With today’s Sunday corporate worship service, this year’s revival meeting will come to an end. As I reflect on the revival, four blessings are coming to my mind.
First is servant-leadership. In order to make this revival meeting come to fruition even as an event, not a small number of people had to serve starting from several months prior to this weekend. This event falls under our Maturity Team. Therefore, the team members met, prayed and prepared well before the event and when the revival meeting began, they superbly executed every little detail so that things will go smoothly giving the Holy Spirit space and atmosphere to do His work among people.
Our Magnification Team served faithfully by providing us with times of praise which always involve not just praise team, but multimedia, sound and lighting teams. Times of praise help us to reflect on and examine our hearts before God’s word is shared by His servants.
Our NLK worked with all the parent-volunteers so that our children can be taken care of while the parents are worshiping God and receiving His word. NLK has done a great job of dividing up the childcare responsibility so that it will not fall under the shoulders of the same group of people over and over but every parent got a chance to experience the joy of serving as he fulfilled his responsibility.
The clean up that was done by villages after each meal was amazing, too! No one complained but everyone served with smile and joy. Through ministry opportunities like this, we are living out the teachings of the Bible that say 100% of the parts of the body of Christ must serve to build up Christ’s body, which is the church.
Second is food. At first, when our Maturity Team mentioned that we are going to serve food before each session, I wondered in my mind if that is not going to be a big hassle. Providing a meal for 300-500 adults and children is never an easy matter. And doing it three straight days is all the more difficult. However, I sense that the meals that the Team served significantly contributed to the success of this year’s revival. Sharing a meal with people is an intimate activity. That’s why we eat with our loved ones, not with strangers. As we eat together, fellowship happens and this fellowship has a way of strengthening our relationship with one another. It was such a joy for me to see people eating, talking and just enjoying each other’s presence. And all those gourmet meals were absolutely free because our finance is strong due to your sacrificial giving. So, well done, New Life! Let’s continue to give faithfully to the Lord for the purpose of building His church.
Third is our speakers and the content of their messages. As I prayed on Friday evening before praise, there is no parent who wants evil things to happen to his own child. However, not every parent knew how to parent us in a biblical way. They meant well but at times, they hurt us and caused some damages in our lives. Many of these, I am certain, were unintentional. Nevertheless, they were real and still have residual effects in our lives. But we heard from Missionary Daniel that we don’t need to live with them anymore. We don’t need to and shouldn’t have victim mentality. We have the power to overcome every one of them in the name of our Lord Jesus because He died and rose from the dead for us and He is with us to give us the power we need to live an abundant and triumphant life! We also learned so much about how to cultivate a healthy family. No matter how dark and depressing the family you had grown up in was, it really doesn’t matter because the future is bright with Jesus. We have the responsibility to work hard with the help that comes from the Spirit to break every unhealthy chain and build a healthy and God-honoring family.
Fourth is the faithfulness of our God. As a way of preparing ourselves for the revival, we did “Six Day Dinner Fast & Early Morning Prayer.” Even if just 100 out of 400 members and regular attendees participated in dinner fast, that’s 600 meals which amounts to 200 days of fasting if we say we eat three meals a day. Our God is a good and faithful God and He surely doesn’t ignore His children fasting for 200 days as they cry out to Him.
God has blessed us greatly during the revival because of all these that I have listed here. The big question is, “Why?” He wants New Life to become healthy so that we can become a resource church to bless other churches in the world. Let’s not forget the reason for His blessings.
Your pastor,
Eric
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