Sermon by Pastor Suresh (City Revival) on the 20th Jan

Hello everyone. Pastor Suresh of City Revival gave a great sermon yesterday. I took down notes so i thought of sharing it with u.

The message title was "Press forward, fulfill destiny". The Bible verses for this message were taken from Number Chap 13 and 14.

Ok, we know about the Israelites journey to the promised land after Moses had led them away from Egypt. A journey that shouldn't have taken a long time was unfortunately prolonged to a length of almost 40 years. Pastor Suresh took it from here. His mesage carried a lot of weight on the current situation in Malaysia. That is, however, how I intepreted his message. I'll squeeze in later in this entry about the connection between this message to Malaysia's condition.

I'm not big on preaching, so here's a list of the key notes I took :
1. everyone has to be positioned to serve God e.g. reach out to non-believers, etc etc

2. every choice has it consequences

3. the grass is not always greener on the other side
- trust God on where He intends to place us
- rise up and obey the Lord and pray so that we can be where He wants us to be.

4. don't focus on the circumstances, focus on God! We have to trust God's promises.
- very often, when dealing with a situation so grave, so adverse, we forget about God.
During these times, we fall prey to intimidation and rely on natural instincts and senses
rather than being obedient to God. Here's an example, the Israelites were this close to
inheriting the promised land. 12 scouts were sent from each tribe to check out the land. On
return, 10 people came back with bad reports, and only 2 of them- Caleb and Joshua urged
for the Israelites to take the land, because it was how God intended it to be. They were at
the threshold of victory, but they didn't realize it! All they had to do was to fulfill the
prophecy. U can read about the reason for the Israelites' reluctance in taking hold of the land
Numbers 13.

5. as God suggests in the Bible, there'll be battles ahead. To reach a goal, we have to persevere.
Nothing is going to come easy. Stop running away from battles. We have to face each battle
knowing that God is helping us.

6. we must have the right mentality at a moment of crisis. Crises are essential in our
development. God reveals what's in our hearts at moments of adversity. The way we deal
with them reflects on our faith. God allows "bad" things to happen to us because He wants us
to grow, to mature; in other words, He wants to deal with us.

God touched me through this message in 2 ways. I'm a Malaysian. My country is in turmoil. Do i run away? Or do i choose to stay to face the hardships some ruling quarters have brought upon this country? These are the questions that I'm still facing. The 2nd point is the exact point from the message- dealing with our exposed weaknesses. I pray to God for humility and understanding of His word.

That's about it. I'll add in more stuff into this entry if I can remember more about what Ps Suresh said. And thank you Joon Heng for the new layout!

-TR