“For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good
works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” Ephesians 2:10
Singapore
will be celebrating her 50th birthday in 2015. The winds of change
are blowing and the choices we make will determine whether Singapore becomes a
cancerous red dot that is doomed for destruction or a bright shining red dot
that is a beacon of light in a dark world of greed, lust and pride.
Christians
in Singapore have the awesome responsibility to become citizens of prayer. Our
calling is to be faithful witnesses of the truth that we are the children of
God. Not only are we fearfully and wonderfully made but we are God’s
masterpieces, new creations in Jesus Christ, created for good works. We are
called to be ambassadors of God's Kingdom. We are the imperfect instruments of
God's perfect will through the power of the Holy Spirit so that peace will come
on earth.
We need
a spiritual revival so that we will not be individuals seeking to become
G.O.A.T. – the Greatest Of All Time, but we will become people who are
S.H.E.E.P. – Seeing Heaven Everyday in Every Person. When we die, what will
count is the love we have sown in the hearts of others rather than the achievements
we have attained. Two years ago, I
attended the funeral wake of a 96 year old lady and was touched by the
testimonies of her grandchildren and great grandchildren of the love she had
given them. It was a love that flowed from her faith in Jesus Christ. She left
them with a wonderful legacy of God’s providential care for her and the family.
Og
Mandino, who has been described as a most widely read and inspirational and
self help author in the world, made the following observation in one of his
books:
“If all our lives are truly plans of God, someone had better call
a meeting soon to remind us, once more, what great miracles we really are.”
Indeed,
the most wonderful secret is that there is a miracle in all of us – Christ in
us, our hope of glory (Colossians 1:27). The problem is that we tend to focus on
our pain, suffering, failures and defeats rather than the opportunities to grow
in our knowledge of God and His perfect plans for our lives in such times.
We are all looking for answers outside of
ourselves instead of cultivating the spiritual disciplines to help us increase
our awareness of the presence of the Living Christ in our hearts. It is through
the disciplines of devotional reading of the bible, prayer and meditation that
we can learn to die to self so that we can be filled with the love of God. We need to cultivate these important
habits to overcome the bad habits of consumerism, materialism and elitism.
The
greatest miracle is not what we can achieve in our lives but what God is doing
in our lives each day. The writer in the
Upper Room devotional on 2nd September 2012 reminds us that “living
for God’s purposes makes us holy, and we are all special in our own ways. God
created each of us different, for a unique purpose.”
So let us encourage one another to be S.H.E.E.P. – Seeing Heaven
Everyday in Every Person.
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