By Ms Lilian Poon
The onset of September is typically a busy month for staff and pastors in the church. This is the season when we plan for the new year’s church calendar and budget. While the task at hand often requires meticulous programmatic planning of the new year, the question I found myself asking is “What is God’s will and plans for the ministry and the church” rather than “What plans or events look great for next year”?
During my weekly preparation for CARE Group meetings, I came across this familiar scripture in Romans 12:1-2:
1 Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. 2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
The context of chapter 11 focuses on Paul’s reminder to the Gentile believers in Rome regarding God’s immense mercy and grace that grafted them into His kingdom (Romans 11:25, 26). The undeserved grace upon the Gentiles that includes us today ought to motivate us to examine our lives in two pathways that will lead us to the discovery of God’s perfect, good and pleasing will.
Firstly, in giving of ourselves to God unreservedly as a living sacrifice, in the same way Christ gave Himself to us extravagantly with His own life as a sacrifice through incarnation and death on the cross for our sins. Sacrifice and worship must go hand in hand. In the absence of true sacrifice, worship is just an empty shell of songs and noises without any real substance to offer God. Secondly, the word exhorts us not to conform to the world so that our minds can be renewed. Brothers and sisters, when we offer ourselves to God wholly and adapt to His ways that might be totally counter cultural to what the world has to offer, God will show up to renew and change us even in the most challenging polarities.
Full time ministry is not always a bed of roses. Last year was particularly challenging as we consider Clementi Peaks BTO as a viable outreach target. However, precedence and resources for such outreach efforts were unclear and lean. While seeking God’s purpose and will in the midst of doubt and personal turmoil, I begin to see the answer does not lie with events or programmes, but rather to acknowledge God through humility and repentance from personal pride that blinded me from God’s heart for the community. As I repented, vision of what God could do came readily through “Kampung Care @ Clementi Peaks” initiative.
Rather than asking where we can find God’s will and plans, perhaps the deeper question is to ask whether we are ordering our lives as a living sacrifice to God. Are we conscientiously offering our first fruits to Him with our time, finances, family and our work? Is God partnering with you in all your ventures as you craft out your life before you? Perhaps God is speaking to you to lay somethings down before Him, so that He can come into reform, reset and reshape these. For the church, God may be speaking to the leadership in getting on to claim the mountains like Caleb and Joshua did, but we must lay aside some negativity and distrust that might have set us back for a season. Only when our hearts are set in the right wavelength with God will the blueprint of God’s purpose makes sense to us. It is not too late to dedicate ourselves anew to God as living sacrifices and allow Him to download His vision and perfect will. If you are willing, please follow through with this prayer:
Dear Lord, thank you for speaking to me. I repent of my pride and fears, humbling myself before you to offer my life fresh and anew to you. Come and reveal your will and purpose for my life and for my church in the following areas (share with Him the specific areas). I give thanks to you, for giving thanks in all circumstances is the will of Christ Jesus for me, regardless of how I feel. Praying all these in Jesus’s name, amen.
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