Serving the Lord

The month of May ends tomorrow midnight. I still have a prayer meeting to lead tonight and tomorrow’s worship rehearsal. I can’t remember when I had a break from preaching. But I felt the anointing strong and on Sunday I shall be speaking of end-time harvest conciding with harvest festival celebrated with the majority tribe here in Sabah and on Sunday’s Gawai celebrated by Dayaks, Ibans and the natives of Sarawak. But this month is a month in the Lord’s service.

Betrayal

It’s been five weeks. I thought I got over the sense of betrayal that I felt 5 weeks ago. But the pain does not go away. In fact I would not be writing about this if I did not know what to do going forward. It was not right to step down in less than half a year and many members would be shocked if I did, so I bore with the insult and betrayal but the wound did not heal after 5 weeks.

Pressing On & Planning Ahead

In the past couple of days I had sleepless nights. Just as Sunday night could be taxing after the exertions of the weekend and it was hard to relax and let the mind wind down. On Tuesday night, we had our church council meeting and again I was asked to chair the meeting which I duly obliged. As it was our first business since the election of office bearers last month, the meeting went for just over three hours and we ended at 11pm sharp. In fact, I had to apologise to the council members for the lateness when we were still on AOB at 10.30pm. But we managed to get many things done, not least the activities and programme for the next few months including our Leaders' Retreat scheduled at for the first week of December.

Where are the Men?

The proposed Young Men's Fellowship happened only twice since I suggested to form such a group early in the year. Yesterday on Mothers' Day, it was an eye opener although we had talked about it for a while. There could be 40 mothers who went up as I invited them to come forward to be prayed for but there were hardly ten men seated in the hall. That meant at least 30 women attended church without their husbands. Where are the men? I know it has been a trend among churches that we are losing men. Even young men, only seven of them took part in our Young Men's fellowship while there are easily 20 plus young women who will attend the Youth gathering. It looks like the percentage of women over men is getting ever larger, last time it was two-thirds female to one-third guys but now out of the four women, there is only one man. Where are the men? I need to take time to pray and wait on the Lord for answers.

Baptism of the Holy Spirit (43rd Anniversary)

I received news of the new Pope being elected early this morning. While digesting the news, it dawned on me that the Pope was elected midnight Malaysian time (6pm, 8th May Italy) which is today, the 9th May. It happens to be the 43rd anniversary of the baptism of the Holy Spirit that I experienced at the 3pm prayer meeting at Clyde Street, a road at the side of the University of Canterbury, Christchurch.

Eventful First Week in May

I thought I was going to take a break on Labour Day on 1st May but there was a home group to attend to. Thankfully the traffic was not that bad since it was a public holiday and my wife and I duly arrived at the home of the hosts in good time. I shared for about 20 minutes from two passages but that the labourer is worthy of his wages (Luke 10:7) and from Psalm 17 how the Psalmist said that in his righteousness he will see God's face. I told the home group how essential we continue to be righteous and do righteousness id we want to behold God's face which is truly a privilege by His grace. I can understand why many people cannot see God's face and their worship is routine or following basic instincts instead of being moved by the Holy Spirit into God's presence.