Meditate for Good Success

Praise the Lord for another round of Fine Wine for the start of the New Year!

What's the Bible's secret to experiencing good success in every facet of life? Let Joseph Prince show you how meditating day and night on God's Word is the key to thriving, flourishing and seeing the blessing of God in all that we set our hands to do. Discover also how biblical meditation offers life-giving benefits you won't want to miss out on! Begin to walk in greater health, peace, stability and unceasing fruitfulness as you meditate on the Lord's wonderful promises for you today!

Pastor Joseph Prince

Sermon note from Tycm's Blog by Terence Yeo: Raw review of NCC 2nd svc 8 Jan 2012. 

There's a Hole in the Bucket

In the first Chapter of the letter to the Ephesians, Apostle Paul revealed that we have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. At time, it is literally hard for us to believe as we do not really witness the manifestation; but the truth is, we need to believe in the Word of Christ before the manifestation comes. For we walk by faith, not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:7). 

With Odetta (Odetta Holmes) Belfonte performed this traditional folk song on May 2, 1960 in Carnegie Hall. This version appeared on his album, "Belafonte Returns to Carnegie Hall". A spadecaller video.

Figurative speaking, we are all vessels or buckets in this case. The truth is we have everything, even the thing pertaining to life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3); but once we stop believing in the Word of Christ, the hole of unbelief exist in our bucket and our blessing started to leak...

Why do we need to believe in the Word of Christ?

It is because the Word of Christ is the word of the resurrected Jesus revealed to Apostle Paul. The Word of Christ always points us to His righteousness and what He had accomplished for us at the cross. Our Helper, the Holy Spirit also convicts us of righteousness and He is here to glorify Jesus by witnessing to the His Word.

Is your bucket leaking?

In this New Year, start "working" the work of God by mending your bucket i.e. to believe in the Word of Christ!

John 6:29 ~ Jesus answered, "The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent." 

Mind

I have been talking to a few of my friends about their life before and after they knew Christ. In the midst of our conversations, we noticed a common factor which was the main cause of the failure in their lives… that is the human mind which generates our thinking, our intellectual, our greed, and strategies to fulfill our selfish desires. The human mind has gotten us into the troubles of our lives. We got ourselves into troubles because we used our mind too much to strategize in order to satisfy our desire and archive our goals....  and in the midst of  our troubles, we still engaged and relied on our mind which had first caused all the troubles for all sorts of rescue plans, hoping to get ourselves out of  them.

When I looked at my own life, manipulation of mind has been happening in it as well. As we look into this world, we can also find this phenomenon at our workplace, even among our own family members and relatives.. We can find it in the movies, be it from Hollywood or Bollywood and they portray the same scenarios... of which they call "mind game"! I presume this is the root cause of all the troubles in this fallen world.

  

By looking at the first few chapters of the Bible, we find out that before Adam fell, he was full of revelation that he could name all the animals without going through the learning process of zoology and until now, an elephant is still called elephant… and yet, we who are born after his fall have to go to school and learn the names of the animals. Adam’s fall had caused  revelation to cease from sinful men and since then, human knowledge is getting us into all sorts of trouble... be it big or small and this is indeed, the signature characteristic of the fallen nature. 

Ecclesiastes 9:11  ~ I have seen something else under the sun: The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favour to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all. (NIV)

All the things in the Kingdom of God are never to be achieved by our might, but by the power of the Holy Spirit... Not that we are faster, stronger or wiser than others, not that we have learned a lot... It is all by GRACE... the effort of Jesus. We are now above the sun not under the sun. We are above the sun because we are in Christ who is now seated at the right hand of our heavenly Father.

Our Lord Jesus, by dying at the cross, had come as high priest of the good things that are now already here... ALREADY HERE...! GOOD THINGS ARE ALREADY HERE!!! Not what we have to do but only to BELIEVE in Him because of His FINISHED WORK at the cross! Creation had fallen but the Creator through His finished work at the cross redeemed the fallen mankind.

Hebrews 9:11~ But when Christ came as high priest of the good things that are now already here, he went through the greater and more perfect tabernacle that is not made with human hands, that is to say, is not a part of this creation. (NIV)

After all these years of believing in Jesus, I think it is high time for us to rest our mind in peace (RIP). Our carnal mind is simply of no help to us at all because it is of the flesh as Jesus had said, "It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing." (John 6:63). Therefore, we have to engage our heart...  The new heart that He had given us together with a new Spirit in us. He had taken away the heart of stone from our flesh, and gave us a heart of flesh. He had put His Spirit in us, causing us to be guided by His rules, so that we may keep His orders and do them. Our Saviour had given us this heart from the moment we believed in Him… 

Christianity is not about what we can do or how we manipulate our mind... It is all about what Jesus had done at the cross. Through believing in what He had done for us, we receive all the good things that are from Him through the cross.

Let us give thanks to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ because in our union with Christ our heavenly Father has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly world. So do not be conformed to the standards of this world, but allow God to transform us inwardly by a complete change of our mind. Then we will be able to know the will of God. Jesus who came to die for us at the cross is His good and pleasing and perfect will.

Concerning believer's heart, the power that gives life is in our heart because the Trinity manifested Himself twice in the following verse... 

Romans 8:11 ~  But if the Spirit of the One who raised up Jesus from the dead dwells in you, the One who raised up Christ from the dead shall also make your mortal bodies alive by His Spirit who dwells in you. 

I pray that you can have revelation on the power of our heart and be blessed by it. Amen!

POOR & LOVING vs RICH, Yet WISE & LOVING

It was about 15 years ago and I could still remember it was in one of the afternoon when I was having my tea break in a coffee shop. Beside this coffee shop was a grocery shop and I was there buying some cough drops. I saw an elderly man selecting the expired canned food from a discount counter next to me.

As I was watching him choosing, I told him that these canned foods were expired and could be harmful for human consumption. He told me that he understood but his children loved this kind of canned food and he was too poor for the normal canned food… Indeed, the expression on his face told me that he loved his children very much.

With compassion in my heart, I asked him to get from the normal stock and I would pay for the difference. He took for himself half a dozen and I paid for him together with my cough drops at the cashier counter. I went back to my seat at the coffee shop next door. 

After awhile, I saw this elderly man came out of the grocery shop with a big  bag full of canned foods… Out of my curiosity, I went back to ask the cashier counter and the cashier told me that, the elderly man used the normal canned foods to exchange for the expired canned foods… and by doing this; he could have more canned foods for his children.

The key word here is, this man was POOR and yet, he LOVEd his children very much…

After the finished work of Christ, any born again believers are to live by the word of Christ. The word of Christ is the word reveals by the resurrected Jesus. The word of Christ only comes through revelation by the Holy Spirit. The revelation of the word of Christ had the power to transform a Pharisee of Pharisee into the Apostle of Grace. He was none other than the Apostle Paul, an Apostle to the Gentile. Apostle Paul himself mentioned in the Book of Galatians that he received the gospel through revelation from Jesus Christ. 

Galatians 

1:11 I want you to know, brothers and sisters that the gospel I preached is not of human origin.

1:12 I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ.

If it was by revelation, Paul indeed needed the work of the Holy Spirit in him to unveil the truth because Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth. He only witnesses to the truth and He comes to glory Jesus. For us to understand the grace of God, we too, need the Holy Spirit to reveal to us the Gospel of Grace. That is why Paul prayed for the churches in Ephesians to receive the Spirit of wisdom and the Spirit of revelation so that the Ephesians might know Jesus better and the eyes of their heart might be enlightened.

Ephesians 

1:17 I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better.

1:18 I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people,

In this grace dispensation, any minister ministering the grace of God needs the revelation from the Holy Spirit. If a minister is POOR in revelation, chances are, he is feeding the expired food to the congregation…, but it is still out of his LOVE for his people…. Like the poor elderly man loving his children…

Take heed, when the Spirit of wisdom and the Spirit of revelation enlighten you, you are WISE and RICH... and the objective of loving is fulfilled through the revelation of Agape Himself...

Do This In Remembrance Of Me

In the Chinese Calendar today, the Chinese people are celebrating the Mid Autumn or Moon Festival. Traditionally, on this day, Chinese family members and friends will gather to admire the bright Mid-Autumn harvest moon, and eat moon cakes together.

This festival is to remember their legends Chang’e in Chinese mythology involve some variation of the following elements: Houyi, the Archer; Chang'e, the mythical Moon Goddess of Immortality; an emperor, either benevolent or malevolent; an elixir of life; and the Moon. Basically, this is what the Chinese people think; and they are doing this every year at this time to remember their “heroes”.

This is just a version of what this festival is about. There are various versions because a mythology is not the truth; so I won’t expound on that and as for me, the truth has set me free.

Now, Our Lord Jesus on the night he was betrayed took bread, when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way after supper he took the cup, say, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.

The word remembrance in our generation has been watered down to mere remembering in our mind. But in the Jewish culture, they actually go through the process in action to remember the festival or occasion. Just like the Chinese people, they are eating moon cake, admiring the bright Mid Autumn moon in remembrance of their legendary heroes.

In the body of Christ today, we have been led to perversion on the way we remember the Lord’s Body. Instead of coming to the Table in celebration, we come in consciousness of our sin and with fear of condemnation and judgment.

Jesus has gone through all the sufferings and died for us on the Cross; and He is our real Hero totally different from those legendary heroes. What the people of the world have are mythologies while we are having the truth. Can we just shift our focus off ourselves for a while and give Jesus the due respect by REMEMBER HIM when we come to the Lord’s Table?

The people in the world celebrate their festival and freely commune to remember their “heroes” with the right attitude, but of no value. While we have been eternally made righteous by the blood of Jesus, we have the truth in us but come with a wrong attitude. This wrong attitude makes void this powerful provision of God and put us back in same position with the people of the world. Hey..., this is a conspiracy from the evil one!

1 Corinthians 11:27 – Therefore, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord.

What the Lord meant is the manner of how we come before the Table not who! The MANNER, not the MAN…!!! Yes, we were once full of sin; but when we are born again, we have been made righteous forever not by the bloods of bull and goat but the Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ! When our Lord is resurrected on the third day, we are justified.

However, our heavenly Daddy is always mercy and full of grace. He never gets angry with us but forever faithful in leading us to His truth with lovingkindness.

Come to the Lord’s Table and celebrate His death and remember Him. For whenever we eat the bread and drink the cup, we proclaim His death until He comes. It is His death on the Cross that set us free. Rejoice before the Lord’s Table and give Him the due respect and praise Him. The beneficiary of this remembrance is us not Him.

This is grace….