Worship Roster - 26 February 2012 - Communion

CM : Tom Cheryan
WL : Wong Kai Yew
BU : Ng Siew Pin, Shankar R, Gigi Lim
PN : Lydia Sim
SY : Jacinta Lee
LG : Chew Weng Ern
BG : Terry Choong
DR : Kenneth Lai
TM : Joycelyn / Lareina / Colleen
LCD : Joseph Yap
PA : Tommy Quek, Jason

*as per hardcopy printout

Sunday Sermon - 19-Feb-2012 - Dr. Siow Kim Woon

Speaker: Dr. Siow Kim Woon
White Fields Assembly Seremban

http://www.mediafire.com/?4bii7k272mk90bq

The Shadow of a Doubt

by Max Lucado

Sunday mornings. I awake early, long before the family stirs, the sunrise flickers, or the paper plops on the driveway. Let the rest of the world sleep in. I don’t. Sunday’s my big day, the day I stand before a congregation of people who are willing to swap thirty minutes of their time for some conviction and hope.

Most weeks I have ample to go around. But occasionally I don’t. (Does it bother you to know this?) Sometimes in the dawn-tinted, pre-pulpit hours, the seeming absurdity of what I believe hits me. The fear that God isn’t. The fear that “why?” has no answer. The valley of the shadow of doubt.

To one degree or another we all venture into the valley. In the final pages of Luke’s gospel, the physician-turned-historian dedicated his last chapter to answering one question: how does Christ respond when we doubt him?

For both the dejected Emmaus bound disciples (Luke 24:13-35) and the frightened upper room disciples (Luke 24:36-49): A meal is served, the Bible is taught, the disciples find courage, and we find two practical answers to the critical question, what would Christ have us do with our doubts?

Whitney Houston and the Silent Shame of Addiction

J. Lee Grady Newsletters - Fire In My Bones

The pop diva’s death should remind us of an uncomfortable reality: People in church take drugs.

Anyone who has listened to Whitney Houston’s rendition of “I Love the Lord”—or who saw her perform with CeCe Winans and Shirley Caesar at the 1996 Grammy Awards—knows she had an incomparable voice best suited for gospel music. But Whitney chose a broader path: When the doors opened for her to make a pop album in the 1980s, it became the all-time best-selling debut album by a female artist. She became America’s diva.

But all her worldly success didn’t help her overcome her personal demons. Her stormy marriage was marred by domestic violence. She admitted in the 1990s that she took cocaine every day. She tried rehab three times over the course of eight years. Her voice was so damaged by her drug habit that people walked out of her comeback concert in London in 2010. She became a pathetic shell of her former self.

“Whitney Houston was not the only person who talked about Jesus yet struggled privately with cocaine or other illegal drugs. I frequently meet men and women at church altars who have never found the strength to kick their habit.” 

Christians in the music industry reached out to Whitney and prayed with her during her up-and-down battle with addictions. But the drugs had a powerful pull. In 2006, a photo was released of her bathroom sink in Atlanta filled with crack pipes, drug paraphernalia, cigarettes and beer cans. Even after she divorced Bobby Brown in 2007, the downward spiral continued.

Control Is Not a Four-Letter Word

by Mark Gungor 

Control is not a bad word. It’s not a bad thing. Yet in our culture today, people treat it as is if it is a cuss word. Many think it’s a horrible insult and freak out when someone accuses them of trying to control something. Frankly, I just don’t understand it.

Here is a scenario to help illustrate what I’m talking about: A wife is texting and emailing very personal, sexually charged and inappropriate things back and forth with a guy from work. She is also meeting this guy alone for coffee and lunch. When her husband talks to her and challenges her on this, she fires back, “You can’t tell me who I can be friends with and what I can and can’t do! You are just trying to control me!” And then he feels bad and backs down.

Or maybe it’s a husband who goes out drinking and partying with his friends several nights a week till the wee hours of dawn and when his wife confronts him, he shouts ”You are a control freak! You can’t tell me when I can come and go in my own house!” Then she thinks she’s wrong and just lets it go because she surely doesn’t want to be controlling. Are you kidding me?!

I am stunned at how many people in bad marriages just shut up and empower the other person because they fear the charge of being a controller. Whenever you have a badly behaving spouse, there is always an enabler who is weak and insecure and all the badly behaving spouse has to do is accuse the weaker one of being controlling, jealous or insecure, and they win.

FG+ Convergence Camp

https://www.facebook.com/fgplusconvergence

http://fgconvergence.weebly.com/

Worship Roster - 19 February 2012

CM : Tan Hong Lu
WL : Terry Choong
BU : Tan Hong Lu, Chow Foong Yee, Joycelyn Choong
PN : Priscilla Sim
SY :
LG :
BG : Anna Sim
DR : Darren Oi
TM : Joycelyn / Lareina / Colleen
LCD : Moses Tan, Bryan Tan
PA : Manjit

*as per hardcopy printout

Sunday Sermon - 12-Feb-2012

Speaker: Bro. Chin Teng Lum
White Fields Assembly Seremban / Youth With A Mission (YWAM)

http://www.mediafire.com/?xs8461jvkuhme9b

Take Up Your Cross

by Max Lucado

The phrase “take up your cross” has not fared well through the generations. Ask for a definition, and you’ll hear answers like, “My cross is my mother-in-law, my job, my bad marriage, my cranky boss, or the dull preacher.” The cross, we assume, is any besetting affliction or personal hassle. My thesaurus agrees. It lists the following synonyms for cross: frustration, trying situation, snag, hitch, and drawback.

The cross means so much more. It is God’s tool of redemption, instrument of salvation—proof of his love for people. To take up the cross, then, is to take up Christ’s burden for the people of the world.

Though our crosses are similar, none are identical. “If any of you want to be my followers, you must forget about yourself. You must take up your cross each day and follow me” (Luke 9:23 CEV, emphasis mine).

We each have our own cross to carry—our individual calling. Discover your God-designed task. It fits. It matches your passions and enlists your gifts and talents. Want to blow the cloud cover off your gray day? Accept God’s direction.

“The Lord has assigned to each his task” (1 Corinthians3:5 NIV). What is yours? What is your unique call, assignment, mission? A trio of questions might help.

In what directions has God taken you?

What needs has God revealed to you?

What abilities has God given to you?

Direction. Need. Ability. Your spiritual DNA. You at your best. You and your cross.

While none of us is called to carry the sin of the world (Jesus did that), all of us can carry a burden for the world.

Check your vital signs. Something stirs you. Some call brings energy to your voice, conviction to your face, and direction to your step. Isolate and embrace it. Nothing gives a day a greater chance than a good wallop of passion.

From: Great Day Every Day: Navigating Life’s Challenges with Promise and Purpose

Copyright (Thomas Nelson, 2012) Max Lucado

Previously published as 'Every Day Deserves a Chance'

Phoney Rabbis, Lost Discernment and the Eddie Long Disaster

J. Lee Grady Newsletters - Fire In My Bones

Why did people applaud Bishop Long’s bizarre “coronation” in Atlanta?

Question of the week: What should you do when a megachurch pastor is accused of serious financial and/or sexual misconduct?

A. Ask the pastor to step down so he or she can receive ministry, and then conduct a thorough investigation. 

B. Flatly deny all allegations and wait until the storm blows over.

C. Use church funds to pay off the people who made the sex abuse accusations.

D. Ask a guest preacher to call the pastor to the stage, wrap him in a 312-year-old Torah scroll and ask an “expert” in Old Testament language to declare him a “king” so he can be exonerated of all wrongdoing.

“True restoration requires a lengthy process of repentance, restitution and inner healing. If we practiced biblical restoration on a wide scale, the cancer of immorality that is eating the church alive today would go into remission.”

Until Jan. 29, when Bishop Eddie Long of Atlanta was coronated on the stage of New Birth Baptist Church in front of thousands of his congregants, I would never have dreamed of option D in the list above. I thought I had seen it all. Yet the odd ritual (I hesitate to call it a “Jewish ceremony”) performed by Denver minister Ralph Messer is now officially the most bizarre religious video ever posted on YouTube. (If you are one of the 16 people in the world who have never seen it, click here.)