Miracle Seed Sunday at New Creation Church on April 20, 2008 was indeed a miracle in and of itself. The church had a record attendance in excess of 18,700 ( the previous record was about 18,250) on that day and, hear this, the amount collected was a staggering S$18 million. Yes, your eyes are not playing tricks on you - $18.0 million!! - and there will be more as some members were not ready on April 20 but sowed on April 27.
So why the overwhelming response? I am confident that everyone who sowed is believing Abba Daddy for his/her harvest and already there are great reports of harvests coming into the church. The Lord promised in Genesis 8:22, "as long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease." Whenever the farmer sows his seeds, he expects a harvest to spring forth in summer and early autumn (depending on what seeds he sowed. As surely as night follows day, harvest time will always follow seed-time.
I started sowing into the One-North Project of New Creation Church back in November 2007 and again in February and I will tell you that I have already received 10 times what I sowed. Now I have decided to sow on a regular monthly basis and I am believing Abba Daddy to send me a bigger harvest. Abba Daddy is a God who makes our 'hap' happen. Our 'Karrah' or 'God-appointed' moments will always come and when it happens to us, we receive the blessings and give thanks for them.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Friday, April 18, 2008
Miracle Seed Sunday
This Sunday, April 20, 2008, has been designated as Miracle Seed Sunday and all members of New Creation Church have been encouraged to plant a seed into the One North Building Project of the church. Now don't get us wrong; the church is not in dire straits and need the finances. On the contrary, the financial health of the church is in a fantastic state and the huge amount needed to complete the building is already starting to pour in.
So why then did Pastor Joseph Prince dedicated this particular Sunday to the project? As surely as harvest follows after sowing time, there will be a financial harvest whenever we sow into the Lord's Kingdom. What we give to the Lord as our worship will be so blessed that when the blessings come around, they will be "a good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you." Luke 6:38. And so Pastor Prince is actually interested in each of us receiving our portion from the Lord.
Interestingly also, the Hebrew word for 'seed' is 'zara' but when that same seed is planted (sown), the word changes to 'zarah'. An extra letter 'hey' is added to the seed for there will be grace when the seed is sown and a harvest comes back to the sower at harvest time. So often we want to see results but many a times we forget that the results or blessings come only because someone else had done the sowing and we become the beneficiaries of those blessings.
Remember, all our blessings come to us because Someone had laid down His life (act of sowing into the Kingdom of God) and quenched the Father's righteous demands on us and thereby opening the floodgates for His blessings to flow towards us. So for of us who want a harvest, start sowing into His work. There are numerous ways for us to do that. Ask the Lord to show you and when He directs your path towards that sowing ground, start to sow and then sit back and watch the Lord giving the harvest. That was what the Apostle Paul was referring to in 1 Corinthians 3:1-7 when he chided the Corinthian church for their divisive thinking of who is more important and completely missed the mark that it really did not matter who performed which portion - it is the LORD Himself who enables things to grow (v7).
So why then did Pastor Joseph Prince dedicated this particular Sunday to the project? As surely as harvest follows after sowing time, there will be a financial harvest whenever we sow into the Lord's Kingdom. What we give to the Lord as our worship will be so blessed that when the blessings come around, they will be "a good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you." Luke 6:38. And so Pastor Prince is actually interested in each of us receiving our portion from the Lord.
Interestingly also, the Hebrew word for 'seed' is 'zara' but when that same seed is planted (sown), the word changes to 'zarah'. An extra letter 'hey' is added to the seed for there will be grace when the seed is sown and a harvest comes back to the sower at harvest time. So often we want to see results but many a times we forget that the results or blessings come only because someone else had done the sowing and we become the beneficiaries of those blessings.
Remember, all our blessings come to us because Someone had laid down His life (act of sowing into the Kingdom of God) and quenched the Father's righteous demands on us and thereby opening the floodgates for His blessings to flow towards us. So for of us who want a harvest, start sowing into His work. There are numerous ways for us to do that. Ask the Lord to show you and when He directs your path towards that sowing ground, start to sow and then sit back and watch the Lord giving the harvest. That was what the Apostle Paul was referring to in 1 Corinthians 3:1-7 when he chided the Corinthian church for their divisive thinking of who is more important and completely missed the mark that it really did not matter who performed which portion - it is the LORD Himself who enables things to grow (v7).
Friday, April 4, 2008
The Benjamin Generation Preachers Are Bringing Reconciliation To Ethnic Groups In Conflict
Ever wondered how ethnic strife can be healed? Well, the Lord has the perfect answer - by raising two young eight-year olds among the children of Poso on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi to preach to the very people who just a few years ago were butchering each other and razing their homes to the ground; literally out of the ashes, the Lord is doing a new work.
The Lord prophesied about the end-time church that He will raise a new generation to evangelize the world, we are now witnessing this happening right before our eyes.
Monday, March 24, 2008
This World Is Not Perfect Because Of The Fall Of Man
Alas this world is not perfect because of the Fall of Adam in the Garden of Eden. You see, Adam and Eve were created in the image of God and were given authority over everything that God had created. However, they disobeyed God and sinned by doing the very thing that God told them NOT to do.
God told them that they could eat of everything in the Garden EXCEPT for the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. God had intended them to eat of the other Tree - the Tree of Life - but they chose to disobey and decided to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Here is the principle of the Tithe! Imagine the whole Garden with millions of fruit trees laden with delicious fruits and ready for their enjoyment and to top it all, they were the only ones in the Garden. But they decided to challenge what God had expressively stated not to do.
And so when they fell, the authority which they had over the created order was handed over to the devil to whom they had listened to and therefore submitted themselves to. And that is where the problem started. Since the Fall, you will notice that the Earth is not the same any more. The Bible tells us that thorns and thistles grew (Genesis 3:18) where they were not there before and Adam and Eve were driven out from the presence of God the Creator. In fact it was for their own good that God drove them out else they would have eaten the fruit from the Tree of Life in their fallen state and salvation would not have been possible because the fallen nature would have existed for eternity. Praise be to the Lord He foresaw what would have happened and executed His Salvation plan for mankind.
This fallen world will have to come to an end and a new order will come in when the Savior comes back for His Bride, the Church, and start His physical reign for a thousand years (the term thousand is used in the bible to represent a LONG time because in the eyes of God, one day is like a thousand years and so a thousand years will be like a thousand times 365 times a thousand and you can work out the mathematics of that).
Yesterday was Easter Sunday and it was a day set aside by the Church to commemorate the resurrection of Christ from the dead. It really does not matter which day we chose to remember His resurrection but the fact remains that He did rise physically from the dead and even walked, talked and dined with His disciples and was seen by more than five hundred persons at one instance. The authorities in the days of the early church tried to dispute the resurrection facts but the important piece of the puzzle was that they could not produce the body to dispel what the disciples claimed.
The clock for this fallen earth had already started to tick the moment Adam and Eve fell and there is a time limit to the clock. Soon it will run out of its time and everything will disintegrate. Ever noticed that the fallen earth is getting hotter and hotter because it is so full and ready to explode? Well, I believe it will and that is not until the Lord had taken away His Church in the Rapture which I believe will be very shortly.
Scientists had made some calculations and predicted that the resources on Planet Earth will only be able to sustain humankind for another 50 years at the most. At the present consumption we are experiencing, I believe we would not be able to produce enough to feed every mouth soon (maybe in 20 to 30 years time). What will happen then? I believe the Lord will return sooner that that and we need to be ready for Him.
Are you ready? For those of us who have received the Lord Jesus Christ into our hearts as our Lord and Savior, we will be physically raised up to meet Him in the air but for those who have yet not done so, I urge you to believe in His redemptive work on the Cross and receive Him into your hearts and you will immediately join in the body of the Church His Bride. And the benefits of sonship start immediately.
God told them that they could eat of everything in the Garden EXCEPT for the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. God had intended them to eat of the other Tree - the Tree of Life - but they chose to disobey and decided to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Here is the principle of the Tithe! Imagine the whole Garden with millions of fruit trees laden with delicious fruits and ready for their enjoyment and to top it all, they were the only ones in the Garden. But they decided to challenge what God had expressively stated not to do.
And so when they fell, the authority which they had over the created order was handed over to the devil to whom they had listened to and therefore submitted themselves to. And that is where the problem started. Since the Fall, you will notice that the Earth is not the same any more. The Bible tells us that thorns and thistles grew (Genesis 3:18) where they were not there before and Adam and Eve were driven out from the presence of God the Creator. In fact it was for their own good that God drove them out else they would have eaten the fruit from the Tree of Life in their fallen state and salvation would not have been possible because the fallen nature would have existed for eternity. Praise be to the Lord He foresaw what would have happened and executed His Salvation plan for mankind.
This fallen world will have to come to an end and a new order will come in when the Savior comes back for His Bride, the Church, and start His physical reign for a thousand years (the term thousand is used in the bible to represent a LONG time because in the eyes of God, one day is like a thousand years and so a thousand years will be like a thousand times 365 times a thousand and you can work out the mathematics of that).
Yesterday was Easter Sunday and it was a day set aside by the Church to commemorate the resurrection of Christ from the dead. It really does not matter which day we chose to remember His resurrection but the fact remains that He did rise physically from the dead and even walked, talked and dined with His disciples and was seen by more than five hundred persons at one instance. The authorities in the days of the early church tried to dispute the resurrection facts but the important piece of the puzzle was that they could not produce the body to dispel what the disciples claimed.
The clock for this fallen earth had already started to tick the moment Adam and Eve fell and there is a time limit to the clock. Soon it will run out of its time and everything will disintegrate. Ever noticed that the fallen earth is getting hotter and hotter because it is so full and ready to explode? Well, I believe it will and that is not until the Lord had taken away His Church in the Rapture which I believe will be very shortly.
Scientists had made some calculations and predicted that the resources on Planet Earth will only be able to sustain humankind for another 50 years at the most. At the present consumption we are experiencing, I believe we would not be able to produce enough to feed every mouth soon (maybe in 20 to 30 years time). What will happen then? I believe the Lord will return sooner that that and we need to be ready for Him.
Are you ready? For those of us who have received the Lord Jesus Christ into our hearts as our Lord and Savior, we will be physically raised up to meet Him in the air but for those who have yet not done so, I urge you to believe in His redemptive work on the Cross and receive Him into your hearts and you will immediately join in the body of the Church His Bride. And the benefits of sonship start immediately.
Monday, March 17, 2008
The Righteousness From God in Christ - Philippians 3:9
Jesus instructed His disciples during the Last Supper that His Blood was for the forgiveness of our sins (Luke 22:20) - "This cup is the new covenant in My blood, which is poured out for you." The life of an animal is found in its blood and once that blood is extracted the animal is expired (Leviticus 17:14) and so when Jesus said that He shed His Blood for our forgiveness, He is telling us that He had purchased our redemption by paying the price - His very life.
Paul, in Philippians 3:9, wrote, "and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith." You see, the moment we put our faith in Christ Jesus our Lord we are immediately placed into the righteousness that is found in Christ and whenever the Father looks at us, He no longer sees us as us but us IN CHRIST. All our ugliness have now been wrapped up in the loveliness of Christ; no wonder we can enter into the Presence of God the Father and not be punished because Christ already paid the price and therefore God being a Just God cannot punish the same sin on Christ and then again on us; that would be a gross miscarriage of the law.
So my friends, remember this - whenever we have this accusing finger pointing at us or when self-condemnation rises on the inside of you, know for a certainty that God the Father is no longer mad at you. He had already forgiven you of your sins at the Cross when Jesus dies there for us two millenniums ago and all we need to do now is to appropriate that righteousness over our lives.
Therefore, as the Beloved of our Lord Jesus Christ, walk tall as we have the righteousness of God in Christ and nothing can ever remove that position from us. The only Person who can do that is not doing it because that would have defeated His purpose in coming to this world in the first instance. So, rest easy and lean hard on Christ and all your problems and challenges will fade away.
Paul, in Philippians 3:9, wrote, "and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith." You see, the moment we put our faith in Christ Jesus our Lord we are immediately placed into the righteousness that is found in Christ and whenever the Father looks at us, He no longer sees us as us but us IN CHRIST. All our ugliness have now been wrapped up in the loveliness of Christ; no wonder we can enter into the Presence of God the Father and not be punished because Christ already paid the price and therefore God being a Just God cannot punish the same sin on Christ and then again on us; that would be a gross miscarriage of the law.
So my friends, remember this - whenever we have this accusing finger pointing at us or when self-condemnation rises on the inside of you, know for a certainty that God the Father is no longer mad at you. He had already forgiven you of your sins at the Cross when Jesus dies there for us two millenniums ago and all we need to do now is to appropriate that righteousness over our lives.
Therefore, as the Beloved of our Lord Jesus Christ, walk tall as we have the righteousness of God in Christ and nothing can ever remove that position from us. The only Person who can do that is not doing it because that would have defeated His purpose in coming to this world in the first instance. So, rest easy and lean hard on Christ and all your problems and challenges will fade away.
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