What I took back from today's Staff Devotion

Today at staff devotion, we had a guest speaker come and share with us as our Division leaders went away for a retreat. Just wanted to note it down so that I won't forget. He was sharing about his difficulties in ministry with the youths and how it is so challenging, not so much the youths but many times, their parents can really be a pain as well.

Amongst his sharing, he mentioned how a parent got upset with him cause he had to tell their child to step down from ministry cause his relationship with God wasn't going well and it was starting to reflect outwardly in his ministry. And he went to still apologize to the parent. He told us "I apologized not because I did something wrong to her son, but I apologized because I hurt them."

When I heard that, it really touched my heart to know that we don't apologize because of the action that we did, but instead for the reaction that was caused by the initial action (which might not be wrong in the first place). This was something that I want to hold onto in every area of my life; my relationship with God, my family, my friends and my ministry.

Serving with Great People - Judah 4

I am simply amazed at how God's people would rise up to the occasion to give and serve beyond their physical limitations. Last Friday we had our huge event which catered for 46 people! There were so many new visitors that night too! Praise God for that!
When it came to the night before the event, the people were working so hard trying to get everything together and ready for the big night. I am so blessed to have people with such heart to serve God. We even have new visitors that came to help out. It is just so obvious that the heart of servant hood has been passed on through the people.
I want to do my best to lead this unit into greater heights in God. May God's hand be so evident in my service towards Him as well.

Passion vs Commitment

Yesterday at Ablaze conference 2009, we made it there in time to listen to Ps Ben of Lifeplace shared at the workshop. Having travelled all the way to Yandina just for that session, I felt it was so worthwhile! Ablaze conference rocks!!! God bless you guys at Ablaze even more over today and tomorrow morning.

During the workshop, we had a Q&A time where someone asked the question "What happens when I no longer have the passion to serve God"? When I heard Ps Ben's reply to that, I was so encouraged. He said along the lines of - serving God something Christians should be doing. It is not dependent on your feelings or passion. If that's how we walk in our Christian life, then there will always be lots of ups and downs, which makes our relationship and walk with God very unstable. If I had to choose, I'll choose commitment over passion.

That was so true and something that I had close to myself. Times when I feel so down and out, but still on the roster it says KM on worship leading. I would be dragging my feet to practise and all. But without fail, on Sunday pre-service practise will always sound like the worst session ever and it just gets worst. But when service starts, the time of Praise and Worship is handed over to God, I can just feel God ministering to myself as I lead. It is such a privilege and honor to serve God.

So when time comes where passion is all lost, remind yourself that as Jesus had to drag himself to carry the cross to Calvary, we too sometimes just have to pick up our cross and follow Christ no matter what!

Press on my fellow Christians!!!! Passion will come when we serve God wholeheartedly even when it is doing the lowest of tasks!

Fear of men or fear of God?

Do I fear men more than I fear God? Have I done the things I am doing because it pleases men or because I know that it pleases God?

When I was prayed over today, the message that God spoke was about that fear that I have in my life, not being able to proceed on with God because of the fear that I have. I used to have such a 'we can do anything with Christ' attitude in the past as a student leader. But now as I have progressed into a different phase of life; married, working and being a Dad, I have that fear within me that the youths that I am ministering to might not be able to learn as much as they want to from me. And at times, that might have caused me to 'dilute' the message so that it might still be pleasing to the ears of people.
But in doing that, I am not helping them to grow spiritually; not helping them to set a higher standard in their Christian walk. I should have said things like 'Church conference will help you grow more if you would make that decision to come and allow God to speak to you' or 'You know this relationship is not something would be pleasing in the eyes of God right now, why do you still want to go ahead with it?' or 'Choose for yourselves this day who you want to serve; God or yourself.

I must remind myself that I hold the responsibility of raising a younger generation of Christ followers who would lead and rock this planet for Christ. And NO ONE is ever too young for God to touch and use!!!!! Please if you are reading this, remind me along the way if you feel that I have forgotten this fact.

There are plans and ideas of having life group nearer to IES, starting a youth service on Sunday and starting shepherding at 530am in the mornings. There is fear rising up within me as I even think about these ideas. Will it eventually happen? What will my leaders think, will my people follow me, will I give up half way? I am praying that these are ideas and inspired by God. And that I am responding because of my obedience towards God. May God give me the strength and perseverance to pray and seek His face until these all come to pass!

Multiplying Christ like people - Will God use me more in that area?

Yesterday was Day 1 of our Church conference 'EXPONENTIAL' Multiplying Christ like people. It was a good time where Ps Wilson was really reaffirming the hearts of the current mentors and also inspiring the future mentors to rise up as well.

It has been such a privilege to serve together with my core team, they have made serving God so much more fun and enjoyable. Today was the start of the guys coming together to develop both their spirit and physical man! It was so encouraging to see Jason, Wenyu, Josh and David meeting with myself to do a short run and 20 counts of star jumps at the Regatta Citycat Terminal. After waking ourselves up with the run, we went on to pray.

I really hope that this would last longer, just that some of the guys live a little further, thus it might be hard to do it on a daily basis, but at least on a weekly basis would be great as well!
In our prayer together, we prayed for:

• God to increase in us as we decrease.
• God to help us surrender our 'idols' in our lives
• God to help the guys in Judah 4 rise up even more to lead and serve the unit
• the upcoming IES July orientation that we'll see 2 groups of guys coming in. firstly guys that are not Christians but have hungry and ready heart to listen and accept the grace and forgiveness of God into their lives, secondly Christian guys whom God has built a strong foundations of convictions that will not weaver who are ready to serve God as His mouth piece together with us on IES.

And at the prayer, I also made a great discovery, that David is a really talented guitarist! He just started learning less than 1 year and he can already play songs like 'Hosanna'!! Praise God for raising up another guitarist!

After all that God has sparked off in the hearts of the males in the group, I really pray that the fire will continue to burn even stronger until the coming of Christ! Thanks guys!

Last Group Shep with the Girls

Last Group Shep with the Girls
Originally uploaded by kelvin and chia yen

It's not so much of a fare well sob kind of Shepherding. But this is probably our last group shepherding (as in this combination). The last shep before baby pops, and I move to another life group and some of them are also moving to the working professionals group. I am going to miss hanging out with you gals, thank you for making discipling such a joy and encouragement. I shall not go on too much here before Sharon blames me for making her cry :)

Weekends of Weddings

We attended 2 weddings 2 weekends in a row. I love weddings, shows the love and commitment of couples and it also reminds me of every moment of my own :)

Congratulations to the 2 new couples - Don & Grace; Joseph & Phuong

You guys are going to enjoy the journey ahead.

Weddings are fun when you get to take some shots afterwards, especially since both have got finger food served in pretty gardens.

Ivy's Birthday

The gang of girls
Originally uploaded by kelvin and chia yen

We had a lovely time celebrating Ivy's Birthday last night with all the core team girls of J1. It was a nice time just chatting over the dinner table with a bunch of girls. To top that off, the food was great with free entree (any entree of your choice) that came with the main course. I haven't had so much food to my satisfaction for such a long time but was definitely 'lusting' over the fresh oysters and the oyster shots. Had to settle for the cooked ones ... poop. Click on the picture for more pictures of the night.

Hope you had a great time Ivy, thank you for being such a great pal over the years and this girls team would not be where it is without you too! :)

Thoughts of the week

I had such a good time this week catching up with all my "non-sheep" JG and leaders. One of the best thing is discipling is seeing how God is always doing something in each persons' life and it's always so exciting and gratifying. I am just so excited because each and every single person I've met this week have just reflected so much growth in their character maturity and their journey with God! Though there were still struggles and challenges, their willingness to continue to seek His face and longing to be led by God more just encouraged so much! Thanks guys (incl. girls), I look forward to meet you all more often and I am looking back at each conversations thinking of how much I have enjoyed each session too! Keep walking and looking ahead, and be found faithful in every single aspect of your life!

Ministry of People (Part 2)

Learning more and more about my ministry of people, I just grew to understand that people who don't experience God will never have that maturity to accept tough hits from the evil one. Moses had to come out of his comfort zone to do something he did not want to do; to lead people. I think I fully understand the struggles he had and some reasons why he did not want to lead the Israelites. Then were not even supportive or appreciative of what he did for them.

Moses was already a free man, he had a comfortable life, with his family and all. But God had to come in and challenge Moses to another level of faith in God. God had great plans for Moses, but the people Moses was leading was just not understanding how much God loves them. All they did was complain and complain, why isn't there food, why do we only have manna, why is there no water. They just kept complaining about their physical needs.

I reckon people have not changed over the few thousand years. People are still caught up with their physical needs and wants. That is why it seems like its so hard to lead and deal with people, trying to meet their needs, comfort them, counsel them, teach them and sometimes even trying to catch them when they are falling.

This is an on going process of us Christians maturing. Moses out of his frustration from leading the people, he failed to trust God enough to honor Him as Holy (Nu 20:12). He was also rejected from the promise land.

I really don't know how come people are just refusing to grow up in their maturity of their faith. All they keep asking if for more milk, more milk. Seem like other leaders of the bible faced the same problem. So I will press on with my growing faith in God.

Heb 5:11 We have much to say about this, but it is hard to explain because you are slow to learn. 12 In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! 13 Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. 14 But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil. 6:1 Therefore let us leave the elementary teachings about Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again the foundation of repentance from acts that lead to death, and of faith in God

God will be my guide, shelter and pillar of strength. More importantly, my grace and love and patience for the people. I NEED YOU GOD!

Ministry of People

God's love and grace is the most amazing thing we can feel or find on earth. Nothing else compares or even comes close to it! God just poured out so much for us, and He is still pouring out more for us. If only we can stop to think about what He has done for us and not just keeping on the track of asking God for more and more and more and more and more and more.

God will never not have enough to give to us, just that sometimes overlook the attitude of having gratitude for all that He has done for us. Appreciating what He has already given to us and never stop thanking Him for everything. If we actually stop to thank God for everything, we won't even have enough time in our lifetime to do it! So how come we are more caught up with the things we want don't not yet have?

Sadly, we as Christians only keep asking and wondering how come God doesn't give us this, doesn't do that for us, asking why we are still stuck in this situations, why God has placed such a difficult person for me to shepherd, why doesn't people understand me, why can't I do what I want. These questions just keeps on floating around our minds and guess what, we would in our most natural human instincts go and entertain it with our best utmost abilities! As we entertain such thoughts, we then fall into that trap of being self-centered and focusing at what our needs are and how others fail to meet that need.

"TING TING TING!!!" ITs WAKE UP CALL TIME!! It is time we stopped and look at the things that are happening around us and STOP thinking only for yourself! Yes, we are important to God, but we can't just be satisfied looking at the mirror and say:" Oh, You are so important to God, God loves you and God cares for you." We have to learn to say it to OTHER PEOPLE who are also living on this earth with us, in case you happen to forget that you are not the only person living on earth.

Spare a thought for your brothers and sisters, don't just be focused upon your own needs. Take a step out from the mirror and look at the needs that are out there. You'll learn to appreciate life a lot more and learn to appreciate what God is doing in your life already. MOST IMPORTANTLY, to learn to give to others and appreciate others because that is exactly what GOD Himself commanded us to do. Love Your neighbours as you love yourself.

Things that I still learning; the ministry of people is really a tough one. After pouring out what you as a limited human being have, people still can ignore all you have done. Just like how people have ignored what God has done by GIVING HIS MOST PRECIOUS; His son Jesus.

I'm learning to be humble and take what ever people are giving me and give to people whatever they are asking from me. My only cry:"If only they would see the example and learn from it."