In the morning, one of my colleagues came up to me saying, “I need a favor.” I don’t usually respond with, “Sure! Anything!” but for this case, he was Kumar, an old friend of mine, and I agreed immediately.
The favor turned out to be this: He was having trouble sleeping at night because he hears whining from the main street of his home, and he said there was a puppy stuck in the drain and as I’ve once talked to him about my dogs, he reckoned I was a part time SPCA worker and could I please help?

A quick profile of Kumar: He had been a vegetarian for 20 years, and once went 14 days without food and just juice because one of his muslim friends complained about the Puasa period and how Kumar didn’t need to suffer. We usually engage in discussions on religion and beliefs. He believes in Jesus. He also believes the garden of Eden is inside your spirit and that you are full of energy matter and if we are pure enough we can turn into light and disappear and that Jesus went to India and died there with the samis. He believes in lots of things and I’ve come to group all these beliefs into the umbrella religion I call Kumarism. He has compassion for everything, since everything has a ’spirit’, so that pretty much explain the sleepless nights over a puppy stuck in a drain two roads away.
We’re good friends…the kind that goes beyond the boundaries of colleagues, and our conversations are usually good natured arguments.

Back to the puppy:

Why don’t you get him out? I had some reports to finish at that time and I wanted to get it done…

I tried, there were three. Took 2 without any problems and put them back into the abandoned house next to the drain.

Abandoned house?

The mother and the family is there, but they started barking. The last puppy wriggled and gave a lot of problems . When I put him down next to the drain, he started running off and fell into the drain again. I got him out and he fell in again.

Well, put him in the house then.

I tried but the whole gang of dogs came and I was forced to run.

Ohh-kay.

And so lunchtime found two jokers in long sleeve and tie going down the big drain somewhere in Puchong area. So there was the little puppy, breathing heavily in the drain, lying down, half under drain water and possibly one more day left in its existence. We put on surgical gloves and I thought Kumar was going to help me, but he just held a stick and motioned for me to go down. Go on, I will guard in case the dogs come. I think he’s scared of the puppy’s massive killer jaws and bone crunching teeth.

Once I got the puppy out, I wanted to wrap him in a blanket, but he started getting up and running off again and if I didn’t smack him in the head, he would have plopped back into the drain. Kumar’s upset that I smacked the pup. By now, the puppy was crying and squealing and the family of pariahs were howling and coming to the rescue. At this point, I think Kumar may have regretted taking the post of the guardian. I quicky grabbed the squealing puppy and ran into the abandoned house, dropped him there, and dashed back out, locked the gates and the both of us started running back to safety.

It was funny, but it struck me how we are sometimes like that puppy. Everytime God rescues us from the drain, from sin, we just want to hop back in and start bawling again. We don’t know what’s good for us and once we’re down at the drain again, we’re helpless until we are rescued. Why do we go through that cycle? Sin entices, and consumes and when we’re in too deep, there’s no way we can get out. Like that puppy, we start squealing when God takes us out, rescues us with situations and circumstances that occur around us, to wake us up. Because we don’t know where we’re heading, we wriggle out, trying to find our own way. And down we go into the drain again.

Sometimes, trusting in God is not as easy as it sounds, but if we know the result is always for the best, it becomes a little easier, I guess.

Kumar and I congratulated ourselves over our roles as saviours, and he invited me into his home for lunch.

Vegetarian of course.

When was the last time we had a worship in either the Saturday or Sunday worship session with only 3 songs?

Trading My Sorrows

Joy of My Desire

Still

That was it, and it took me 40 minutes to go through that, although the final song “Unto You” which was practiced the hardest, didn’t even materialise. I told Jon that it always happens when I led, we never finish our songs.

Ps Julie spoke about I Will … Rest. It was quite amazing how God worked. I never knew that she was going to talk about rest…in fact, listed as the topic was Sow One Seed (or S.O.S. — the YA always comes up with these cool acronyms), which basically was evangelism I guess. In fact I almost overhauled my song list to tie it with the message, but I finally stuck to the original list. When she mentioned how she wanted to sing ‘Still’, it just fell in place. Her message was Rest, and the list fitted her sermon.
Wow.

But the tough challenge: “Give me Oil in my lamp”, spontaneous, in pseudo Country Western.

I had not much idea what I was playing on the guitar, to be honest.

Mega Church = Great Church?

24/02/2006

GT has a goal: to hit 5000 people by the end of 5 years. We’re a little shy of 2500 right now but that’s just an official number. That’s taking into account the English service, tamil service, Indonesian service, YA, Youth, Chinese service and the church cat if there was one. We’ve got about maybe 900 or more on an average for the English service itself, and that’s not really filling up our church.

What has to be done? Can we become like one of those “Mega Churches” in Malaysia?

Before anything, here’s a list of megachurches and their congregation in US:

http://www.forbes.com/2003/09/17/cz_lk_0917megachurch.html

On the onset, it seems that these churches are “people oriented”. I’d take it further to state what Rick Warren wrote in “Purpose Driven Church”:

“One reason sermon study is so difficult for many pastors is because they ask the wrong question. Instead of asking, “What shall I preach on this Sunday?” they should be asking, “To whom will I be preaching?” Simply thinking through the needs of the audience will help determine God’s will for the message. . . . People’s immediate needs are a key to where God would have you begin speaking on that particular occasion.”

Yet, didn’t Paul state in Gal 1:10-12:

10Am I now trying to win the approval of men, or of God? Or am I trying to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ.

Paul was admonishing what he knew was a ‘different’ gospel; we are not sure exactly what, but we can be sure sometimes the gospel isn’t something that people want to hear. If we’re sinning, the church isn’t supposed to make us comfortable. How many people come to church wanting to be condemned for sinning? I don’t suppose a lot, yet the gospel speaks plainly about it, and sin was the reason why God sent his Son for us.

Not saying that Saddleback or Willow creek or Lakewood are false churches; on the contrary, there is undeniable anointing in their worship: but can all mega churches be considered great churches?

A mega church can have explosive growth, but if a new direction comes in, say for repentance and exposure of sin, that growth might start declining. Some argue that we should get the people in first before we can sort them out; but wouldn’t that be a misrepresentation of the gospel? Shouldn’t we just say the gospel as it is and speak what God wants us to speak instead of what people want to hear?

It’s better to be a mile deep than a mile wide.

Can it be done that growth in numbers be parallel to growth in spiritual health?

1) Prayer

Acts 2:42 – 27 talks about prayer first and foremost before the work of God is done. It’s very much like the abiding and abounding concept from last week. Prayer is the way we can achieve our First D; diving deeper. Wednesday prayer meetings are important for the members to attend, because only through prayer can we achieve Mile Deep.

2) Presence

Infilling of the Holy Spirit. Dwelling in Him, living by the spirit. Empowerment of the holy spirit allowed Peter to get out of his shell and reach the potential placed in him. Great Churches live by the Spirit. There’s empowerment to carry out ministries. Healing Rooms, Worship, Altar Workers all need the holy spirit to carry out their ministry in our church.

3) Proclamation

A great church is an outward looking church. One of the concepts of some mega churches is that unbelievers are seeking. They gravitate naturally to churches. While there are some cases like that, it’s dangerous to assume all unsaved will eventually be found wandering into a church because of an inherent instinct. And it is critical to know that churches need to reach out and proclaim God’s glory, and not expect people to come into the service because they are seeking all the time.

4) People

And finally, people. At the end of the day, the church isn’t the building but the people. Community works, kindness, showing people we care; these are the things that can make a church great.

The Mega Church phenomenon will grow, definitely and sometimes, I hear a church growing spectacularly in one or two years. GT has been around 30 plus years; but it is steadily growing. Spiritual growth at the end of the day is more important that physical growth; for at the end of the day, when we are put through the fire, can we say we have withstood the test?

Hi guys,

Angie will be going off today to Australia! Have a safe trip and get updated through the site…also, u can post too and put up pictures and stuff and tell us bout your trip. I’ll get Justin to write up something on how to use the site…I’m afraid I’m still a little unsure how to do some stuff, but Jus is smart, he’ll figure it out…

Tonight is Winst’s last cell with us for the next 3++ months; it’s a sudden move to ship him to Bangla on Monday to work on a project! We’ll spend some time praying over him tonight and after that, Alvin and Justin will be organizing yet another pigout session and Kel’s cell will be here! Uncle Jeremy, we’ll be having more TEA again!!

Pauline, a couple of prayer points that we’ll bring up:

1) Winst

2) Justin’s aunt – for comfort after miscarriage

3) Ms Lau, Pauline’s friend for healing from 2^nd stage breast cancer

Thanks for sharing out the email…

For me, I was pretty shaken last week when I found out one of my friends died during a dive trip. We still don’t know what happened, but I think he panicked during a deep dive and shot up. Lung ruptured maybe or drowned, I don’t know. We weren’t best of friends, but we mamaked together and did our advanced license together and I enjoyed diving with him. He loved life, and it showed in all aspects: his dressing, his smile, his passion in photography and God, and as a group, we’re all massively sad. He was only about 36 or something and had so much going on. So yeah, Pauline, I do question God sometimes, but He has his own Plans for us and knows when we would come in and expire in life. Acts 17 reads:

26From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. 27God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us.

Life’s pretty fragile, and God has reminded me over and over again through the loss of friends, close or otherwise, not to take things for granted, and that for each tragedy, there are lessons to be learnt.

Hope this encourages you..

Stevie Heong

Secure Access Operations

Telecommunication Services

Phone: +603 8315 8000

Direct: +603 8315 7739

Mobile: +6019 239 8629

Fax: +603 8315 8100

What are the things to have?

• Prayer requests categories
• Integration with photo albums
• Ability to post in main page
• More categories and pictures! More ideas, such as lyrics, chords, sports, events, cooking recipe, guitar notes, etc etc
• Links links links to other blogs and from there to this!
• Map to the cell
• Articles and posts from cellies…
• Duty Roster

Church Review 2, 2005

MEP 1 Class Begins

The first taman sea cell group meeting!

I actually planned to be a little creative to kick off our first cell group, but really couldn’t figure out what. One of the things that I thought of was giving each member as they come in a number and depending on that number, they’ll end up in different rooms. That way, it would kinda put us all in a small group facing one another and have some interactive discussion of sorts….but I reckon that’d be too stressful for a first cell, what the hey, another time I guess.

Shared a little on abiding and abounding, but kinda left the cell notes after a while to have the examples of Elijah and Peter. I’ll set up separate categories for cell notes.

Roles and Responsibility also provided, would likely update the ‘Who is ThreeDs’ page to reflect the job scopes

After that, we did a ‘census’ and finally got from the cell more information like baptism and membership so we can plan ahead on the foundation classes to attend.

We also had Thomas buying pizza! He’s got promoted as well as a bonus, making him officially the wealthiest in the cell! Many more blessings to come!!!
The other cell joined us for the Pizza and Tea party and it was a great time catching up…it seems strange we are different cell now from the rest, but hope that through such events like makan or sports or anything, we won’t lose any of our bonding as such.

First cell attendance: 15.

Not bad!

Abiding and Abounding

17/02/2006

Though the cell notes was useful, I went through it briefly and added in my own illustrations:

Elijah and Peter.

Elijah was the guy that took on 450 Baal prophets and called fire from heaven. His resume included resurrection of the widows son, being fed by ravens, causing rain to stop for 3 and a half years, parted the Jordan and basically made a nuisance of himself to King Ahab, the most hopeless of all hopeless kings of Israel. So in 1 Kings 19, we find him fresh from his victory in Mt Carmel. Wow! What a high he must have felt. That’s like winning the World Cup, or defeating Tiger Woods in the World Matchplay and nabbing 1 million bucks.

So why was he afraid (19:3) when he was threatened by Jezebel, the queen, who was also a prophetess of Baal? He RAN FOR HIS LIFE. I’m like, what the? I mean, you’d kinda expect Jezebel to be pissed off because she probably had an uncle, cousin or childhood buddy among the 450 Baal prophets that Elijah ordered to be killed, so he wouldn’t be too surprised at a woman’s wrath. What was up with Elijah?

Some commentary stated that Elijah was having a burnout. After such a high, he would have expected at least Israel to repent and turn its back to Baal worship. Disappointed that his expectations were not met, he just kinda gave up and said, Lord kill me for there is none righteous.

He went to Horeb, which was Sinai, and there waited on the Lord. In Chapter 19, the Lord sent 4 things to him: First, a great gust of wind, but He was not in the wind. Then an earthquake but He was not there. And then, fire, but He was also not there.

Then, the Bible says, there came a still small voice.

God is not just a God of the spectacular, of Red Sea partings and fire from heaven. He is also a God who hides himself and only reveal himself when we seek with all our hearts. Elijah needed to abide and he did just that, to listen to God’s voice and to be still.

After that, he took up Elisha as an apprentice and his ministry grew even more.

Peter was similar. Here was an impetuous man, who no doubt loved God but had very little idea what was required of him. John 13 talks about Jesus at the Passover and Peter just gets a little whiny. First, when Jesus washed his disciples feet, Peter says “You will never wash my feet!” then after reprimanded, went “Wash my head and hands as well!” We can only shake our heads at Peter’s outburst: here was a man who loved God but did not really listen or abided in Him. When Jesus says someone will betray Him, Peter was the one who asked “Who is it?”

And finally, when Jesus says that He will soon be leaving and they cannot follow, and that they had to love one another as a new commandment, Mr Peter misses the entire commandment and got stuck at the first part, he asks: “Where are you going?” and misses again when he said “Lord I will die for you,” forgetting that Jesus had mentioned He would die for them, not the other way round.

Because Peter never really listened or abided, his fall was great. Denial followed depression and I think he underwent profound changes during that moment and the moment he was restored at the end by Jesus.

When Jesus restored Peter, he abided together with the others at the beginning of Acts. Acts 1:4 states that Jesus told them to wait until the Holy Spirit came. In 1:14, it states they met continually for prayer, abiding in God. Peter took the lead to select Matthias to replace Judas, and here we see a changed man, a more matured Peter.

After abiding and then being filled with the Holy Spirit, Peter went out and had one of the greatest preacher debut ever. He brought 3000 people to Christ in a passionate sermon in Acts 2:41, and his abounding began in earnest.

The balance need to be there, and we need to take time out so that like Elijah, though we might be matured, burnout and fear and tiredness are realities we face and we need to find our own Mount Horeb where we can abide in God and listen to the small still voice.

Likewise, for us who struggle for maturity like Peter, we need to question less and listen more to God, who speaks to us everyday through events, friends and the Word of God. Through abiding, we can hopefully mature into someone like Peter, and bring our own 3000 into God’s kingdom!