Jaspoon

Prayer changes us to engage the culture

Well, God is awesome! We had our 1st Sub District prayer meeting of 2009. I took a risk of not having a guitarist and a worship leader because the designated WL was unable to be on duty.

I was sharing to Victor, KL and Elaine that probably we will just focus on praying and get the Holy Spirit to inspire us to pray. So we decided to do so and not sure what to expect.

We knew we need to stretch our spiritual stamina and hunger in prayer and declaring our dependence on God. That's what I shared before we pray. We need to increase our eargerness to pray. It's not going to be easy for all of us. We are capable to depend on ourselves then to labour in prayer. It's much easy to operate in our flesh and not the spiritual. That's why we came to work out together.

To our amazement, 40+ of us prayed continually for 45mins without stopping. And God gave specific word to encourage and add faith into our hearts. Then we continue another 45mins.

1. God wants to draw those who are timid or insecure but putting up a brave front/strong front out. God wants those to take his authority, the very same authority that he has given to his disciples (Mark 16:15-20). God wants to build the lasting confidence in our lives. It's not the confidence the world models (confidence in your experience, your job, your academic, finance, etc) but having the confidence in Christ. Because when we put our confidence on things or people, it will fluctuates and it will change. But when we put our confidence in Christ, it will grow from level to level (Ps 84:7). We will be more consistent in our boldness and courage and assurance because God is our identity.

That's how we can engage our culture. People in our culture are self sufficent people. They don't need a religion but they need to know how relationship with Jesus is meaningful and relevant in their lives. How to do that? When we grow in our confidence in Christ and face our lives, pain, struggles and challenges different from those who are self sufficient. They will be curious how we do it because it's impossible to have consistent joy and courage in trying times. That's engaging!


2. God wants to use our words to build others up. There is power in our words. We uses thousands of words a day. We either complain or grumble. God wants us to do otherwise. He created the earth by speaking. He called lights. He spoke and the land divided. When we uses our words to affirm and encourage, we are creating a little world / Life inside the person. God wants us to be generous in our words to speak a great future of our family, colleagues, bosses, friends, Christians. Don't be stingy but be generous in doing that as regularly as we can. (Heb 3:13)

That's how we engage our culture. Singaporean complain more than commend. We criticise more than affirm. We sow with what we reap. When we sow a smile, we reap a smile eventually. People loves to be build up and knows that someone believes in them. When we start to use our words like how Jesus would use, we are a walking cheer leader to our friends and family. They will wonder why we can do so continually. They will start to wonder and then thats how we can engage with our lives and sharing of Christ.

I'm just so excited to be among NG8 peeps to become this kind of community that carries the presence, love and power of God in the way we see ourselves (confident in Christ) and the words we speaks. Thank you G, for your timely words!

That's the way we do and be CHURCH!

posted by jaspoon @ 10:11 PM