Releasing the Burdens we weren’t supposed to bear

In the same theme of “God, Self, Cell”, this was in the circle of Self, where we needed to be a clean vessel in order to be used. And in all things, trust and entrust God with our anxiety as stated in 1 Peter 5:7.

We need to recognise the burdens to be released:

1) Burden of Self Reliance

In an analogy of a sheep, there are Three Ds: Dumb, Defenceless, Dirty. We are like sheep: without God we have a meaningless existence. Without trusting our shepherd, we are lost. (Isiah 53:6). As long as we carry this burden of self reliance, we are incapable of truly trusting God. Jeremiah 17:5 states, “Cursed is the one who trusts in man”. It is foolish to believe that we are self-sufficient when it is God who created us and caused all that is. It was God who brought us to where we are, so should we not follow him to where we need to go?

Do you trust God and believe that he wants to lighten your load? Are you carrying the burden of self-reliance?

2) Burden of Worry

Worry divides the mind. Our energies become split between today’s priorities and tomorrows problems, and as result we are using today’s strength on tomorrow. What we ought to be doing is utilizing today’s strength to meet today’s needs. Matthew 6:27 tells us not to worry! God will deal with everything when the time comes. Focus our energy for today and not have a half minded walk with God. Turn your worry into prayer and allow God’s peace to guard your heart and mind against worry. Remember also that what we put into our minds determines what comes out in our words and actions.

3. Burden of disappointment

A Missed appointment.

Remember that our appointment is with God, not man, as man will always disappoint. In Psalms 147:3, there is a promise that he heals the broken hearted. In James 5:13, we should pray to overcome these burdens.

Well, we’re back from an amazing time up in Cams!

Will be writing later on the trip itself, and the things we did up there, plus putting up the requisite pictures. In short, we had everything you could throw a kitchen sink at:

Tom Yam dinner,ping-pong tournaments, scrabble championships, spirit filled worship, personal devotions, prophetic ministries, breakthrough in relationships, more ping-pong tournaments, english breakfasts of toasts, scones etc, market browsing for corns and fruits and veges, games that got us drenched, Johann rolling on the ground blindfolded, and down the hill, literally; water pistols, water balloons, and all out water war, KFC, outdoor session on the patio, walking in the tea plantation, and of course tea, tea and more glorious tea.

Our theme was called “God, Self, Cell” — we had 4 sessions overall, and even though the session leaders didn’t really get together before the retreat (traveling etc), the direction of the Holy Spirit was awesome: We had a distinct unity in our sharing and as we went along, the sense of being guided became clearer and clearer. The retreat focused mainly on the book of 1 John, that covers the love of God, the sinful Self and the love for Others.

The GSC Model

First lesson on our cell retreat: Throw everything out the window. I thought of having the 4Ws like a cell group but ended up sharing, then break out individually for personal quiet time, and coming back to worship; and the spirit just ministered from there.

I introduced the GSC (God Self Cell) Model as follows:

It starts off with a large circle of Cell, and what we can impact through the cell. This isn’t limited to cell ministry but can be the church, or bible study group or worship team etc. For simplication, lets call it Cell. Listed outside the circle, impact points like missions, ministries, community, world, nation, evangelism or anything we can think of, that as a cell group, or a church group we can (and want to) drive towards.

Then the second smaller circle, Self, is contained within the cell. What we, as individuals can do to impact the cell group, or personally impact our neighbours, family members, colleagues, church, oikos and our ministries, be it worship, YA, children etc. These are within the cell circle, and we can write what we want.

The inner circle is God, the centre, the focus. Our relationship with God directly impacts the main battlefield in life, that within the Self circle. Here wages the spiritual battles and warfare all of us must endure, and most of the time, enduring it alone, by the grace of God. Here, we write the things we struggle with, strongholds that keep us from progressing, the issues that separates us from a perfect fellowship with God. I put in quite a number, but it’s a very personal list of “God, you gotta help me in this…”

It all sounds very theological, but it’s really not. It’s just a matter of putting God as the centre and get Him to help us with all those issues we list out in the self circle. From there, we can impact the cell, and from there we can impact the rest of the world.

I thought we could come together as a cell and start ministering immediately. But without the focus on getting ourselves right, and accepting God’s standards in our lives (1 Thess 4:3-6), that of holiness and abstinence from immorality, our service becomes a mockery to Him. First, accept the standards of God, then purify and deny the Self, and then minister using the Cell, Church or individually.

It doesn’t happen sequentially but it does need to happen consistently. We need to imprint the realisation of our sin and the hopelessness of our situation without God, then understand and accept the grace and salvation of our God, and finally to use the gifts to minister to others. As we mature spiritually, these three circles are constantly active; God-Self, Self-Cell, Cell-Others.

It doesn’t mean we need to be perfect before we start serving in Cell, no. But the requirement of a relationship and the surrender of those issues to Him, is needed. We’ll stumble, or falter, but God’s call is to walk as He walked (1 John 2:5-6) and leave the life of sin, i.e the acceptance of habitual sin is no longer present, and our conscience no longer allow us to sin without bearing witness to it. (Acts 24:16).

The GSC Model 2

I ended the retreat with a wrap up session and again presented the GSC model in a different light. In each circle we see a progression towards God’s plan in us.

It starts out with the fact that we are all sinners, and God’s judgement towards us. (Romans 6:23, 3:23)

But as we move out of the center circle, we realise that God loves us so much that He died for us and provided us a way back to eternal fellowship with Him. (John 3:16, Romans 8:5, 1 John 1:9, Eph 2:8-9)

While we are restored back, we will inevitably still face struggles in our walk, which isn’t unusual. In the battlefield of the Self, God provides us the solution to overcome. (1 Cor 10:13, 1 John 3:9, Romans 6:6, Hebrews 12:11, 1 John 5:4, 1 John 4:4)

And when we mature further, we can begin to minister with Gifts to the Cell, Church and community. (Gal 5:22, James 1:27, John 16:14, 1 Cor 12:27, 1 John 3:16, 1 John 3:23)

Conclusion

I don’t know if this illustration makes any sense, but it seems pretty clear that unless God is the center of all our efforts: to overcome sin, to minister, to progress; we will always hit a brick wall in our walk. We need to honestly list down those issues in our Self circle, and make provisions and agree with God to do battle, because the guarantee is that the Devil won’t be backing down from it. All the more, our security in 1 John 4:4, the promise that He who is in us, is stronger than he who is in the world!

Venue: 2nd floor Church Office

9 am - 7 pm

Ps Lee Kuan Ming

Cameron Highlands!!!

In preparing for our Cell Retreat, here’s another article again from Os Hillman from Today God is First: 

Psalm 147: 10-11, “His pleasure is not in the strength of the horse, nor His delight in the legs of a man; the Lord delights in those who fear Him, who put their hope in His unfailing love.”

Do you ever feel so skilled in what you do that you require little help from others? Perhaps you may feel that you are more skilled than any other in your field. Does God need your skills and abilities in order to accomplish His purposes on this earth? The answer is NO. 

One thing God does not need is our skills and abilities. However, He does give us the priviledge to exercise our gifts and abilities for His service. That service may be as a computer technician, a secretary, an ironworker, or even a lawyer. God calls each of us to our vocations to work unto Him. To believe that He needs our skills to accomplish His mission on earthy would be to lower our understanding of an all-encompassing and all-powerful God. The psalmist tells us that His pleasure is not in our strength and ability, but His pleasure is in the attitude of the heart. It is what we find in the heart that helps determine whether ability is translated into availability.

You see, God is looking to and fro throughout the earth for a man or woman who is fully committed to Him. A man or woman who is committed to fearing the Lord and placing his hope in His unfailing love is the person God seeks to support. “For the eyes of the Lord range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to Him.” (2 Chronicles 16:9a) When our agenda becomes His agenda, we can expect God to fully support all that we do. 

If we want to see our skills and abilities multiplied a hundredfold, then we must make them completely available to His service. Where are the opportunities in which God is calling you to be available to Him? Next time, someone asks you to be involved in some activity, before you say yea or nay, make sure you check in with the Master of our decisions to ensure that your gifts and talents are being used, as He desires.

Eileen’s Birthday!

I was having an animated discussion with some of my Czech friends over drinks after our conference. I still maintain that Czech people, compared to Germans and Austrians, are a lot more laid back and easy-going. It’s a general statement, I know, since I’ve got a number of good German/Austrian friends as well; but the Czech can get pretty rowdy after work, which makes them quite funny. I’ve got a good friend called Milos who likes to remind me that Czech is the number 1 beer drinking nation in the world and Germany a distant third (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_beer_consumption_per_capita) , and he said that to me while lying on the floor on our tram home, and me and another guy had to kick him every few seconds to make sure he was alive.

Anyways, back to our conversation. Milos was telling me a little bit about Czech history and we got into a discussion on the controversial chapter in Czech history in WW2. One of the reasons why the Old Town Prague was so well preserved and considered one of the most beautiful cities in the world was because there were no aerial bombardment during the WW2, that affected much of the other cities in Europe. There was a minor bombing by US by mistake at the end of the war but it missed Prague city and hit one of the other districts, among them the Vysehard area, where I stayed…and it wasn’t pretty. It looked like…industrial Munich.

While most Czech are generally proud of the fact that their city was the most well preserved city in Europe (Charles Bridge is the oldest bridge, simply because all the other older bridges were bombed to smithereens), my friend didn’t like to think that his country was the only country that allowed Hitler to come in without any resistance. Apparently, their president that time succumbed to Hitler when threatened an aerial bombardment will destroy all the beautiful buildings in Prague and the city, much like the bombardment that flattened Warsaw, Poland.

I’m not sure how much truth is in that, and I do love Prague and being with the people there, but a thought occurred to me; that in many ways, Prague can represent us at times. Beautiful on the outside, constantly preening, proud of our achievements and status in life? There’s nothing wrong with success: in fact, Joseph became the prime minister in Egypt and Lazarus himself was a very rich man. Joseph of Arimathea, the follower of Jesus was as rich as Donald Trump in his days. But to what extent will we go to preserve our status, our success and riches? That we compromise our beliefs and our stand, and allow the world and its influences to come into our borders, so that we are accepted and not persecuted, so that our reputation don’t get ‘bombed’ like Warsaw?

Granted, we can start with good intentions; the army in Czech were ready to fight. But their allies (France, Britain, Hungary) deserted them and they lost their advantage in the mountain regions which was given away to Germany without consulting the Czech. They would have lost anyway, the same way Poland lost, and perhaps that was why the President gave in, to save lives. But some Czech believe that they should have at least fought, and contribute something to the war, despite losing the beauty that defines Prague.

They eventually did contribute significantly (perhaps more than most countries, they assassinated the Security Director of Nazi), and influenced the war and lost many lives, but the old myth remained: that out of the preservation of Prague’s beauty, they initially gave in to Hitler without a fight, while the rest of Europe fought valiantly on. On hindsight, I think it was the right decision, since we are now treated to such a magnificent city, old and wonderful, retaining much of its medieval charm, but for purely illustrative purpose, we need to ask ourselves some questions.

As we prepare for our retreat, ask ourselves: Do we allow the pressures of our work, our friends, our relationships dictate our stand with God? Are we compromising our borders to preserve our status, our ‘beauty’? Are we trading inward integrity for outward appearances?

Are we Prague in our walk with God?

Here’s an interesting piece of article written by Os Hillman. If you’re interested, you may log in to the website at http://www.todaygodisfirst.com/ and subscribe a daily devotional for the workplace. 

1 Chronicles 29:17a, “I know, my God, that You test the heart and are pleased with integrity.” 

God tests His children to know what is in their hearts. God’s desire for each of His children is to walk in relationship with Him, to uphold His righteousness and integrity. It is a high calling that we will fail to achieve without complete dependence on Him. The greatest tests come not in great adversities, but in great prosperity. For it is in prosperity that we begin to lose the sensitivity to sin in our lives. Adversity motivates us to righteousness out of a desire to see our adversity changed. Prosperity fails to provide this motivation for obedience. We fall into a satisfaction and confidence in life that is based on our prosperity rather than on God. 

Hezekiah was a great godly king. He was faithful, God-honoring king most of his life, but toward the end he became proud. God wanted to find out if he would still honor Him and recognize His blessings in his life. He failed the test when God sent an envoy to his palace to inquire about a miracle that God performed on behalf of Hezekiah. The test was designed to find out if Hezekiah would publicly acknowledge the miracle performed on his behalf.   

But when envoys were sent by the rulers of Babylon to ask him about the miraculous sign that had occurred in the land, God left him to test him and know everything that was in his heart. (2 Chronicles 32:31) 

Hezekiah’s failure resulted in his children failing to carry on as rulers of Israel, and the nation would eventually be taken over by Babylon. 

The lesson of Hezekiah is clear. If we are to remain faithful to our Lord, we must remain steadfast in our obedience to Him. Prosperity can be our greatest test. Ask the Lord to give you the grace to be a faithful follower during the times of prosperity.