The Power of Your Word

Ecclesiastes 5:1

 ¹ Guard your steps when you go to the house of God. Go near to listen rather than to offer the sacrifice of fools, who do not know that they do wrong.

This was the verse I woke up to today after our very first NYCB2 stayover at Shi Jie's place!
And man, did it change my day! I resolved not to offer the sacrifice of fools today - not to sacrifice 5 more minutes of my time staring at the bible pretending to want to spend more time with God, not to sacrifice 3 hours today to go for WFL with a heart not ready to listen and not to sacrifice the time I spent in service and during post-service dinner/fellowship without knowing and reflecting on the wrong I did.

And man, it did change my day!

WFL was great. I went for the tentmaking and church-planting class. If you ask me to share just one thing I learnt from that lesson, I would share this. Missions is nothing more, nothing less than an act of going forth out of simple obedience to God to avail ourselves for any kind of service we can give unto God! God did not command us to do missions, but missions is the best way we can obey God and fulfill the Great Commission He has given us. This really reminded me that I really need to have this simple obedience which was what God was telling me recently as well (this is also a potentially powerful testimony that is a bit personal, so I will only tell you when you ask me about it.. umm if you're someone I feel comfortable sharing this to as well..)
Service was great. I'm truly amazed by the speaker for today's sermon, Julian. His life is really a testimony of how we can never outgive God. He gave up everything when he set out to plant a church in Peru. Today, he came back with much more than he, we or anyone in the face of this earth can ever imagine. And I'm not only talking about the tangible material wealth that he's blessed many times over by God with. Though he did not mention it, I believe his character grew a lot through this church-planting experience as well. If anyone tries to identify how he feels when he made these 2 decisions - to go to Peru and to come back to Singapore, he/she would have realised that it takes a lot of character and a lot of trust in God to be able to make both decisions. He did and through this, his character must have grown as well. WOW! That's every good reason we need to have to try to outgive God - We could never outgive Him! And the principles we learnt today also deserve a mention as they are principles not only applicable in the missions (although it was shared in that context) - We need to spend time listening to God to discern God's right timing. While doing that, we need to continue remaining faithful to the task at hand and work out a plan. Then, we need to step out in faith when the time is right and last but not least, we need to trust God to work out the success for you. Simple, plain and easy. Sermon messages have always been this simple, plain and easy but usually the problem with us is that we usually just want to offer the sacrifice of fools and not to listen when we go near the house of God.
Service is great because of another reason also. God healed! God healed my blocked nose which resulted from a lack of good sleep the night before due to having a stayover (who sleeps early in stayovers?). This is nothing unfamiliar to me. I have also been healed in worship by God before. The other time was during HIMGC and I was having a very bad runny nose (it was sprinting a marathon non-stop if you get what I mean).
*starts to rummage through his book of random thoughts, trying to find the entry regarding the above incident
*found the entry and starts feeling encouraged by how much God loves him
*decides to post a separate blog entry regarding that entry because he thinks it can encourage so many more people as well
Last activity of the day, post-service dinner/fellowship was great as well. Our CG is gradually becoming more and more like a group that cares about God's people and God's work. Just maybe about two weeks ago, we were kind of having a CG where we're sorting out differences. Haha and now, we're talking so comfortably over dinner at Concorde Hotel food court about things of God. One table was sharing conversion stories and another table was discussing missions. (Forgot to mention our CG is so big we had to occupy two tables! tried but simply couldn't squeeze into one.)

Lord, just thank You for the day! It's truly the Power of Your Word that made this day a day You've made!

Chingster