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No Good Fortune, No God

Last Sunday’s sermon was preached by Pastor Harry with the title “No Good Fortune, No God” (Matthew 26:57-75) . The sermon and the whole service can be watched on our WIC YouTube Channel. Today’s sermon title is: “No Good Fortune, No God”. I trust this doesn’t apply to our newly-weds, Alan and Maria! We’ll be blessing their marriage in just a while. For them, it must have been a year of good fortune – perhaps particularly for Maria: falling in love; becoming Jesus-centred in her faith; getting baptized in an exotic country; and then the church wedding soon after. Even more, Maria is really playing an active part in church life with her creative digital fliers designed for us each week. That sounds like very good fortune, right? So I’m sure they’ve both drawn closer to God.   But being close to God – as Peter found out – is still no guarantee that the good luck will last for ever. Maybe Peter thought that nothing could go drastically wrong with Jesus close by. So his first shock...
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George Müller’s Orphanages (from path2prayer.com)

In making the decision to found an orphanage, M ü ller spent much time praying, searching his heart relative to his motives, seeking to dispose of all worldly thinking and seeking input from other church members. He was struck by Psalms 81:10 where it said, “ Open your mouth wide and I will fill it. ” As a result he prayed for a building, funds and workers. Shortly thereafter he received a shilling towards such an enterprise and a large wardrobe. He also received a £100 gift from a poor needlework woman. Opening day everything was in place, but no orphans came. M ü ller realized that he had failed to pray for orphans and added to his prayers.   His purpose in opening the orphanage was to demonstrate God’s faithfulness in furnishing means through prayer alone, promoting the spiritual welfare of fatherless and motherless children, providing for their temporal good and encouraging others to also enter into such a life of faith. As he put it, “ If he, a poor man, without asking any...
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Spiritual Baptism

Last Sunday’s sermon was preached by Pastor Harry with the title “Spiritual Baptism” (Colossians 2:8-15 and 20) . The sermon and the whole service can be watched on our WIC YouTube Channel. In the Bible, the real baptism is into Jesus Christ and His Holy Spirit, as was made clear at Pentecost, when Jesus appears to His disciples and tells them (Acts 1:5): “In just a few days you will be baptized – with the Holy Spirit!” The water baptism comes after the spiritual turning towards Christ, never before.     Supporters of infant baptism criticize those who hold strongly to believers’ baptism, because they say there should only be one baptism: the one which took place first, i.e. the infant baptism. This is a total misunderstanding of Paul’s assertion of “one Lord, one faith, one baptism”. Neither can infant baptism be justified as being the New Testament “successor” to the Jewish rite of circumcision. Circumcision was regarded as a ceremony of induction into the Jewish religio...
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Who Did Jesus Die For?

Last Sunday’s sermon was preached by Pastor Harry with the title “Who Did Jesus Die For?” (2 Corinthians 5:14-15 and 17; John 6:44-45) . The sermon and the whole service can be watched on our WIC YouTube Channel. Who did Jesus die for? You might think this question so simple that you could be wondering why I’m preaching on it! I know your answer: “He died for us folks”. OK! But dig a little deeper, and things aren’t so clear. For example, if you’re a Pentecostal, a Methodist or a Catholic, you’ll probably say: “He died for all”. But if you’re a Presbyterian, a Baptist or Reformed Church, your answer might be: “He died for some, but not for all”. I found that shocking, coming from my own church background, when I heard it for the first time as a young adult. It sounded crazy to me, because it meant God was so unfair. So I got confused: both teachings can’t be true.   I decided to search the Bible, and got even more confused! I saw that both teachings are represented in Scriptu...
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The Mirror And The Mould

Last Sunday’s sermon was preached by Brother Kevin with the title “The Mirror And The Mould” (Mark 5:21-43) . The sermon and the whole service can be watched on our WIC YouTube Channel.   This Father's Day, we're not looking at God as our Heavenly Father — we're looking at an earthly one. Jairus was the archisunagogos of Capernaum, the synagogue ruler — a man who held the kind of civic and religious authority that made him, in modern terms, equal parts mayor, judge, and senior pastor. His very name meant "he enlightens." He was the keeper of the light in his town. And yet none of that status could save his dying twelve-year-old daughter — a girl standing at the very threshold of adulthood, with everything Jairus had poured into her about to come to fruition. That's the Mold — what Jairus built, taught, and shaped in his daughter, and the identity he built for himself as a man of influence. But fatherhood eventually brings every man to a wall his title can...
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The Power Of God’s Presence

Last Sunday’s sermon was preached by Brother Daniel with the title “The Power Of God’s Presence” (Exodus 33:12-17; Matthew 28:16-20) . The sermon and the whole service can be watched on our WIC YouTube Channel. God's Presence gives us the true identity that cannot be taken away from us even in the next world. Hence, this is the most important identity we can have. Exodus 33:16   God's Presence also confirms His grace in our lives. Again, with God's presence, we become carriers of His glory. This makes us true followers of Christ, not mere worshippers.   In the Great Commission - Matthew 28:16-20 – we learn that Jesus firstly gave us "confidence" before the "commandment", and lastly "comfort". He promised that He would be with us to the end. This means God's Presence lives in us through the Holy Spirit and the power of His Presence gives us the ability to have dominion over His creation.   To live in God’s Presence, we need to pr...
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Living In A Bubble

Last Sunday’s sermon was preached by Pastor Harry with the title “Living In A Bubble” (Genesis 3:6; 4:1-12) . The sermon and the whole service can be watched on our WIC YouTube Channel. One of my interests is ornithology: watching birds and identifying them. But we all know that most birds are very shy, and don’t let you get near them. So I was thrilled when our nephew made an app available to us, which identifies birds by their song: you just press “record”, hold it up in the direction of the sound, and it’ll give you the names and pictures of all the birds that are singing near you! In this way, we made an amazing discovery in the Kabacki Forest, when one of the birds we recorded was a beautiful yellow and black bird I would never ever see (a golden oriole), because it’s so shy. But it was there, and we heard its song!   You know, it struck me that God is a bit like those birds: you can’t see Him, but you can certainly hear His voice! But can you identify it as God’s voice wh...
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