Week 18: Life & Death

Good morning to u, Mdm

Last week, I left you with this bible verse to meditate :

Deu 30:19-20

19 I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live; 

20 that you may love the Lord your God, that you may obey His voice, and that you may cling to Him, for He is your life and the length of your days; and that you may dwell in the land which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give them.

Indeed, when we seek God, we seek His blessings... And when we seek His blessings, there is life. For life & blessings are synonymous. Amen!

Just in case we may make the wrong choice, God said choose life. He decided to lead us in our choice because when this was presented to Adam, Adam made the wrong choice.

The Fall of Man

Look at Gen 2:9 

"And out of the ground the Lord God made every tree grow that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil."

Notice tree of life was in the midst... Sounds familiar?? Remember, last week we talk about Jesus is always in our midst? Yes, tree of life here refer to Jesus.

Adam was given authority over the whole earth on one condition... not to partake the tree of knowledge of good & evil. A choice is given to Adam because Adam was not a robot. If Adam was a robot, then there is no need for a choice...

Gen 2:16

"And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

So, tree of knowledge of good and evil equal to death. Tree of life/Jesus equal to life. When we replace this in Deu 30:19-20, we understand that God want us to choose life (which mean Jesus). In John 10:10, Jesus said "I come that you may have life, and more abundantly."

On the other hand, God does not want us to dwell in the knowledge of good and evil. I submit to you that everyday we are subjected to good thoughts and bad thoughts, agree? What do we do with these thoughts? Do we go with those negative thoughts and manifest into an anger or bitterness, and worst of all, quarrel and fight.

This is important and when we start to identify and be conscious of these thoughts, then we can deal with it in a godly way. For we choose life over death, Amen! Our days on earth should be days of life and not hell.... When we pursue Him, it will add days to life and life to our days, Amen!

So how do we tackle these thoughts? Again, in short, one of the way is to speak in tongue. Sorry, I keep delaying on the topic of speaking in tongue. I thought it is important to have an overview before diving into the topic. We don't speak in tongue for the sake of speaking in tongue. There is a reason why God give us this gift on the very birth day of the church. God's gift can never be something useless, Amen?

ok, next week we will dive into the topic of speaking in tongue. With that, I leave you with this verse to meditate:


John 6:63

"It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life. "




Shalom

Bro

Dated: 16 Jan 2014

Week 17: New Year Spirit

Good day, Mdm..

Happy New Year to all! Often than not, whenever it comes to a New Year, we will start to think about our New Year resolutions... However, if you notice, most of the time, it always seem to start well, but only to end up not fulfilled. Why? The answer is self-effort. That is also the gist of the spiritual warfare. The satan want you to focus on yourself. As long as you are focus on yourself, Jesus cannot reign in your life.

That's why we need God. We need our Lord, Jesus. Whatever we intend to do, Jesus has to be in the midst. He loves to be in our midst. The bible says when two or three are gathered in His name, Jesus is in our midst. Even in His time of suffering at the cross, He is the midst of two other criminals and He offered one of them who believe, paradise! Amazing! This is our God! For He has come to give us life and more abundantly! Amen!

If Jesus has come to give us life, it means that we will take from Him. For in life, if you notice, we are always drawn/pressed (taken) by problems, worries, work, meeting targets, dealing with difficult people, everything that requires us to solve... If we do not draw strength from our Lord, we will be drained and run empty eventually... Just like a car ran out of petrol, it stop and break down. Running empty will trigger our negative emotion easily and that's what the satan love to see. It make very much sense now why satan want you to focus on yourself and not Jesus, isn't it?

So how do we draw strength from the our Lord? In short, when we are in a bad mood or feeling lousy, we are not in best state to read the Word and focus on Jesus. The best remedy for situation like this is to speak in tongue. Speaking in tongue is one of the greatest gift our God has given us. Think for a moment why would God give us something that is not useful? It is like having a sophiscated phone, yet if we do not know the functionality of this phone (maybe the phone can do video recording, can organise/remind yr daily schedules, can do facial/voice recognition), it is merely a phone. We will be ineffective not because the phone is ineffective, but we are ignorance. Likewise, until we know what God has provided for us, what Jesus has done for us on cross means, we cannot be an effective Christian, Amen! I will share on the topic of speaking in tongue next week, in continuation of the topic on healing.

Let's recap for this week on what we have discussed so far...

We are in the topic of healing... the objective of this discussion is for the preparation of the mission this coming Oct 14. We will be heading to Maluku islands. In the mission, we will be expected to minister to the village people, inclusive of laying of hands on the sick and casting out of demons. The team going for this mission consists of my ex-colleague and his friends. They have been in mission for many years, very experience, veterans as well. It is their delight to be able to pass on their knowledge and skills to the younger generation. This trip will be an eye-opening for those who are new to mission.

In preparation for this trip, I will try to share as much as I can in the area of healing & deliverance. So far, we have been discussing on personal healing. We talked about holy communion, meditating on God's Word and I will touch on praying in tongues in the time to come.

Please don't get me wrong that in order to lay hands on others, the person laying his/her hand has to be healthy. Miracles can flow through us as much as we are willing. God can only use us when we are willing to be used by Him and not on whether we are sick or not. You see, I maybe frustrated and yet I can still lay hands to pray for the sick if I am willing. But the problem is, at that kind of emotional state, usually I am already focusing on myself and not God. In situation like this, I would rather (not necessary though) speak in tongue first to stir up myself and re-focus on Jesus before I lay hand on the sick.

We have been discussing on personal healing for a period of time. I do hope that by doing so you could experience the goodness of God for yourselves first. Only when you see His power manifested in your life that you can have confident to be a testimony for Him. It is like buying a new skin care product. You would want to try on them first, before you introduce that to your friends. You do so by then because you have the confidence that this skin care product works. And the louder you share about this product goes to show how confident you are with this product. Likewise, once you can see God working in your life, when you lay hands on the sick, you no longer doubt even though the person may not be healed immediately.

By now, we should be clear that it is the interest of our Lord, Jesus to heal. He had spent most of His time on earth to heal the sick. And when He left this earth, He left us with holy communion, holy spirit through speaking in tongue and He revealed Himself in the scriptures concerning Himself in the Old Testament. It is all about Him, Amen! And we have covered the holy communion & meditating His word. For the next few weeks, we will talk a bit on speaking in tongue.

With this, I leave you with this bible verse to meditate:

Deuteronomy 30:19-20 

19 This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live 

20 and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the Lord is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.



Shalom

Bro

Dated: 8 Jan 2014

Week 16: It's all about His love

Good day, Mdm!

Last week, we talked about the significance of Holy Communion, partaking the bread in a worthy manner. We also looked into the scriptures in detail and know that eating the bread has to do with our healing, health and wellness. With that, we are much pretty done with this sharing which has to do with the topic on "healing". I would encourage you to do this as often as you can. Also, do keep listening to the sermons on healing or read the books/scriptures pertaining to healing. Faith is very important when you are partaking the elements. By listening to the Word of God, it will help you to build up your faith.

Believe has two sides of a coin - faith & fear. If you have faith (a form of believe in the spiritual) that eating the bread will make you wholesome, it will. Likewise, if you fear (a form of believe in the natural) that eating the bread will make you gain weight, it will. Therefore, believing right is important for us to live right. Amen!

Ok, for this period of time... I believe everyone will be busy shopping, travelling, partying, I'll be sharing for the last time for this year. We'll resume beginning next year. With Christmas round the corner, let's just focus on the significance of this celebration.

We all know that when we celebrate Christmas, we celebrate the birth of Christ. His birth is part of God's plan to redeem the world from the curse of sin. And we know that God has this plan because in John 3:16, it says:" "For God so loved the world.... "

Without a doubt, God love us... to the extend of sacrificing His Son! How do you feel when you first hear this? Do you feel loved? To be honest, I don't. Because I cannot relate how God, by sacrificing his Son, love me???

It is very much like a stranger come to you and say that he love you. Very difficult to understand nor relate. So you might ask the stranger:" What do you love about me? What is the reason?" Let say for example, the stranger start to reveal his identity as your father and begin to tell you the touching story why you are abandoned and seek your forgiveness.... (Sounds like a typical drama, isn't it?) Probably, by then, you might feel for his love towards you, isn't it?

Likewise, in order for us to understand God's love, we need to find out more about Him and the reason why He love us.... Where can we find the answer? The bible, of course.

In Gen 1:26-28 

" Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all[b] the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 27 So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. 28 Then God blessed them...."

Clearly, we are created by God. Not only did God blessed man after the creation, He gave man authority over all others of His creation! Note that if you read the previous verses, God created other creatures as well but none of them were given the authority over the earth. If the creator of this universe God want man to take ownership over the earth, we do mean something to Him, isn't it?

What happen next? Man fell, sin entered into this world when Adam disobeyed God's instruction not to take of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
When sin enter this world, ageing, deterioration, sickness, death become part and parcel of human life. And it gotten worse.

Gen 6:5-7"Then the Lord[b] saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. 6 And the Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart. 7 So the Lord said, “I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man and beast, creeping thing and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.”

Man became evil and God grieved in His heart. Have you ever grieved over someone? Isn't it true that you will grief over someone because you love that person? This is exactly how God felt...He was on the verge to destroy the entire evil mankind, yet He did not. The following verse says" Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord." Subsequently, God made a convenant with Noah that there will never be another flood to destroy the earth.

Now, when God made a promise, He cannot reverse it... Yet, the sin on earth has not been fully dealt with... What to do? God cannot send another flood to destroy mankind because of His convenant with Noah.

The problem then was God is a just God; If a sinner is not punished because God become soften on sin, then God is no longer a just God. Yet, God love His creation, man. What a dilemma..... (Fast Forward...) That's why Jesus came into the picture. Just like any other sacrificial lamb (which blood were used to cover the sins of the sinner), His blood was required to redeem every man on this earth of their sins.

When we are saved, our sins are covered by the blood of Jesus, we became righteous in the eyes of God. Therefore, God cannot punish us for our sins because Jesus had already bored the sins of all mankind 2000 years ago and was punished once and for all. God cannot punish the same sin twice.  What a plan!

Only when we understand our God, then can we understand His love for us. The reverse is true. Without knowing how much He love us, our eyes will continue to set upon the things of this world.... Have a look at these video clips:

With this, I know everyone will be busy celebrating during this festive seasons, I leave you with this verse...

2 Cor 13:11 (NIV) 

11 Finally, brothers and sisters, rejoice! Strive for full restoration, encourage one another, be of one mind, live in peace. And the God of love and peace will be with you.


And also, take a peek of the upcoming movie:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uVJAGJ5SVM

Finally finally, I leave you with this "million dollar chicken" video by Chef John... I thought you might need this just in case you need to cook up an "expensive" dish for your friends...

Wishing all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!



Shalom!

Bro

P.S. There is a reason why those breads are underneath the chicken... Don't forget to take your holy communion! :P

Dated: 18 Dec 2013

Week 15: Bread Talk

Good day to you, Mdm!

Wow.. yet another year has come and will be gone soon.. I hope your year has been fulfilling.. both outside as well as inside.. It has been a great year for me.. Though I had a rough start, I'm glad it is going to end well. Praise the Lord!

Last week, we talked about meditating on God's Word and the goodness His Word could bring forth in terms of healing, health, wholeness, peace and completeness. I believe by now you have fully understand what meditating God's Word is all about- slowly "chewing" and digesting each and every word until all the "nutrients" are fully absorbed into your body!

Now, as mentioned last week, this week we will take a closer look at "Holy Communion". This is important... Why?? Because there is a provision given to all of us as children of God. It is free and yet not cheap?? because Jesus has paid for it at the cross! And until we understand it, it will be left unclaimed!

Many of us are aware that by drinking the wine, we are believing that that's the blood of Christ was shed for the forgiveness of our sins. Even the bible states that very clearly. However, when partaking the bread, there hasn't been a clear explanation of its purpose. Some believe taking both bread & wine together are mean for the forgiveness of sins. So, are these two elements for different purposes or for the same reason which is the forgiveness of sins??

When Paul wrote to the Corinthians about the conduct of Lord's supper, he was pretty upset about the way they partook the communion. And then he went on to say in 1Cor 11:30 " 30 For this reason many are weak and sick among you, and many sleep."

Note the sequence of order - weak , sick & many sleep (which means die at young age). He was talking of physical conditions of these Corinthians. Apparently, they were not looking good. And notice Paul said "For this reason" - in other words, there is only one (singular) reason why they were in such condition. What was it? Let's take a look at the context to understand what he was saying.

1 Cor 11:27-30 

27 Therefore whoever eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood[d] of the Lord. 

28 But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup. 

29 For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner[e] eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord’s[f] body. 30 For this reason many are weak and sick among you, and many sleep."

The Last Supper: Bread & wine representing the body & blood of Christ

Paul stressed the importance of eating the bread and drinking the wine in a worthy manner. What is considered a worthy manner? Look at verse 29 "not discerning the Lord's body. For this reason......"

In other words, many are weak, sick and die young because they are NOT taking the holy communion in a proper manner! The bread represents the body of Christ. That's why Jesus said He is the bread of life. And in the Lord's prayer, we are taught to say " give us our daily "bread"!

Make no mistake about it .. Partaking the bread has to do with healing our body! The bible says "We are one body of Christ!" By taking the bread, we reckon to be part of Christ's body. If God want us to be part of Christ in a body, would you think that He wants this body to be weak, sick and die young???

Remember, the Law of First mention... The "law of first-mention" is the principle in the interpretation of Scripture which states that the first mention or occurrence of a subject in Scripture establishes an unchangeable pattern, with that subject remaining unchanged in the mind of God throughout Scripture.

Ever wonder when the word "bread" was first mentioned in the bible and what revelation it gives??
It was first mention in Gen 3:19 "In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread "

Interesting, eating bread has something to do with us sweating. Some interpret this verse as "you got to work hard (sweat) in order to earn your meal (bread)."
When you look up the meaning of the word "sweat" ... it also mean worry, anxiety, lose sleep, agonise, fuss, panic, agitation.

 I would classify these "worry, anxiety, lose sleep, agonise, fuss, panic, agitation" as "weak". "Weak" always come before "sick". In the modern medical science, it has been proven that the root of major illness & sickness (SICK) has to do with worry, fear and stress (WEAK)! (You've heard the sermon on "The root of your problem is condemnation", you know what I am saying).

Are you seeing the love of God now? Imagine, since the fall of Adam and the curse of sin enter into this world, it is already in His mind to provide a way out for us!

If this is not enough, look at what Jesus did after He rose from the dead... He followed a couple back to Emmaus... (you know the story).. He broke bread for them before He disappeared in front of them. Before He went to the cross, He broke bread for His disciples, after He rose from the dead, the first he did was to break bread for this couple.  What does that tell you?

He want to tell us that breaking bread is more than just remembering Him, it is about remembering what He has done for us at the cross! And when we partake the bread with sickness in our body, we can boldly say to this sickness that it does not belong here because Jesus has already paid for it and taken it to the cross. Hallelujah!

Now, when you meditate these verses like John 14:27 & Proverbs 4:22. Do they make sense to you now?

And the word "peace" in Hebrew is "Shalom" which means "peace, wholeness, completeness, prosperity, health!" Praise the Lord!

I hope you're blessed by this sharing. Sorry for being lengthy this week coz this is important. If Jesus can spent almost 3/4 of His ministry in healing, how much more do you think He want us to be in good health as children of God? Amen!

Smith Wigglesworth (a plumber) had raised more than 10 dead people during his ministry and those miracles were recorded. He took holy communion everyday. With this, I urge that you will practise holy communion as and when possible (DO NOT make it a ritual but do it in a worthy manner).



Shalom

Bro

Dated: 11 Dec 2013

Week 14: More on God's Word

Good Day Mdm!

Last week we've mentioned about meditating on God's Word and the healing it can bring forth to our body (not just spirtual health). In essence, the bible is like a medicine. Of course, we do not despise doctors. We do believe in medicine and doctors for they are on our side, fighting the same enemy! But as much as there are natural means to restore our physical health, we believe our God has also provide the means to restore us from this fallen condition of this world, Amen?

Be warned though, God's Word do have side-effect... It will rejuvernate you and make you look younger! Go to Genesis 20 and read the story of Abimelech & Abraham. King Abimelech wanted Sarah for his harem only to find out (through God) that she was Abraham's wife.... Wait a minute, before chapter 20, in chapter 17 verse 17, it was mentioned Sarah's age was 90 years old! Think for a moment... Why would a King of all the women he can have, want Sarah (old as mentioned in Gen 18:11) for his harem??? Why would Abraham need to lie to the King about his wife???  The bible says that Abimelech took Sarah into his harem when Abraham said she was his sister. Do you think at that moment Sarah was physically attractive or spiritually attractive in the eyes of King Abimelech?

 Actually, this week I would like to share more on the Holy Communion. I can't stress more how important this topic is... The more I listen to the sermon and look into the Word, the more I am convinced Holy Communion is one of the greatest gift from our Lord Jesus. Having said that, I'm going to KIV this sharing until next week. This is because I've just come across these videos relating to God's Word and I believe it is going to bless you.

Remember Proverbs 4:22 

"22 For they are life to those who find them, healing and health to all their flesh."

Enjoy and be blessed by these sermons!


Shalom!

Bro

Dated: 4 Dec 2013