I attended Kingdom Invasion from 19-21 March at the Singapore Expo, but mainly the morning and the afternoon sessions. The keynote speaker was Bill Johnson and we missed him the last time round but it was good to have him take more sessions this time. He was full of interesting insights into God’s ways and some of his one-liners stay with you like henna dye. Two of his powerful messages were the ones on culture of honor and the one of the role our desires and faith play in God’s sovereign plan. The basic thesis of the first is that the church needs to recover the key of honor in different aspects of relationships so that what God has gifted and graced the person who we honor may be released to us. Jesus was not honored in Nazareth and thus they were deprived of what He could have done for them. The central truth of the second is that our desires and faith have a way of bringing forward what God may have planned for the future. Jesus said to Mary his mother, My hour has not come (to perform miracles). However due to her persistent faith, that hour seemed to have been brought forward in the miracle of changing water to wine. Thus imagine if the church had the desire and faith to bring forward the promises of the future kingdom to the here and now – bringing the promises of heaven to earth – what kind of glory would the church display to the waiting world. What an inspiring, expansive vision.
James Goll was another proposition altogether. More prophetic and inspirational he spoke, sang and shared some of his encounters with angels and dreams and taught people how to intercede as a privilege, out of the intimacy that the Father offers us.
And as ever the inimitable Heidi Baker facilitate a soaking in the presence of God. We think we need more cognitive content but God knows we ministers need more time allowing the Spirit to fill us and to be inspired by her abandon to the Spirit.
Part 5 shows how a reader can move from an undesirable position of self-occupation to the desirable one of Christ-occupation. This is a continuation of the whole theme of the renewal of our minds by right believing. Part 5 shows the goal and why it is important and how it can be done.
Chapter 13: Be free from self-occupation
Joseph Prince emphatically states the need to move from self-occupation to Christ-occupation.Too many are self-occupied and as a result suffer from the consequences. They are overly concerned about what others think or say about them. They suffer from an inferiority or a superiority complex. They are often insecure and dwell on negative thoughts about themselves and others. He used the example of how David slayed Goliath as an example of someone whose trust in God, rather than the bigness of the problem occupied his mind. It set him free from fear and anxiety that plagued the other fighters in the battlefield.
Chapter 14: Jesus be the centre of it all
In chapter 14 and 15 Prince moved to the practical steps that help us move from self- to Christ-occupation. Chapter 14 shows that the way to do it is to see Jesus in the scriptures. His main text is the story of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus (“warm baths”). The disciples were discouraged and confused over Jesus’ death. The resurrected Lord, unrecognized by them began to show them how Jesus fulfilled the scriptures. He showed them Jesus in the Old Testament. He reproved them for being slow to understand and to believe. This then is one practical thing to do to move to Christ-occupation. Whenever we read scriptures look for God. Do not see more rules and laws to obey. See more of Jesus and his beauty. Then our hearts will have a warm bath just as the two disciples’ hearts burned with holy fire.
Chapter 15: Worship with the words of David
Joseph Prince uses a story in the life of David. He had fled from Saul who wanted to kill him. He went to Gath and pretended he was mad. They released him and he hid in the caves and Adullam. Prince used Psalms 34 to highlight how David sang and worshipped and prayed and this helped him shift from a self-occupation that discouraged him to a Christ-occupation that inspired him. Prince traced the shift from self to Christ in Psalms 34 thus showing that the act of praising God and praying moves us from self to Christ-occupation.
As a whole this was a practical part. It motivates you to co-operate with God bath yourself in scripture and prayer and praise. It reminds me of the traditional “means of grace”: scripture meditation and prayer. In fact the whole of church community life is meant to revolve around the word and the sacrament, both of which point to the finished work of Christ.
We trekked from Bukit Timah Hill to the Tree Top walk in the MacRitchie Reservoir on Saturday. We were intensifying our training for the Gunung Rinjani climb round the corner. This was a good 4 hour trek. We wanted to build endurance.
We walked up the steep bitumen service road of Bukit Timah Hill and then turned right at Catchment Path until we reached a clearing next to the BKE. We turned right again before we linked to Rifle Range Road that took us over the BKE. Everywhere the effects of the dry spell that Singapore is facing stared at us. The grass suffered, and the trees were crying for rain. Even the clouds were constipated.
Constpated clouds at the Rifle Range Road flyover across the BKE
It was a good two hours to get to the Ranger’s Station where we could refresh and refill before we walked the Tree Top Walk and got back on the path back home. The stable steel Tree Top Walk gave us a view of part of the reservoir. Nothing spectacular, but it gave us a perspective of the trees and forests that once only monkeys and birds had.
Ranger's Station in heart of MacRitchie ReservoirTree Top Walk made of solid metal Walking above the tree tops
By the time we walked back it was 12 noon. We took a short cut back using a cycling track instead of using Catchment Path. There were no inclines except at the beginning but it was a lengthy trek over fields, streams, roads, and trees and through the forests. Endurance. The next preparatory training is a trek along the raliway tracks from Bukit Timah to don’t know where and back. Not really looking forward to this because of humidity and the exposure to sun, but it will be another Saturday with friends.
The last reflection was on 23 Dec 2013. That was about two months ago. I have been rather occupied and there were other event-related blog posts I wanted done more urgently. However, I still want to finish the reflections on this book that I started off with. In Part 4, Joseph Prince writes about a topic that has helped many of his hearers. He has received much feedback on messages related to these chapters. The title of Part 4 is “Win the Battle for your Mind”. Let me highlight some of the main points as it appears to me and give you my reflections:
Win the battle for your mind (chapter 10): The battle of the mind has to do with replacing wrong beliefs with right beliefs. The devil wants negativity, lies, condemnation to occupy believers’ minds. These deeply embedded wrong beliefs are strongholds that affect their emotions and feelings and even their health. Thus negative emotions like fear, worry, guilt and anger find their source in people’s thought patterns and beliefs about God and the world and people. Thus the battle of the mind is won by establishing the truth of Jesus and what he has accomplished on the cross. It is won by believers knowing who they are and what they have in Christ. It is won by bringing every thought into captivity, which means to focus on the obedience of Jesus in the place of believers, the perfect righteousness of God granted to all believers by faith.
Prince shows insight into how the devil works in planting wrong thoughts in the believer’s mind: he uses the first person pronoun “I“, instead of “You” to deceive believers into thinking the bad thoughts were theirs, instead of an external evil source. Instead of “You are such a lousy Christian” he will insert “I am such a lousy Christian.” This alerts us to the devil’s tactics.
Victory over the enemy’s mind games (chapter 11):The unpardonable sin is dealt with in this chapter. Joseph Prince shares his experience of condemnation. “I was really worried that I had already committed the unpardonable sin and was on a one-way ticket to hell. The more I tried not to, the more I would have all kinds of blasphemous thoughts about the Holy Spirit when I prayed and even when I was earnestly worshiping God. It was a harrowing experience, with the devil relentlessly oppressing and attacking my mind with all kinds of evil thoughts.”(Prince, 170).The mental oppression lasted a year for Prince. He won the battle by ignoring the enemy. “When the devil suggests things to your mind, just ignore him. Spiritual warfare doesn’t have to be combative. It can be restful, peaceful, simple, and easy. It’s all about seeing Jesus’ finished work”(Prince, 173). I liked the way he interpreted the “unpardonable sin” as “simply the sin of an unbeliever continually rejecting Jesus as his or her Savior,” something any true believer simply cannot have committed.
Prince quoted an excerpt from John Bunyan’s autobiography, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, in which Bunyan was delivered from his despondency by a revelation of God’s gift of righteousness. “I saw, with the eyes of my soul, Jesus Christ at God’s right hand; there, I say, was my righteousness……………..I also saw, moreover, that it was not my good frame of heart that made my righteousness better, nor yet my bad frame that made my righteousness worse; for my righteousness was Jesus Christ himself, ‘the same yesterday, and today, and forever’.”
We also get Prince’s idea of repentance. It is “metanoia”, a Greek word from the original text which literally means “a change of mind”. He debunks the caricature associated with repentance as grovelling, tears, self-condemnation and feeling bad enough for long enough so that God’s forgiveness can be earned. For Prince it is changing your mind to align it to what God thinks and has said about believers. Let right beliefs based on God’s word replace all the falsehoods planted by the devil in the believers’ minds. “It is right believing that brings about true repentance (change of mind) and hence genuine transformation”(Prince, 176).
Beware the roaring lion (chapter 12): Prince dealt with one of the greatest struggles of believers: the persistent thought that God does not approve of them. He is not happy with them. In fact, he is angry with them. He debunks this and shows that God is not mad at us but mad about us. He shows that the armor of God needs to be put on and the armor shows all the ways the devil will attack our minds. The belt of truth shows Satan will attack us with lies. The breastplate of righteousness shows that the devil will attack us with accusation and condemnation. The shield of faith is to protect us from fears and doubts. The shoe of the gospel is the peace that protects our joy from being stolen. And so on. His main idea: the armor of God has to do with what you believe in Christ. When you believe right, there is nothing the devil can do with you.
I prefer the way Arthur Wallis put it in his book, “Into Battle”. He demonstrated how Jesus fulfilled all the pieces of the Christian’s armor. He is truth. He is righteousness. He is our peace. He is the author and finisher of our faith. He is our salvation. And He is the Word. When we continually believe in Him, we have in effect put on Christ and therefore the whole armor of God, and are fully protected in Him.
However I was not comfortable with his interpretation of Proverbs 19:12 “The king’s wrath is like the roaring of a lion, but his favor is like dew on the grass.” The best interpretation is the obvious sense. The wise writer of Proverbs has simply made a wise observation that it is scary when the king is angry with you for your life is in his hands, but if he likes you, the blessings will nourish and prosper you. Prince has spiritualised the text. The king is the Lord Jesus, and when Jesus is angry it is the disease, the injustice, and what sin is doing to you that he is angry with. “But the devil comes to you all dressed up as a lion, impersonating the King. He wants to give you the impression that God is angry with you, even though He isn’t…..The devil is going about asa roaring lion because he is pretending to be Jesus and trying to intimidate you through the impression that God is angry with you. The devil is an imposter! He wants to make you feel alienated and cut off from Jesus. He wants you to think Jesus is saying, “I am not pleased with you. I am really disappointed in you. How could you make such a mistake?” His description of the devil’s tactic is spot-on but the usage of the Proverb betrays a slant for spiritualizing, when a plain reading of it has nothing to do with the devil or spiritual warfare. However other scriptures about the “accuser of the brethren” more plainly expose this aspect of the devil’s tactics.
Overall, Part 4 is very practical and useful, as our minds are a spiritual battleground in which we need to enforce the victory that Christ has already given us. The chapters give us practical handles for winning the battle of the mind.
This years prayer summit was held on January 6-9 at the Equatorial Hotel in Malacca. The theme was Jubilee. There were about 500 pastors and leaders from Singapore in attendance. The speaker was Peter Tsukahira and his theme was the kingdom of God and the marketplace.
Worship preceded the sessions
The prayer summit this year was Word rich. I suppose there were pastors who attended because of the guest speaker – they wanted to hear his teachings. He is of Japanese origin, speaks with an American accent, and has an Israeli passport. He is married to a Messianic Jewess and both of them lead a ministry and Messianic community in Haifa. In fact the last thing we did during our holy land trip was to visit and support his ministry. I saw pastors who never attended the pastors’ summit attend this summit giving attention to all the teaching sessions. Peter Tsukahira did not disappoint. He spoke about the formation of Israel, and its relation to the return of Christ, the gospel of the kingdom of God and how these give the framework for the marketplace ministry. I was blessed by the teaching it stirred me to return to my favorite writer on the kingdom of God, G. E. Ladd, a professor from Fuller Theological Seminary. Read an excerpt of his concept of the kingdom HEREfor an example of his concise writing and clear thinking and grasp of a difficult subject with many different interpretations.
Chance meeting with pastors Lawrence and Guna
This year they also re-introduced pastors Lawrence Chua and Guna to do the stand-up comic thingy. They are two members of the team steering the Love Singapore churches. They are pastors with hearts for community service and have led their churches to be models for such a ministry in the heartlands. They have somehow discovered a chemistry between them for stand up comedy. They brought the house of God down with laughter. Humor is serious business. You need a gift to get pastors in a sober “prayer summit” to laugh shamelessly. So used are pastors to being serious about eternal and earthly issues. Kudos to Lawrence and Guna for their gift of getting all the stressed-up pastors laughing. However, they would do well to expand their range of subjects. They seem too constrained to introducing the chairman and the speaker or the organizing church in humorous ways. They can evolve into a stand-alone act that can help pastors and leaders laugh at themselves and alter some perspectives of church ministry and relations.
Lindy Chee, Dara Chee, and Kenny
The pastors’ summit is one of the best places to keep in touch with acquaintances and other pastors. I met two of my cousin’s daughters: cousins once removed. One morning I had breakfast with Lindy Chee and Dara Chee. Lindy worked with YWAM for many years. Now she is in training and facilitating. Dara Chee is a trained social worker who was in Vietnam for a few years with the Anglicans, and now a residential manager for Highpoint Dayspring, a residential treatment center for abused women and teens. It was encouraging to see young people with a passion for Christ’s kingdom to be realized on earth as in heaven.
Vincent, Thomas, Kenny and Kenny
This year I roomed with priest Vincent Hoon from True Light Anglican Church. We met years ago when we were randomly put together to share a room in a similar conference. We gelled and this was the second time we roomed again. Vincent drove us all to Malacca -me and pastor Kenny Fan from Woodlands Evangelical Free Church and pastor Thomas my colleague. They were such pleasant company the road trip seemed shorter. On the way back we stopped by Yong Peng, and later, at a Gelang Petah seafood restaurant popular with golfers. Ahhh…Malaysian food.
