Pastor Vincent - 4 June 2015
Doing Nothing, Yet Believing Everything
For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel—not with wisdom and eloquence, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. (1 Corinthians 1:17 NIV) In life, we are subjected to various circumstances and decision points that propel us to mobilize our human wits to do something, find something, or solve something right away. Our human nature always draws us to focus on the signs and outcomes of things, and thus it activates our big self easily, causing the big self to drive us. Yet, the big irony is, it's also this big self that hinder us from magnifying Christ, ie the biggest victory before we ever activate anything. When Christ sent His disciples to preach the gospel, those who were sent included people like Peter who was a mere fisherman, lowly educated he was. But God has a message for us -- a lot of times, we focus a lot on the outcomes eg whether one will believe in Christ, whether our family will be saved, can we fulfil our key performance indicators at work etc etc... But when Christ commissioned His people to preach the gospel, it's because the gospel itself is all that we ever need in evangelism, not our eloquence nor human wits. The gospel, in its inherent nature, has all its power to effect the outcome God has intended to bring on. But it's only when man looks upon God with a believing heart can he participate in the glorious fulfilment of God's work. As we continue on our pilgrim's journey, God wants us to do nothing out of our human nature, but believe in everything because we genuinely and sincerely hold onto God's promises. When we rest ourselves on the right platform (eg the unchanging promise of God), it will activate all our spiritual senses and propel us to live by faith.
From Series: "Topical Messages"
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Sufferings in the Presence of Divine Relationship
What really torments a Christian during sufferings? There are countless answers to this question. Yet, the most direct and underlying reason behind this torment is a Christian’s “sense of abandonment”. It simply feels like, “NO ONE is on my side anymore. No one can understand or can help me. Even God has forsaken me because of my sins and mistakes. I am left alone to face the frightening consequences.” Truly, when we accept such deceptive voices into our spirit, every twinge of pain seems punitive and endless. We will try to make sense of everything except the love of God.
In the Bible, even the blameless Job could not make any sense of his sufferings. Therefore, God, in one of His greatest revelations, has given us <Romans 8>. This glorious chapter in the Bible seeks to address the sense of abandonment that children of God may experience during pain and sufferings. So yield your mind not to what you feel, but to the truth especially such times.
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