in many different areas of church works.  

The bottomline is, if we do not guard our hearts, someday this feeling could fester into pride, and form a thick crust, preventing the word of God to penetrate through.  

We have to examine deep within ourselves and remove any traces of pride that threaten to gnaw away at our faith just like how the locusts chomp away the vegetation, leaving not a scrap behind.  

Hence, shine for Jesus wherever you are!  

In my life, i have only experienced two blackouts.

The first was decades ago at my old house, the second was a brief one at BP church due to the thunderstorm.  

I could feel the darkness pressing against my eyeballs as I strained to look around me. That was also when I began to appreciate the lights and lamps that we always take for granted.  

It is hard to imagine being plunged into thick darkness for 3 whole days (Ex10:22).

Unfortunately, the people of the world are in the same predicament… they are souls trapped in the suffocating spiritual darkness.  

Today as TJC members, we have Jesus shining bright as a beacon in our hearts, radiating warmth and peace. We have tasted His goodness, and we ought to do our part and share this goodness with others.  

May the light of His love shine on us and through us, that we could be a living testimony to those who have yet to know our Lord Jesus.  

May God supply us with courage to share the good news with the people still imprisoned in the lightless world, and break through the canopy of darkness in their hearts.