New Life Community

There are different level of trust, and if we are evaluating our trust in God, we might find that our trust was not rightly built. Outwardly we might seems like a faithful person, but deep within, are we trusting who he is more than what he could do for us?

Peter walking on water is less about a miraculous act and more about dealing with doubt and fear, knowing that Jesus does not mock our little faith but reach out instead to bring us up. 

Living a faithful life does not mean that we live a doubt-free life. On the other hand, we learned from Thomas that all the doubts that we face should not be a dead-end and can be a turning point toward our destinies.

Obedience started with knowing God's will and intention. We learned that even if we regularly go to church or serving the Lord, it does not mean that we have little difficulty living in obedience. However, by evaluating how we live, we can reflect back on how tune our heart is with God's. 

Obedience is one of the first commandment that God gave to us. Living in obedience means that we build our lives on the right and firm foundation.

We learned from James that we need to be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry. These are the ingredients toward living an obedience lives before God. 

Holy Spirit sanctifies us in our darkest, grey, and even in our winning area. Understanding this crucial roles would help us to live a life that ready to be used by God.

Obedience is the key to be set apart and being used by God. However, we have many different obstacles, mostly from our own self interests that hinder us to live according to God's will. We learn from Saul, how our reputation, our comfort, our desires, and our will can be the main hindrance to obedience.  

It's difficult to obey God when the consequences or the rewards are not clear and straightforward, we don't know what we missed if we chose disobedience. This week we learned from David how to be live in obedience, and treat every single day as a battle toward being Chris-like.

From Jesus Christ we can learn some of the greatest principles relevant to us today. He is always dis always doing his father's will, he shows humility even though he is God, He forgives others - including you and me - he gives assurance whenever we are in doubt, and last but not least, He shows that no one is small enough and everyone matters to Him. 

Jesus gave an example of how we might treat other people in different situations, this new culture of treating others with equality regardless of the social status or position needs some conscious practising. Jesus teaches that the higher our position is the more we need to serve others. 

Throughout Jesus ministry, we see a principle of following Jesus, from fishermen to tax collectors, to a young rich ruler. Each of them was challenged to deny themselves, their dreams, and their sources, to trust God with their future and as their source. If being a Christian today seems boring, we might not be truly a follower of Jesus but merely adding Jesus to achieve what we want to begin with. 

On the road to Emmaus, there were two disciples that discussed with Jesus but unable to recognize him, until he broke a loaf of bread and gave it to them. This act of breaking a loaf of bread has been strong throughout gospel, from triggering a miracle to officiating a remembrance. A lesson that is very relevant to people of all ages, including us today.

Through the last few hours of crucifixion, we can learn how Jesus actually foretold the Kingdom of God with the abundance of mercy, grace and showing the perfect obedience to the will of God that brings about repentance to the multitudes on the calvary.

We are called to be a blessing and to do good works. We are to give whatever we have back to God as a good steward, and this is regardless of our current vocation/career. The right experience of living our calling is less about getting the right job, but to do everything as if for God and not men. 

Every one of us has both generic and specific calling, the biggest step is for us to respond to it the right way by looking inside and see what God has provided us to do. 

There are lessons we can learn from Joseph. Every pain that we went through in our past is a preparation for our calling. There will be provision for every process that we face today. All of our platform and season today has a purpose to glorify Jesus through everything we do and everyone we see.

We try to find calling, and we wait for that calling moment in our lives - while actually, the Bible shows us quite clearly what our "calling" is. Yet most of the time we missed it. Jesus calls us to salvation, sanctification and service, and this is the cornerstone of how we approach things, how we work every day, how we serve one another these days.

True repentance comes from the right understanding of the Gospel. How we live our salvation depends on how we perceive our salvation and our everyday lives. This is why we must not stop at having the knowledge of God but respond the right way too. 

To become the person God wants us to be, we have to be real. Being real is being authentic, true, and genuine. With this mindset, we will see repentance in a new light, as something that we need to do, not something we avoid.