Sharing Christ With Others

Romans 10:13-17 10:13 For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved10:14 How are they to call on one they have not believed in? And how are they to believe in one they have not heard of? And how are they to hear without someone preaching to them? 10:15 And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How timely is the arrival of those who proclaim the good news.”10:16 But not all have obeyed the good news, for Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed our report?”10:17 Consequently faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the preached word of Christ.

Evangelism is the duty of every single followers of our Lord Jesus Christ and every little efforts leading to the expansion of His kingdom counts. Missions do we really need to venture into the foreign lands? The answer can be yes and no depending on God's calling mission can be as simple as sharing the word of God in your respective work place we call that evangelism in the marketplace.

The moment we start evangelizing we had already started our mission and our aim is to save one more for Jesus and to ensure each and every single one gets the chance to hear the gospel. Recently I attended Pastor Benny Ho seminar on evangelism and he point one key area and he calls it the PDA Strategy.

• Personal Revival
• Divine Appointment
• Actions Obedience

Lastly everyone has a role to play when it comes to evangelism and some of you might be asking I have no one to share Christ with but remember what the Bible says? The answer can be found in Luke 11:9 “So I tell you: Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. Amen!

Respect

Respect is something that Money can't buy or demand, respect is something that oneself have to earned it for himself/herself. One classic example supposingly a very rich and powerful man and he has the "WORLD" in his hand, people feared him and on the surface it may seems that he gained lot of respect from the people but do you consider that as respect?

Let's take a look at the life of Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ the Son Of Man managed to gain respect even from those of rejected Him as the savior of world. WOW how did he do that? I can tell its all about leading by example! This proves one thing respect must be earned and we must always drill this in our minds be considerate just as what the Bible teaches in Matthew 7:12 In everything, treat others as you would want them to treat you, for this fulfills the law and the prophets. Amen!

Treasure On Earth?

Is life on earth is all about making money and having the best? These things that we enjoyed are only temporary and it will be gone in a prescribed time. Like I always said you can have the whole wide world but you will never enjoy if you do have the peace of your mind.

For some of us we are so focus at getting the best at times till we have forgotten our first love and that is our Lord Jesus Christ . The Lord said in Matthew 6:21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

He also said in Matthew 6:24 “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.

Everyone loves to be a winner in lives in fact we have tried many ways to get to our goals but for some of us, our minds are so determine to see the results we sort of loss focus and turn away from God and back-slided. The Bible made it clear in Mark 13:31 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.

This boils down to one thing and question are we spending too much time to chasing after something that is temporary and if we think that we are the winner after getting what we want then I would say we are very wrong. I can tell you the only winners are those of seek after His Kingdom and they will reward richly when they entered into the Heaven and the rewards he received will be permanent! Amen!

Holy Tample Of God

We are purchased by the Blood of Christ, He died so that we may live. We are no longer our own instead we belong to Christ and we are part of Christ so if we do not take care of ourselves it hurts The One who saved us.Our bodies are the Holy Temple of the Lord and we have our duty to take good care of it.

Christ has paid for our salvation with his Blood and we are his investment. From a investor point of view every investors would want to have good returns that includes Jesus Christ himself. The only way that we can repay his Kindness and Grace is to take good care of ourselves and grow in the spirit and when the time ripes we will be out in the field to do His work for the expansion of His Kingdom!

God's Answers?

I was once Luke warm and to Sunday church services are just going in motion. All these change when I was touched by the Holy Spirit and I was convinced that I can't be just going in motion otherwise there will no growth at all. I have been visiting other cells and different cells thought me different things.

The question is will I be given an opportunity to bring back what I have learnt to my own cell? If I'm given the opportunity how do I implement it? Well for now I do not have an answer to it because I have not felt the calling. When will God call me then and if He does how would I respond? I'll be praying for this and I believe God will provide me with an answer in due course.

Grace Of God

We know God is always ready to forgives and when he forgives He remembers nothing! However we must not take it lightly otherwise it will become cheap grace instead of true repentance. Our Lord died for us more than 2000 years ago and we should be thankful because of His great love we need not receive as we would deserved.

The penalty for SIN is death but Christ came and take that away and He gave us everlasting lives if we accepts Him as our personal Lord and Savior. The grace of God is still a debatable topic but there is one thing I want to stress is repentance comes from our hearts so long the spirit is in our hearts it creates a force that will guard us from wrong doings.

My prayers to Father God is to invite the Holy Spirit to stay inside my heart to guard me from the evil one , to teach me and to prepare me to go out to the field to do His work for the expansion of His Kingdom!

The Potter's Hand

We human are like clays and clays needs to be shaped,molded and burned before we can see the end product. God Himself is a potter and a potter sure have some standards for His end product. There will be pains and trials during the process of molding and shaping and pains and trials are sometimes necessary for the birth of a perfect product.

When we go through pains and trials that does not means that God dose not care. God does care He will provide solutions but before He does that He would want us to go through the learning processing for the sake of our spiritual growth.

One greatest weakness seen in human is they do not learn until they have seen the worst. Our prayers to God is open our eyes to see what God desires in us and He will see to our needs thus preventing us from making a detour! Amen!

Defining Moments

Romans 8:28 And we know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. As usual I was reading the our daily bread and today's topic was on defining moments and it tells the story of Joseph.

Most of you know the story and we all know what Joseph's bothers did to him in the past. Joseph could have taken revenge but he did not instead he responded by grace and forgiveness. Grace and Hatred is just a thin red line you have a choice.

Contentment?

How much is enough? We are always chasing something that we think we need but in fact not. By doing so we worked extra hard and eventually end up being very tired and burned out.

At the end of the day we have achieved what we want but the question is do we still have the energy to enjoy what we always want when we are so tired and burned out?

We have to learn to be contented with what we have and instead of channeling all our energies to achieve our material needs why not channel our energies to achieve our spiritual needs?

At times when we are so focus in channeling our energies for our material needs till a point that we might turn away from God and we will start giving ourselves excuses that we have no time for ministries, cell meetings and even the most basic requirement as Christian and that is to attend regular Sunday worship service.

I have experienced this before and now I pray to God to help me to avoid stepping into such traps. Pastor Benny Ho once shared about living below your needs and I like one of the example that he pointed out "you chose to drive a Toyota when you can afford a Jaguar" he also pointed out to be contented with your Toyota otherwise God take away your Toyota and make you take public transports!

Doubting God?

To be frank all of us will go through or have gone through this stage especially when we are going through a time of difficulties. We all know satan is known as the father of all lies casting doubts in us delights him.

Building up our defenses is the best way to combat such spiritual attacks, I view doubting God and other matters inspired by Satan that does not delight God as spiritual attacks. We have be strong in our word and faith.

I know when the day I started to get myself right with God I'm actually preparing to have a war to combat satan. I'm getting myself armed by staying close to Him through various ways such as attending cell meetings regularly, daily devotion/reflections, Christian education course ect....

The more we know the heart of God the more we are less likely to fall. My prayer to Father God is to keep me strong no matter what happens for I bare the name of Emmanuel and I must live up to it!

Words? - Just a thin red line

A few weeks back I had a heated argument with my colleague and we were exchanging WAR OF WORDS in our email correspondents and it went on and on until one parties stops. I gave in and I called for a truce and establish a dialog with my colleague together with a nurture party.

I came to realized that most of the issues can be resolved by having dialogs. During the dialogs we can trash things out have a heart to heart talk. We can also get to the root of the problem and study it and thus come up with some contingency plans to prevent such things from happening again.

Kind words gives encouragements and confidence boost to a person while discouraging words puts a person down which can result in serious consequences. Sometimes the consequences can be that serious it will literally find yourselves hurt because of guilt.

The Bible tells us that our tongues has the power of life and death therefore we must be very careful with the words that we used and always think before saying the words out. I myself have this problem but I'm working on it and I believe God is with me and He will help me overcome this!

Being Legalistic?

I used to be very negative towards to playing mahjong as I have always associate mahjong with gambling. I really hated gambling and I learned a painful lesson it was during my NS days after our Chinese New Year holidays we suppose book in to our camps and after we booked in one of the camp mate suggested that to have a few rounds of blackjacks.

At first I didn't want to join in but in the end I gave in due to peer pressure and that was the biggest mistake and that very night I lost all my red packets collections and it was a painful lesson. From that onwards my attitude towards gambling was very negative however that did not really stop me from visiting casinos and buying 4D and TOTO.

I only stopped gambling when a brother in Christ knock some sense into me. I used to have this thinking that I'm buying hope when I'm buying 4D or TOTO and Singapore Pools which is Singapore only legal lottery operator. Singapore Pools usually donate part of their profits to charities and I always tell myself if I didn't win I'm indirectly donating to charities.

Brother Alfred challenged me by asking what was the percentage that Singapore Pools is donating? If I really have the heart to donate I could have donated to the charities directly. Brother Alfred words struck me hard and it sets me into doing some soul searching and not long after I find myself completely stopped gambling and it has been 4 years that I have not bought a single lottery ticket.

Today I tried playing mahjong without money involved and I actually find this game interesting and it really helps to stimulate your mind in return its good. Playing mahjong can be considered as a form of fellowship provided that no money is involved.

Put it simple it is a thin red line if money is involved then its consider as a form of gambling otherwise it is just another game. Our walk with God can be enjoyable and interesting if only we could learn see things with a bird's eye view and refrained ourselves from being legalistic.

Listening to His promptings

Franking speaking I have not reached a stage that I can really hear God speaking to me. However at times I do get promptings from Him to take my parents for a nice dinner. I know myself very well it is very unlikely of me to do such things without a reason.

Just that during that time I just felt like buying them a nice dinner and I believe this is a prompting from the Lord judged base on my character.

Worship

Contemporary praise and worship has taken the world by storm and it has broken into the secular world. The question is are we going after the artist or are we going after God? I remembered years back when a famous Christian band came to Singapore to lead us in a time of worship for the Festival Of Praise at the Singapore Indoor Stadium.

That was the very night where I saw thousands queuing up to get into the stadium well I have no problem with that however when the worship segment ended I saw lots of people heading for the exit. During that point of time I have not reached a close relationship with God so I cared less about it.

However things are different now, I just came from a praise and worship concert toady I realize it is not really about the worship style instead worship comes from our hearts. No doubt music brings up the mood and it makes us feel great but if our motives are wrong then I would say that we have completely missed the point.

We must always remember worship is only meant for God and no one else and contemporary worship is just one style of worship so long our attitudes are right and it comes from our hearts our worship regardless of any style will be a sweet smelling fragrance to Him!

Forgiveness?

We are dealing with the issue of forgiveness and just as the Bible mention in Matthew 6:14 For if you forgive others their sins, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. Forgiveness is a challenge it is not easy to forgive someone whom they have hurt you.

Let's look at Joseph's life his very own blood brothers had him sold into Egypt and when Joseph raised to power he could have taken revenge but he did not instead he has shown grace and has forgiven his brothers.

Un-forgiveness can lead to serious health problems, research shows that prolong anger can lead to increase in heart beat rate which can result developing hyper-tension and other heart related illness. Un-forgiveness can also lead to the development of mental problem such as depression ect....

Jesus Christ The Son of Man , The King of kings and The Lord of Lords was sinless made sinful because of mankind's sin. When He was hang on the cross He actually cried out to His father to forgive the roman soldiers. Can you imagine you as the father and your very own flesh and blood asking you to forgive someone who had badly beaten Him.

We must forgive others before our Lord can forgive us and I can tell you we can do it with the power of God. Forgiveness does not means we will forget instead it should be treated as a valuable lesson learned. Lastly let us learn to let go and move on for He is Emmanuel and He is always be with us till we are called home to be with Him forever!

Can Crooks Be God's Agent?

Can crooks do God's work? Why not in fact they are the best because of their experiences and once the experienced the love and grace of God it stirs up their hearts thus transforming them into fishes of men.

God can use anyone to do His work and that includes prostitutes , drug traffickers and the list goes on. These so call social out casted due to their bad deeds had been cut off from the society the only person that is willing to take them in is our Lord Jesus Christ giving them a second chance.

When they got a second chance they are filled with the Holy Spirit and they begin to do God's works and shine in all area thus bringing glory to God. These once called social out casted has became powerful evangelistic warriors of God and their rank rose from being a social out casted to be a prominent evangelistic leaders!

Integrity vs Office Politics

Integrity in Singapore's work culture well as a Singaporean I hardly see integrity being practiced instead we are seeing more of office politics. Office politics can be really damaging and can even causes someone to loss a job or causing the affected person to resign from his/her position.

As followers of Christ we must try our best to avoid getting into office politics but it seems harder than said and somehow unavoidable due to work culture.

I'll always try to take a nurture stand when it comes to office politics and I felt that this is the best way to handle office politics in fact being nurture we can be a bridge to defuse the tension between the affected parties thus bringing peace and harmony. Lastly be strong in our decisions and stick to it for the sake of the truth!

Spiritual Discipline

Discipline? I think we all need to be discipline and it is for our own good for the Bible already said Proverbs 13:24 The one who spares his rod hates his child, but the one who loves his child is diligent in disciplining him. Well this is earthly discipline which teaches us to be a good citizens.

Spiritual discipline is a higher standard and its necessary for Heavenly citizenship. I think I have share this before but would like to share this again as it is line with the current theme. God sometimes uses pain and sufferings to teach us and mold our characters.

God is like a potter's hand always there to mold our characters until the potter Himself thinks that He can come out with a perfect product. However due to various reasons we sometimes disobeyed Him and we wanted to do it our own ways. Take for example at one stage of my spiritual life I was very self-centered and I had a self-reliance attitude despite warnings and advises I turn a deaf ear to them.

God as loving father and He loves His children a lot and could not bare to see the degenerating lifestyle of mine and He took spiritual actions against me. Things were bad and I also losses my job along with 1 month of salary due to the breach of contract and many more.....

Back then I had negative attitude towards cell meetings and I think it wasn't necessary. My church was doing The old testament challenge last year and brother Alfred and Sister Jennifer challenged me to be a part of a cell and take the old testament challenge then without much consideration I accepted their challenge.

I thought I might leave the cell after OTC but it never did happen. It was only until when I joined the cell thus had realized that not all oranges are sour and there are sweet oranges too. If God had not disciplined me I don't I will be seated in front of my laptop blogging for Him and I would not have gotten a job @ Infineon Technologies Asia Pacific! All glory to the Most Highest!

Save The Planet from God Perspective

Earth is a place where men and beast dwells and we only had one earth and we have play our parts to save it. When God create Adam He commanded Adam to take good care of the garden of eden.

Now lets come back to the modern world and look at the things we do we are basically killing the earth slowly with poison. Due to the effects of global warming we are facing major climate change.

In Dec 26 2006 a major undersea earthquake hits the province of Arch in Indonesia and it triggers a distractive tidal wave across Asia and the south pacific nations. The damages of the aftermath could be minimized if we could re look the problem of deforestation. Trees can act as barriers to take the damage caused by the impact of tidal wave.

God gave us this earth and we have our duties to take good care of it. Here are some of the mirror things we can do to save mother earth. For example switch off your engines while waiting for someone in this way we saved petrol and will not give out greenhouse gases unnecessarily.

We can also do our parts by supporting the use of Green Technologies and renewable source of energies. However due economic reasons the use of such technologies did not really materialized. But I'm confident one day the use of green technologies will become common thus reducing cost.

Lastly what ever we do we are held accountable to God so let us be good and responsible stewards and take of what God has entrusted us with!

God's Love

Yes God's love is without boundaries and he loves all his creations including those who rejected Him. His great love was demonstrated on the Cross more than 2000 years ago. I watching a video testimony forwarded by my aunt.

This video testimony is about a brother in Christ and he was an ex Muslim. He was a very devoted Muslim to a point that he does more than what is required as a Muslim. However things change when our Lord Jesus Christ visited Him and the rest was history.

Does God cares ? sure He does Does God love? sure He does and His love for the human race was demonstrated on the cross more than 2000 years ago. If God can save a Muslim which is kinda of a impossible thing then what about the non-muslims who rejected Christ?

http://www.muslimjourneytohope.com/testimonies/testimony_afshin.wmv

The Power Of The Media

We live in this age and we jolly well know the power of the modern media such as books, magazines, internet and television programs ect..... We know what Satan can do and we know what he does best. What is seems harmless on the surface can be the most dangerous on the inside.

Satan often package media in a nice way and it looks so nice till we care less whether they are harmful or harmless. Take music for instant no body will ever think that music is harmful but we must not forget what is satan's job scope before his fall.

Satan was the chief musician in the courts of heaven and he knows music inside out. I have recently switched to listening to praise and worship music and I notice that after I do that I find myself to more be calm and it sort of suppress the loud header character of mine.

Listening to P&W music also keeps me connected to God and there is lots of benefits to it. I'm not saying that we should avoid secular music however we must be careful when choosing secular music.

I'm a big fan of Kitaro and I know his music were great however when listening to his music it can sometimes makes me feel spiritual but the problem is that is not from God. That does not stop me from listening to Kitaro's music just that I have reduced listening to it.

Put it this way you will not notice the danger until the music is being played backwards and for satanic inspired music you will likely to hear the satanic encoded message. The problem is our brains picks up these messages without us noticing it and that's dangerous therefore we must be very careful when choosing secular music.

Our Daily Bread - What Should I Do?

Hmm... Making God honoring decision can be tough and you will face lots of challenges and big stones along the way. The bible promises us so long we put our trusts in Him and He will provide a way and He will make a way when there is seems no way.

I refer to the author struggles whether to keep her old car and live its maintenance problems or just get a new car. I don't know what's the implication or procedure when buy car in overseas but in Singapore buying a car is really a major decision considering the taxes , bank loans and the necessary charges and as well as the rebate that LTA is giving.

We have to weigh the maintenance cost of the old car and servicing of the brand new loan for the new car. Most impotently what ever our decision is it must not affect our financial health. Lastly we have to pray hard and pray like never before and seek His directions when making decision whether they are major or minor! Honor Him and He will give you peace thus enable you make a wise decision and the outcome will be the perfect outcome!

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2008-04-04

What Should I Do?

READ: Proverbs 2:1-9

The Lord gives wisdom; from His mouth come knowledge and understanding. —Proverbs 2:6

My friend Krista is struggling with a decision: Should she keep her old car with its continual maintenance problems or buy a newer model? She wants to be a good steward of her finances, and she desires to make a wise decision. And most of all, she wants to honor God.

Financial decisions can be tough to make. Billy Graham even says, "If a person gets his attitude toward money straight, it will help straighten out almost every other area in his life."

Here are a few ideas to consider about wisdom in money matters:

Do a checkup to be sure you're following God's priorities. Are you giving to Him and to others? (1 Cor. 16:2). Taking care of family needs? (1 Tim. 5:8). Not letting money control you? (Luke 16:13).

Research the topic. Consider all the options and the pros and cons of each one.

Ask God for wisdom. Pray, pray, and pray some more. He will direct you (Prov. 2:6).

Trust God and make the decision. Use the knowledge and wisdom you've gained, and commit your decision to Him.

Obedience to God nurtures a growing love-and-trust relationship with Him. What's most important is that we see each decision as an opportunity to draw closer to Him. — Anne Cetas

When you're facing a decision
And it seems a daunting task,
Trust the Lord for true discernment—
He'll give wisdom if you ask. —Hess

The closer we walk with God, the clearer we see His guidance.

You can also read this devotional in full colour.
All contents and materials © RBC Ministries

Detour?

Many of times when we plan to go with plan A but somehow or rather we end up proceeding plan B. But yet again if we had not gone for plan B we might have missed out something important. Sometimes when we make mistakes it may not be necessary bad and the end results may turn out to be something that we have least expected. We may have our plans but the Lord directs our steps for His purposes!

I used to think this way its not necessary to attend cell group so long I’ll have been regular at the Sunday worship service so I avoided cell invitations for a period of time and lead a self-centered life and the end results was bad. I have my plans to skip cell invitations from friends until God stepped in and made a detour in my life.

I can assure you when God steps in it may not be necessary nice and sometimes He will use pain to make us reflect and to also search ourselves. Before joining Infineon I was with a British Bank working as a IT engineer and things were bad so not too long after I tendered my resignation and also due to the contract that I have signed I also loss 1 month’s salary…..

This incident sets me thinking why has God forsaken me when I needed Him the most? A couple of days later my Church announced that they will doing the Old Testament challenge and the modules will be delivered via daily reading guide, Sunday sermons and in cell meetings. Not too long after my friend asked if I’m interested join a cell just for this OTC and without much consideration I agreed and stayed on till now. If God had not stepped in will I be what I am today?