When Saint's goes home: A salutation

This week we witness to going home of a dear saint. The inevitability of the experience of death will someday knock at our doors. How we greet death is a deep theological reality. On the human aspect death of a person bring a feelings sorrow to people of endearment. On the Spiritual aspect, when a life is well lived, death is a celebration of a lived hope. To be absent from this body is to be home with the Lord. This is a very simple way of putting it. There are more deeper theological implications. I am not writing a theological essay here. I will keep it this way.

Mr. Lee Chee Kai was one of the early convert to Christianity during the era under the ministry of Carrie P. Anderson, one of the early missionary whose work later was deem to be the first Assemblies of God Church in Malaysia. He has lived well his years, leaving behind many spiritual legacies that had impacted his children and grandchildren. These were the hero's that had labored for the future generation of the Church.

His faithfulness to God and his Church is a testimonial of his walk with God. He has served as leader in the Church for many years and to witness his Children and grandchild faithfully serving in the Church speaks volumes. I can say this of him because I have the privilege of having his grandson as one of my student in ministerial training.

When I received the news of his demised, I call his grandson. I remembers saying this to his grandson, "He has well lived his years. Definitely we are sad of the fact that some dear to us has passed on. However we should celebrate his going home, going home to be with the Lord is a good thing".

So it is not how long we live but rather it is how well we lived that matters. We all all have a journey to travel. Stories and legacies to the crafted in the memoirs of time. How the story continues and how it end is left to us to pen it with our lives.

Slippery slopes there will be. Shattered moments is a common shared lot. Moments of victories are not lacking. The secret is that we must brave them all. Stay faithful. Persevere on. Be faithful to the end.

Lee Chee Kai has been such a man. He was saved and grew up in the First Assembly of God Kuala Lumpur. He remained as a faithful member all his life. More importantly he walk faithfully in God.

Many of us don't enjoy history, but little do we realize that everyday we are writing our own history. We are history makers whether we are conscious about it or not. The only difference is whether we write good, not so good or bad history. As for Lee Chee Kai, he has written his last chapter and made his conclusion. For me he has written and have concluded well.

I pray that I will be able to emulate him in his faithful journey with God. I have some years to go. My deepest prayer is that I may leave a rich spiritual legacy and not just worldly wealth. What about you?


My deepest condolences to the members of the Lee Family.

Let God be God

Alvin the Chipmunk (Ringtone) greeted me early last Sunday. It was a distress call. Such call to duty is a common portion of a minister's life. Jerk myself from the slumber mood to get ready to be on the go to meet the need. I felt a deep sense of unpreparedness and inadequacy. No matter how much we know or how learned we are it is hard to prepare for such an emergency call like this.

Let me get straight to the point, one of the maid of a Church member got up early that morning with a rage of anger and smash a glass on the floor. She picks up a broken piece of glass and started cutting herself on the wrist, and she writhed on the floor and was crying uncontrollably in a sort of a trance state.

Reaching the scene, we calm her down in the name of the Lord, and brought her back to the Church to be prayed for. This young lady was possessed by evil spirits. As we pray for her, she resisted and her strength was phenomenal. After about an hour of prayer the Lord had the final victory and she was delivered from the evil spirits.

Throughout this moment, I can only Let God be God, He has to take over and make the difference. We witness the grace and power of God at work. All glory to Him. God does and continues to reveals His people glimpses of his power and reality. Supernatural and the miraculous still happen.

We cannot coerce it to happen. Neither does it happen every day. The fact is it happens and when it happens it humbles us to reckon our human frailty and inadequacy. God's is the one who is in control, it is only Him can cause the miraculous. We are just His channels and instruments of His grace and power. We take deserve no credit and cannot take any credit to the victory accomplished. We can however be thankful that we have been given the privilege to participate and to witness the moments of the power demonstration of His grace.

The enemies within the Church Part 1

I would like to foremost affirm that the Church is a loving community. We are all aware of the Lord's commandment that exhorts us love one another. I know we all aspire to live as what the Lord has prescribed to us.

There different types of "enemies within the Church". I will attempt to work through this issue in several parts. So for my first part of this reflection I want to suggest the fact is that "the enemies which the Church" are often an unintended or non malicious. Many acted or reacted to certain happenings or persons in the Church unfavorably not because they in discord. Often than not in many instances they deem themselves as conscientious objectors. The acted and reacted from who they think are really of themselves.

Action and reactions are part of life's routine. It is in this dynamic process we form perceptions, emotional boundaries and our personal security parameters. Whether our perceptions are accurate or inaccurate are dependent on many possible variables.

First, is the factor of information, Are the information we received adequate and accurate?
Misinformation can warp our perception and emotional boundaries. When this happens we may lend up to be sincerely wrong in our handling of the issues. We can become and unintended enemies of the Church

Second, is our own acquired social "garbage". Negative episodes in personal experiences can induce and works a person to produce perception and emotional "garbage". These "garbage" contaminate and distort our ability to be objective. It draws out possible preconceived prejudices, feeling and reactions from our past shadows. It clouds our judgments of thing and issues.

As a result sometime people acted as if they are "enemies", which in actuality there are not. They may have acted out of a noble intention and with no malicious intent but ends up unknowingly become an enemy.

I will for the time being paused for a moment and post up my thoughts for your feedbacks.

Objective of my blog

My reason to blog is a quest for mutual edification. Living as a man of the cloth for 30 years, I have journey through life's multi faceted terrains. I lived with no regrets and have learn much from the journey. I hope to learned from fellow sojourners. At the same time I hope to contribute to others some of the insights that I have gains in my journeys.

The most recent event that I had been through caused me to realize that the worst enemies of the Church are, "The enemies within the Church". I am still in the midst of ruminating over this issue. In a few days I hope that I would be able to post my thoughts on this issue.

I have just started the blog for two days it will take a bit of time for me to make this blog a viable one. I am learning. Any tips and tricks are welcome.