A New Lease of Life

I enjoy the communion of the saints. It was life to me to be together with the saints of the most high God. Yesterday I had breakfast fellowship with a couple of pastors and one elder before Sunday service. Then an elder invited me for lunch after helping me to sell about 10 books and I realized I met his needs, his spiritual needs as he asked me tons of questions over an hour of lunch fellowship. Basically how to run the church, inter personal relationships with the pastor, among elders and church members. Also a number of doctrinal issues that came up. I arrived in church at 7.30am before the 9am start and the pastor and his wife just opened the church doors.

When he asked to leave the breakfast table earlier to return to church I joked that the pastor was “seorang hamba” in a good way, a slave of Christ not of men and one pastor was not very happy that I said the word “slave” and he quoted another elder’s aversion to the term which I replied I already explained to that elder that it was not wrong to use the word “hamba Tuhan” to refer to a pastor. I am proud to be slave of Jesus Christ, apprehended by Him when I was 17 and then at 18 called to His service. 

A third pastor who knows a bit of background told me how he was encouraged to see me keeping my spirits up and remaining where I was. He knew some English “pastor stay and remain as you are and where you are in the [denomination]”. But I was given a new lease of life yesterday. Again I shed tears during worship though not as much as last Sunday though the music was way too loud especially for those sitting in the front now. As Paul says “in honour and in dishonour”. 

Yesterday I was honoured because all four leaders who went up to the pulpit greeted me and said how thankful to God that I was in their midst. Then after service the book sales went briskly. I was asked to autograph most of the books sold and an elder was there to record all the moments when God’s servant is honoured and His Word is magnified.