At The Wedding

AT THE WEDDING

¹³ But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, ¹⁴ and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”

¹⁵ When one of those at the table with him heard this, he said to Jesus, “Blessed is the one who will eat at the feast in the kingdom of God.”

¹⁶ Jesus replied: “A certain man was preparing a great banquet and invited many guests. ¹⁷ At the time of the banquet he sent his servant to tell those who had been invited, ‘Come, for everything is now ready.’

   ¹⁸ “But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said, ‘I have just bought a field, and I must go and see it. Please excuse me.’ (Luke 14)

Over this years of serving the Lord and living by faith, my wife and I have experienced God providing and taking care of us. He does this through the care and love of the people He has brought into our lives..namely - our family and friends and even Church leaders that we have the privilege to cross paths with.

Sometimes we have felt like a burden to them and that's when we always cry out to God to give us our own so that we don't need to be a burden. However I've come to realised, as someone told me a long long time ago...be humble enough to receive from God.

Why? because when God blesses and provides He does it through unsuspecting sources and people. To see how much sometimes people have done for us and stood by us..I just stand in awe and so humbled by it all. Instead of complaining about who He uses, my wife and I have learn to give thanks and appreciate people more. Thank God for our parents, siblings..for people like Pastor Benedict and Betty Rajan, Pastor Wee, Pastor June and Bro Ding, for Bishop Daniels and Alicia and so many many more.

Its because of them, my wife and I can do what we do now. Its because of them I love God more today. So whenever God wants to bless you, let Him do it His way.

Luv
Edwin 22/3/11

He is God, I'm not.

^{HE IS GOD, I AM NOT
10}Let be and be still, and know (recognize and understand)

 that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations! 

I will be exalted in the earth! (Ps 46:10)

In this season of prayer and fasting for me, God is doing delivering me from self. I suppose so many times in wanting to make things happen, I've taken things into my own hands. I do pray and pray alot, but one thing I have often failed to do...that is to let Jesus be God.

When we play God or try to bear the burdens of life, we try to be God. You see we are in the flesh and weak in corruption. When we try to bear things on our own, we end up messing things up. Because we are not meant to do those things and neither do we have the power to make things happen !  God never created man to bear life. God created man to walk with Him. When man learn to walk with God, they must learn to let God go before Him. Many times we go ahead or are left behind because we want to be in CONTROL.

We fear being taken out of our comfort zones or fear and manipulating of others. Instead of empowering and loving people, we repress and destroy lives and relationships  by our effort to control - to be God. God does not control, He loves. 

Jesus never forced anybody to love Him. He loved them. He was always with the rejected like the tax collectors, forgiving the unworthy. Fellowshipping with Zaccheus. Loving us. He always was with people. How He succeeded ? He loved His Father first. Jesus is who we must be. Its because He love His father, He came to us. Because of His Father's love in Him, He loved us. He always helps people to the point they are so helped they can walk in freedom !

I've learnt to trust Him more. 

Just yesterday (18/3/11), I needed RM1,595.00 to pay for our Church renovations. Till this point, God has brought a Pastor and her husband across our path. They have given so much to lift this church up. We always think it takes many to do much..I've learnt one thing from this couple, all it takes is God !

So my wife and I prayed hard. God's presence was so strong when we were praying yesterday. God prayed through me saying we don't have to borrow and that He will provide. We will have our miracle. By evening the miracle came RM1,000.00 from this Pastor and her husband. They've already gave us RM600.00 last Sunday to do the metal gate for our Church. Now we decided to put the two together and pay off the renovations. God did this in one day !

The lesson I've learnt is..cast your cares on Him because He cares for you..once cast already..then rest ..Because God will see us through. 

Awesome ! Praise Jesus !

Luv 

Edwin.

The Power of Fasting

THE POWER OF FASTING

The power of Fasting is not in not eating or not doing some lifestyle thing. God does not desire sacrifices but obedience..obedience is not doing this instead of that. Lets discover what Fasting really is.


Pastor June Yuen shared with our church recently what Fasting actually is. The more I meditated on it and studied the Word, God showed me much much more. Isaiah 58 teaches us on what ideal fasting and sabbath really means.


If you read Matthew 25, where Jesus compared sheeps and goats and in fact most of the Gospel, you will see one thing. 

 ⁶ “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: 

to loose the chains of injustice 

   and untie the cords of the yoke, 

to set the oppressed free 

   and break every yoke?  (is 58:6)

Sheep will always have a need to be part of a body and close to its Shepherd. In John 10:16-17

¹⁶ I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen.

 I must bring them also. 

They too will listen to my voice, 

and there shall be one flock 

and one shepherd.

 ¹⁷ The reason my Father loves me is

 that I lay down my life—only to take it up again.

A goat is like the prodigal son and like the one that received the 1 talent and very much like the people that fast by afflicting their hungry stomachs and forgotten about mercy. We do not serve God for the sake of profit or self-enrichment neither is it to be richer or smarter or stronger. He did not give His only begotten Son so that we can do whatever we want and go wherever we want. 

Adam and Eve took and ate a fruit from the tree that they were not suppose to do. They like lucifer, disobeyed because they wanted to be like God or even be God. Creation cannot control the Creator. Neither can creation be worshipped as the creator.

It is because we are mere human beings. When we die, we become dust. When we pass on from this world, whatever we had before cannot be brought to wherever we go. Whatever or whoever we are on earth, matters nought on earth. That's why Jesus said, without HIM, we are nothing.

Yet Christ showed us one thing (see John 10:15)..which is also said in Isaiah 58 and also in Matthew 25:45 

¹⁵ just as the Father knows me and 

I know the Father—and I lay down 

my life for the sheep. (John 10:15)

⁴⁵ “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, 

whatever you did not do for

 one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’

The Gospel and who Jesus is and what Jesus does for mankind is God love in us and thru us to love people. You see Jesus goes to the lonely, the broken, the rejected, the one who sits alone,. He laid His life down in obedience to God because God thru His Son wants to tell the world, HE LOVES YOU.

So Fasting like everything else that God wants us to do..which is the message of the Cross - the Great Commandments of God (Mt 22:37-40). Love God and Love People. 

Fasting is not to just deny ourselves of food and to look so super religious. Fasting takes you out of yourself and into what God see. God see the end of this world and the return of His Son, the first fruit over all that love Him. Fasting is us telling God, I will not eat meaning God I am man. I must obey my master. I am not God. God you be God ! isn't that awesome truth.

Remember the Holy Spirit cannot take you into the Kingdom of heaven, if you are full of yourself. We die to self daily.

When you face problems you cannot overcome, don't go and try to solve it by getting another job..by borrowing money, by getting yourself deeper and deeper into messes. Pray ! pray that you cannot do anything about this, but you want God to intervene. Then rest don't try to help God. Then you will see God open doors and make the impossible possible for you !

Let Him be the Shepherd of your life today.

Be Blessed

Luv Edwin

TSUNAMI

 Tsunami 2006

Way back in August 2006, when I was closing the metal gate of our newly rented premise for our Church, I was electrocuted. To cut the long story short, there was a power leakage that infact short circuited and damanged electrical appliances of our neighbor above our shop. It broke my left shoulder blade. I knew I would have died but somehow, I believe till today God intervened. 


Anyways, my thoughts immediately that following week was where to have church services after this as we decided to return to that shop was dangerous. The owner could not give us a guarantee that the problem was rectified properly. So in much pain and difficulty...the thought of giving-up the Church work did cross my mind as we were facing some difficult challenges up to this point too.


It was when one afternoon that I was praying and seeking God for a word, that was when He drop the word TSUNAMI into my spirit. I asked God what He meant. Suddenly it was like a quick lesson on what a Tsunami is. In the natural Tsunami brings untold destruction wherever it hits and untold lost of lives. It was not a good things.


But God then said, the Tsunami He is going to bring will not bring destruction..but it will bring GOOD change and LASTING change. With that word I believed, God was talking about the Church work we were doing is going to see GOOD growth. So we continued. In fact I shared that revelation with our members in the service at Tropical Inn ..the service we did immediately after the electrocution.


This week after the Japan Earthquake and Tsunami...I remembered that word God gave me. When I was on Facebook this week...I read a blog update by this Evangelist - Shyju Matthew..it intrigued me because of this Title - Holy Spirit Tsunami. When I read it, I got the shock of my life.


Word for word, it was literally what God said to me in 2006 !!! ..Then I tot it was a word for our church work..but over the past weeks..with visiting Pastors coming to our church..I believe that word is not just for us..but it is what God is going to do..A final REVIVAL HARVEST of souls before the end time events unfold ? ..but all I know is, with every new generation...GOd always does something awesome ..so that that generation WILL HEAR the GOSPEL.


I believe Word of Life Church, JB (our church)..is going to be a strong end time ministry. And I believe it will not just be a local ministry but an international one. And I believe and know, just like all other God's works today, the Tsunami that God is going to bring soon will be a great move of GOd thru the workings of the Holy Spirit for all of God's body.


So exciting to be living in the end times..where truth that was foretold..is unveiled for the final time.


Check out Pastor Shyju Matthew's article.


Luv
Edwin Koh
17/3/11

POWER OF 1

 <sup>POWER OF 1

8</sup>And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.

 ⁹And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

⁸And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.

 ⁹And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. (Gen 2:8-9,17)

 I shared this sermon yesterday (6/3/11) in Church. It came so suddenly and truely a revelation as I was reading through Malachi 3 and 4 especially on tithing and offerings. God showed me something else and tot I shud share the highlights of the Power of 1.


As I was reading through Malachi 3:8-10...I know tithing is 1/10 or 10%  of our income. Suddenly God was telling me about the 1 hour of prayer that Jesus said to His disciples to do at the Garden of Gethsamene. But the  consequences are there if we don't. If you don't tithe, and don't pray for 1 hour, the consequences are what we have to face. With every law there's are boundaries. Basically the boundary stops us from crossing over to take what the devil failed to do be life God.


Suddenly God took me back to Adam and Eve. He told them to not take the tree of the knowledge of good and evil ..(it was a good tree)...but what is God trying to get at ? It lies in what I call the POWER OF 1.


The tithes, the 1 hour of prayer, the 1 tree of the knowledge of good and evil even our 1 life that belongs to Jesus...belongs to HIM !. You and I belong to Him.


You see tithes teaches us to obey Him. Usually people have issues with tithing its because they have no confidence in a God that can provide. 


One day Jesus (Mt 4) was walking along the shore, He saw the fishermen..He knew they worked  hard but caught nothing. He decided to step into their boats and teach them to fish. When the fishermen saw their nets overflowing and breaking with tonnes of fish, their eyes were open to Jesus Christ. They followed Him, because He could do more than they could ever do.


Tithing, prayer is about our trust in Him. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil really is a wisdom and the mind of God. Only God knows what is right and wrong..Only God knows what is good and what is evil. Only God knows what tomorrow will bring.  Jesus saw the fishermen forward..as in the Book of Acts extending His Kingdom throughout the world. He didn't see them as failed fishermen..He saw them as increasingly fruitful and effective because they positioned themselves in Him.


The power of 1 is a reminder and a gauge of the quality of our devotion and relationship with God. You see many always try to do good works and to do right works. Yet Righteousness in God is right believing and right standing. It is only in abiding and devoted relationship..that the fruits of that relationship is the right works can come to past. Depend on the Holy Spirit and not what is right or wrong (Romans 8:1-2)...there's no more condemnation in Jesus.


So stop taking what belongs to God..and start planting yourself in prayer to love God more..and let God work more in your life. God will bring change and blessings into your life !


with luv,
Edwin Koh