Hi HIM Family!
It is great to be able to communicate again. I have done a lot of travelling in the last two months, covering various areas of our regions and churches. I am really thankful to God that He is indeed working among our churches and among our leaders. It is encouraging to see that God is certainly continuing to advance our family of churches as well.
Fundamentals of Christian Faith
What I would like to share with us is about fundamentals. Recently, in the midst of all of my travelling, God brought me to the passage of scripture in Revelation 2, where it talks about the church at Ephesus. As you know, the church at Ephesus lost its first love. In the midst of doing many things, in the midst of being able to hang on to much of the strength of the church, God said that it has lost its first love. As I meditated and thought about the first love, God brought me to the fact about fundamentals. Oftentimes, when we are busy and when we are doing so many things that we are familiar with, we forget to keep to the fundamentals or the basics. What are some of these fundamentals that I would like to share with you and remind every one of us, to not forget or not to be careless about?
1. Loving the lost
One of the fundamentals I am impressed with in Revelation 2 is about love. Sometimes, our hearts can become careless about love. Sometimes as a Christian and as a pastor, I may become casual about love or worse, I may lose that compassion for souls and for the lost, because I am so busy with church, and just busy with Christians, until the extent that there are souls out there that I may have lost the love for, lost that compassion that drives me to see salvation in their lives.
2. Personal time with God
Another fundamental is prayer. You know, real intimate personal time with God whereby we are talking and we are hearing our Saviour’s voice or we are hearing the voice of the shepherd speaking to us. We can be careless to lose that personal touch about just spending time in prayer. I was also brought back to read passages where Jesus got up very early in the morning, where Jesus would get the crowds to go away and He would go to a quiet place where He could hear the heart of the Father. We could lose that fundamental in the midst of our busyness. I want to encourage us never ever to forget about your personal prayer and your personal time with God.
3. Dwell in the Word of God
Another fundamental that we may lose or we may forget is really devoting ourselves to dwell in the Word of God. We can read the word for sermon, we can be preparing sermons and you know, the word that comes and goes. We are thinking about our congregation, we are thinking about vision, we are thinking about goals, but what is the personal word that is feeding our soul and spirit that is causing us to really the love the word again, in a devotional, in a way that it speaks life to us again? We could easily forget that fundamental.
4. Power of the Holy Spirit
The last fundamental I believe God wants to remind us is about seeing the power of the Holy Spirit at work. You know, church comes and church goes, as we realise it is already June – half the year is almost gone. But what is the Holy Spirit doing in our church? What is the Holy Spirit doing in the lives of our people? Do we see the power? Are we able to have testimonies of God’s power at work: where the Holy Spirit is actively, wonderfully and powerfully doing things in the midst of our church and our community where we are at?
I want to remind us, brothers and sisters, as we go about evaluating our half-year planning for the next half of the year, do not forget these fundamentals. They are so important. Do not lose the real and living sense of these fundamentals because these fundamentals continue to soften our hearts with love. It continues to fire up our hearts with the power of the Holy Spirit. It continues to give us that personal intimacy and that personal time with God, which we so need. I want to encourage us therefore, take that time, look into your fundamentals again, and look in the foundations and the basics again. Do not lose them as the church at Ephesus lost its first love.
May God bless us. We are going to see each other soon in our Global Conference in Kuala Lumpur. God bless you until the next time that I communicate with you. May the blessing and power of the Lord be with you. Amen.
Pastor Simon Eng
HIM President