New Season - New Actions, New Postures, New Ways of Speaking
Last Sunday, the Word of God challenged us to step into a New Season. In tropical Singapore, we might not have the four seasons like the temperate regions, but even here we do have our monsoon seasons and durian seasons. We also have exam seasons and our school holiday seasons. Knowing the seasons matter, especially if you want to book a staycation, go on a cruise or have some fun at Universal Studios Singapore. There is a reason why they have off-peak and off-season pricing. Essentially to know the season is to know how to act. How to behave. How to make decisions that will minimise our costs and maximise our benefits.
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The End? Or Just the Beginning?
Did you know that 10th October is the day that the World Health Organization recognises as “World Mental Health Day”? It is also the Day that Cuba celebrate their Independence Day, a day that marked since the war with Spain in 1868. And of course, it is also the day that Taiwan marks the start of the Wuchang uprising in 1911 - Taiwan’s National Day.
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Life is a Journey Home
2020 was the year we celebrated what it means to be a Strong Church - a people not isolated but connected to one another, in Christ. And 2021, we began a 3 year theme “Moving with Christ”. But what exactly does it mean to move with Christ?
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Let God Define your Success
I’ve been recently struck by the deep truth of the importance of faithfulness. Beginning from the apostle Paul captured with His words - “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith” (2Tim 4:7), and with all the saints before and after him (Hebrews 11), as far as God is concerned, success in this world has always been a matter of faithfulness rather than as an event or achievement - however spiritual. In a world of statistics and numbers, of Instagram visuals of worldly success… we need to be reminded of what true success before God is.
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The World Needs Saints - a Poem
What does the world need right now?
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God is in the Business of Raising People from the Dead
This week I discovered one of my relatives has three of his arteries blocked. Open heart surgery is always a risky affair. But at 70 years old, an open-heart surgery might be the last experience of our lives. The Christians in the household have responded by raising a banner of prayer and we are putting our trust in the goodness and love of God, our Father who knows my relative by name and loves him as His own.
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Moving With Christ… 2021 and Beyond
As we step into the last four months of 2021, there will be a lot of movement. Beginning next week in September, we will be gathering again for in-person worship services in JW and City. On October 10th, CNL City will worship for the last time @51MR. On the 17th of October, we will all worship the LORD for the first time in Jurong West as One Church. In all this movement, let me say this - if Jesus is who He is, then let’s learn to move with Him as One Body.
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Jesus: It Matters Who We Believe He Is
For many of us, Jesus is our saviour. He saves us by meeting our needs. He saves us by being our provider. He saves us by giving us a meaningful existence. He is a saviour… until he stops saving. And then Jesus becomes useless to us. It is when He stops being for us what we need Him to be, that we leave Him. We leave Him so that our needs can be met.
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National Consciousness Part 3: Jesus is NOT a religious person
I have always been convinced of this basic idea - we need to stop being religious. We need to get Jesus of Nazareth out of the “religious” category, and place Him in rightful place as Prime Minister of a Nation - anointed One of a People, called by God to be a new creation - a blessing to all the families of the earth.
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National Consciousness Part 2: a Holy Nation
There has never been a more interesting time in history than now to reflect on the importance of a national culture and identity. As the world continues to the second year of a Pandemic, it is painfully clear that the security and safety of our families and communities rest almost entirely upon the nations that we belong to.
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National Consciousness
We are about a week from Singapore’s National Day. Despite the fact our celebrations will not happening on the day itself, a sense of national consciousness has already been building up for those of us who count ourselves as citizens. This of course has been helped along by the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. For fans of sports, competitive sporting events have the potential to generate a variety of emotions - “referee kayu!”.. “oleh oleh oleh oleh oleh”… anger and frustration, relief and hope, tears of sadness can become also be tears of joy. Who said being a spectator is a passive thing? Watching sports might not have the physical demands as the sport itself, but it is an emotionally demanding activity. One that can incite violence, and moodiness that spoils family outings. So what happens when we join sporting passion and national passion?
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Some Questions are Worth Asking
”Why?“ is probably a big question within our hearts, even if we don’t verbalize it. This week’s emerging story of the 13-year-old River Valley High student who died might have produced this question as well. Why? Why does it have to be this way? Why do “good and innocent people” have to suffer? Why do people who don’t deserve bad things happening to them, end up facing such tragic ends? Why?
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Waking up to a New Day
As human beings, we all experience an interesting phenomenon. Some days we wake up strong. Some days, we wake up with a bounce and an energetic step. We feel alive. We feel good. We feel empowered. But some days, it’s the complete opposite. On those days, we tell ourselves “I woke up on the wrong side of bed”.
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The Word of God
Do we love the Word of God? Do you and I yearn for the Word of God? Do we desire to live by the Word of God? I think if we are honest with ourselves, we might say that we don’t love the Word of God nearly as much as we should. Or at least not as much as the author of Psalm 19.
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Let us Consider the Steadfast Love of the LORD
As Christ followers, we too believe in the God of Israel. The Christian Creed begins with this - I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth. This is interesting because it doesn’t say - I believe in God the Creator. It says, I believe in God, the Father… who is the Creator of Heaven and Earth.
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Let us Consider the Steadfast Love of the LORD
Are we wise? Have you and I considered the steadfast love of the LORD for our lives?
Especially since the Pandemic descended upon us, we have all felt the need for wisdom. Knowledge alone is not enough. Knowledge is not the same as wisdom. With all the knowledge of experts and the multiplicity of opinions and charts and statistics and data… we are still left with choices that quite literally is matter of life or death.
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Growing in Every Circumstance
Today is officially the last day of Phase 2 (HA)! Yayy!! The good news is that tomorrow we will begin Phase 3 (HA). The bad news of course is that for those of us who are looking forward to when we can dine in again, apparently Phase 3 (HA) is going to happen in two phases - which means no dining in until 21st of June 😩
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New Life for our Families and Homes
Like the Jewish culture, Family is a defining aspect of our identity. We are not only explicitly taught to respect our parents and cultivate a deep sense of generational familial identity, but much of this is caught from our culture. The family is a big part of the way we see our lives. We still even today’s individualistic culture, quite readily give our personal and individual preferences for the sake of family. And so Jesus’ comments here are quite jarring to our sensibilities. Even in His time, His words must have been shocking to the people who heard him. After all, the Israelites were instructed by God Himself to put to death children who were disloyal or disobedient to their parents! (Leviticus 20:9, Deuteronomy 21:18-21). So what exactly was Jesus doing?
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Ordinary Time: Practicing Life with Christ
Welcome to the First Sunday after Pentecost. This Sunday marks the first Sunday of 2021, where we have as a community proclaimed and heard the full Gospel through the seasons of Advent-Christmas, Lent-Easter and Pentecost. The question to us today is will we practice the New Life made possible by the Gospel we have heard?
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Day of Pentecost: Life Made Simple
“But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. (Galatians 5:16–17 ESV)
The world we live in is a complex world and many times, I’m sure like me, you have wondered how to make life simpler for ourselves. The good news is this - life can be simple.
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