Can't Preach Without Conviction.

Preparing several messages a week is not something I find easy. This week I am juggling between the Sunday's message which is top priority and the upcoming messages for the men's breakthrough weekend. On top of that, I just began the process for the preparation of the church camp messages.

But it is not the hours involved preparing, or even the mental effort that's difficult.  It's the spiritual challenge. Its kindling my enthusiasm on a given morning with a new pair of passages and a blank piece of paper.

How do you stay fresh?

Quoting the Psalmist, Paul answered: “I believed, therefore I have spoken” (2 Cor 4:13).

Here is the key: convictions keep us preachers preaching. A preacher can preach without eloquence, commentaries or training. But one thing he cannot preach without is convictions. He can perhaps ‘talk’ of spiritual generalities, or convey some humanistic message. But he cannot really preach unless his words are coming from his heart, from the deep burners of his soul.

‘I believed therefore, I spoke’, said the Psalmist (Ps 116:10).  What will not only propel a man into the ministry, but keep him there? It's conviction. It's a non-negotiable. And conviction cannot be rushed. It cannot be micro-waved. It comes from struggling through the text to understand the heart of the God behind the text and then coming to the place of surrender to it's call.

Without conviction, the preaching is simply rhetoric, a lot of dazzling words without the depth of His Word darting through the soul. A T Robertson once wrote, "The highest excellence in preaching is where reverent learning is united with great pulpit ability and deep conviction."

Peace Of The World And Peace Of The Lord

 I often like to sit and watch people as they hurry through the streets. They all seem to have  a zest for life and an energy and colour that I can only envy. But there have been too many times when I have also found that inside in of all that zest and energy, they lacked hope because they don't have a meta-narrative. They don't have a big story, a big vision, that can give them perspective beyond the ups and downs of their everyday lives. When their health, relationships, and lives are going well, they feel happy and full of hope; but the reverse is also true. When things aren't going well the bottom falls out of their world. They don't have anything to give them a vision beyond the present moment. As a result, they lay broken."

In essence, that is  "the peace that this world can give us." In his farewell discourse, Jesus contrasts two kinds of peace: a peace that he leaves us and a peace that the world can give us. What is the difference?

The peace that the world can give to us is not a negative or a bad peace. It is real and it is good, but it is fragile and inadequate.

It is fragile because it can easily be taken away from us. Peace, as we experience it ordinarily in our lives, is generally predicated on feeling healthy, loved, and secure. But all of these are fragile. They can change radically with one visit to the doctor, with an unexpected dizzy spell, with sudden chest pains, with the loss of a job, with the rupture of a relationship, with the passing of a loved one, or with multiple kinds of betrayal that can blindside us. We try mightily to take measures to guarantee health, security, and the trustworthiness of our relationships, but we live with a lot of anxiety, knowing these are always fragile. We live inside an anxious peace.

As well, the peace we experience in our ordinary lives never comes to us without a shadow. Strangely, there is a quality of sadness that pervades all the moments of our life so that even in our most happy moments there is something missing. In every satisfaction there is an awareness of limitation. In every success there is fear of jealousy. In every friendship there is distance. In every embrace there is loneliness. In this life there is not such a thing as a clear-cut, pure joy. Every bit of life is touched by a bit of death. The world can give us peace, except it never does this perfectly.

What Jesus offers is a peace that is not fragile, that is already beyond fear and anxiety, that does not depend upon feeling healthy, secure, and loved in this world. What is this peace?

At the last supper and as he was dying, Jesus offered us his gift of peace. And what is this? It is the absolute assurance the we are connected to the source of life in such a way that nothing, absolutely nothing, can ever sever - not bad health, not betrayal by someone, indeed, not even our own sin. We are unconditionally loved and held by the source of life itself and nothing can change that. Nothing can change God's unconditional love for us.

That's the meta-narrative we need in order to keep perspective during the ups and downs of our lives. We are like actors in a play. The ending of the story has already been written and it is a happy glorious triumphant one. We know that we will triumph in the end, just as we know that we will have some rocky scenes before that ending. If we keep that in mind, we can more patiently bear the seeming death-dealing tragedies that befall us. We are being held unconditionally by the source of life itself, God.

If that is true, and it is, then we have an assurance of life, wholeness, and happiness beyond the loss of youth, the loss of health, the loss of reputation, the betrayal of friends, the loss of a loved one, and even beyond our own sin and betrayals. In the end, as Horatio Spafford says, it is well, it is well, with my soul.

And we need this assurance. We live with constant anxiety because we sense that our health, security, and relationships are fragile, that our peace can easily disappear. We live too with regrets about our own sins and betrayals. And we live with more than a little uneasiness about broken relationships and loved ones broken by bitterness or death. Our peace is fragile and anxious.

We need to more deeply receive Jesus' farewell gift to us: I leave you a peace that no one can take from you: Know that you are loved and held unconditionally.

When You Suffer

“And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace,

who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, 

will himself restore, confirm, strengthen and establish you.  

To him be the dominion forever and ever.  Amen.”  

1 Peter 5:10-11

And after you have suffered a little while.
Our suffering is real, be it emotional or physical.   “A little while” does not trivialize it.  But suffering is not the rest of our story.  It will end, and soon – according to this verse.

the God of all grace.
He has remedies, comforts and powers for every need, every occasion, every moment.
He is the God of all grace. And His grace is always sufficient.

who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ.
Someday we will all be in glory; just that today some of us are called home before others.

will himself.
Not mediated but directly and personally.  Not bare luck but his own loving personal involvement.

restore, confirm, strengthen and establish you.
Terms upon terms, because God has thought of everything.
Whatever you have lost he will restore.
You lost a loved one, a dear one; God still restores -
the lost strength, the lost joy, the lost hope - God will Himself restore.
However you are weak he will confirm, strengthen and establish you,
so that you emerge whole, formidable, happy.

To him be the dominion forever and ever.
God is still God alone and He is still on the Throne. He is Sovereign in all that suffering and pain. He alone knows what He is about.

Amen.  Very few things in life deserve this absolute affirmation.  But here is one. Every thing promised will be!

Permission To Dream.

I am so grateful that God surrounds me with people who give me permission to dream.

I’ve been in  meetings before where the leader will share a big vision for a new initiative.

And I’ve seen people in the meetings roll their eyes or give that sceptically look like "Are you sure?" And then immediately share their abridged version of seven  reasons this might not work.

Or subtly point out to everyone how much work this is going to add to their already full plate.

But it must be the sheer favour of the Lord that in recent times, I am so surrounded with people who propel me to dream and dream big. I love to get in a room with staff members and ministry leaders who burst into flames with just a drop of vision kerosene.

I believe we have truly entered into that season of faith where we are believing God for the impossible and getting excited about the God who is more than able!

Last week, when my family was celebrating my son's 21st birthday, he told us his great dream about his future. It was so big and grand, I wondered if I will  still be alive when it comes to pass. But none of us doubted it's possibility. We all gave him full permission to dream, by our responses, both verbally and non verbally.

A lot of husbands and wives, fathers and mothers have grounded their family members from dreaming big. This is sad.

I also love spending time with other leaders who, through their leadership approach and way of seeing the world, give me permission to dream in my own context.

I am attending a meeting Thursday night which to me is a permission slip for dreaming: to set audacious goals, speak them, pray our guts out, work hard, face the obstacles, do the uncomfortable, trust God through it all and give God the glory when it comes to pass, or try again if it doesn’t. It makes life so exciting. It gives me the reason to wake up every morning with fresh hope and joy.

We all need permission to dream.

To my Wife, my Children, my Staff, the Agape Guy's Ministry Core, the Heads of Ministry (Worship, Rays, Agapeland, Chinese), the Cell Leaders and the Council - thank you for giving one another the permission to dream and dream big for God!

Check this verse in Eph 3:20: Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us. 

God is more than able to do more than we are able to imagine!

Permission granted. Go dream.

Exposition Must Be For Application!

“Sound Bible exposition is an imperative ‘must’ in the church of the living God. Without it no church can be a New Testament church in any strict meaning of that term. But exposition may be carried on in such way as to leave the hearers devoid of any true spiritual nourishment whatever. For it is not mere words that nourish the soul, but God himself, through application of the Word and unless and until the hearers find God in personal experience they are not the better for having heard the truth. The Bible is not an end in itself, but a means to bring men to an intimate and satisfying knowledge of God.”

A. W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God (London, 1967), pages 9-10.