From the Pastor’s Desk (65) Our humble trailer has housed us these past two and a half years as we worshipped and ministered here.  God has truly done some marvelous things in our midst.  We watched as time after time, many came to commit themselves to become followers of Christ, publicly professing their faith by getting baptized.  As I write, we are witnessing the number of our house churches tripling from the original six to eighteen and people’s lives being touched and transformed by the work of the Holy Spirit in and through our house church ministry.  We are also sensing much personal as well as corporate spiritual ...

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From the Pastor’s Desk (64) August 12, 2001 Every once in a while I need to remind myself of the importance of evangelism!  Some of you may probably be surprised to hear me say this because you would expect the pastor to be always red hot when it comes to sharing Jesus to save the lost.  Unfortunately, that is not the case, at least, with me.  Like many of you, I have the tendency to choose the path of least resistance.  I gravitate towards doing those things that are easy.  On top of that Satan is always at work to keep us sedated on apathy and busyness.  This is the reason why I am not necessarily always all ...

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From the Pastor’s Desk (63) August 5, 2001 My wife and I will be taking a short trip to Nova Scotia from this Tuesday to Saturday.  The Bakers and the Martinezs will take care of our children while we are gone for about five days!  Even though I know for certain that they will be well taken care of and have a great time with their friends I still feel uneasy about leaving all three kids behind.  I just cannot help but feel this way because this is going to be our first time being away from our children as a couple for more than a day! The reason why we are going on this trip is because John Kohl, who is very dear and ...

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From the Pastor’s Desk (62) Some of you have probably noticed the expanded parking lot on the right hand side of our trailer house when you came in to church this morning!  That’s right!  Our church is growing!  And we are increasing the parking space to accommodate the growth of our church family. Another thing that our Korean congregation has decided to do to better handle the parking space problem is to change their worship schedule.  Beginning from Sunday, August 12th, their first worship schedule will change from 9:15 to 9 and their second worship from 11:45 to 11:30.  Currently, their first worship draws about ...

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From the Pastor’s Desk (61) You will notice a newly designed offering envelope inside your bulletin today.  From now on, we will be using it to honor God through the giving of our tithes and other offerings during Sunday worship.  And I, for one, am very excited to see this new offering envelope because it is an indication that New Life is moving towards in becoming a biblically functioning church.  One of the principles God laid down for His church is that His people would use God-given spiritual gifts and talents to build His church.  This is what Paul had to say about the usage of spiritual gifts in church: “We ...

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From the Pastor’s Desk (60) One of the core values of New Life is “Energized through Prayer!”  We realize that without prayer we can’t do anything for God.  It is because prayer is a declaration of dependence on God.  If we fail to depend and rely on God for his direction and strength, we will end up doing things that God never desired for us to do and easily tire in our ministry and spiritual journey.  Each time we kneel before the Father we are humbling ourselves and trusting Him for the direction and the strength in fulfilling His will in our generation.  When we do this, God is faithful to meet us and give us ...

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From the Pastor’s Desk (59) Today we are having Mini Urbana Sunday.  In presenting to us a glimpse of what Urbana 2000 was like, the delegates are hoping to pass on to us the passion and zeal for world missions they caught attending the conference.  I saw several people practicing at church and I am very excited to see how God is going to use today’s service to challenge us for the work of world evangelization. This is very timely as we are having our first Mission Fund Campaigning Month in February.  I know there will be several of us who will be going on a short-term mission trip this summer.  Some will go to Roca ...

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