Dear...
'Then I will give them a heart to know Me, that I am the Lord, and they shall be
My people and I will be their God, for they shall return to Me with their whole
heart.'
Jeremiah 24:7
This morning's newspaper had a rare special report on the phenomenal growth of
the Christian faith in present day China,from 2.5mio in the aftermath of the Cultural
Revolution back in 1966, to the present estimated 70 million. And this article
on the hunger for the sanctifying Spirit of God's love and peace in wanting
hearts in the now awakened land of the mythical Dragon King reminded me of my
unfinished business.
Back in the office, I had cobbled a yet unfinished sharing of this same thought
"hunger" that the Lord placed in my heart. It was meant to be an expansion of a
sharing I did with some of you last Saturday in our men's prayer meeting.
In that sharing, which I culled from the anointed preacher, Charles Spurgeon, in
his sermons back in the mid 19th Century, he called on all to have this great
hunger for the Word of God, to soak ourselves in the sanctifying presence of
God, for the Word is God, and God is the Word, then will we truly see the grace
of the omnipresent God.
'Magnificent obsession," this was the theme of the latest update from the
Antioch Mission, a ministry that seeks to share the Word of God to the
spiritually hungry in China, through the distribution of the Bible and materials
on the gospel.
Magnificent, I am not too sure, but obsession was the thought that crossed my
mind yesterday, as I surveyed the cold hard steel rooms, in my privileged guided
tour of Singapore's equivalent of Fort Knox( http://www.singaporefreeport.com/)
The Freeport Singapore, a new safe haven for the wealthy of the world to store their collection of art, wine,jewellery or even mundane gold bars. Being a quasi collector, I can understand the grip on one's heart, when one is enamored with the collecting bug and this hunger to acquire can often be an uncontrollable trait much as one might seek
to master what is truly mastering oneself.
Have we in the pursuit of the delusions of the devil, become enslaved to our own
lusts?
'Behold, God is great, and we do not know Him.'
Job 36:26
In North Korea, they do worship an idol, the present President Kim. And like all
good dynasties, the ailing Kim is now laying the groundwork for a handover to
the third generation of this dictatorial regime.
The Hermit Kingdom North Korea might seem to be, no different from the its once
erstwhile ally, the ex cold fortress of Albania. But North Korea was once a very
fertile hotbed of Christian faith, as the repressed and conquered Koreans
hungered for God, in the midst of repression by their Japanese conquerors. And
who would imagine that this fervency and steadfastness for God in the face of
intense compulsion by the Japanese to force their idols upon their vassal state
would be rewarded by the onset of an even more repressive communist regime with
the defeat of the Japanese after World War 2.
Do the long suffering present generation of North Koreans not know God any
longer, given the great lengths the communist regime goes towards suppressing the Christian faith and yet promoting the cult of the Kim family?
I believe in the foreseeable future, the world will witness the surfacing of
that vibrant seeds of faith that was suppressed but never destroyed and it will
spring forth bountifully.
Interestingly, on a side thought, the great evangelical spirit of the South
Korean Christian church, I do suspect emanates from the faith of the many North
Koreans who fled down South, to the American side of the 38th Parallel,
during the Korean War. God works in interesting ways.
'Behold the days come saith the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land,
not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the
Lord....'
Amos 8:11
In the blessed lands of us in Singapore and HK, we often do take life for
granted. And it is indeed a miracle that just two person were injured in this
morning's severe Richter scale 7.1 magnitude earthquake in Christchurch New
Zealand. Has the choice of name for this second largest city in New Zealand
been its saving grace, for God did promise that when the shaking comes, those
who are steadfast in their faith will not be shaken. New Zealand, like much of
the Anglo Saxon world, started as a Christian nation, but is increasingly
secular. Yet, there are growing pockets of renewed faith and hunger to know the
Lord our God and would this experience today in Christchurch lead to a renewed
hunger to seek the only source of comfort and grace in the lives of many in this
blessed city?
'O Lord revive Thy work.'
Habakkuk 3:2
Unprecedented is the increasingly common word used to describe the predominance
of natural disasters that was once long consigned to memory. To many, the idea of death becomes a convenient lapse of memory, for what matters at hand is the attainment of the riches of the world, that the devil promised Christ, if only He will pay
obeisance to it.
But God is faithful and He wants us to veer away from the slippery slope to
eternal damnation, that the slithery snake, the devil incarnate is leading many
to, in their unfettered lusts.
'We have heard with our ears, O God, our fathers have told us, what work Thou
didst in their days, in the times of old.'
Psalm 44:1
Our children must see the hunger in us for God, the blessed men and women of
faith , whom God in His grace has brought unto His light. In our midst of
plenty, lets not lose sight of God our Provider. For woeful it will be for us
and our children to thirst for God only when our world falls apart, as it surely
will, if we continue to malinger in our ways and malign God in our lives.
'....This day is holy to our Lord your God, do not mourn nor weep. For all the
people wept when they heard the words of the Law.'
Nehemiah 8:9
God Blesses
Eng Hieang
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