Miracles Following Prayers.
Below are the accounts of a real God working passionately in the lives and circumstances of 4 Christians who looked to Him in times of need.
1. God Make Exceptions. (Shawn Ow, Australia)Shawn used to be an extreme skeptic of the Christian faith. However, God is One who answers all who seeks Him, and when Shawn eventually searched for answers in His life, Shawn found and gave his life to Jesus.
Shawn is a Singaporean student who has been studying in Australia for the past 3 years. Upon his graduation recently, God blessed him with a great job in a prestigious company.
However, Shawn faced a problem when he had to move out of his school's hostel upon his graduation. Accomodation options available to him in Australia are either too costly for him, or are too far from his future work place. The best option would be to stay on in his school's hostel as it is affordable to him as well as near his future workplace.
However, under the university regulations, students are NOT eligible to stay on in school's hostel upon their graduation. Nonetheless, Shawn asked his school to make an exception for him, but still, it was to no avail.
Until Shawn prayed, and asked God to intervene.
By faith, God moved him to approach the school about his request again, and miraculously, without any hassle, his request was approved instantly. Nothing of this sort has ever happened to anyone in the school...and Shawn knew without a doubt, nothing of this sort can ever happen to him, if not for God.
2. Training Provided! (Gim Seng, Singapore)Gim Seng is a navy officer with the Navy of the Singapore Armed Forces. He recently received Christ after spending many years searching for the answers to life. Despite his self-confessed lack of faith, God answered his prayers when Gim Seng asked God for a favour with a simple prayer.
The Navy wanted Gim Seng to give a speech to an audience in a couple of months time, and being more of a thinker than a speaker, Gim Seng found that a tremendous challenge. He needed help and he needed it sooner than later.
Gim Seng decided to pray and tell God about his problem. Surely God can do something about it, he thought.
One fine day, about a couple of weeks after his prayer, Gim Seng was given a ticket by a friend to attend a seminar which his friend could not make it for. At first, it appeared to be nothing more than an event which Gim Seng just chanced upon.
However, upon closer note, Gim Seng realised it was a divine intervention by God to answer his prayers! The seminar was a training session for equipping people to public speaking, and it could not have come more timely than now for Gim Seng.
God answers prayers and surely, He had just answered Gim Seng's prayer.
3. Lobang King (Jack Cheong, Singapore)Jack received Christ recently when he finally came to learn of the gravity of what God did on the cross to pay for his sins. Jack was thrilled about his newfound life in Christ and despite the trials and temptations that tried to dissuade him to grow further, Jack was certain God has found him and he has found God.
When Jack learnt more about the importance of leading a life devoted to Christ, Jack realised it was of utmost importance to show his love for God in real and tangible ways, rather than paying mere lip-service to God. Soon, it became clear to Jack that tithing was a spiritual discipline which reflects a heart of genuine devotion to God. Jack wants to start tithing straight away, but he had also just graduated, and he needed to provide for his family and make ends meet in many areas of his finances.
So Jack prayed and asked God to give him some tuition jobs to provide for his financial responsibilities. By faith, he approached a few tuition agencies and from then on, tuition job offers came ringing in non-stop.
It was not something usual for Jack...but Jack knew in his heart, miracles are certainly not unusual from God.
4. There Will Be Enough Rest! (Si'er, Singapore)Si'er is a trainee teacher undergoing training in the National Institute of Education for the past one year and he is thankful to God for bringing him through the past year of tight schedules in his studies and work in church.
The new school year is about to start, and Si'er knows he is in for another season of tight schedules in his school work soon. Lectures and tutorials in school often meant going home at late afternoons, if not evening. However, there is a course coming up in a Bible College which greatly fascinates Si'er and he knew he had to sign up for it. The course has its lessons on every Thursdays evenings, and Thursdays in the past always meant going home late.
By faith, Si'er signed up for the course in the Bible College, despite knowing he is commiting himself to a tiring half-year ahead. Si'er just prayed God will give him enough energy to go through it all.
However, upon receiving his time-table for his new semester, Si'er was both surpised and awed by what he saw. The new semester's time-table had NO LESSONS on Thursdays and lessons on Fridays starts only after 12pm!
This meant Si'er will have ample rest before his night classes on Thursdays and after which, he could rest really well to prepare for his school tutorials on Friday afternoons! Only God and the school administrator can adjust the school's time-table, and Si'er certainly didn't tell his school administrator about his problem.
He only told God. And God did something about it.
Commitment - Conviction - Counting on the Holy Spirit
I've always believed that the 3 most important areas in the art of reaching out are:
1) COMMITMENT
2) CONVICTION
3) COUNTING ON THE HOLY SPIRIT
With reference to Aristotle's 3 principles of the art of rhetoric,
i.e. "Ethos", "Pathos" and "Logos",
I have made some observations as follows...
COMMITMENT - without which, there will be no completion of anything started.1. It is of utmost importance for me who strives to reach out, to COMMIT to living a life which credibly reflects Christ's work in me, as this directly affects the "Ethos" element of the message I send.
In other words, without a COMMITMENT to genuinely strive to live a Christ-like life,it is hard for anyone to believe me when I say God changed my life.
2. It is of paramount importance also, to realise that to truly help a person to understand the love of Christ, I need to COMMIT to loving the person in real and tangible ways. This will greatly enhance the "Pathos" element of the message of love I send. The only thing that beats a visible action of love is a continuous series of visible actions of love.
In other words, a COMMITMENT to continually love a person through real acts of love, kindness and generousity, is crucial in bringing Jesus' love into the pre-believer's world. Without which, all other things will be way harder.
CONVICTION - without which, there will be little or no connection of the message to the listener.
I have noted that it is so true when the Bible says in Romans 10:17 that "Faith comes by hearing, and hearing of the Word of God."
What comes from the heart goes to the heart.
If I am not WHOLEHEARTEDLY convinced and CONVICTED totally that Jesus Christ is the ONLY way to God and without giving one's life to Him, one will certainly burn in hell forever,
I will show it when I speak.
Any listener can hence, tell easily.
A CONVICTION of the heart can only come from reading the Word of God and seeking Him in desperation to convict me. I may also read other Christian books (of which I love the Apologetics genre the most) to equip me with proofs outside of the Bible, so as to give an answer to any question posed by a seeker of Truth.
A CONVICTION in the message will bring depth and confidance to the "Logos" of the rhetoric.
A CONVICTED Christian is a strong Defender of the Truths of the Bible. The world I live in today is subtly sliding into an era of no absolutes of anything.
I have to make a choice how I want to convey the message of Jesus Christ.
AND LAST BUT NOT LEAST...
COUNTING ON THE HOLY SPIRIT - without which no soul will be saved. I find myself being disappointed with myself when I have to reach out without expecting a person to be saved by the grace of God.
Because, I realised that's when I have relied on myself all along.
Do not get me wrong.
The 2 aspects mentioned above about Commitment and Conviction are tremendously important.
However, without an utmost dependency and TRUST in the Holy Spirit in reaching out, all I do will be futile.
I have experienced this personally and it is so true.
In fact, a person who is ENTIRELY submitted to the Holy Spirit's guidance to do the work of God to reach out, will be guided to commit to the 2 areas mentioned above, even without the person's own knowledge.
In any case,I have discovered for many, many occasions when God Himself gave answers to questions posed to me, and I answered and convinced the seeker instantly despite not having any prior knowledge of the subject asked. I was amazed each time at how God intervened.
A heart which truly is able to reach out and touch the heart of another pre-believer with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, is a Christian's heart that is completely SURRENDERED to the leading of the Holy Spirit.
There Is No Fear In Your Love
There is no fear in Your love.
And in Your love,
There is no fear.
In Your love.
Self-centredness
The strongest opposition to Love,
is Self-centredness. Or some call it Pride.
Hatred is definitely not the strongest opposition to Love,
as Hatred says that it wants Love...but it just does not have enough of it.
(Hence, hatred is often a result of insufficient love, or unreciprocated love.)
However, Self-centredness is not so.
Self-centredness says that he himself is greater than anything else, even Love.
Self-centredness looks down on Love.
The Strongest Opposition To Love.
Ponder, ponder.
Think and wonder.
What is the biggest opposition to Love?
Before the answer is revealed in the next entry,
Ponder, ponder.
Think and wonder.
The Greatest Pain
In your opinion,
What is the greatest pain for a man?
Think.
Is it a knife piercing through your body?
Is it the sense of loss of a romantic love?
Is it losing someone who is your flesh and blood?
The greatest pain which tormented Jesus,
Was a momentary separation from God's love.
The Greatest Pain.
Is to be turned away by the Greatest Love.
Cough Now.
My cough is bad.
It makes me sad.
I feel mad.
Ok.
I'm just sick.
The Grandeur Of John 1:14
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. ~ John 1:14There is something about angels.
Strong, powerful beings
Who are alien to our world.
Their beauty far exceeds human comprehension.
Their voices far trancends human standards.
Their might far superior than the most sophisticated human weapon.
They are almost fairytale-like.
But you know they are real.
They are somewhere out there.
And if we see them, awe overwhelms us.
And I believe even as you read this, you are wondering what "out-of-this-world" thing do I have to share with you about angels.
Simply because the mere mentioning of angels
awakes in us,
the human awe for the supernatural.
Yet,
the biggest contradiction lies here.
There is a Maker of angels.
And we seldom live in child-like wonder as to how He brought His powers into creation.
There is a Reason for the existence of the supernatural and the natural world.
And we do not consider that important enough to for us to stop and ponder where we belong to and where will we end up in.
There is a Creator who makes and watches the world in motion.
And we do not consider Him spectacularly overwhelming enough to live each day in fear of offense to Him.
Allow me to offer my explanation:
God has come SO CLOSE to earth, right beside you and me,
so much so that,
we are considering Him,
lesser
and lesser
of a God.
And this is tragic.
The Word became fleshSuch grandeur in these four words.
The everlasting Power of the Universe takes on human form.
The Chinese translation of "The Word" refers to "The Way" - "道"
Lao Tze and Confucius, both great thinkers of the East
have strived all their lives to grasp the essence of "Way", but to no avail.
"The Way is a limitless vessel;
Used by the self,
it is not filled by the world;
It cannot be cut, knotted, dimmed or stilled;
Its depths are hidden, ubiquitous and eternal;
I don't know where it comes from;
It comes before nature."- 老子（道德经，第四章）
"To hear in the morning
that the Way prevails
is to be able to die
without regret
in the night."-孔子（里仁，第四，第八句）
These great minds of the human race have invested their lives on earth, sincerely seeking the truth of the Way.
And if only they live in my day.
What could their exhilaration be,
if they SEE for themselves
the visible formation of this Way,
in flesh?
Jesus Christ.
The fullness of the powers of the Creator expressed within the frame of a man from Nazareth.
(Isn't it without logic when mere man figures according to his limitations of Science, how impossible it is for the Creator of the laws of Science to manipulate such laws to bring about the processes of healing of a blind man's eye or a leper's wounds, processes which are naturally perceived as "miracles"?)
The ultimate expression of a Force beyond natural human comprehension, in a human anatomy.
The Word became fleshand dwelt among us.To me, this is the supernatural of all supernatural.
Can the mind of man possibly comprehend that?
The eternal and the all-powerful force of...
everything
once threaded on the same earth you and I currently live on.
If this is not mind-blowing, I don't know what is.
And we beheld His glory.Allow me to talk about angels again.
What would your reaction be if an angel appears beside where you sit now?
I thought I would faint.
But my response would be nothing short of fantastic wonder.
If only we are willing to understand this once again.
That God has come
Not angels.
God.
And we beheld His glory.
This, my friend, is precisely the greatest contact point between the supernatural glorious and the natural fallen.
And all the reasons of living comes into sensible logic.
Here, we come into an inevitable realisation that it is no longer about what I think or even what I want to think about:
- God,
- what I want to do with my life,
- my dismay with the 581st problem of yesteryear.
- and whatnot.
Because,
the One who is the Designer of the human world and the angels' appearances.
the One who is the Writer of the story of the natural world.
the One who brought into existence everything I ever knew, including the brain I'm using to contemplate Him with now.
He makes contact with me.
And I see it.
And...
wow.
Perfection revealed and explained.
God in humanly-understandable form.
the glory as of the only begotten of the Fatherfull of grace and truth.And when everything has settled,
we awake to the tender note that,
Jesus
is THE token of love from God to man.
He came to make God comprehensible to man,
but above that,
He came to bring you a message.
Love.
Can you grapple with this?
Can you?
Failure to do so often leads to a Christian life littered with attitudes of a man who is living but has no true life.
Take a read at John 1:14 again.
May it jolt you from wherever you are,
to the full awe of who you are,
and what your God has done for you.
Would A Christian Fight In A War?
God is love.Wars destroy lives.Christians ought not take up arms to fight.Christians must obey.God is love.Yes, certainly, God is love.
This cannot be more true.
There is zero doubt that conflicts between nations should not be advocated.
However, does taking on a neutral stand and refusing to take up arms to defend your country sound like a Christ-like thing to do?
Much as taking on a neutral stand sounds peaceful and loving,
I find it hard to distinguish it from sitting on the fence.
As the saying goes,
All it takes for evil to thrive, is for good men everywhere to do nothing.
Would World War Two have ended if all American pilots hold on to this notion of a neutral stand and drop no atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
Would the Iraqis under the Ba'ath regime be delivered should no countries take the drastic move to dethrone Mr. S.Hussein?
Would the prophecy of the reconstruction of Israel come to past if the Six Day war (and other related military conflicts) was not fought by the young men of Israel?
Yes, God would be the final judge of all things.
And wars are detested by God as they fill the very earth created by God with bloodshed and violence.
But look here, my dear JW friends.
Does promoting a worldview which could only exist in a utopia,
In the fallen world of ours which God has permitted to be in existence,
Bring God closer to the hearts of men?
Is it realistically possible?
True children of God possesses the discernment and understanding of right and wrong.
Yes, Germany may be a Christian country in the wake of World War Two,
And Hitler a supposed devout Christian,
But it is certainly logical to arrive to a conclusion that what they did is wrong.
However, we cannot simply, thus, conclude that Christians should not use arms.
True children of God have the wisdom of God to use arms at the right time, and there will be times when a child of God will have to use arms.
If this sounds inconceivable to anyone reading this,
Tell me,
If all male Singaporean Christians refuses to fight in defence against an infiltrator for Singapore, how would the whole of Singapore perceive the people of God...and eventually God Himself?
The answer cannot be more obvious.
A knife used for a murder can serve the same function as one used for cutting the ropes binding a hostage.
Is God really so much concerned with arms itself?
Or is God more concerned with the heart which uses it?
A soldier, in defence of his country, may shoot another man.
But God knows his heart has absolutely no hatred for the man shot.
And here we have it.
Hatred.
The question is never on a war, a battle, a conflict, or even a fight.
We have it here:
Hatred.
This is essentially what God abhors!
Jesus Himself emphasized in the Sermon on the Mount with regards to murder and adultery, that the heart of the matter, is a matter of the heart.
With my understanding of how my God is, yes, I will most certainly lay down my arms, if my country is the aggressor.
This may come at a price of losing my life, but I am convinced it will be what Jesus would do.
However, God will grant me the discernment to distinguish this from a day when my nation requires me to protect it with arms.
To totally take on a stand of no arms no-matter-what,
Is like a child who closes his eyes, trying to clean up a room,
Without realising the mess he is creating.
Insane Living
Si'er,
Do you know your perception of how God is like as a person,
Will directly affect how obediently you live as a Christian?
Do you know the worldview you adopt,
Will easily reveal who you truly pledge allegiance to?
Do you know the thing you are most passionate about,
Will instantly reflect to yourself how much you really love God?
Do you know not every person who claims to be a Christian,
Will arrive in heaven?
Alright...things can't exactly be that bad.I think I still have some time...no?C'mon. That's being a little extreme...It's not like it's the end of the world!Ok, you are radical. I'm not.If being on fire for Christ is to be radical,
Then what will your definition of a rational way to live, be?
What exactly will be a sane way to live?
To not abandon your all to God and live purely for Christ,
Is like a man who is
Lingering in a house in flames,
Savouring every breath of soot,
Singing in a bath of smoke,
Relishing every rise in the temperatures of the fire,
Accomodating himself to the sensations of being burnt...
Alive.
What exactly will be a sane way to live?
To not live for Christ,
Is to accustom your whole being to live away from the Kingdom of God,
And get all ready to settle down in hell.
I hope I can paint a picture which is less disturbing, Si'er.
But I would rather disturb you enough,
To ensure you arrive where God wants you to,
Than to lead you to anywhere short of it.
