In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the importance of understanding the spiritual realm beyond rational explanation. He encourages the audience to read the Bible with a mindset of seeking deeper understanding and asking questions. The theme of the sermon is love and obedience, and the preacher admits that he has not found a satisfactory explanation for love in any book except through personal experiences. He also discusses the significance of the season of Lent and encourages individuals to embark on a personal journey of spiritual growth and reflection. The sermon concludes with the reminder that worship is not limited to external rituals but encompasses the entirety of one's being - body, soul, and spirit.

Jesus transfigured himself. I mean, can you imagine Jesus was born like a little baby like our little Naomi, you know, a tiny little baby he can hold in one hand and drinking milk from her mother's breast and make all kind of noises and poo poo in the diapers. But then Jesus, this little baby was born and he was growing up just like the little children that you see running all over this place. And when Jesus called his disciples to come and follow him, just take a second and think what it took for Peter and John and rich man who was a tax collector for Romans, Matthew, and all these disciples, what happened that they would leave everything instantly and then follow? As a matter of fact, many of you, especially from our culture here in the eastern part of the world, even if you are convinced about something, finally you will say, but what can I do? What can I do? My mummy wanted, my father wanted, I hate this fellow, I didn't want to marry him, he looked like a donkey. But they say I must marry him. I don't think he will do that. But, you know, I think about my parents getting married, you know, this horror story, first time my mother and my father met, first time they saw each other in the church. They never saw each other. And that's the difference between the western culture and our culture. There they fall in love, they get married, and here they marry and fall in love. But here's the thing, I have this choice of exposition of God's word and teaching all these things, but I'm always concerned about something more deeper. That don't mean something better or greater. But, for example, our world is a mystic theology. The eastern world, it's a mystic theology. But the western world, it is a rational theology. What is rational? Rational is 2 plus 2 is what? 4. But in eastern, 2 plus 2 may be 7. And you ask why you come to that conclusion, we have no way to explain it. But we know it is true. Now, I'm just telling you my lack of understanding and my struggles also in this. That is, at least I think to myself I'm a very brilliant and able student of church history, because that's where I live for years and years and years. And Bible is not two books, one book. In the Bible there is only one God, not two gods. The God who sought worship from his people in the old covenant is the same God who seek worship in the new covenant. In John's gospel chapter 4, Jesus said, My father is seeking worshippers. So did God the father change the worshippers? Not worship. It is all inclusive. It is body, soul, and spirit. It is not external activity, like I shake your hand. Do not shake my hand. But the shake hand can have, just simply shake hand because he just put his hand out, I put my hand out, or it can be all of a sudden in my brain, in my emotions, a million thoughts are going through. Thoughts could be like, God, what a privilege it is that I could shake his hand. What is he going to be in eternity? What are you planning through his life? This one opportunity I have to touch him. You see, those are thoughts that he cannot see or hear. But those are invisible realities and mysteries. And so, the sad thing about Christianity, which I will say this again and again in all kind of ways, and I'm looking at the clock also, and I want to honor the time, but this you must hear from me, and I'm glad now I have some sense of peace that you are brilliant and you listen and you think, which gives me a great hope, that is, since the Reformation, which happened not too long ago, five, six hundred years, 99% of all the books sitting in our libraries and the evangelical theological seminaries that explains about Christianity and the meaning of things, it all came from rational theology. That is, we have become the center of everything. It never used to be until 1500 AD or so, there was never a preaching pulpit in the center of everything. People just gathered around the table, the altar, where the bread and the wine represented Christ's real presence. And the people around read the scriptures and sang hymns and all those things, and their one intention was to live this short life until they see Him face to face. There was nothing else. But rational theology began to make God finally get into the dark. That's what C.S. Lewis said. Now he's there and we are outside, and we decide how we must worship you, we decide what we will do, what it means to the scripture what you said, and we make all the decisions. For us, this is the way we must have our Christian life. And brothers and sisters, believe it or not, believe it or not, and believe it or not, it could very well be there could be a massive deception Satan has unleashed upon multitudes. Maybe this will help us to understand what Jesus said. When He comes back, will He find faith on earth? And the bride of Christ is not going to be majority, it is going to be minority. Many will say, Lord, Lord, and they will proclaim everything rational, so perfect. We did this, we did this, and Christ didn't say, you are lying. But the final verdict, I did not know you. And so what does that all mean? And this is something I struggle with in this journey, that is somehow as Paul said, I strive, I ache, I burden like a pregnant woman until you be born in Christ. That is you understand the ways of God is not simply based on doing a lot of things and just being pharisaical, but there is a deeper understanding of the mystical fellowship and journey with the Lord. Your life and my life on earth is 50, 60, 70, 80 years, which is nothing, nothing compared to multiplied billions or trillions of years and there is no time in eternity. And this few years of classroom in which the Lord is preparing us to reign with Him forever and ever. So the only way He can do the training with us is through the senses we have, our body, our soul, our spirit. And the body is what you see here, and the soul, the mind, the emotions, and the smell and all that. And all of a sudden I was taken into many, many Bible verses and I said, now I understand why. Why this God described so detailed in Exodus about making the holy oil and all the fragrance that need to be in there. Is God starving to have a nice scent so I should buy some expensive deodorant and give it to Him? Is God so desperate He wants some more candles so He can see some light? He created the sun and the moon and the stars and billions of galaxies. No, this is the pride and arrogance and satanic influence of the rational mind that invaded even the innocent believers in Africa and India and these countries and destroyed our willingness to bow down and say, oh God, you are God and not me. And it took us from seeing the invisible almighty God and look at the sun that shines so bright and the moon that is so incredibly bright in the middle of the night and start weeping, saying, God, I just can't believe you created all this and I'm your child. Whatever happened to our Christianity? That's the reason why I'm fighting continually to abandon, renounce the rational Christianity of the western countries and embrace the mystical Christianity of the Bible. Jesus was not an Englishman. He was not an American. He was an Asian. And the disciples, when they wrote, I'm convinced they were writing not for rational mind but for our heart and our spirit. How will you explain the Bible? You can't. And so Jesus just pulling the curtain and revealing himself and all of a sudden they are in shock. My goodness, all of a sudden they are plunged into a whole world where their whole being got lost in another world and the longing, oh, we don't want to leave this place. We just want to be here. Whatever happened, it is like little kids who play with little plastic toys and mud. Like me, a little boy playing with little coconuts and little rocks and stuff. But then you all of a sudden run into the reality of real motorized vehicles. Then you run into not imaginary cookies and cake you make out of mud but real chocolate. And all of a sudden you are thrust into a real world. It is no more shadow. Created imagination is real. And this is a Christianity that is of a different world. I must conclude. But all the Bible passages we read, honestly, I like to comment on all of them. But would you think about going back and read all those passages and now look at it from this perspective? Look at it from perspective. Why on earth Jesus would reveal himself to these disciples a different individual than they have been living with? For them to see there is more than what they see with their eyes. The incense, I thought, well, from the beginning of worship God instructed his people to create incense. And there are tons of Bible verses that represent the prayers of the people going up. Representing the whole people. Worship becomes the community. And he described that. And how we do something that says, oh, Lord, have mercy on us. Okay, that's a great thing to do. I thought that's a wonderful thing to do. But when I got into this crazy book, it's not a Christian book. All of a sudden I said, this is weird. Then I went to Google. You know where Google is? And then I found out something shocking. That bothered me. Hitler, who was a mass murderer in the Second World War. It is documented that he had research done to detect and refine certain scent or smell. And have it sprayed in the auditoriums and gatherings of large numbers before he would speak. I didn't know that. That these certain scents evoke and draw people to certain ideas and products. And then Google search, I found about this one lady who is a world-renowned scientist. Who goes all over the world and actually spent with her team with well-known companies like Tata or Nike or whatever. And they study what kind of smell that would induce and invite masses to come and purchase their product. I'm not lying to you. I'm not making this up. I'm living with a lot of difficulties in my life. I don't want to tell you all about that. And that, you know, look at her, she's smiling even now. They have the scent infused on that page. When you rub your finger and smell it, it fills your nose. And then the scientist, she was talking about how they discovered there's a part in the brain that has no other activity other than just to detect certain scent. That's all. And then that part of the brain is linked directly with emotion that create action. Do you see how it works? Now, you have a lot to think. And yesterday I said to someone, when I was a small boy, we used to jump into the river in front of my house to take a bath and everything, even at times. And when that is all done, there are two important things I remember about taking a bath when I was a small boy. One is a red, large bar soap called Lifebuoy. And my mother used to cut that big bar, two, three pieces. One small piece for me, one piece for somebody else and all that. Second, we will have a powder that after you take a bath and everything, you come in the house and you shake. Of course, you know, there's always this fight over it. Who gets more? It is one long cylinder tin called Kutikura. So, it's a weird thing. I'm telling you, you won't believe this. I've been asking for Kutikura for years. And one day somebody bought me Kutikura. The long cylinder tin that can is no more. They have different shape. And I read the name, Kutikura. And I put it all over and I wiped everything off because it smelled different. Back in my head, the old, beautiful smell of Kutikura when I was a four-year-old little boy is locked into my brain. And then I told our people, by the way, you buy Lifebuoy, the red soap, which is the best soap in the whole world. And they bought it. And I found out they changed that also. It is no more my Lifebuoy when I was a small boy. I no more buy them. I no more use it. The power of scent. How do I understand God? Is He so... I mean, He is a God who said, let there be ten billion galaxies come into existence, multiplied billions of light years away from the earth. And He is concerned about some little fragrance and smell. All of a sudden I realized, I, this little me, is finite, but within me, something infinite. That's what C.S. Lewis said. Every human being you meet and you play with, you talk to, interact with, you are looking at immortals. They are not mortals. Destined to be for eternity either in heaven or damned. Therefore, be cautious and take care. So my little body is not finite, a little thing, but in me dwells something so eternal that God uses all the senses, the five senses, the environment, and you, and sun and moon, and everything to help me understand what He is doing, which is beyond any rational explanation. So, as this journey continues, I pray that now you read the Bible, not for how to do things, how to be a good husband, and how to be a nice friend, no, you will read it and ask a lot more questions. Because rational, it makes no head, no sense at all in your head. And that will help you to say, God, please help me understand this. And then he says, taste and see, the Lord is good. Until you taste this, until you do this, until you obey, you will not understand it. Now, what is the theme we have today? Love and obedience. By the way, until this time, I am not able to find any book or any explanation for love. The best explanation I found in all the years of my journey by Dr. Walter Traubisch, love is a feeling to be learned. There is no absolute. In other words, it's a mystery. The love of God, then you take it, it's beyond anything you can imagine even, forget about understanding it. But how do we enter into that? Obedience. I don't understand it, I have no clue about it, but what I will do, that's what he says, and I obey. And all of a sudden, you taste something supernatural. So what is Lent? I didn't create it, don't blame me, I didn't make it happen. It all goes all the way back and throughout the whole Bible from the beginning of time, where people sought God by giving up something as a demonstration. Lord, I choose to be alone, I choose to fast, I choose to give up this friendship, I choose to stop watching television, I decide for this whole season, I will not use my cell phone, or this is what I'm going to give up. I met somebody in York, England, some years ago, it's a very high level priest of the Anglican Church, like he could be the next bishop or something. So I said, this is Lent season, I was there to speak for him in the cathedral there, and he said, I'm having a wonderful time during this season of Lent. I said, so you don't eat any meat, you don't eat any egg and all that? He said, no. I said, then what is your Lent? He said, I pledged before the Lord not to eat any chocolate. I said, what a white man. Because he said he was addicted to chocolate. And he decided this Lent season, he will not touch chocolate. For me, giving up chocolate, Baba has no meaning because I hate chocolate. I don't like chocolate. No, I do eat sometimes, but it's not my favorite thing in the world. But Lent is a season where even the nature, the trees, experience it. They give up their leaves, and they're silent. And animals, they go into season of quietness. And this Lent season for our church, everywhere, all over the world, it is a time, every evening, local churches meet for an hour of reading Scripture, and praying, and things like that. And in your personal life, you can start a journey. We have a book, I forgot to bring it, 50 days, every day there's a passage, and one page, it's a beautiful book, we just got released, in English language, in all other languages. This is about season of Lent, that explains a little book about it. And then, this is the journey with Jesus to the cross. This is 50 meditations, and the Kauma, and all the different things. This is for all our church, obviously millions of people are going to be using that. This is happening in English. What it does, my mother, as long as I lived in my home, 16, 17 years, from the time I can remember anything, there was never a year where she missed the 50 days Lent. No matter what. And I encourage you to start your journey in your personal life, not saying, oh, how long this vegetable food is going to take? How long this daal, the chapati? Where is the chicken and mutton? What happened to all that? What happened to all that? We are trying to train you Baba, to have some spiritual understanding in this journey, and you'll be happy, and you'll be more healthy also. So, don't enter into the season of Lent grudgingly. You have to do it. No, God is not looking for that, no. He invites us to joyfully be part of it. And you as members of the believer's church, you know, this is somehow, we as a people of God, live our life with God's calendar. And so the Lord bless you.