Pastoral Reflection: Faith Challenge rockofages.org.sg/media-resources/pastoral-reflection/542-faith-challenge Today, we celebrate the fifth anniversary of Rock of Ages Church. Rock of Ages Church began on 20 August 2008. We rejoice and I believe God rejoices too. Five years is not a long time. Neither is it short. It has been an exciting journey with the usual ups and occasional bumps and challenges along the way. Overall, God has been good and immensely faithful throughout this faith journey. We are so thankful for His goodness. The Christian life is a faith journey. After all, the Scripture says that without faith it is impossible to please God. God speaks through His Word. He also speaks prophetically. By His Spirit, God leads and guides us to accomplish His will and purposes. God speaks but it conditions upon us to believe and act upon His words and promises. If Abraham had not responded in faith and left his homeland, he would not have become the father of many nations, including Israel. If Elisha had not left his oxen and family, he would not have tasted the power of God. If Peter, James and John had not left their fishing nets, they would not have become apostles. If these men had not responded in faith, none of them would have realised God’s promises and purposes for them. Throughout these five years, God has given our church a number of promises. We have not quite seen these promises materialising yet. But we believe that they will come to pass in due time. We believe and therefore we respond in faith. One such promise is God would bring growth. The promise is accompanied by the instruction to enlarge the place of our tent and to strengthen our stakes. The promise is encapsulated in Isaiah 54:2-3. Verse 3 is the promise and verse 2 the instruction. Isaiah 54:2-3 (NIV) - Enlarge the place of your tent, stretch your tent curtains wide, do not hold back; lengthen your cords, strengthen your stakes. 3For you will spread out to the right and to the left; your descendants will dispossess nations and settle in their desolate cities We understand the instructions contained in verse 2 means to build capability and also to look for a much bigger premise. To realise the promise, we have to respond in faith. Before we see the increase in the number of people, we must act like it is going to happen. So, we acted on God’s prophetic word. We increased our staff strength. We also began to seek God concerning relocating our worship venue. Sometime later, God began to open the door. An ideal opportunity became opened to us. It happened in quite a coincidental manner. Everything about it looked good. The only consideration was whether it was God’s will for us to move to that particular location. Later that day, I came back home and spoke to Pastor Adeline. She asked, “Tell me the names of the two churches that are confirmed going there.” I gave her the name of one church and the pastor’s name of the other church. She walked to her study table and came back with a piece of paper scribbled with handwriting. It contained the details of her dream. She said, “The Lord gave me a dream a few days ago. In the dream, our church has just moved into a new premise. That pastor’s church is our neighbour in the same building.” Fascinating! I knew that God had spoken. Two nights later, God gave her another dream. In the morning, she asked me, “Does bus number 61 go to that location?” I didn’t know. Neither did she know. Upon checking, we found out that bus 61 actually stopped at the Eunos bus interchange nearby, which is just six minutes’ walk away. Amazing! This is like living in the Book of Acts! It is exciting. However, like I said earlier, claiming God’s promises require faith. Put it in simply, the rental-equivalence is less than $2 per square foot for the next twenty over years, which is extremely attractive. But our challenge is to pay $4.8 million within the first year. This is a hefty amount for a church of our size. So far, our members have pledged a total of $2 million. This is a remarkable amount but we still have to raise another $2.8 million quickly. This is our faith challenge! We believe that God will provide! Pastors Les & Adeline Chua
Posted on: Sat, 20 Jul 2013 11:53:45 +0000
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