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07 January 2001 - Serve Him With All Your Heart
14 January 2001 - Giving To Missions
21 January 2001 - Fear
28 January 2001 - Speak Blessings
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7
January 2001
Serve Him With All Your Heart
Today is the first Sunday of the
year. It has been seven days since we came down
from Penang Hill. Nehemiah
4:2 tells us that when the people of God
started rebuilding the wall, opposition started
to come. How many of us are still as excited as
before or is our fuel already running low? Many
of us might have doubts and wonder whether we
can achieve the goals we have set for 2001. Looking
at the goals set, it seems like we cannot do it.
However, church, if we go to God admitting our
weaknesses, asking Him to help with prayer and
supplication, God is going to grant us His favor
and success. Miracles will only happen when we
work with all of our hearts! Just imagine if Cinderella
didn't provide the pumpkin to her fairy godmother,
she wouldn't have the means to go to the palace
to meet her Prince Charming! So it is the same
with us. When our goals look so big and impossible
to achieve, pray and ask God to strengthen our
hands (Neh 6:9).
We are to be committed to our church with all
of our hearts and He is going to help us! In times
like this, don't lose heart like the Isrealites
in Deut 1:26-28.
Focusing on the impossible and murmuring over
the situation won't help us move forward. We've
got to serve Him in HCC with all of our hearts.
How can we serve God with all
of our heart? There are 5 types of heart that
pleases God:
- Willing
Heart
Joshua 24:15 "
as for me and my household, we WILL serve the
Lord." Exodus 35:21 "
and everyone who was
WILLING and whose heart moved him came and brought
an offering to the Lord." I Peter 5:2 "Be shepherds
of God's flock that is under your care, serving
as overseers: not because you must but because
you are WILLING , as god wants you to be; not
greedy for money, but eager to serve."
- Sincere
heart
Heb 10:22 "
Let us draw near to God with a
SINCERE heart in full assurance of faith, having
our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty
conscience and having our bodies washed with
pure water."
- Faithful
Heart
I Samuel 12:24 "
fear the Lord and serve Him
FAITHFULLY with all of your heart; consider
what great things HE has done for you." I Chro
19:9 "
you must serve FAITHFULLY and wholeheartedly
in the fear of the Lord."
- Obedient
Heart
Job 36:11 "If they OBEY and serve Him, they
will spend the rest of their days in prosperity
and their years in contentment." I Samuel 15:22
"
to OBEY is better than sacrifice
.." Heb
13:17 "OBEY your leaders and submit to their
authority. They keep watch over you as men who
must give an account. OBEY them so that their
work will be a joy, not a burden, for that would
be of no advantage to you."
- Joyful
Heart
Psa 100:2 "Worship the Lord with gladness; come
before Him with JOYFUL songs."
With willing hearts we
follow.
With sincere hearts we draw near to you.
With faithful hearts we serve.
With obedient hearts we submit to you.
With joyful hearts we worship.
With all of our hearts, we will arise and
build
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14
January 2001
Giving To Missions
In Acts
20:35, the Bible tells that it is more
blessed to give than to receive. Often we hear
testimonies after testimonies of God's blessings
in people who have given to God willingly and
sacrificially. We know that in our hearts and
even see that with our eyes but many people still
find it difficult to obey God when it comes to
giving tithes and mission. Why?
It takes great faith for us to
give especially when we have little. Giving is
an act of faith. With our natural minds, what
the Bible teaches may seem illogical and even
stupid but this spiritual law has been proven
to work as we see God showers blessings generously
and freely on His people. He is able to do exceedingly
and abundantly beyond what you can imagine when
we sow in the kingdom of God. He will multiply
what we sow and give that back to us.
Consider this: We cannot withdraw
from our heavenly account if we have not deposited
to it! Our accounts should reflect our hearts.
Matt 6:21 "For
where your treasure is, there your heart will
be also". Mission is God's heartbeat.
He lives and breathes it. His main concern is
people. Think of what would happen if God did
not save us: Would our lives be full of hope or
luck, opportunity or chance? I think we would
start to answer with, "If it were not for
God, I think I would have..." and there would
be just too many "would-haves"! God's
heartbeat is for the people and this is evidenced
by Him giving the best, His Son for the world.
Miracles will not happen unless
and until we are willing to let them happen. When
we give from our hearts, He is going to grant
us His favour and do wonders because we are in
convenant with Him. In Exodus
12:35, the Egyptians gave the children
of Isreal whatever they asked for, silver and
gold. Would you have thought that is possible
with your own imagination?
Let us be the hands and feet on
this earth that bring His love to the nations
by giving to missions and we will see miracles
happen!
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21 January
2001
Fear
In order to reach the goals we
have set, we need to work with all of our heart,
mind and soul. Neh. 4:6
"…the people worked with all of their
hearts". We need to work together
as one like what the families did in the rebuilding
of the wall. We have to resist the devil and start
equipping ourselves spiritually
(Neh 4:17). Without much prayer and His
word, we can never fight to win a battle! Neh
6:9 tells us that the enemy has come to
frighten us. Fear is the greatest enemy that most
people are fighting. Some fears are real, some
are illogical and stupid but they can nevertheless
be very harmful and contagious! Fear will keep
us stagnant and prevent us from progressing. Nehemiah
asked God to strengthen his hand. We need to ask
God to strengthen our hands and our faith in Him.
Out of the twelve spies who were sent into the
promised land, only two came back with positive
news. The other ten spies were focusing on the
giants in the land and the result was the Israelites
went around Mount Sinai for 40 years. Fear is
a bondage! I am afraid of height but I know that
height would not kill me unless I jump. Peter
walked on water and I believe that if he had the
slightest fear or doubt in his heart or not have
trusted his master enough, that miracle would
not have happened.
There are four steps we can take to help us to
overcome our fear:
- Examine the fear in
a realistic way
Do what you are supposed to do. Just imagine
if Nehemiah were to sit down and worry about
the enemy (who did not attack them), he would
not have built the wall of Jerusalem in 52 days.
We need to examine the cause of our fear.
- Get ready and take action
We need to take action to overcome our weakness.
Be prepared to fight. No one can go into the
battlefield without proper armor. We become
a failure when we do nothing for God. If God
is for us, who can be against us!
- Carry on our work
Neh 6:15-18
tells us that half
of the people worked and half of them equipped
themselves. Despite of the opposition
that comes our way, we still need to do our
routine work. It does not solve the problem
if we were to stop working and start worrying.
- Be part of the team
Every family has contributed to the success
of the rebuilding of the wall. In order to overcome
fear, we need to face it. We need to work together
as a team to overcome the fear, not by ourselves
but together.
The Bible tells us about the fear
of God. It is a holy fear where we reverence God
and His presence. The
fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom Prov
9:10. God loves you and He lives in you.
He has not given us the
spirit of fear but a spirit of power, of love
and of self-discipline 2 Tim 1:7. There
is nothing we need to fear of except Him who is
able to give and take away our very lives.
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28 January
2001
Speak Blessings
The Chinese New Year is celebrated
by all Chinese, regardless of age and belief.
For the first fifteen days of the New Year, we
visit friends and we speak blessings and well
wishes to one another. To many Chinese, each new
year has to begin with everything new and that
is why people begin to spring clean to welcome
the new year and wear new clothes on the first
day of the Chinese New Year. The celebration symbolizes
their hope for this coming year, leaving the past
and starting everything anew. As Christians, we
need to learn to speak blessings and well wishes
to one another not only during this festive season
but throughout the whole year.
When we pronounce blessings,
we will change the situation
Gen 1:14-18
tell us that God created
day and night and they are to serve us as signs
to mark seasons. David Cho-Yongi speaks
blessing to his days and they turn out to be days
that bless him. In Gen
2:19, God formed the beast of the fields and the
birds of the air and Adam named them all.
All things were created to serve us. When a situation
does not favour us, we need to speak blessings
unto it instead of cursing it. Prov
18:21 says, "The tongue has the power of
life and death...". We have to make
the decision to praise and bless our enemy as
when we do so, God is going to change the situation
around to favour us.
When we pronounce blessings,
they will return back to us
"Do to others what you would
have them do to you." It is just like the
principle of sowing and reaping. When we bless
someone, God sees it and He will bless us in return.
It is important that we bless our bosses who are
demanding, our enemies who have hurt us as God
is going to turn the blessings to us! 1
Peter 3:9 says, "Do
not repay evil with evil or insult with insult
but with blessings because to this you were called
so that you may inherit a blessing.".
The verses continue in
1 Peter 3:10-12, "Whoever
would love life and see good days must keep his
tongue from evil and his lips from deceitful speech.
He must turn from evil and do good; he must seek
peace and pursue it. For the eyes of the Lord
are on the righteous and his ears are attentive
to their prayer, but the face of the Lord is against
those who do evil.".
All blessings come from God.
Isaiah 45:7 says, " I
form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity
and create disaster; I, the Lord, do all these
things.". Let us all be like David
in Psalm 103 who
said "Bless the
Lord all my soul and all that is within me...heart
and mind, soul and strength and all that is within
me….Bless His holy name...!".
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