I nearly left the church of my forefathers

Saturday, 20th January 2007

Dearest brothers- and sisters-in-Christ

I have shared with you how God blessed me with the biggest bonus ever in my entire career on 22 Dec 06.

What I may not have shared in great detail is that my spiritual growth in the past 2 years has really spurted because I have been feeding on God’s Word spoken via a truly anointed man of God – Pastor Joseph Prince of New Creation Church.

I have been attending this particular church for 39 years (since I was born). My late great-grandfather was a Pastor of this denomination, and since then my grandparents, parents, siblings and now children have been faithfully attending this church.

Sometime in April 2005, my boss and I were interviewing candidates for a managerial vacancy in our department. One particular candidate that we shortlisted conducted himself very well, and could answer all the questions we threw at him. However, what impressed me the most was that not only did this person indicate openly he was a Christian, he even told us that he could not work late on Thursdays because he had to attend bible study on those nights :-)

To cut a long story short, we offered him the job and he joined us in May 2005. Soon after that, he started to bring CD sermons from his church to circulate around the office. Coming from a traditional church background, I was very wary and sceptical of 'independent' churches. But out of curiosity, I brought back one to listen in the car and guess what? God so touched my spirit man that I was shedding tears only 10 minutes into that sermon! It was as though a burden that was upon me was being lifted, and at the same time, a void inside me was being filled.

That made me hungry for more, so the very next day, I took back a handful of other sermons to listen to. Later on, colleagues and family members would peer into my car wondering why I was still seated in it in spite of having reached my destination: it turned out that I was so caught up in listening to a particular sermon, and like that thrilling novel that could not be put away, I just had to listen to the sermon to the very end. Very soon, I had started to venture onto my colleague's church's website and ended buying about a dozen other of his Pastor's sermons. As at Nov 2006, I had already purchased close to 50 of his sermons already.

This Pastor of his is truly anointed, because 9 out of 10 of his sermons will move me to tears. At Easter 2006, I brought my mom to the 4th service and was amazed to see hundreds upon hundreds of youths queuing up patiently to enter the auditorium. I have seen youths queuing up to enter a pub or a disco, but this was the first time I saw youngsters queuing up to enter a church!

Anyway, I have been very blessed and enlightened by God's progressive revelation of His true nature through the messages of this Pastor. Being steeped in the doctrine preached by previous pastors, you can just imagine how tough it was for me to unlearn wrong doctrines such as "fearing vs loving God" paradoxes, conditional healing, keeping the balance between law and grace, generational curses, etc.

I was so disillusioned that at one time even considered leaving my church to join the 14,000 others. But somehow, God has impressed upon me the need to stay on to change things from the inside. About 5 months ago, He raised me up to be serve Him as a member of my church's LCEC (local church executive committee) as the Honorary Treasurer. And just this month, He has also raised me to serve as the cell leader of 3L7, one of the cells in Sunny Yap's 3L Cluster. So it does appear that my season is still with the church that my great-grandparents, grandparents and parents grew up in.

I thank the Lord for my colleague, whom I really believe He had divinely-appointed to point me to the man of God, who is able to uncover Jesus in the most unlikely parts of the Bible: from the genealogy of Noah, to Ruth, to Esther, even right down to the Leviticus customs!

Coming back to the bonus I received last month. I had been contemplating how to “tithe” on this bonus, and the Lord impressed upon me 4 days ago to start a personal “resource library” of the sermons and books of the Pastor who has so blessed me with his messages on grace and the finished work of the cross. Last night, I placed an order so as to obtain the entire catalogue of his sermons and books.

Meanwhile, I have compiled a database of his sermons and books (using Microsoft Access). Do let me know if there are any that you would like to borrow, and I will arrange to lend them to you accordingly.

Shalom