Love [3] – Loving yourself, 27 Dec

Time : 8pm

Venue : FOE (CR1026)

Is learning to love yourself really what people need to learn? Is loving yourself the answer to your needs in life? How does it apply in our Christian life? Come and explore more about this topic.

As the year comes to a close soon, Lets come together to remember and appreciate the things in this year and prepare ourselves for this coming Christmas. See you There =)

Date : 20 Dec
Time : 8pm
Venue : FOE (CR1026)

Chillex Night!

Date : 13 Dec

Time : 8pm

Venue : FOE (CR1026)

Come take a break from studying and assignments. Join us to have some fun and just relax. There would be some awesome console games and board/ card games too!!

Summary: Ultimate Goal? Being Christ like

Who is Christ?

Savior
Healer
Redeemer
King of kings
High Priest
Prince of Peace
Lord of lords
Son of man
Lamb of God
Good Shepherd
Messiah etc...

We need to know who Christ is, simply because we cannot grow into being someone we do not know."

7 But to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christs gift.8 Therefore He says: When He ascended on high, He led captivity captive, And gave gifts to men.9 (Now this, He ascended what does it mean but that He also first descended into the lower parts of the earth?10 He who descended is also the One who ascended far above all the heavens, that He might fill all things.)11 And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers,12 for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ,13 till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ;14 that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting,15 but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the headChrist16 from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.17 This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind,18 having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart;19 who, being past feeling, have given themselves over to lewdness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.20 But you have not so learned Christ,21 if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus:22 that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts,23 and be renewed in the spirit of your mind,24 and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.
(Ephesians 4:7-24 NKJV)

<<< I AM A NEW CREATION >>>

17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. (2 corinthians 5:17)

How?

• By continually allow your mind to be changed

• And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. (Romans 12:2)

• Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus (Phil 2:5 NKJV)
  

• Even so consider yourselves also dead to sin and your relation to it broken, but alive to God [living in unbroken fellowship with Him] in Christ Jesus. (Romans 6:11 Amplified)
  

• For as he thinks in his heart, so is he. (Proverbs 23:7 NKJV)
  

• Your actions is based on your beliefs

Testimony : Realized

Being brought up in a Christian family, I have always followed my parents to church, to worship and prayed to God, to follow the 10 commandments...but, all that was merely following as it was the “family culture”. Sadly, I didn’t understand the purpose of doing it...i’m just doing it blindly...

Thanks God for His plan that at one time I begin to wonder...asking what is the purpose behind all the “being Christian-like” person. Is it just to please the community? Or it is to please God? My answer...neither one of it...because all that He wants is to have this very close and special relationship with you...so that we can learn to be like Him, and he’ll bring us to the right path.

When I was asked to write a testimony, first thing that comes to mind...Oh no! What testimony do I have to share with people? I don’t have...I don’t have those freaking awesome testimony like my friends who experienced miracles...but...wait...isn’t being able to wake up every morning, staying alive and breathing is a miracle? Look at things around you...did you ever wonder how could trees stay alive by breathing through the small holes on its leaves? How would birds have wings and know how to fly in the sky? Stupid questions?

Who would have this unexplainable power that has created all this? Why do human even have brains that know how to think and being able to write this testimony now? All praise to God as this is all the miracles that He had done in our life without us realizing it.

At this point of time, all I that I want is to give thanks to God for all that I have in life. Good and bad things happen...you may ask...how would we give thanks even when bad things happen? Just bare in mind that there’s always a reason for things to happen. We may not know of the reason now...but God will reveal the answer...somehow...and you’ll realize that nothing else could be better than that.

Love each other as how God loves you. How God loves us? Can’t seem to see the love and feel the love? Open your heart to Him my friend. And he’ll show you...There’s nothing greater than His LOVE for us. There’s no one that can be closer to us than Him alone. Thank you loving Father for blessing each and every one of us. Be grateful for all that you have, because He’ll always give you more than you need.

Thank you.=)

By V.T.~

Summary: Love (2) - Loving God, 29 November 2011

We know John 3:16. We know how much God loves us, that He sent Jesus Christ to die for our sins in order to restore us to our position in the spiritual hierarchy. (Refer to previous post) God’s love is beyond human understanding. God is very wise, He is a genius. We use a few years just to study a certain aspect of God’s creation. However, God doesn’t purposely want to be complicated. He wants us to know Him better. Being children of God, we are privileged to enjoy our ‘royalty’ position which we ourselves do not have to earn it.All this because God’s love is unconditional and overflowing that whoever believes in Him and accepts Jesus Christ as his Saviour will have such privilege.

God first loves us, therefore we love. He is the source of love and by reciprocating His love to us, we love Him back. In the small little things we do everyday in our lives, we are actually showing how God’s love lives in us and at the same time loving Him. We go to church, we come to CF, we worship Him, we study His words, all this simply shows our love to God.

The main reason we love God is because we want to love Him, not because we want to earn something from Him. Typical Asian culture roots in our mind since young, telling us that everything which is good needs to be earned and reward comes hand in hand with it, like the law of sowing and reaping. But when we love God, we don’t love Him with theintention of wanting to be loved more. God looks at the heart, so we love him genuinely from the heart. And the whole point is that He’s already given us His love; we have been loved from the very beginning and will always be. We don’t have to ask for more. God’s perfect love comes from zero percent of our hardwork. As long as we are children of God, His love is already our eternal inheritance.

However, we can do greater things than that. God, through His love in us, wants us to live out His words without fear. Many Christians live in fear. We fear that when sometimes we do things like loving our enemies, we may be perceived by the worldly people as hypocrites or not conformed to the norm. We fear of not being acknowledged, not being appreciated and being rejected especially when telling the non-believers about how awesome God is and how we are redeemed through Christ. We fear that by saying such straightforward yet ultimate truth, we will have to bear the rejection. More often we tend to rather say things euphemistically. In short, we subconsciously do things with fear and this is not perfect love. In fact, when a person rejects the Good News that you share to him, he is actually rejecting God’s love. It’s between that individual and God. So why we fear?

The Bible says perfect love casts out fear because fear has to do with punishment. (1 John 4:18) Therefore, we have to stop being afraid of the right thing that the Holy Spirit tells us to do. Our responsibility is to preach the gospel. Reach out to people not out of fear, do evangelism not out of fear. Fear doesn’t reflect perfect love. We need to get the truth of we being so loved by God very deeply until it becomes our default point. Don’t feel condemned. Whenever we fear, we go back to God, allow His prefect love to dwell in us and help us to wipe out the negative within us. Instead of letting the Asian typical mindset to control our thinking, we ask the Holy Spirit to assure us intuitively that our position is already restored and hence we can be comfortable with our new identity in Christ.

We love because He first loved us (1 John 4:19). Another way to love God is by making disciples and this requires us to be disciples first. Making disciples can take our lives thus it is like the love that Jesus displayed to mankind. However, being a Christian is not like a competition. It’s not valued and measured by how much we do (or how many disciples we make etc) because everything we manage to do comes from God, if His will allows that. The glory eventually belongs to Him.

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. (1 John 4:16) As we know that we are loved, we are children of God, it prompts us want to love more. We need not fear because nothing can separate us from God, not our past, present or future. (Romans 8:38-39) (God’s) Love never fails. (1 Corinthians 13:8) So, let us not love by merely saying but by appropriate actions. (1 John 3:18)

P.S. Read John 14,15,16 too. Don’t just read one chapter, read the whole text to get the full picture. Or else if you just focus on one aspect like if you love Me you will obey my commands, you’ll feel that you are a terrible person who doesn’t deserve God’s love. :D

By Faithful~

Ultimate Goal? Being Christ like.

Date : 6 Dec

Time : 8pm

Venue : FOE (CR1026)

Come and let us find you what being Christ-like it is suppose mean!!

Topic: Love (2) - Loving God Date : 29 November 2011

Topic: Love (2) – Loving God

Date : 29 November

Time : 8pm

Venue : FOE (CR1026)

Speaker: Ps Jason

As we all had learn about Love (1) - “Being Love” last week, now we all are going to learn the Love (2) - “Loving God”.

We know that God’s love for every one of us is “Agape - unconditional love” and we must not take it for granted but to know and love Him more!

Some of us might wonder how to love Him more? How to draw closer to Him? In what way we can show our love to God?

So~ don’t miss it! Come and learn about the Word of God and experience His love for us!

Summary : Being Loved, 15 Nov 2011

Title: Being loved

Speaker: Pastor Jason

In Malaysia, our education system tells us that you need to enter primary school at the age of seven, after that you move on to secondary school and then continue to pursue your studies at tertiary level. Unfortunately, many have drop out of school after PMR, SPM or college. If you grow up in a Christian family, usually you attend Sunday school at a young age. As you grow up, you see many of your friends leave this faith or back slide. Why do people renounce their faith since we have such a wonderful God? Because they don’t know that God is real and He loves us? Many of us focus on the secondary and tertiary aspects like being kind, compassion and merciful. But we must not miss the primary aspect of Christianity – that is to know God’s love for us. What makes Christianity special is our relationship with God is base on His unconditioned love for us. Being concern about others, compassion and kind do not make us special. Any non-Christian organization can also be kind and compassion, you just need to be a good and caring person.

Agape (God’s love) is unselfish, unfailing, unmerited and ONLY God alone can give us this love. As humans, no matter how we will be a little bit bias to people around us. We will care for this person and care for another less, we will be kinder to this person that another. However, God’s perfect love is the same for every believer. We all are His children. He doesn’t save you more and save me less. We are equally important in God’s heart and in His plan. Remember that only you can offer your worship to God, no one can do it on your behalf. Only you can bring it. Those worships, prayers, thanks giving and etc are important to Him. (The incident that the leper thanked and praised God after he was healed by Jesus was recorded in the Bible, God was pleased and happy as he was the only one to come back and give thanks to God. It matters. David’s prayers are recorded in the Psalms). If you think that you missed the chance to worship Him, to pray to Him and to give thanks, remember that our God is the mighty Redeemer. He can redeem the lost time. (Joel 2:25 - I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter, my great army, which I sent among you.)

Before human sinned, God was at the top of the spiritual hierarchy, followed by men, angels and Satan/demons. God made us lower than Himself but higher than angels (angels bring our prayers to the throne of God and minister us). After God created Adam, the first thing God gave Him was authority. But after Satan deceived and usurped Adam’s birthright (the authority). The spiritual hierarchy was changed. God was still at the top of the hierarchy, followed by Satan/demons, angels and men. Actually, the main reason why Jesus came and died for our sins is not for us to go to heaven, but to give us back the authority and restore the spiritual hierarchy. (Jesus went to Hell to get back the key).

So as children of God, when we pray to God, we don’t need to beg but come in faith that He is good and He will provide. Usually God is absolutely please to give us or even give us more than what we ask and imagine. We ask in the restored authority. Add the good stuffs are ours because of the restored position.

God keeps all of His words. He doesn’t take back His words. Humans could not fulfill the first covenant which contains both blessings of keeping it and curses of not keeping it. So God made another covenant with His Son, Jesus. He sent Jesus to earth to fulfill the covenant. So there is a perfect man who fulfilled the covenant. God doesn’t cheat. Whatever you fail to do with your own strength, Jesus has done it all for you on the cross. He has won the battle. He has the victory over all those things. He didn’t do the miracles (healed the leper, casted out demons, the blind gained sight) as God but as man. He used the authority given by God to Adam. You may say wow, that’s Jesus, I cannot do it. But Jesus said greater things than these you’ll do. We as partakers, as inheritors don’t work for it. (If you are the inheritor of your father’s wealth, you don’t work for the inheritance and you don’t deserve the inheritance too. But in the end you possess it). We don’t work for miracles but we inherit them. It doesn’t come by performance, but by identity. He loves us and doesn’t want us to suffer on earth without out inheritance.

So brothers and sisters, don’t be fear-oriented Christians. We don’t need to be afraid of temptations when they come as we can overcome them through the Word of God. (Jesus overcame Satan’s temptation as He used the Word of God to reply Satan.) If we fear them we will become powerless. Let us be powerful faith-oriented Christians for we have the perfect love of God and perfect love casts out fear.
You truly know how to love when you can receive and give love freely. So let us make God the first in everything and not just only give a part of our life to Him (eg. You only give Sunday to God. Actually how you live your life on Monday until Friday often will reflect who you really are) Luke 12:31 - Instead, seek his kingdom, and these things will be added to you. Surrender your academic life, family life and everything to God if you want Him to call you friend. John 15:14-15 - You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. Don’t worry if you think you have so many weaknesses, all the friends of God in Bible had weaknesses. Peter was impulsive, David was an adulterer, Jonah ran away from God, Elijah was pessimist and etc. Thus you stand a good chance to be a friend of God.

Maybe you have tried love before the person disappointed you. You decide to not trust anyone again because of that painful experience. But God’s love is different. You can absolutely trust Jesus who died for you and He will never disappoint you. There’s nothing more liberating than placing your life/heart into someone’s hand that you can fully trust. There is freedom in God. You are not alone when you go through tough times which make you stronger as you have God. When you are dealing with others, their words and actions won’t hurt you, their hate and rejection won’t shake you if God’s perfect love is in your heart. So do God proud and give Him all the glory.

Testimony : Who Am I

Most Christians have this one point in their lives where they decide that they would accept Christ as their savior, but I don’t really know if that is the same for me. Being born and raised as a Christian, I was taught from an early age about who and what God was. I was studying and memorizing bible verses from an early age and God was indeed real to me.

My parents and church elders told me that Jesus was my Lord/Savior and being a kid I had no reason not to believe them. After many years of going to church and getting to know more and more about God, that fact that was Jesus was my savior was like a no brainer for me. I knew that he saved me from my sins and also knew that “Jesus first loved me” and in my mind I have had always accepted him as my savior. So “what is the purpose of this testimony?” you may ask.

When I was 16 there was this church camp that I went to and the theme of the camp was “ Who Am I”. The reason I’m writing this is for what happened on the last day of the camp. The speaker was talking about how unworthy we were to receive salvation and how much love God must have had to send his one and only son to die for us. I’ve heard and I’m pretty sure most of you have also heard this speech many times, but since the whole three days of the camp was about that topic, I decided to just let that fact sink into my head for a while. And that was when it hit me. It was not some special revelation or anything special like that, but it was the feeling of unworthiness.

I can’t really put into words just how unworthy I felt at that moment but the only other feeling that was stronger was the feeling of thankfulness. It was weird singing the theme song for the camp that night but it was good kind of weird(if that makes sense). I got baptized a few months later and I admit there are times when I feel that I’m doing okay on my own but I quickly remember my time at that camp and I would ask myself “Who Am I”.

P.S. The theme song for the camp was “Who Am I – Casting Crown”

By "I Know Who Am I"

Topic:

Love (1) - Being Loved

Date : 22 November

Time : 8pm

Venue : CR1026

You are not alone.Whatever trails we may be facing , we all need to reject the idea that God hate us or is out to punish us and ruin our lives . No matter what temptations that we are facing everyday , just remind yourself that God loves you so much that he even sacrifice his son to save us all from sins.Being love by Love is the greatest gift that we receive from God.All he want us to do is to receive it.

There will be a special guest to come and speak in our CF

Ps. Jason

He will talk about the need of the love of God so that members of CF shouldn't treat anything about God as a "Touch And Go" thing.

Be sure to come next week.

LOVE IS A SEED PLANTED BY GOD,

AND WATERED BY MAN

Interfaith Talk 2011

Topic :

Alcoholism & Drug Addiction

Date : 15 November

Time : 8pm -11pm

Venue : XR1002



Interfaith is a cooperative, constructive and positive interaction between people of different religion aiming of deriving a common ground in belief through a concentration on similarities between faiths, understanding of values, and commitment to the world.

CF today!

Date: 18/10/11

Time: 8pm

Venue: Foe CR1027

MMUCS Malacca + Cyberjaya Gathering

This is what happened on the 6th of AUGUST 2011 (Sat)...


Before reaching...






































































Before reaching + some time later...

At MMU Malacca...

Meanwhile...

At Ayer Keroh Water Sport...

At LOIS Top Beef & Bakuteh Restaurant...

THAT'S ALL FOLKS


Photographed

by

Philip Phua & Stephen Goh