I just thought I would share my journey the last three weeks....
The week after I preached the message on Moral Margin, I fell sick. I ran a fever for three days and my voice gave way and I was struggling through the preaching with a bad voice the following Sunday on Professional Margin. Christina, my wife pointed to me that she observed a pattern that every time I preach on moral/sexual issues, I tend to fall sick and we wondered whether this could be an attack from the enemy.
Anyway, as I recovered from the fever and the bad throat, I discovered that my morning devotion time was turning dry. I was in the book of Ezekiel and from that time, every time I opened the Word I received nothing from the Lord. This to me was unusual because I was always able to find something in any passage that I read that would inspire me and stir my thoughts. But for the whole week following, I just felt the silence of God.
To my surprise, when a guest speaker, Gary Koh came to preach at Agape on the Sunday following Chinese New Year, he called on the church to write some affirming note to the Senior Pastor. That Sunday, I received many encouraging notes, most of them appreciating the pulpit ministry at Agape. I didn’t quite understand what the Lord was doing. On one hand, He was not speaking to me, yet on the other hand He was affirming me about my preaching.
I wondered what God was about in this sudden silence. And I was wondering how I was going to preach a Gift To The King (GTTK) message the following Sunday when I was not hearing anything from God even from my personal quiet time. In fact, I was all ready to preach on God, Land and Man, a message I had preached in the earlier years of community-taking. I reasoned since we have so many newcomers over the last few years in our church, it will be okay to do so.
But on the Wednesday before GTTK Sunday, I felt the Lord direct me to the life of Abraham. I studied Gen 12 to Gen 24 and I was amazed to discover the way God blessed Abraham for the way he obeyed God, outside of Himself. Those few days, I felt so nourished in the Word of the Lord. The GTTK sermon followed on Sunday – I received an email later saying that was truly a “God-powered ' sermon.
But Monday came and I still sensed God’s silence. It was then that I knew God gave me that Word for the church and the many who have been obedient to Him with regards to the community. But he was still quiet at a personal level. I felt my job was to stay obedient to opening the Word despite His silence. And it was not until last weekend that I felt a breakthrough. And what a breakthrough, it was.
The scriptures promise us that those who wait on the Lord will renew their strength. This past weekend I was in KL ministering and I came home truly renewed in strength. No, it was not the ministry that brought about the renewed strength.
On Sunday afternoon, after church in the morning, I found a quiet spot at Starbucks in Times Square, KL while Christina went shopping. I had about two hours to myself. Among other things, I was reading 2 Corinthians 4:6—"the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ". And I was flooded by a whole new depth of the knowledge of God. It was not a head-knowledge. It was heart-knowledge. It came like it did for Lydia in Acts when the Lord opened the eyes of her heart. Suddenly there was a new assurance of the things I had hoped for in God and a stronger conviction of things not yet seen.
It was a knowledge that was so real, so precious, so satisfying to my soul, that at that moment if there was any thought, any attitude, any emotion which threatened to distract me from that knowledge I would have fought it at all cost. Nothing else mattered. Nothing else was more important. At Starbucks, in that short time, I met the Lord and I was so strengthen.
The Lord said that those who drink of His living water will never thirst again. That means there is a deep satisfaction in God that is far superior then anything that can satisfy. I became thirsty for that kind of deep, divine satisfaction. Maybe it was the dryness in the weeks past that created this thirst but all week long I have been praying, "Lord, show me what it means to drink of you and be fully satisfied."
Indeed, they that wait on the Lord never faint! God does come through and when He does it is with bouts of inner strength!
