What will i be doing?

Many have asked me this questions ????? a lot over the last weeks.

I am just as excited to know too...because i sense in my spirit God will reveal soon.

But i know that i need to guard my human heart. There is always a human desire to attempt great things, good things for God. But as i walk with God, i want to do GOD's thing in my life more than great or good.

Some one commented that every pastor that have left FCBC did not achieve much in their ministry. His reference was to the size of the ministry. I was, for a moment, shaken with such an observation. Other than one dialect pastor, who planned and brought a group out, most who resigned and decided to start ministries or churches later, failed to hit the 200 mark. Of course there are others who joined other ministries or churches and have taken a sizeable ministry.

God reminded me NOT to compare. It is more important that everyone of us are faithful to God's call rather than focus on the size of our ministry as a measurement of our success. For the size of ministry is a decision on God's part. My part is faithful to His call.

Jo and i hope to go away, locally, to seek confirmation of God's revelation. We believe our time of ministry will start soon.....

A new dawn is coming!

Who are you?

Who am i?
Most of us will have a rather defeated mindset of who we are. Maybe it is our oriental upbringing, we tend to think negatively or poorly of ourselves.

What would God's answer be if we ask Him how He thinks of us?
From my little OT knowledge, He never answer such question. In Exodus, when Moses asked Him, He only assured him that He would be with him.
In NT, God assured us, that He will be with us, when He gave us the great commission.

Ps Derek Hong, Church of our Savior, made an interesting link to both texts that the devil always attack our perception of God and us. He used other texts to reinforce that the devil's scheme is to create distortion in our mind of who God is eg Genesis (temptation of Eve) and Matt (temptation of Jesus)

Thus, it is very important for us to know who God is and who we are in Him.

Who am i?
Bibilically speaking, i am someone God hangs around with. Cool isnt.
He loves me so much that my identity is tied, always, with Him and His presence.

In fact, when He died for me, He died for ALL my inquities and sins. All my mistakes and faults and sins are all paid for. He did not select which part of me that He would redeem. He redeemed me fully. I am totally forgiven, forever loved and completely fulfilled in Him.

The key is for me to stay in Him.

I am very thankful for this visit to COOS. It was not easy as we had to settle some spiritual attack before we could reach the church. Even so, we were told that the carparking problem was very real. We asked for a sign ie that we would have a lot. And we did.

This visit opened my eyes to see how this church focused on people and the supernatural work of God. There was a place setup for everybody to help themselves to get a drink or some food (FOC). A place to chat and meet the pastoral staff. During service, time was set aside to ensure those who were not well were prayed for.

1 interesting statement from Ps Derek i held dear as well. When the spirit of prophesy was released, we must intentionally catch it and wait to see God unfold.

I am waiting to see how God unfold the destiny of my life.

Tribute to Rev Henry Khoo

It was a blessed time!

Standing outside the packed hall, among the cars, singing praises to God.

The hall was packed with pastors, believers and people in authority.


I was moved in my spirit as i worshipped the Lord under the sky. Thanking God for the home-going of one of the great saint of God i know.

I came to know Rev Henry Khoo back in the '80. It was when Jackie Pullinger came to minister to FCBC and requested to visit the Changi Prison. I was blessed to be among the small group that went with her and met Henry. The meeting marked the beginning of my involvement with Prison and Prisoners. And since i was serving the Campus and Combat Ministry then, i focused on the detention barrack for the soldiers.

Then in 2000's, my wife and i visited Henry to discuss on how we could really serve the prisoners. He led us to serve the Changi Woman Prison. The rest was history.

But through those times, Henry had come across to both jo and i as a very humble man despite his wealth of experiences and seniority in ministry.
He never made us feel small or inexperienced in his presence. He encouraged us all through the times we served the prisoners.

Queuing through the throngs of people, i heard many ex-prisoners recalling their encounters with Henry and how special they felt when he baptised them. Personally i felt the crowd to be very different. Different in that all who came had been personally blessed and touched by God through the very personal ministry of Henry. Not that he was not a popular preacher but it was his personal time with people that left a deep impression and impact. it was so for both jo and i.

Thank you Henry!
For giving to the Lord! We have been blessed by your life!
Your support through your listening ears,
Encouraged us through the years.

Your humble disposition,
Disarmed all confusion.
Your fatherly smile,
Brought strength to go another mile.

Your unswerving commitment to love the prisoners,
Reflected Jesus' love to the commoners.

Your life is indeed a legacy,
For all generation to see.

Thank you Henry!
I have been blessed by your life story!
May more "Henry"s rise to your shoes,
Even if we don't know who

To continue to love the unlovable,
To show us it is possible,
For in Christ we will always be able!

Have a blessed rest in Him.

He is my Provider!

The recent finanical crisis made me wondered if i had resigned at the wrong time. But God has spoken again and again that this is indeed His time for me.
Suddenly it hits me that it is precisely in such occasion that He will be glorified as my Provider.

The earthly perspective would be bad timing and poor market for whatever i intended to do. i should have resigned later so that i could at least collect my 13th mth.

But faith perspective sees that when all else looks bleak, it will set a great backdrop for His light to shine through!

And shone through He did!

Over the last 1mth, i have received :

daily prayer and scriptural promises from an angel (overweight one; hahah you said so),
family holiday to Beijing (from an overseas friend) in Nov
family holiday to Malaysia (from a family friend) in Dec
business for JC Edu Park,
saving from NICE discount + currency exchange
NICE text books (from overseas friend)
friendships and support from the community.

I have been blessed by His provision!
In fact, by faith, i am believing that i can give, despite being not-employed, to those in need or as lead by God. It is always more blessed to give than to receive for God is no man's debtor.

God is my Provider!
He will be for all who trust in Him (finanical crisis or otherwise)!

Be a 4th dimensional man!

Be a 4th dimension man!

You will not be limited by the lack of resources.

You will not be limited by the support of man.

You will not be limited by the constraint of time.

This was essentially the theme of Ps Kong's message this week. We were reminded of the power of positive words, pictures and even feelings over water and crystal (the work of Prof Emoto).

Ps Kong brought us to examine the scripture on how visual can impact the type of youngs produced by the flocks. Jacob brought the flocks to the place whereby he had prepared with branches which revealed both the white and stripes. And when they drank and mated in front of the branches. they bore youngs which were speckled or spotted (Gen 30:39).

Such is the power of visual impact on the lives of the flocks.

He challenged us to focus on the 2 branches - the cross!

Thus, there is a need for us to think, speak and feel good about what we ask of God. We must not ask in fear or doubt. We must not pray just against bad things; we ended thinking bad things.

I learnt to move in faith again.

I must pray believing and expecting the best from God; He desires the best for my life.

I must not doubt that.

Application - I must move into the 4th dimension. I must not be logical or rational in the realm of the spirit. I must dare ask again - Make My Life A Miracle!

My God reigns!

My God reigns!

This truth meant a lot more during this season of my life. I enjoyed affirming this truth during the worship session at City Harvest Church. Somehow, God used this truth to prepare me for the message to come.

My God is greater! My God is over all!

i was invited this week to attend the saturday service with Elim. She hosted my family throughout the service and dinner. Thank God for friends like her.

Ps Kong reminded us to find HOPE in God during this finanical crisis. We must not allow the media and news to cause anxiety to fill our hearts. we must continue to trust in Elohim.

He explained that God redeemed us for a purpose - to be like Him (esp in the beginning before sin entered.)

And in Gen 1, we will be reminded that He is a creator God - Elohim.

God's desire is for us to move beyond heal me-feed me-encourage me - mentality to one of an overcomer through God's creative power.

It was a timely challenge for me to move beyond trusting God for His provision to using His provision to generate miracles for God.

I must not be passive in my faith ie just waiting for provision to come. i must rise up and move knowing it will come. and i must be good steward of it when it comes.
Also, i must learn to be creative in my stewardship of God's provision of contacts, connections, competency, cash. I must use them to demonstrate what a great God He is.

i am glad that God has been speaking weekly (even daily) to me during this painful period. Paiinful because i am not really letting go of my rights and past. His Word has been a great encouragement to my soul.

The secret to experiencing God:
Build His altar
Bless my family
Be connected in His work/call for me.

By His grace, i WILL!

Teachers and Students

This is a part of my submission for 1 of my study unit.

It is about developing a biblical community with our students.

I have attached this portion for the Christian teachers who are reading this blog.

Recommendations for Christian Teachers
In order embrace our God-given roles and responsibility, even in public school, Christian teachers should consider the following;

1 Renew our mind
When there is no renewal of mind, there is no transformation of life (Rom 12:1-2). Our life in God is the basis for which we can bring transformation to the students. Thus there is a need for Christian teachers to have our mind renewed regularly in the Lord. Part of the renewal of mind would require the new teachers to attend some basic units of Christian Education by National Institute of Christian Education. Especially, for units such as ED 500 and ED 501 which deal with Biblical Foundation and Worldview. This would open the eyes of the teachers to understand the relevance of their faith in their sacred calling as teachers.

Unless the teachers recognise the subtlety of the devil’s scheme, their relationship with the students could become mere humanistic effort to show love and acceptance. There is no lasting power in such endeavours. Human effort, on its own, could lead them to discouragement, disillusion and even depression. This could explain why many teachers left the teaching forces. From the website of ABC News, it was reported that a quarter of new teachers left the teaching profession within a year. In Singapore, it was reported that about 1000 teachers resigned every year (Ministry of Education, 2006).

These reports heighten the need for Christian teachers to deepen their walk with God through developing a biblical mindset. With a renewed mind, they can have the strength to persevere in their sacred calling.

2 Review our teaching practises in the light of biblical worldview
2.1 Your position in class
Teachers in Singapore are taught to maintain a professional distance between teachers and students. This is rooted in our Confucius’ worldview whereby teachers are learned people thereby making them to be always right. Flowing from this worldview, and the fear of promoting favouritism, teachers are expected to maintain a distance with his students.
Noddings (1984) commented that this distance is a sense of “narrow professionalism” (p. 184). She further commented that teachers need to recognise the common humanity we are all part of. This is very true and necessary if we are serious to nurture a learning community with our students.

Edlin (1999) mentioned that the effective Christian teacher does not just “teach from the head, but from the head and the heart” (p. 125). If we are too distance from our students, they cannot hear our heart. We cannot nurture a community from a distance.
Thus we should review this practice of distance and seek to enter into the community of our students with them.

The Ministry of Education (MOE) website, under the “purpose of teaching”, highlighted that “we will be purposeful in what we do and our passion to care for our pupils and education them will be our source of motivation”. The students would only know if we care if we are willing to step into their community and not teaching from a distance.

2.2 Your layout of class
The layout of our class is a reflection of our worldview about our students and their learning. Individual seating arrangement would promote individualism and thereby destroy the very community we seek to nurture. Van Dyk (2000) promoted the idea of “a multifunctional classroom” (p. 222). Essentially it is still a collaborative classroom. But this idea helps to meet the communal and individual needs of the students.

In order for us to be able to fully implement this well, we need to start with an extensive inventory work of knowing our students. This would include details like their spiritual dimension, social relationship, physical/physiological strengths and weaknesses, emotional status, learning styles. For the purpose of nurturing community, all these information should not be collected through scientific means. We should attempt to collect them through our personal interaction with them during both formal and informal settings.

2.3 Your approach to teaching
Many of the lecturers who I came into contact with, viewed teaching as transference of information. They do not see the students as the focus of their vocation. Thus getting them involved in Service Learning with the trainee teachers was met with much resistance. They could not agree to spending time with their students to process their learning and being. This was what I advocated in my conduct of Service Learning Course for the hundred plus lecturers. It is, therefore, no surprising that many in-service teachers do not see value in nurturing community let alone to process the learning with their students.

This calls for us to recognise that we are not teaching academic subjects. We are teaching students. This idea was very well promoted by Doud (1988), in his “Teacher of the Year” audio CD. It was precisely the focus on teaching students that led him to become the “Teacher of the Year 1986-87”.

Christian teachers must review our approach to teaching and ensure sufficient attention be given to the being of our students rather than just communicating the importance of the subject matter. People do not care how much we know until they know how much we care. Nurturing community requires us to pay attention to the individual and not just our insights to the lesson plan.

We can draw inspiration from Paul in his letter to the Thessalonians. In 1 Thess 2:8, Paul shared that he went beyond the gospel of God (subject matter) to share even his life with his students because they had become so dear to him. We must grow in our compassion for our students.

2.4 Your strategies in teaching
Edlin (1999) highlighted that “best teachers are enthusiastic about their vocation and subject” (p. 125). This is very true because enthusiasm is contagious. And so it is with the lack of it. If you are not interested in what you are teaching, your students will pick that up from you too. Thus, it is important for Christian teachers who seek to nurturing community, to be enthusiastic about and the subject they are teaching.

And one of the ways of expression is to enhance your understanding of the students through the knowledge of educational psychology. Van Dyk (2000) encouraged teachers to keep ourselves abreast of the “latest theories about learning styles” (p. 116). We should examine every theory through our biblical worldview and apply those consistent to our faith into our lesson plan. In this way, we could make our lesson more “know-able” to the diverse groups of students in our class.

2.5 You confidence in teaching calling
Many Christian teachers would struggle with much of what have been suggested because of the fear of man within us. This is a very Singaporean worldview because of our colonial past and the Japanese occupation. The whole nation was brought up to fear authority.
But the root of fear is the lack of love. 1 John 4:18 explained to us that “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.”

Christian teachers need to learn to receive this perfect love daily and release daily to the students. Fear will limit both the teacher and students from learning and growing. For a learning community to nurture and flourish, Christian teachers need to be the bearers of God’s perfect love to the community. When the students receive this unconditional love, they may be willing to try and achieve beyond our expectation. This perfect love would also help Christian teachers to lovingly correct or confront the students’ unhealthy habits or behaviours without fear of losing the community.

This perfect love would also restore the much needed confidence in the teaching professions to dare make a difference.

3 Realign the ultimate objective of community life
Community Engagement is not an end in itself. Christian teachers must work hard at nurturing community within the teachers and community sphere so that learning could take place. But the end of all learning must be to prepare the students for living in the real world. The goal of Christian Education is empower students to live life as intended in the real world (Fennema, 2006, p. 39). And the real world is not the secular world we are seeing. The real world is God’s world (Ps 24). Thus the final intent of the community is to bring this learning community into the kingdom life in Jesus.

And it is not through human effort or strategies. It is by the work of His Grace. Thus, we need to commit our learning community daily before our loving Heavenly Father who wants and will answer our prayer when we humbly ask of Him in Jesus’ name (Matt 7:7).

Conclusion
Community Enhancement Strategies are humanistic effort apart from the wisdom and grace of God. Thus, Christian teachers must daily bathe ourselves in the presence of our loving Heavenly Father and seek His Kingdom and His righteousness and all these things shall be added upon us (Matt6:33).

My 1st day as a "jobless man"

5th of Oct is very special.

It is my first day as an unemployed man. haha.

i have worked since 1988 after NS till 4th of Oct 2008.

Being a Sunday, it has certainly helped to cushion the impact.

I woke up very unwilling to go to church. It is part of the denial process of not wanting to go to a different church; in transition, we faced 3 constant challenges - emotional, relational and esteem. Yet i know I cannot deny God of my worship. Thanks to my wife, I obediently brought my family to Christalite Methodist Church. We decided to go somewhere nearer our home because this is exam period for the kids. We wanted to get back asap to continue their revision.

It was a pleasurable experience being in the Kingdom of God and celebrating the Lord's supper.

I need to constantly remind myself to focus on God and not on "operation" within the service i.e. I see myself looking out for things to improve etc... haha... ome habits take a while to change.

The worship was simple but needful for this broken man. Knelt before God and affirmed that Jesus is my firm foundation. I will lift my face to the King of Glory. He will forever be my King.

The message is interesting for me at this junction of my life ie "Forgiven to Forgive". While it is not new to me, it is timely to remind myself to forgive all who have hurt me during this period of change. Both Jo and I are determined to live our lives without any bondage and bitterness. We are committed to TOTAL FORGIVENESS.

We are reminded that we can only forgive if we have experienced true forgiveness from God. And that required me to come before God and receive His forgiveness afresh and extend His forgiveness. I must surrender any feeling or needs for revenge or vindication.

Amen and I did so during the time of prayer.

Met some friends in this church; Singapore is really small.

Rachel gave a very insightful comment i.e. God had been speaking to us - from Accepting People (in Muar Church) to Forgiving People (today). I am thankful God has been speaking and affirming us. I had a wonderful time with God in my dream this morning ie He affirmed His pleasure over me. And He further reminded me that today is a day of new beginning as I reflected on the birth of Hannah (Evan's and Mabel's new born).

Not bad for my 1st day.





Must get back to my study soon. Trying to submit my assignment by this week.