Don’t Marry, Be Happy

by Mark Gungor

 I know that it seems like odd advice for a marriage speaker to give. But what I really mean by it is pretty simple. If you think marriage will make you happy, you are sorely mistaken. Don’t marry someone with the idea that it’s going to make you happy. When either one or both spouses head into a marriage with this thinking, it creates some of the most miserable couples out there.

Can you be happy in marriage? Absolutely. But the people who are successful and happy in their marriages are not happy because they are married. It isn’t the marriage or the person they are married to that makes them happy. They are happy and fulfilled in life apart from their marriage.

The reality is if you are looking for a man or a woman to make you happy, if you are looking to marriage for happiness, you are barking up the wrong tree. The answer to your happiness isn’t marriage. The answer isn’t another person. Some of the loneliest and most unhappy people on the planet are those with wedding rings on. Sad, but true.

All of the romance novels, chick flicks and TV shows sell the lie that the real answer to finding contentment is to find a man or woman to make you happy, but nothing could be farther from the truth. Here is what I say about this in my book Laugh Your Way to a Better Marriage: A successful marriage is not the result of two empty souls finding each other in an attempt to “complete” each other. Two empty, unfulfilled souls who get married will just be a marriage of two empty, unfulfilled souls.

Sunday Sermon - 26-Feb-2012 - Ps. Sandy Haverfield

Speaker: Ps. Sandy Haverfield

http://www.mediafire.com/?wdsjk6nwvydkz1f

In Celebration of Being Single - Pastor Mark Gungor

Anger: Handle with Care

by Dr. Gary Chapman

Do find yourself over-reacting to little irritations? Your spouse forgot the milk. Your child tracked mud on the new carpet, and you explode. There is a good chance that you are suffering from stored anger. Anger that has been living inside of you for years. Your parents hurt you with harsh words or severe punishment. Your peers made fun of you as a teenager. Your boss treated you unfairly.

You've held all of these hurts inside and now your stored anger is showing up in your behavior. The bible says, "Don't let the sun go down on your anger." In my book entitled Anger, I talk about getting rid of stored anger in more detail, but here's a few helpful insights that could help you handle this powerful emotion.

Discover the Symptoms

One of the common problems I encounter in the counseling office is people who are eaten up with anger. They have been deeply hurt by others. In an effort to be good Christians, they have held their anger inside. They didn't want to explode or be unkind, so they said nothing. Anger held inside leads to bitterness, hatred, and often depression.

Many people have no idea why they are cranky, critical, and condemning. They make life hard on others and hard on themselves. Almost always, these people are filled with anger. Everything they encounter seems wrong. They read into the present what has happened to them in the past. They were hurt by parents, siblings, and others. The hurt turned to anger and the anger to a critical attitude.

Cornelius

by Max Lucado

Cornelius was an officer in the Roman army. Both Gentile and bad guy. He ate the wrong food, hung with the wrong crowd, and swore allegiance to Caesar. He didn’t quote the Torah or descend from Abraham. Uncircumcised, unkosher, unclean. Look at him.

Yet look at him again. Closely. He helped needy people and sympathized with Jewish ethics. He was kind and devout. “One who feared God with all his household, who gave alms generously to the people, and prayed to God always” (Acts 10:2 NKJV). Cornelius was even on a first-name basis with an angel. The angel told him to get in touch with Peter, who was staying at a friend’s house thirty miles away in the seaside town of Joppa. Cornelius sent three men to find him.

Peter, meanwhile, was doing his best to pray with a growling stomach. He saw a vision of a sheet that contained enough unkosher food to uncurl the payos of any Hasidic Jew. Peter absolutely and resolutely refused. “Not so, Lord! For I have never eaten anything common or unclean” (v. 14 NKJV).

But God wasn’t kidding about this. He three-peated the vision, leaving poor Peter in a quandary. Peter was pondering the pigs in the blanket when he heard a knock at the door. At the sound of the knock, he heard the call of God’s Spirit in his heart. “Behold, three men are seeking you. Arise therefore, go down and go with them, doubting nothing; for I have sent them” (vv. 19–20 NKJV).

Pursuing God in the Dead of Winter

J. Lee Grady Newsletters - Fire In My Bones

How hot is your spiritual passion when it’s 40 degrees below zero outside?

Because I grew up in Georgia’s sweltering humidity and I now live in Florida’s year-round sunshine, I am not fond of cold weather. I’d rather go barefoot in the sand than trudge through snow in heavy boots. To me, it’s “cold” when I have to wear anything heavier than a T-shirt and shorts, or if I have to cover the Sago palm in my front yard with a plastic sheet on a chilly Florida evening.

But because I told God a long time ago I would go wherever He sends me, I ended up in the Canadian city of Saskatoon two weeks ago. It was minus 40 degrees F on my first night there. Snow was piled everywhere, and the Saskatchewan River was frozen solid, yet my hosts told me this was a “mild” winter. Locals, who start their cars 10 minutes before going anywhere to warm their engines, joke that there are four seasons in Saskatchewan: “Almost winter,” “winter,” “still winter” and “road construction.”

“God honors spiritual hunger because it is a sign of humility. He does not reveal Himself to casual inquirers; He looks for fervent pursuers—people who are willing to go the extra mile to find Him.”

We had a renewal service planned for a Friday night, and I wondered if anyone would be brave enough to venture out in that freezing weather. (I would have hibernated until late March.) But not only did these people from Saskatoon come to receive a word from God, one pastor and his family drove from a town three hours north.

The Value of Loneliness

R.T. Kendall

In May 1984 Billy Graham spoke at Westminster Chapel. His subject was “loneliness.” He took his text from a strange verse; Psalm 102:6, in the King James Version, in which the psalmist likens himself to an owl in the desert. Graham definitely hit a nerve! There are so many people today who are lonely.

Loneliness is a painful condition, a dreaded state that, given the choice, most people would do anything to avoid. It is enforced solitude.

There is obviously a significant difference between enforced solitude and chosen solitude. Some of us appreciate the bliss of solitude. Jesus needed to get away from the crowds, and there are some who, by nature, are loners; they love it that way. My friend Robert Amess calls himself “the complete loner,” but he is not lonely.

Enforced solitude is another matter. It may be that you are confined to one place or one room. Or, in the case of social isolation, you have few or no friends. “Webster’s Dictionary” says that “loneliness” means “sad from being alone.” It occurs when you have no one to share your hurts or joys with.

You may spend time with people, and that is good as far as it goes. But you are sad the whole time because you know that, in a few moments, in a very little while, they will go back to their homes — some to their wives, some to their husbands. You, on the other hand, will go back to your lonely place and turn on the television.

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.)

Apologies: Because People Aren't Perfect

by Dr. Gary Chapman

When is the last time you apologized? What did you say or do? Did the person to whom you apologized seem to accept your apology? Did they forgive you? Was the relationship healed? If not, I have an idea as to why they found it hard to forgive you. They did not hear your apology as being sincere.

When someone hurts us and is now trying to apologize, the question in our minds is: are they sincere? We judge sincerity by how they apologize. If they simply say, "I'm sorry," that may seem a bit weak. We may want to hear them say, "I was wrong. Will you please forgive me?" There are five ways to apologize. If you speak only one, you will likely come across as insincere.

Apology 101

Do you know how to apologize? Chances are you do what your parents taught you, but that may not be enough. Dr. Jennifer Thomas and I discovered that people have different ideas on what it means to apologize. In fact there are five languages of apology. If you don't speak the right language you are not likely to have a favorable response.

If you aren't sure how to apologize, consider saying this: "I value our relationship. What do I need to do or say in order for you to consider forgiving me?" Their answer will reveal their 'primary apology language'. Express your apology in that language and will likely receive forgiveness.

Worship Roster - 12 February 2012 - Communion

CM : Siow Kim Woon
WL : Shankar R
BU : Peggy Tan, Jacquelina Lim, Colleen Chang
PN : Christopher Lai
SY :
LG : Chew Weng Ern
BG : Kenneth Lai
DR : Wong Kai Yew
TM : Joycelyn / Lareina / Colleen
LCD : Timothy
PA : Hiew FF, Jeremiah

*as per hardcopy printout

Sunday Sermon - 5-Feb-2012 - Bro Andrew Kok

Speaker: Bro. Andrew Kok
Malaysian Fellowship President, Moscow

http://www.mediafire.com/?s3lvzx07qw43p44

How to Win ANY Battle in Life - 2

by Steve Arterburn

The Choice of Humble Willingness
Those who are both humble and willing realize they do not have all the answers, and they are willing to do whatever it takes to find them. This place of humility allows them to seek help from others and shift their reliance from themselves to God.

Proverbs 3:5-7 tells us to not lean on our own understanding and to not be wise in our own eyes. A humble willingness to do whatever it takes, to reach out and get the help that is needed is a sign of character and strength. It is the beginning of the path to the victory circle. But to get there you have to allow God to use your struggle to teach you to rely less on your own resources and totally on Him.

Over the years I have watched people reach this crucial point where they are willing to do whatever it takes, and I have watched everything in their lives turn around. I have also seen those who reach the point and turn and run in the opposite direction. The biggest reason is that they are unwilling to make a bold move toward healing.

You can't just declare yourself a winner. You have to heal the things that are preventing you from having victory. The biggest reason you have lost the battle is that you have relied on your own strength, trying to win on your own.

Automatic vs. Intentional

by Mark Gungor

When you first start out dating, and then in the early stages of marriage, most of the relationship is automatic. You are running off of emotions and hormones that drive each of you to be nice, be considerate, spend time together, and tend to one another. But eventually, marriage happens, life kicks in, kids come along and things change.

Most people think that the early stages of love—that chemically induced time of bliss and ease—will continue indefinitely. After all, they are “in love” and have found “the one” that will make the rest of their days as euphoric as the honeymoon phase.

But that’s not the way it works. The reality is this automatic phase is short-term (lasting six months to a couple of years) and when it fades away your marriage and your sex life must happen on purpose. You have date night on purpose. You plan to have sex on purpose. You make time for each other on purpose. Couples who don’t make the transition from automatic to intentional have marriages that suffer the most.

This is especially true when you become new parents. Now there is this new little creature that has come into your lives who consumes inordinate amounts of time and energy. Add another child or two and it’s easy to see how the auto-pilot can fly out the window. Couples start to struggle during this season of new responsibility because things aren’t as easy as they once were. They don’t have the time or they are too tired and often this is when husbands and wives will begin to think that the marriage isn’t working, or that it’s over.

Does your child feel loved?

by Dr. Gary Chapman

Nearly all parents deeply love their children, yet not all children feel that unconditional love and care. Why this contradiction? Often, parents assume that their kids just "know" they love them, or that saying "I love you" will be enough. But children are behaviorally motivated. They respond to actions-what you do with them. So to reach them, you must love them on their terms.

Sometimes parents don't feel especially loving if they've had a discouraging day. But you can behave in a loving way, because behavior is simple. You can give your love to your children, even when you don't feel loving.

You may wonder if your children can see right through you. Since your children are exquisitely sensitive emotionally, they know when you don't feel loving, and yet they experience your love behaviorally. Don't you think they are even more grateful and appreciative when you're able to be loving, no matter how you feel inside?

It was the apostle John who wrote, "Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth" (1 John 3:18). If you began to list all the behavioral ways to love a child, I doubt that you could fill more than one page. That is fine because you want to keep it simple-behavioral expressions of love can simply be divided into five categories: physical touch, quality time, gifts, acts of service, and words of affirmation. To uncover your child's love language, visit 5lovelanguages.com.

A word of caution, though. If your child is under age five, don't expect to figure out his primary love language. You can't. The child may give you clues, but his love language is rarely clearly seen. Just speak all five languages because they all converge to meet your child's need for love. If that need is met and your child genuinely feels loved, it will be far easier for him to learn and respond in other areas. This love interfaces with all other needs a child has. Also, speak all five languages when your child is older, for he needs all five to grow, even though he craves one more than the others.

Continue the conversation: Share your questions, thoughts insights, or comments by joining the conversation on Facebook at facebook.com/5lovelanguages

Peace for Anxious Days

by Max Lucado

When my daughters were single-digit ages—two, five, and seven—I wowed them with a miracle. I told them the story of Moses and the manna and invited them to follow me on a wilderness trek through the house.

“Who knows,” I suggested, “manna may fall from the sky again.”

We dressed in sheets and sandals and did our best Bedouin hike through the bedrooms. The girls, on my instruction, complained to me, Moses, of hunger and demanded I take them back to Egypt, or at least to the kitchen. When we entered the den, I urged them to play up their parts: groan, moan, and beg for food.

“Look up,” I urged. “Manna might fall any minute.”

Two-year-old Sara obliged with no questions, but Jenna and Andrea had their doubts. How can manna fall from a ceiling?

Just like the Hebrews. “How can God feed us in the wilderness?”

Just like you? You look at tomorrow’s demands, next week’s bills, next month’s silent calendar. Your future looks as barren as the Sinai Desert. “How can I face my future?” God tells you what I told my daughters: “Look up.”

When my daughters did, manna fell! Well, not manna, but vanilla wafers dropped from the ceiling and landed on the carpet. Sara squealed with delight and started munching. Jenna and Andrea were old enough to request an explanation.

My answer was simple. I knew the itinerary. I knew we would enter this room. Vanilla wafers fit safely on the topside of the ceiling-fan blades. I had placed them there in advance. When they groaned and moaned, I turned on the switch.

God’s answer to the Hebrews was similar. Did he know their itinerary? Did he know they would grow hungry? Yes and yes. And at the right time, he tilted the manna basket toward earth.

And what about you? God know what you need and where you’ll be. Any chance he has some vanilla wafers on tomorrow’s ceiling fans? Trust him. “Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes” (Matthew 6:33-34).

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

Please Stop the Holy Ghost Smackdown

J. Lee Grady Newsletters - Fire In My Bones

Do you want the real power of the Holy Spirit? Then don’t pretend by pushing people to the floor when you pray.

I love it when the Holy Spirit shows up in church gatherings. Whenever sinners are converted, backsliders repent, bodies are healed or self-centered believers are broken by God, we see evidence of the Spirit’s work. But I don’t appreciate it when people fabricate spiritual manifestations to prove God is using them.

A few years ago a popular charismatic preacher spoke at a meeting I attended at a church in Orlando, Fla. After his message he asked all ordained ministers to run to the platform so he could lay hands on them. Immediately this man’s team of beefy bodyguards began grabbing people, dragging them onto the stage and holding them in place until the evangelist could pray for everyone.

“We seem to have become masters of mixing the anointing with other ingredients. The charismatic movement has become an embarrassing mixture of flesh and spirit.”

I felt queasy about this spectacle. It resembled a charismatic version of World Wrestling Entertainment: lots of smacking noises, falling bodies and cheers from the excited crowd. We Christians seem to love a good show, even if it is staged!

I cringed as I watched the bizarre theatrics. But before I could move to the side of the auditorium, one of the evangelist’s 220-pound goons strong-armed me onto the platform. When I looked up, the wild-eyed preacher was heading toward me with his arms flailing. I tried to duck, but when he got close enough he shouted “in the name of Jesus” and slapped me across the face. I tumbled to the floor.

8 Myths (and Truths) About Male Authority - 2

 by Joel Hunter

SO WHO ARE WE? 8 TRUTHS ABOUT MALE AUTHORITY

Being real men is not just about gender; it is about spiritual maturity in all areas of life. Therefore, manhood is about our calling and not about any competition with women.

Truth #1: We have a gender-unique leadership role in our marriages. 1 Corinthians 11:3 says: “But there is one thing I want you to know: A man is responsible to Christ, a woman is responsible to her husband, and Christ is responsible to God” (NLT). Then, in verse 8 it says: “For the first man didn't come from woman, but the first woman came from man.” I don't know why God made this arrangement. In many ways our wives are more competent than we are. Wise men will lean on their wives to decide many things for the family. In the end, it is not a matter of competence or even gender; it is a matter of following God's order.

When I was in grade school, my desk was closest to the door. That made me the leader for fire drills. Why was I the leader? Because I was more competent? No. Because I was a boy? No. It was because the teacher said so.

Truth #2: We are to love our wives as Christ loved the church and give ourselves up for her. Our authority is for sacrificing and protecting our wives, not for lording power over them. We don't need to be less strong to be a servant, nor do we need for our wives to be weak so that we can appear strong.