Are we not all convicted? At some point of time in our Christian lives, we must have felt a bit like that, if not a lot. Many times we sing on Sundays, we just “go through the motion”. We sing the songs because we are expected to. I must confess there are some times I can sing the songs without even thinking about what I’m singing! I know the lyrics so well that my mind can be thinking about other things while singing.

Isaiah 29:13
The Lord says:

   “These people come near to me with their mouth 
   and honor me with their lips, 
   but their hearts are far from me. 
Their worship of me 
   is based on merely human rules they have been taught.

Worship is about the posture of the heart towards God. Singing without meaning is not worship at all. Singing is merely a tool to express our worship to God, and we do have many other ways to express it. The first time worship was mentioned in the Bible was when Abraham was tested to sacrifice his son on the altar. In Genesis 22:5,

He said to his servants, “Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.”

Abraham saw the sacrifice of his son as worship to God. Now let me clarify, that the act of sacrifice is not worship. The act of obedience was. Only sacrifice in true obedience to God’s instruction is worship. So we not only worship God with song, but with the lives that we live- in complete obedience to God. This is the posture of the heart that produces real worship. With that in mind, we can also ask ourselves if we are really surrendered to God. Many times we declare our surrenderedness during altar calls and camps. But the act of surrender is a daily affair. The decision we make at the altar is only positional surrenderedness. The lives we live in obedience to God is true surrendering and thus, true worship.

Next, let’s talk about singing of His love only on Sundays. Is this Biblical? Of course!

Philippians 4:4
“Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!”

If everyday is surrendered to the Lord, then we must be in constant acknowledgement and awareness of the life that we are living- a life that seeks to glorify God. Personally, when I received this revelation, my heart was so full of God that every moment of the day, I could not help but sing and praise the Lord! Even when there was no song in my heart, I would speak and praise God for who He is. When I am walking to school, to church, on the bus, at home… This may sound weird at the start, but it is only a natural response when we stand in awe of His holiness and love. We just cannot help but want to praise Him! Praising God should be an every day affair.

The last point I would like to draw from the video is that worship is wholly and totally about God. It has got nothing to do with our song preference, the style of the worship leader, or whether the song ministers to us or not. So what if we’ve sung that song for years? Or if we feel dry and don’t feel like singing songs  at all? Worship was never about us. It’s about our Holy and Almighty God! When we sleep early the previous night, or leave home early so that we won’t be late- those are all acts of worship to God. Let us do our best to make sure that when God comes to receive our worship, we have the best performance we can give to Him.

Let’s make sure we live out what we sing, say and commit in obedience and worship to our God.

Being through 2 years of National Service, many guys would know the way people speak in there. Every single moment of the day, I would hear various expressions of anger, discontent or injustice through words. Now these words are so commonly used that they become part of people’s speech, whether they are using it in anger or not. Of course, I am referring to vulgarities.

I believe that Christians would generally not speak like that, but how about things like “Oh my God”or “damn”? They may seem less harmless or less vulgar, but they are not.

“You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.”
Exodus 20:7

Our God is the creator of the universe, the strong and mighty God who gives, who takes away, who judges and gives mercy. He is the God who loves and sent His Son to die for us. He is the God who rose from the dead. He surpasses all time, who was, who is, and is to come! If we proclaim Him to be our one true God, how can we, with the same mouth use His name to curse!

You must understand that we are talking about something serious here. It is not “try to reduce the number of times you say it”, or “maybe we can use words that don’t talk about God”. You would have missed the point. Too often we see God as our Closest Friend, our Provider, our Strong Tower, our Refuge and Strength. These are not wrong, but when was the last time we acknowledged God as the great and mighty God, the King over our lives?

Our generation of youth are seeking God fervently, taking part in Charismatic activities. They want to seek and know and feel God in their lives. The want the power of the Holy Spirit in the Kingdom of God. But they have not known the fear of the Lord. That our God is one who commands all respect and all glory in all ways. We are but little humans greatly indebted to a God who never needed to care about us!

“With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God’s likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this should not be. Can both fresh water and salt water flow from the same spring? My brothers and sisters, can a fig tree bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Neither can a salt spring produce fresh water.”
James 3:9-12

Fresh water and salt water cannot flow from the same spring. Likewise, if your heart has been changed by God and transformed into the likeness of Christ, you cannot help but speak good things that edify and build up. Only a heart with anger and hatred can bear vulgarities.

For all other forms of cursing and useless words, do you not know that we will be judged in the end for every word that we said? Every good word and every idle word, we will be judged.

“Make a tree good and its fruit will be good, or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad, for a tree is recognized by its fruit. You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of. A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him. But I tell you that everyone will have to give account on the day of judgment for every empty word they have spoken. 

For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned.”
Matthew 12:33-37 

I must say first that God’s presence is never limited- He is not limited to the kind of place you’re in, the people you are with, or even the pastor giving His Word. God chooses exactly when and where He wants to minister to His people. However, I believe that God prefers to make His presence felt in certain conditions. Let’s see what the Bible says about God’s presence:

Matthew 18:19-20
“Again, truly I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything they ask for, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.”

Does the Bible say “only where there is an anointed pastor, there I will be?” or “only when the praise and worship is spirit-led, there I will be?”

Not at all! As long as two or three gather in God’s name, there He will be. You see, God loves being with people who are hungry and thirsty for Him. He loves making His presence felt when His children, gathered in His name, so strongly desire to know and see and hear from Him. From Jeremiah 29:13, “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart”. God is found and His presence is felt when His children seek Him with all their hearts. There is no where in the Bible, and never has God said that His presence will only come when the pastor is Spirit-filled! The pastor does not bring God’s presence; instead, God’s presence is invited by the hearts of His children. So if you were to ask me about the sermon on the first night, I personally believe that the youths were not hungry for God enough- they were not expecting enough, and wanting enough to hear from God that night. When hearts are not open to God, it is no surprise that God’s presence cannot be felt. God will not force His way into lives which do not expect and desire Him.

With that, I want to personally encourage everyone to then, seek God with all your hearts. Our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit, and it is in us that He dwells. Therefore, God’s presence should not only be expected during youth camps, services, altar calls or congregational praise and worship. We should be expecting His presence in our lives every single day! In our personal worship and communication with Him, we should be feeling God’s presence surely and strongly. Of course, I believe that God does move more powerfully in camps and such, as that is when many are gathered in His name to seek Him. But that should not limit our connection with God through the Spirit. God gave each of us the Holy Spirit so that we may individually experience Him in our very personal ways.

What this means is that even if the praise and worship may not be spirit-led, or if the pastor is not speaking from the Spirit, we can still be ministered to. Yes, it is true that God uses these people to minister to us, but Christ has died for all, so that all may commune directly with God, and all may have the Holy Spirit in them. It is ultimately the Holy Spirit who ministers to us. Therefore I challenge all of you- that even when the music is bad, or the message is boring, you allow the Holy Spirit to still minister to you. Be still and prayerful as you seek to hear God speak into your heart. He is not limited by the pastor or the music team.

Now, what happens when “I feel that he is not speaking from the Holy Spirit”? First, we must examine our hearts prayerfully.

Sometimes our preliminary judgement prevent us from hearing what God has to tell us. When we start to judge the speaker in our hearts, we subconsciously make a decision that the speaker is boring/bad/not anointed, and we close our hearts to what he preaches. From then on, we start to judge every point that he makes, and try to identify flaws in his preaching so as to justify our decision reject his message. This is one thing that we should all watch out for, before we fall into the trap of pride and judging others, preventing the Holy Spirit from ministering to us.

When you feel that your heart is right, and you still feel troubled and not at peace, it may be that you have the gift of discernment, or have a spirit of discernment. The Holy Spirit may be prompting you, or perhaps even warning you about the things that you are hearing. Some of it may not be correct or true. In that case, do highlight it to your leaders or mentors, and don’t forget to check it up with the Bible on your own!

In the end, humans are always fallible and prone to make mistakes. God however, is not, and He can choose to minister to you in any situation. So do keep your heart open to hearing from Him. In our relationship with God, the most important thing isn’t ministry, leadership or serving. It is the relationship itself- that is what God treasures most, and what we should too.

I’ve chanced upon this link recently and thought I’d share it with you guys: http://theresurgence.com/2011/12/15/bet-you-cant-resist-the-temptation-to-watch-this

So many times we try to fight temptation and recurrent sins in our lives, but the battle is never against it. Christ has already won the battle over sin when He died on the cross, and as children of God, we too are victorious over it. The thing is, we were created to have some purpose, some sort of idol in our lives. We seek to fill our lives with things that are fulfilling. That’s why we indulge in material possessions, sexual sins, and perhaps even ministry in church. These are the wrong idols to fill our lives with, because they will never be as satisfying as a true and direct relationship with God.

Only when our lives are so fulfilled by the presence and love of God that all other things of the Earth will fade. They will no longer be attractive to us compared to the beautiful connection that we can have with God. So fighting temptation is not about resisting the attraction, it’s about fulfilling our thirst for purpose with something transcendent, perfect, and lovely- God.

You know, I used to think that the original purpose of writing a blog would be about myself- the things I am interested in, my good day or bad day, etc.. But there’s so much in life about ourselves already, writing a blog in such a way just serves to boost our ego and makes us prouder. Perhaps not just writing blogs, but do you find yourself constantly reviewing your facebook profile to make it look more appealing, whether to yourself or others? We do so much to promote ourselves to other in the ways we want, whether real or fake. But we also know that God detests the proud.

God created us to worship Him. And that’s just it, for no other purpose. I think many of us have been disillusioned and made to believe that life is about achieving things for ourselves. So much we do and get for ourselves, yet they become meaningless when we are gone. But life should be all about God, and all about Christ! We are like the background characters in  a movie; everything we say or do is to make the movie look good. A movie not about us, but about Christ! All things that we do in this life is to glorify God and to preach Christ.

He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind; and, Love your neighbor as yourself.”
Luke 10:27

There are 3 groups of people that Jesus mentioned here; that we need to love. The first is God, there is no doubt about that. The second is our neighbours. Who are our neighbours? Then Jesus continues with the story of the Good Samaritan. Our neighbours are the people around who need help.

The 3rd group of people we need to love is ourselves.

Obviously, we would take without a doubt, that loving our neighbours means well, loving them. Treating them with respect, speaking graciously to them, meeting their needs. And if we are to love our neighbours as such, Jesus assumes that we have first, loved ourselves in that way. Therefore, we love neighbours as we love ourselves.

I was reading this book by Robert Pierson about needs-based evangelism, and he summarizes very neatly as such:
Well that was the best I could do with paint.

With each sermon and Bible study emphasizing on loving God and loving men, I will proceed to talk about loving ourselves.

I believe that once one become a Christian, his mindset must be completely changed. And this usually does not happen in a flash. He must be taught and reaffirmed of his Identity in Christ. If you’ve been a Christian a long time and think you know about this, please do still read on. Many times we forget who we are in Christ, and live lives that are not fully empowered with what Jesus has done for us and given us. I must also say that I am no expert in this; this would be an area that I am lacking in too, but I will do my best to teach what I know is truth.

Firstly, we must acknowledge that we are forgiven for our past, present, and all future sins. For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous (1 Peter 3:18). Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,  because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death (Romans 8:1-3). When we have sinned, we are not to feel condemned because we have sinned (though we must repent if we know it is sin). We do not have to wait for God to “cool down” to start praying to him again. We can approach the throne of grace with confidence (Hebrews 4:16), knowing that God has forgiven us already. This does not mean that we can keep sinning. But that is a topic for another time.

You know, whenever I take notes during sermons and Bible studies, I will use an asterisk to denote a key point/application. So let’s do that now,

*In Jesus there is no condemnation. We can approach the throne of grace with confidence!

And He said unto me, “My grace is sufficent for thee, for My strength is made perfect in weakness. 2 Corinthians 12:9

If you have lived in this world long enough (not that I’m very old), you would come to find that no one is perfect. Each of us have flaws and inequities, and some of these things we cannot change.

But in Christ you have been brought to fullness (Colossians 2:10). In every thing that we are not good enough; every bit of holiness, righteousness, or perfect thought or behavior that we lack, Jesus Christ has it! And because Christ lives in us (Galatians 2:20), he makes up for every flaw, and every weakness that we have. Because when we are weak, then we are strong (in Christ) (2 Corinthans 12:10). We are brought to fullness!

*In Jesus we are made complete and perfect.

One of the first few times I distinctly heard God and experienced Him was when I was 16, about to take some major examinations. I really can’t remember how I was feeling at that time, but I must have been quite stressed. We were singing these lyrics:

“You are the peace that guards my heart, my help in time of need”

And I felt an overwhelming sense of peace come over me. At that point, I knew God was covering me, protecting me, and helping me.

 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Philippians 4:7

God’s plan for us is perfect; to prosper and not to harm us, to give us a hope and a future (Jeremiah 29:11). Therefore in any and every situation, we can be assured that God is in control. He knows what is going to happen, and makes the best happen for us. Even when we make wrong decisions, He can turn it into good. Because we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him (Romans 8:28).

*In Jesus we have peace that surpasses all understanding

These plans that God has for us, are not just plans for us to live good lives; not to eat well, drink well and then die. They are plans with a purpose. Jesus said “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full” (John 10:10).

We are meant to live lives that are meaningful and have a purpose. God has created each one of us for a special purpose. We all have a unique set of things set out for us to do. Things that will build the body of Christ; things that will encourage, comfort and love; things that reach the lost- we are called to advance the Kingdom of God. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do (Ephesians 2:10)

*In Jesus we are created for good works.

In Jesus we are many things, but here are the 4 that I believe are essential for any child of God to know and believe. Perhaps believing in it and experiencing God may not be instantaneous, but let us first know what Christ has made us. When the time comes when our identity in Christ is challenged, we must affirm ourselves with who we are in Christ. We are very a very powerful people indeed.

Now, for every person you meet or know. Believer or non-believer, you know that they are loved by God. God loves them enough to send his Son to die for them, so that there can be no condemnation against them, so that they can be complete and perfect, they can have peace in God, and they can do good works for God.

Let us love our neighbours knowing that.

Sorrow and love flow mingled down!

Did e’er such love and sorrow meet,

Or thorns compose so rich a crown?

As mentioned- the sermon notes from today’s sermon:

For most of you reading this, you would have received salvation. But do you fully understand what you have gained from it? Do you know what it means to have saved, and what it means not to?

Let me describe to you what I think heaven will be like when we get there.

Come, let us use our imagination a little- imagine Jesus has just returned, and all of us have ascended to heaven. We are immediately brought into this really big waiting hall, where we will be waiting to be judged. We will all be in this hall together, and there will be a lot of excitement. We will be talking about how God’s throne will look like, whether we’ll see people like Moses and Noah and Peter. However, there will be some of your friends you may not be able to find. Friends from school and from work- somehow you just don’t see them around.

Then, one by one, your names will be read out. So imagine there’s an angel who will call out, “Joel, it’s your turn to be judged before the throne of God.” So you will enter the throne room and see how magnificent it is. There will be people on all sides, watching you walk up to the majestic throne. As you walk, you might feel a little nervous, but you are confident. Then God will say “Account for your life of service.” And then the way you have lived your life will be recounted. All the bad and good things that you have done will be recounted. God will turn to His chief scribe and ask, “Is his name written in the Book of Life?” The Chief Scribe will reply, “Yes it is, my Lord”. Then God will say “Because you have called upon my Name and received my Son Jesus Christ, all your sins are forgiven, and you are welcome into my Kingdom.” There will be a lot of cheering and rejoicing from all the people at the sides, and you will take your place and join them. Eventually, all the people in the hall would have been judged and taken their places in heaven.

Then, you see another person, walking up to the throne. You recognize him- your friend from school a long time ago. You guys used to hang out together, and you have talked about religious stuff before. But you didn’t really feel comfortable plunging into the gospel so quickly. After you finished school, both of you didn’t really see each other anymore.

When it was time for him to be judged, his whole life was recounted. The chief scribe will say, “His name is not in the Book of Life”. And then God will say, “In this life that I have given to you, you have committed these sins, and therefore, you are not worthy of my righteousness.” He will turn to the chief guard and say, “Bind him hand and foot, take him away, and cast him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. For many are called, but few are chosen.”

Immediately, any love or goodness in him will leave him, and he will become completely evil. Then he will be sent to hell to be separated from God for eternity.

So think about it: somehow, by God’s love and divine purpose, you will not be condemned for your sins, but will receive salvation. You didn’t do anything amazing to get it. It’s just that you happened to be raised in a Christian family, or that someone who loves you chose to share the gospel with you. And there are so many more people out there, even people that you know, who have not heard, or seen, or felt this gospel of love before. Can you think of any friends who won’t be in that great hall with you when you are in heaven?

If God could love us so amazingly, and has made this love free, don’t you think that while we still have time, we should make sure they know about salvation too?

You know, when I mentioned evangelism today, what was the first thing that came to your mind?

For some, it might be bringing your friends to church, and those from the outreach ministry will say “hey let’s go for street e!” And for those who came from youth alpha it might be debating about Christianity and proving your faith to those who don’t believe.

And perhaps some of you may never have thought about sharing the gospel before.

But today, I want to tell you that evangelism is not just about waiting for outreaches to happen so that you can invite your friends; it’s not about debating and arguing about whether a God exists or not. Even if you win that argument, you may not be evangelising.

Evangelism is about love.

For those who have been around for a long enough time, do you remember that our church once had this “Be Gracious” campaign? Some of the posters are still around the church. They were encouraging the young people to take the stairs, not to use hand phones during service and so on. But of course, being gracious to one another is not just limited to church activities, but in anything that we are doing, everywhere we are doing it. And I’m sure I don’t have to talk more about this because for the past 6 months, YPM has been emphasizing this again and again – to love one another. Even though this love may be between fellow Christians, our behaviour has a very large impact on how people see us.

In John 13:34-35, Jesus says, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

You see, the ways we act and behave are a testimony of what Jesus has done for us- it is a testimony of God’s love.

Have you ever wondered why, after you received Christ, you couldn’t just be taken up straight into heaven? I used to wonder that when I was younger. But now I know that we continue to live here on earth because we are to be a testimony for Christ. We are meant to think and speak and act like Christ so that those who don’t know Him yet will know Him through us! The Gospel is about love. So if we are here to show people the Gospel, then we need to show them what love is; what God’s love is.

So we have love among believers; and we must also have love for non-believers.

I heard this quote somewhere before:

“So many Christians can win arguments, but they cannot win hearts. They can use logic, but they cannot use love.”

One of the first few times I did street evangelism was about 4 years ago. I joined a group of people from another church who were sharing the gospel with people every Thursday at Ang Mo Kio. Well since I was quite new to it, I tagged along with this other guy called Jon, and I’d watch and pray as he was sharing the gospel.

Okay, since I’m on this topic, let me share with you how we went about doing street e. First we’ll find some place to pray. We will pray for the Holy Spirit to speak through us, to lead us to the right people, and then pray for the hearts of the people to be opened. Then we will start walking around to find people who looked like they were sitting around doing nothing. We met many kinds of people. Some were content with life, and some were sad, so we prayed for them. And then there were some who spoke Chinese, so I couldn’t really say much to them, literally.

And there was once we started sharing with this Malay guy. Okay don’t ask me why we approached a Muslim, Jon did it, so I followed him. So we started sharing. Do you know that the Quran has the books Isaiah and Jeremiah in it too? We would use verses like “by His stripes we are healed” and “He was pierced for our transgressions and crushed for our inequities”, all those prophetic verses from Isaiah and Jeremiah to preach the gospel to Him. And the guy we were sharing with was very good with his religion too! He became very argumentative, and started using our points to shoot back at us. So after a while we decided to end the conversation and we told him that it was a good discussion.

You know, of all the times I have won an argument against an atheist, none of them have ever received Christ because I logically convinced them.

You see, the gospel is not about words that make sense to the human mind. 1 Corinthians 1:18 says that “the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing”. God’s wisdom is different from human wisdom! The gospel may sound crazy to some people, but to us, we know that it is the truth and the living Word of God.

It is not about winning arguments by our own logic.

The gospel is about love. And I believe that the gospel is fully empowered to change lives when it is shared by love.

I have thought of 2 ways we can be a testimony of love:

The first is to speak graciously to people.

In Colossians 4:6, “Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.”

What it means to have our conversations full of grace, is for it to sound nice to people, in a genuine way. If you would see how Jesus always spoke to people in the Bible, it was in a kind, non-offending manner, exception to the Pharisees. And if you speak graciously, people would be more likely to listen to what you have to say. In fact, they will be more accepting of your views even though they disagree. But what is more important is that speaking graciously exemplifies the spirit of love. It becomes a testimony that Christ lives in us; that’s why we speak like Christ.

And being seasoned with salt just means that we have to speak graciously all the time. Just like how every French fry in the box has salt on it, every sentence that we speak must be gracious and kind.

A Bible commentary puts it in a very practical way:

“If anyone asks you for proof of your religion, you will be able to reply to him.

If he is talking to you about day to day things, you will be able to answer him in a warm, kind and, friendly manner.

If he asks you of things which you don’t know about, you will not be too proud to admit it, and to ask him to teach you.

If he addresses you in a proud, rude, and arrogant manner, you will be able to contain your anger, and to answer him with gentleness and kindness.”

Not very easy right? We all try, but every day we try, we are perfecting our lives to be more like Christ’s.

So the way that Jesus loved and spoke to the people, let us also love the people around us, that we can be a living gospel of the love of God. When we start to speak like Christ, people will start to know Christ.

Okay, we will now be reading a passage from the Bible about “The Choosing of the Seven”.

When I first saw this, I thought that whoa, you know, like the choosing of the seven. They would be great preachers who will be sent to the 7 continents to have massive evangelism conferences.

But they were not.

Let us now turn to Acts 6:1-7.

¹ In those days when the number of disciples was increasing, the Hellenistic Jews among them complained against the Hebraic Jews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food. ² So the Twelve gathered all the disciples together and said, “It would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the word of God in order to wait on tables. ³ Brothers and sisters, choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom. We will turn this responsibility over to them ⁴ and will give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the word.”

 ⁵ This proposal pleased the whole group. They chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit; also Philip, Procorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolas from Antioch, a convert to Judaism. ⁶ They presented these men to the apostles, who prayed and laid their hands on them.

 ⁷ So the word of God spread. The number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly, and a large number of priests became obedient to the faith.

And this is my 2^nd point- that we must meet the needs of people.

In those times, the people in the community were very closely-knit. They would support one another in everything. Recently in Singapore we had the news about some old people who die in their homes without anyone knowing, and their families don’t turn up to collect the bodies. But over here, once some people didn’t have enough food to eat, it immediately became a concern for the church. It was such an important issue that all the disciples had to gather to think of a way to solve the problem. What do you think will happen in Singapore? Just send them to a home and the social workers will take care of them right?

But you see, the disciples chose men who were “full of the Spirit and wisdom” to ensure that people didn’t go hungry. These are members of the church- people like you and I. As disciples of Christ, all of us are called to love others by meeting their needs.

I understand that some people have the spiritual gift of helping others (1 Corinthians 12:28), but that does not mean that those without the gift cannot love. Maybe helping others doesn’t come naturally to us, but we should be making it our response to anyone who needs help. Let’s not just think about visiting old folks or children homes, or raising funds for charity. What can you do for your friends in school who may not be so well to do? Or those who are struggling with work- have you ever asked them if they needed help?

Or maybe you’re not able to help them physically, then you could also pray for them; ask them if you could pray for them so that they know you care for them!

You see, meeting needs is also evangelism. In all the gospels, before Jesus properly taught anything, he first met needs. He healed the sick, drove out evil spirits and changed water into wine for a wedding. Helping others will cause them to see God’s love that is working in you.

Through the things that you say and you do, you are showing them what Christ is like, what God’s love is like- you are already in the process of preaching the gospel.

Come, let’s go back to the passage. After they had chosen the 7 guys to solve the problem,

In verse 7 it says “So the word of God spread. The number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly, and a large number of priests became obedient to the faith.”

Isn’t it awesome- that the most basic acts of love can bring people to see and know Christ.

Of course, I must add that eventually, the full gospel must be preached for anyone to receive Christ.

There was this young salesman who has just lost a big sale, and was quite disappointed. He was telling his sales manager, “I guess it just proves that you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink.” The manager replied, “Take my advice: your job is not to make him drink. Your job is to make him thirsty.”

And our lives should be like that – not to impose the gospel on others by telling them what it is, our lives should make other people thirst for God!

If we can always speak graciously and meet the needs of people, we can testify to the love that God gave us first.

I will close with this verse:

In Matthew 10:7-8

⁷ As you go, proclaim this message: ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ ⁸ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received; freely give.

Let us show people the Gospel by loving them.

I’ve just returned from Annual Bible Camp, and I am glad I went. Taking four days off to spend time with good friends- that was a real break from life. The sermons were good, though they were preached different from how we usually do it. The camp speaker did not refer much to the Bible, and we had to discern for ourselves between the biblical and secular information. Most of it was of course, biblical. But not all things that he said were applicable in the Singaporean society, or COS, for that matter.

Nonetheless, I have gained much from the sermons, and have had quite a few good reflections about how I approach the different ministries that I am serving in now.

Meanwhile, I will be preaching for the youth service this Saturday. So I’ll conveniently use that sermon as an update for my blog