JOURNEY OUTSIDE THE CAMP

How to be filled with the Holy Spirit every day (Part 3)

Part three of a sermon delivered by my wife and me on 12 June 2011 at Kampong Kapor Methodist Church. Audio is available at the KKMC website.

[Read Part 1 here and read Part 2 here.]

The Word and Spirit go together
Experiencing the Spirit is never meant to be a one-off affair. It’s not as if the Holy Spirit was given to you at conversion and that’s it. In order for us to keep following Christ, the Bible tells us that we ought to be continually filled with the Holy Spirit. How do we do this?

At the point of conversion and maybe some time after that, some of us may have had the experience of a tangible sense of the filling of the Holy Spirit. Perhaps you’ve gone forward at an altar call and someone prayed for the Holy Spirit to fill you and you did feel something: peace perhaps, a stirring in the heart, your heart grew strangely warmed or perhaps you started speaking in a new language. Perhaps for some of you, experiences like that are foreign. But you know and believe that you have the Holy Spirit in you. Whichever group you identify with more, the question remains: How can we be filled with the Holy Spirit every day? What can Christians do to have a stronger Spirit influence on our lives?

How to be filled with the Holy Spirit every day (Part 2)

Part two of a sermon delivered by my wife and me on 12 June 2011 at Kampong Kapor Methodist Church. Audio is available at the KKMC website.

[Read Part 1 here.]

The Holy Spirit at work in our lives
The Holy Spirit is the one that worked to cause this change. Let’s look at Ezekiel. In Ezekiel 36, God gives us details on how he turns unbelievers into believers.

Ezekiel 36:26-27
And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.

God says “I will put my Spirit within you”. The Holy Spirit will come into our hearts. The Holy Spirit will take away our hard, dead disbelieving heart of stone. The Holy Spirit will give us a new, soft, moldable, fleshy heart. The Holy Spirit will work from within us. The Spirit will cause us to want to obey God. The Spirit will cause us to see, understand and believe.  

Notice that this change is because of God’s Spirit, the Holy Spirit. 

How to be filled with the Holy Spirit every day (Part 1)

Text of a sermon delivered by my wife and me on 12 June 2011 at Kampong Kapor Methodist Church. Audio is available at the KKMC website.

Main Scripture Text is Ephesians 5:18-21:

And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.

Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, as we speak this morning, we ask that your Holy Spirit come and descend upon everyone here. Lift off our spiritual stupor, fill us with understanding and wisdom. This morning, we want to talk more about you, Holy Spirit so come, give insight to hardened hearts. Make us tender towards you and your precious word. Lead our speaking in the right way and lead our hearing in the right way as well. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

The Holy Spirit is Given to All Believers
Last week, Pastor Norman talked about the day of Pentecost when 120 disciples of Jesus were given a dramatic infilling of the Holy Spirit. There was a violent wind, there were tongues of flames and there were the disciples uttering words in languages that they had never learnt before.

This was the start of a new era. God was signalling that from then on, the Holy Spirit would come to fill all believers in Christ and to help them model their lives after their master. 

Every believer from then on, would be filled with the Holy Spirit.

Do you believe that? Have you ever wondered if the Holy Spirit is really living in you? Or are you quietly worried that the Holy Spirit is not in you?

I remember we once asked our Sunday School class if they had ever experienced the work of the Holy Spirit in their lives, and if so, they were to raise their hands. Almost every single face stared at us, some with confusion, some with worry, but all with uncertainty. No one raised their hands.    
You know what we told them? We told them that the very fact that they are believers means that the Holy Spirit has already worked in them. They have already experienced the work of the Holy Spirit in their lives. 

How do we know this? The Bible says so.

Spiritual Habits of a Child's Heart 2011

This year's Spiritual Habits of a Child's Heart symposium will be held on Saturday, 23 July 2011 at Fairfield Methodist Church. The symposium is meant for parents, Sunday School teachers and Children's Ministry workers. It's a one day affair that covers spiritual formation in children, children and new media, raising children in a postmodern world, managing the transition years and raising sexually pure kids.

Stuart Briscoe: Put your nose in the book

"Don't put your head on the pillow at night unless you've put your nose in the Book during the day."

 

That was the advice that Rev. Stuart Briscoe shared with the participants of his talk on biblical literacy last night at Kampong Kapor Methodist Church. I had looked forward to Rev. Brsicoe speak, especially after my wife read and summarised his book, Flowing Streams: Journeys of a Life Well-Lived, for me.

Rev. Briscoe's topic was on biblical literacy and he started by talking about how to think about the Bible. He focused on three points: first, the Bible is God's revelation to man. Many people feel that it's impossible to know God or have an accurate picture of him. God knows this and therefore made himself known by revealing himself through scripture. Our God is a god of self-disclosure.

Christian, are you ready to receive all things?

How much do you think God is for you? For the believer, in everything that happens in life, be it good or evil, do you trust that these things are something God does for your benefit? What would you say if you lost your job? Or face financial ruin? Or found out you had cancer? Or lost a child? Or a parent? Or were caught in an earthquake with no hope of survival? Do you trust that God means for these things to work toward your good?

Romans 8:31, 32
What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?

 

Paul's words here in verses 31 and 32 are a bold statement, a follow up from one of the most powerful promises of God: Romans 8:28.

Often times, we live as if God were stingy. We get petty when we feel our blessings are scant. We start to think of protecting the little we have when we feel life getting a little harder. We hold on a little more tightly when we feel we are in a pinch. We worry that God may sometimes not be for us.

Get your head in the Book

I came across this article on the Barna Group's website: Six Megathemes emerge from Barna Group research in 2010. Even though the study was based in the U.S., I could certainly see some of the same themes emerging in our local churches as well. The six themes as outlined in the article were:

1. The Christian Church is becoming less theologically literate.
2. Christians are becoming more ingrown and less outreach-oriented.
3. Growing numbers of people are less interested in spiritual principles and more desirous of learning pragmatic solutions for life. 
4. Among Christians, interest in participating in community action is escalating.
5. The postmodern insistence on tolerance is winning over the Christian Church.
6. The influence of Christianity on culture and individual lives is largely invisible.

How to be a better teacher? Pursue holiness

I've been reading "Don't Call it a Comeback" edited by Kevin DeYoung. One of the points that struck me was about how to be an effective teacher.

DeYoung advises that to see a more effective ministry, teachers (or leaders) should pursue love, truth and their personal holiness. He quotes from 2 Peter 1:5-8—

"For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ."

Moderation is a dirty word

In life, we are told to do things in moderation. Eat in moderation; drink in moderation; work in moderation; and play in moderation. Anything taken to the extreme is bad. What about loving Christ? Christians apply the world's view on moderation onto loving Christ as well.

I've had well-meaning loved ones say to me, "Why are you so passionate about God? Don't take things to the extreme. People will think you're crazy." That's the world talking. When it comes to loving Christ, moderation is a word not found in the Bible.

Listen to the words of Jesus in Mark 12:29,30:

...You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.

Jesus never said that loving God was an add-on to our lives. Christ is not an accessory. Christ is the bedrock of our lives. Loving God is not something we do as a hobby. Loving God is the primary and most fulfilling role we have. Following Christ isn't something we do only on the weekends. Following Christ requires that we abandon following all other roads. Loving Christ means forsaking the world.

The daily question for us then is this: Are we holding nothing back from God so that we can love him with all the love we can muster, with all the strength that we have, with all the brainpower we possess?

If we are not, what are we wasting our lives on? Because nothing else will give us as much joy, drive us with as much purpose, or fill us with as much meaning. When it comes to giving God our all, moderation is a dirty word.

How do we worship God moment by moment?

This is a big and important question. It truly affects how we live our lives in every respect. The key to worshipping God moment by moment is realising how 1) God is all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good, all-sovereign, all of the time and 2) how we rely on him for our life, our means of living (air, food, water, etc.) and 3) how we were created to glorify him but have violated his glory and therefore deserve to die but he has shown us immense mercy by saving us through his son Jesus Christ.