လါယနူၤအါရံၤ ၂၆, ၂၀၂၁
ပဒုးအိၣ်ထီၣ်အပျဲၢ်အဘီၣ်ဧါ
တၢ်ဖးဖျိလံာ်စီဆှံလၢတနံၣ်အတီၢ်ပူၤအဂီၢ် – ယိၤဘး ၁, ယိၤဘး ၂, ယိၤဘး ၃, မးသဲ ၁၈:၁၀-၃၅,
စံးထီၣ်ပတြၢၤ ၁၆:၁-၁၁
‘‘ယစံးဘၣ်တဲ ဘၣ်သုတီတီအံၤ, ဖဲဒၣ်တၢ်လၢသုစၢဃာ်အီၤလၢဟီၣ်ခိၣ်ချၢတမံၤမံၤန့ၣ်, ကဘၣ်တၢ်စၢဃာ်အီၤလၢ မူခိၣ်လီၤ. ဒီးဖဲဒၣ်တၢ်လၢသုဃ့ၣ်လီၤလၢဟီၣ်ခိၣ်ချၢတမံၤမံၤန့ၣ်, ကဘၣ်တၢ်ဃ့ၣ်လီၤအီၤလၢမူခိၣ်လီၤ.’’
မးသဲ ၁၈:၁၈
ဖဲယဒိၣ်ထီၣ်လၢကညီတၢ်အိၣ်ဖှိၣ်လၢကီၢ်ပယီၤအခါ, တၢ်သိၣ်ဃီၣ်သီဃီၣ်အတၢ်မၤထဲတမံၤ လၢယထံၣ်လၢတၢ်အိၣ်ဖှိၣ် အပူၤမ့ၢ် ဖဲပှၤဒီတၢ်အဲၣ်တီဒၢထီၣ်တချုးဖျီအသးန့ၣ်လီၤ. ပှၤဒီတၢ်အဲၣ်တီဒ်န့ၣ်သ့ၣ်တဖၣ် ညီနုၢ်မ့ၢ်ပှၤလိၣ်ဘိတဖၣ်လီၤ. အဝဲသ့ၣ်ဘၣ်ဖးဝဲတၢ်ဃ့ကညးပီၢ်ယၢ်လီၤသးအတၢ်ကွဲး လၢပှၤကမျၢၢ်အမဲာ်ညါ, ဝံၤဘၣ်ဃ့လၢတၢ်ကဒုးဟးထီၣ်ကွံာ်အီၤ လၢတၢ်အိၣ်ဖှိၣ်အပူၤ, မ့ၢ်လၢအဝဲသ့ၣ်အတၢ်ဒဲးဘးအဃိလီၤ. တၢ်တ့တၢ်ဖျီဝံၤအလီၢ်ခံတယံာ်ဘၣ်န့ၣ်, အဝဲသ့ၣ်ဘၣ်ဃ့ ကဒီးလၢတၢ်အိၣ်ဖှိၣ်ကက့ၤတူၢ်လိာ်က့ၤအီၤလီၤ. ဖဲယသ့ၣ်ညါဒု ကညီတၢ်အိၣ်ဖှိၣ်အါဖှိၣ် လူၤပိာ်ထွဲလုၢ်လၢ်အံၤန့ၣ်လီၤ.
ဖဲယဟဲအိၣ်သီလၢဝ့ၢ်ဖံးန့းက်စ်, အရံၣ်စိနါအခါ, ယမၤသကိးဘၣ်တၢ်ဒီး ပှၤအမဲရကၤဖိ တၢ်အိၣ်ဖှိၣ်တဖု လၢအသူၣ်အိၣ် သးအိၣ် ကညီဖိလၢအဟဲလၢဒဲကဝီၤတဖၣ်လီၤ. တၢ်အိၣ်ဖှိၣ်သရၣ်အံၤ မ့ၢ်ဝဲပှၤတဂၤလၢ အအဲၣ်မၤလိ ဒီးအိၣ်မူမၤထွဲ လံာ်စီဆှံအကလုၢ်ကထါန့ၣ်လီၤ. တနံၤတၢ်အိၣ်ဖှိၣ်သရၣ်အံၤ တဲယၤလၢအဝဲနၢ်ဟူဝဲလၢ ကညီပိာ်မုၣ်တဂၤ အိၣ်ဃုာ်ဒီး အတၢ်အဲၣ်တီအဃိ, အဝဲကဘၣ်လဲၤတဲနၢ်ပၢၢ်ဝဲကညီမုၣ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. ယကမၢကမၣ် လၢသရၣ်တဂၤအံၤအိၣ်ဒီး တၢ်သးဒူ လၢကလဲၤသိၣ်သီ ပှၤလဲၤကမၣ်ကျဲတဂၤအံၤလီၤ. ခံနွံလဲၤပူၤကွံၤဝံၤ, တၢ်အိၣ်ဖှိၣ်သရၣ်တဲဘၣ်ယၤလၢ ကညီမုၣ်တကနၣ် အီၤအဃိ, အဝဲအဲၣ်ဒီးလၢယကလဲၤပိာ်အခံ ဖဲအဝဲလဲၤကတိၤတၢ်ဒီးပိာ်မုၣ်အံၤ ခံဘျီတဘျီန့ၣ်လီၤ. အဝဲတဲနၢ်ပၢၢ်ယၤလၢ လံာ်မးသဲ ၁၈:၁၇-၂၅ နဲၣ်ပှၤ ကျဲလၢ တၢ်အိၣ်ဖှိၣ်ကဘၣ်ပိာ်ထွဲ ဖဲအကဟုကယာ်သိၣ်သီက့ၤ အသိဖိလၢ အကျဲကမၣ် န့ၣ်လီၤ. ယသးတဆူၣ်သနၣ်က့, ယလဲၤပိာ်အခံလီၤ. ယထံၣ်ဘၣ်လၢသရၣ်အံၤတဒူဝဲ, တစံၣ်ညီၣ်ဝဲ ပိာ်မုၣ်အံၤဘၣ်. အဝဲကတိၤတၢ် ပှဲၤဒီးတၢ်အဲၣ်ဒီး တၢ်ကတိၤကပုာ်လုးလီၤ. ဘၣ်ဆၣ် ပိာ်မုၣ်အံၤတမၤထွဲသရၣ်အတၢ်ကတိၤဘၣ်. သနာ်က့ တၢ်အိၣ်ဖှိၣ်တူၢ်လိာ်အီၤဒံးဆူညါလီၤ.
၁၅နံၣ်လဲၤပူၤကွံၤဒီး, မုၢ်တနံၤအံၤ, ကညီမုၣ်တဂၤ အတၢ်အိၣ်မူဆီတလဲလၢာ်လၢာ်ဆ့ဆ့လီၤ. အဝဲထီၣ်မၤလိလံာ်စီဆှံ တၢ်မၤလိထီဘိ, ကွၢ်ထွဲဖိသၣ်ဆံး, ဒီး ဟ့ၣ်လီၤအသးလၢတၢ်အိၣ်ဖှိၣ်အတၢ်ဖံးတၢ်မၤအပူၤလၢကျဲ လၢအမၤသ့ဝဲခဲလၢာ် လီၤ. ယတဲသ့လၢအဝဲမ့ၢ်ပှၤလၢအပိာ်ခရံာ်အခံသပှၢ်တၢၢ်, ခရံာ်အပျဲၢ်အဘီၣ်လီၤ. တၢ်ဆီတလဲအံၤဒိၣ်နီၢ်မးလီၤ. ပိာ်မုၣ် အံၤအဂ့ၢ်အံၤယတဲကန့ၢ်ဒၣ်ထဲအံၤဖဲအံၤလီၤ. တၢ်မၤလိအဒိၣ်အယိာ်လၢယမၤလိဘၣ်လၢတၢ်အိၣ်ဖှိၣ်သရၣ်တဂၤအံၤန့ၣ်, ဖဲပမၤလိယွၤအကလုၢ်ကထါလီၤတံၢ်လီၤဆဲး, ဒီးမၤထွဲအတၢ်သိၣ်လိနဲၣ်လိပှၤ, လၢပတၢ်အိၣ်မူန့ၣ်ဒီး, ပကထံၣ်ဘၣ် သးသမူအတၢ်ဆီတလဲနီၢ်နီၢ်တဖၣ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. တၢ်လၢတၢ်အိၣ်ဖှိၣ်အမူဒါမ့ၢ် – တၢ်မၤစၢၤဆီတလဲသးသမူ လၢတၢ်ကဲထီၣ် ခရံာ်အပျဲၢ်အဘီၣ်အဂီၢ် န့ၣ်လီၤ.
တၢ်ဒုးဘၣ်ထွဲက့ၤလံာ်စီဆှံဒီးပတၢ်အိၣ်မူ
မ့ၢ်ပကမၤဒၣ်ထဲလုၢ်လၢ်ဧါ. မ့တမ့ၢ် ပကမၤစၢၤဆီတလဲသးသမူတဖၣ်လၢတၢ်အဲၣ် ဒ်သိးကကဲထီၣ်ခရံာ်အပျဲၢ်အဘီၣ်ဧါ. မ့ၢ်ကစၢ်ခရံာ်ကမၤတၢ်မနုၤလၢ ပှၤလိၣ်ဘိခံဂၤ, လၢအဒၢထီၣ်, တဖျီဘၣ်ဒံးဘၣ်အသး, အိၣ်ဒီးတၢ်ပျံၤတၢ်ဖုး ဒီးလိၣ်ဘၣ်တၢ်မၤစၢၤ, အဂီၢ်လဲၣ်.
တၢ်ထုကဖၣ်
ကစၢ်ဧၢ, ဒ်ပဃုကျဲလၢတၢ်ပာ်စီဆှံနတၢ်အိၣ်ဖှိၣ်အပူၤန့ၣ်, ဟ့ၣ်ဘၣ်ပှၤတၢ်ကူၣ်သ့လၢကနဲၣ်ပှၤ, မ့ၢ်လၢ ပတၢ်မိၢ်န့ၢ် သးလီမ့ၢ်တၢ်အဲၣ်ပှၤအဂၤဒ်နအဲၣ်အသိးဒီး တၢ်မၤလၤကပီၤနၤလီၤ. ပဃ့လၢခရံာ်အမံၤန့ၣ်လီၤ. အၤမ့ၣ်.
ဒီးကထၢၣ်အၤဒၣ်မီၣ်
အရံၤဇိနါကညီဘျၢထံတၢ်အိၣ်ဖှိၣ်
ဖံးန့းက်စ်, အရံၣ်စိနါကီၢ်စဲၣ်
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January 26, 2021
ARE WE MAKING DISCIPLES?
Bible in A Year: Job 1, Job 2, Job 3; Matthew 18:10-35; Psalm 16:1-11
“Most certainly I tell you, whatever things you bind on earth will have been bound in heaven, and whatever things you release on earth will have been released in heaven.”
Matthew 18:18 WEB
Growing up in a Karen church in Burma, the only disciplinary action that I observed in the church was when couples got pregnant before marriage. Such couples, mostly teenagers, were asked to read a statement of repentance in front of the congregation. They then asked to be removed from the congregation because of their “sin.” Sometime after the wedding, the couple would ask to be reinstated back into the congregation. As far as I knew, most Karen churches followed this tradition.
When I moved to Phoenix, AZ, I became active in a local church that took interest in Karen refugees. That local church, led by a Bible-driven pastor, loved and took care of the Karen families. One day, the pastor told me that one of the Karen ladies in the congregation was living together with her boyfriend, and that he needed to talk to her. I was surprised, but at the same time impressed, by the pastor’s courage to confront such a matter in person. A couple weeks later the pastor told me that the lady didn’t heed his advice. This time, he needed me to go with him to talk to her again. He carefully explained to me how Matthew 18:15-20 provides a guideline for handling disciplinary matters in a church. I reluctantly went with him. This pastor was not judgmental, but he talked to this lady lovingly and gently. Again, the lady didn’t change her mind but the church continued to embrace her.
Fifteen years later, the lady is a completely changed person today! She regularly attends Bible studies, serves in children’s ministry and always contributes to church ministries in whatever way that she can. I can say that she has become a true follower of Christ – a disciple. What a change! There is more to her story than what I can share here but the profound lesson I have learned from the pastor is that when we study the Bible carefully, and apply its principles and guidelines in our lives, we see genuine changes in people’s lives. This is what churches are supposed to do – help people to change their lives to become the disciples of Jesus Christ.
Reflection
Are we just maintaining the Christian tradition or helping people with love to change and become Jesus Christ’s disciples? What would Jesus do with a pregnant unmarried teenage couple who are scared and helpless?
Prayer
Lord, as we seek to keep the sanctity of your church holy, we ask for your wisdom to guide us, for it is our desire to love as you do and glorify You. In Jesus’ Name we pray. Amen.
Dr. Adam Maung
Arizona Karen Baptist Church
Phoenix, Arizona