Secret of Contentment

Today is the last day of 2011 and 2012 starts tomorrow. Looking back to 2011 and before that you will note that the world faced economic turmoil, most countries were affected. Because of economic uncertainties many ordinary people all over the world also faced prices increase of foods we eat. Under such circumstances many people are looking for contentment. Contentment is not happiness but more so, joy in the Lord.

I was reading an on-line magazine and I came across this article about contentment written by John MacArthur. I needed to remind myself of these Biblical principles and I believe many readers will benefit from these principles. This is perhaps a good start for the new year knowing the gloom in the world economies.

1. Give thanks in all things.

2. Learn to rest in God's providence.

3. Learn to be satisfied with little.

4. Learn to live above life's circumstance.

5. Learn to rely on God's power and provision.

6. Pre-occupied with the well being of others.

A quote "Contentment is not the fulfilment of what you want, it is the realization of how much you already have".

To read the full article by John McArthur click on the title of this post.

Power of Positive Prayer

You must have read and heard about positive thinking. Even in the secular world motivators have emphasized the power of positive thinking. But for us Christians positive thinking is not necessary a bad things but it appears that God is left out. Here it is merely about our own thinking, but we know our God created everything and He has plans for us. Power of positive prayer is above positive thinking and it is about focusing our minds on God promises for us and not on the worldly problems. Granted we Christians are also subjected to problems, but these problems are small things compared to God's promises to us His children. As we focus on God's promises we can turn our lives into positive prayers. When we walk with God daily, following His commands we can live our lives as a daily prayer to God. The Bible commands us to pray without ceasing, other than uttering prayers aloud or in the mind, living according to God's command is also prayer without ceasing.

To read the full article click on the title of this post.

Shroud of Turin

Sometime ago researchers said the Shroud of Turin was a forgery. Now scientists claimed that it is the real burial cloth of Jesus.

The scientist said

"There are no chemical or physical methods known which can account for the totality of the image, nor can any combination of physical, chemical, biological or medical circumstances explain the image adequately," they said, according to the Telegraph.

A professor of chemistry at Pavia University, Luigi Garlaschelli, shared with The Independent: "The implications are... that the image was formed by a burst of UV energy so intense it could only have been supernatural. But I don't think they've done anything of the sort."

To read the full story click on the title of this post.

Journey to Christmas

It will be an experience to be in the Holy Land, just to be in places where Jesus Himself had walked thousands of year ago.

Watch this video about modern explorers going there.

Global Christianity

The Pew Forum Survey found recently that Christianity is the largest religion in the world. There are about 2.18 billion Christians today out of a total population of about 7 billion. The question is what is the main reason for this growth ? It appears that the Christians as a percentage of the world's population has been steady for many years, and the recent growth was because of population growth in countries where Christians are residing. The areas that are growing most are Sub-Sahara and Asia Pacific regions.

In terms of the growth in Asia-Pacific region, China will be leading the growth. Sources said there are Christians in China ranging from 70 to 170 million. No one really knows because the Chinese government out-law the "house churches" (underground churches). Reports from missionaries that there are multiple thousands of these churches in China, and people are coming to Christ by the thousand each day. There is a great harvest in China. There are reports that very soon China will have more Christians than the US. One very encouraging information is that the Christians in China are of "one mind" as far as Christianity is concerned. They do not have problems of denominations issues, because to them Christianity is just believing in Jesus our Almighty God. They are not concerned about the differences. China is the country to watch. There is a movement started several years back called "Back to Jerusalem" movement, that is bringing back the Gospel from China across all nations from there back to Jerusalem. Pastor Peter Tsukahira has prophesied in his book :God's Tsunami", about the movement back to Jerusalem.

To read the full article click on the title of this post.

Joy In Worship When Depressed

Most people including me found that it does not make sense that while we are in depression we can worship God joyfully. This I learnt from Pastor John Piper and worship leader Bob Kauflin. Usually we associate our emotional state with our outward activities like worship for example. People usually do not worship when they are emotionally depressed. But John Piper said our emotional state and state of contentment in Christ are two separate things. We can still worship with joy even in depression. John Piper said "A depressed but born again person, Piper added, has a “seed of contentment in Christ.” “And the form it might take is, right now I feel nothing; I am totally numb emotionally. But I have a memory that there was once a sweetness of affection, a sweetness of trust… and I by faith believe it’s still down there because theologically, the Bible says it... I now, in this room while everybody is singing and I don’t have any feelings… I am saying to Him, please restore to me the joy of my salvation.”

Worship is affirming our satisfaction with God according to Piper, he said "you can be “satisfied with God and weeping your eyes out at the death of your mother.”

The key to worship for the hurting is found in 2 Corinthians 6:10: “Sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything.”

This message about worship is really an eye opener for me.

To read the full article click on the title of this post.

Kuching Christmas Parade

Last evening a Christmas parade was held in Kuching. It was organized by the Methodist Church and the Kuching Minister Fellowship was also invited. In total including branches of churches, there were 27 churches participating in the parade. This got to be the largest Christmas parade so far in Kuching. The organizer expected about 4,000 Christians to attend, but from the turn out at least 5,000 Christians participated in the event.

This year's theme was "Peace in Christ", and it was a fitting team because we all wanted peace for our nation. For the past two years many events have taken place that affected the rights of Christians in this nation. It appears that many of these rights are slowly taken away. It was indeed a show of unity among the Christians in this city and beyond by the number of Christians coming to celebrate the birth of our Savior Jesus. He came to die for our sins, and to redeem us and give us eternal life. Regardless of denominations, many churches participated in this parade because it is important to be in one body of Christ. We must all join hands to fight the enemies outside, let's stand as One in Christ Jesus.

Praise God that although it is the rainy season now there was no rain last evening. During the afternoon it rained, and the weather was cleared for the parade! Hallelujah! Praise God!

Click on the title of this post to read a news report prior to the event.

Christmas Parade - slideshow with music

Famous Atheist Christopher Hitchens Died

He does not believe in God and wrote books and preached that God does not exist. He wrote a best selling book "God is not great".

Whether one believes in God or not each one will be accountable to God after he/she died.

Click on the title of this post to read the full story.

Internet Evangelism is Effective

Many things can be done on the internet and on-line businesses is a trend. It appears that the Church is not left out in using the internet as a media to spread the Gospel. Personally, I thought that people will just read and go away to do something else, but it seems that beside casual reading those committed Christians who came to know the Lord via the internet continue to become disciples and help to spread the Gospel further. Global Media Outreach found that more than half of those who cam to know Jesus spread the Good News further. This result in itself is a good news for Christianity. In fact the social net work like Face Book has helped millions to know Jesus. The FB page "Jesus Daily", has hits greater than some celebrities like Lady Gaga. The internet has helped the Gospel to be penetrated into many unreached societies. As long as there is an internet connection the Gospel can be shared with these peoples. Another positive point is that many users of the internet are young people and they are the ones coming to Christ. Praise God!

To read the full article click on the title of this post

Prison Ministry

Kuching New Prison

Last Sunday a Brother popularly known as Uncle Ben shared about he and his teams' experiences in the prison ministry work in Kuching here.  Uncle Ben is already 82 years old and yet he has the passion and determination to serve in the prison ministry which he and others have done for the past 18 years.  The other members from our church are Bro.Song, Bro.Arthur and Bro.Chin.  Since 18 years ago Uncle Ben and his team has baptized about 400 prisoners from the locals as well as foreign countries.  At present there are prisoners from Indonesia, Philippines, China and Nigeria.  Of late, there are more Nigerians because many initially came to study in the colleges here but committed crimes and were locked up by the authorities.  Uncle Ben testified that many of these foreigners received Jesus after they hear the Good News from his team.  Praise God!  Uncle Ben remarked that in fact we do not need to go out of our country to do mission, the mission field is right here!  Hallelujah!  Praise God!

Uncle Ben shared that many miracles happened in prison.  He related how a prisoner who could not speak well, could not stand straight, but when he came out of the water of baptism he could talk well and stand up straight!  He was healed!  Praise God!  Many prisoners broken by crimes and separated from their families were finally reconciled with their families after they were released. Many of these prisoners were touched by Jesus and appreciated the work of our brothers.  Bro.Song shared on another occasion that a Nigerian who was converted went home to his country, but on occasions he still call Bro.Song to talk to him.  This ex-prisoner even went home to convert his mother!  Hallelujah!  Thank God!  Even in prison our Lord Jesus is doing mighty work.

There are women prisoners in the Kuching Prison so Uncle Ben appeal to the Sisters in our church to volunteer to help these prisoners.  Although there are only 9 women prisoners, there are work to be done.

The other work is helping those in parole.  They cannot go anywhere as they like and volunteers are needed to help the prisoners liaise with the Prison authority.

 In recognition of their work here,Prison ministry received a certificate of recognition from Prison Fellowship International, USA and also another certificate from the Federal Government of Malaysia.

Our church are very appreciative of the work done by Uncle Ben and his team.  We thank Uncle Ben, Bro.Song, Bro.Arthur and Bro.Chin for their work in helping the prisoners to come to the Lord.  We pray that they will find favors with the Prison Authority and their help in accessing the prisoners to share with them the Good News.  May the harvest be plentiful.  Amen.

You may read more information from Prison Fellowship International by clicking on the title of this post.

Sarawak Re-Awakening

National Evangelical Christian Fellowship Malaysia (NECF) interviewed Pastor Robinson Simunyi of SIB Canada Hill, Miri about issues facing Christians in Sarawak. His answers reflected the current sentiments of Christians living in Sarawak. From observations it is heartening to see Christians from all walks of lives and from different denominations coming together for common purposes. For the past one and the half years we witnessed this trend emerging. The Kuching Minister Fellowship (KMF) here has been organizing monthly prayer meetings in various Churches in the city of Kuching for the past one and half years. I personally attended many of these meetings and I could really sense the spiritual hunger of the Christians and the fervency in their prayers. The prayers were of common interests, like prayers for political fairness in the election process, to elect righteous candidates, fair treatment of all citizens, peace and social justice in this country. Since two months ago KMF has started to organize prayer meetings outside of the city of Kuching, like in Bau (a town about 40 minutes from Kuching), and Lundu another town about 2.5 hours from Kuching by road. Ihe main purpose is to engage the rural pastors and their congregations. Personally, I am touched by the unity of various denominations especially in coming together to pray for our nation and to pray for each other. There is this feeling of belonging to One Church of Jesus. After all, God called us to be in One Church focusing on Jesus Christ our Lord.

We are praying for revival to come to Sarawak, spread to Sabah and Peninsula soon. Revival can happen when we all pray as One.

Read the full interview by clicking on the title of this post.

Little Drummer Boy

Canadian teenager Sean Quigley's Christmas song "Little Drummer boy" has gone viral on Youtube. As of now about 786,000 people had watched his video. He is a drummer and interpreted this song in his own way.

Merry Christmas to all! Watch it here:


A news report of him:

Christmas Prayer

Gratitude

I came across this touching video from reading a fellow blogger's page. The message is indeed inspirational. Many of us tend to complain about things that may not be well as we wanted them. Perhaps after watching this video we may think twice before complaining. Many of us are blessed. In fact, as long as you can read this on the internet, you are blessed! Have you think of that?

God has given us so many beautiful things to enjoy, the sights, the sound and most importantly our relationships with our love ones and our fellow humans.

God encourages us and in Hebrew 13:3 He says "But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called “Today,”.......". As Brother David narrated in the video he says even when we meet others we bring blessings, and we are also blessed.

Be patient in watching this video, it is slightly long. Be blessed by this video.

Trees in the Bible

Bible teachers Rosemarie & David Searle of Melbourne were at our Church last week to teach a series on the Book of Revelation. David delivered 5 sessions of about two and a half hours each session. Revelation is a difficult book for many and his teaching helped many to understand this Book. It was interesting to find that the Book of Daniel in the Old Testament was related to the Book of Revelation in the New Testament.

On Sunday David taught our church using the subject of "trees" in the Bible. He said those verses on trees in the old testament were referring to the story of Jesus because Jesus died and was hung on a "tree" that was the Cross made from a tree. He believed that Jesus was hung on the tree of good and evil as mentioned in Gen 2:9. At least the tree was the representation of the Cross. In Act 5:29-32 was about Jesus hanging on a tree. Act 10:39 it was about the Jew killing Jesus and hung Him on a tree.

David also shared that the Chinese in ancient time knew about the revelation of God in the Old Testament time. In 1986 the Chinese in Sichuan discovered a 3.9 meters bronze tree. He said that most likely the Chinese knew that it was the tree of good and evil as written in the Book of Genesis. This tree has fruits, daggers representing harm if one eats of the fruits, hand of a woman representing Eve, a serpent representing evil. (see picture of tree above).

There are also many Chinese characters that tell the stories in the Bible.


Video of excavation and assembling the bronze sacred tree

Can Christmas Still Change the World?

This is the season again, Christmas is around the corner. Like any other years Christians usually celebrated Christmas the "secular" ways. We celebrated Christmas like the world does, buying gifts for love ones and enjoying ourselves just like the world obsessed with entertainment of all kinds. In these processes we forgot about our Lord Jesus Christ on His birthday! We celebrated His birthday but we ignored Him all together! Yours truly here is guilty too. But how are we to celebrate Christmas in a meaningful way not like how the world celebrate it? Precisely how can Christmas still change the world?

There is a community of people who work towards changing our mindset as well as changing how we impact our communities in our celebration. Pastors pastors Rick McKinley, Chris Seay and Greg Holder wrote a book "Advent Conspiracy" to change mindset. There is a website "Rethinkingchristmas.com" for people to join this community to share ideas of how to spend less on Christmas on ourselves and spend to help the less fortunate.

We can do likewise here in Malaysia. There are many poor without clean water, electricity and even foods. We certainly can help these poor living in our neighborhood.

Let us be Christ like and give to the poor this Christmas.

A "Merry Christmas" to readers. May God bless you.

To read more click on the title of this post.

Sister Wendy Beckett

Sister Wendy Beckett is a 81 year old nun as well as an art historian. She livse in a mobile home next to the Carmelite Nun in Norfolk. I remember watching documentary about her but did not think much about her story. I have been reading Nicky Gumbel's book "The Jesus Lifestyle" and he mentioned about Sister Beckett. She is not only a nun but an art historian who became famous in 1991 when BBC featured her in their art documentary. That was not what inspired people all over the world, it is her lifestyle, living for God everyday of her life. Since 16 years of age she has been a nun, and that was when she acquired her first habit (dress of a nun). She lives a very simple life devoting at least 7 hours to prayers everyday. This is what she said "My daily routine is simple, but unvarying. I spend as little time as possible thinking about what to eat, wear or what to do next. This sets me free to pray: my raison d’être. I go to bed at 6pm. I used to get up at 3am, but now rise just after midnight. I stay silently praying in my home until I go to the monastery for Mass at 8am. I have two short breaks for coffee and breakfast bran, but, like my hours of work, these are just another form of prayer". She is such an inspiration to many, in this modern world of troubles one can still find people like her willing to give up all material things for God.

She literally lives The Jesus Lifestyle!

To read the full story click on the title of this post.