Sunday, 23rd August 2020
Rev Daniel Xi An Poon
Through Covid-19, the devil try to take away our faith as Christians. Jesus already given us all the authorities and power to heal sickness. We can do bigger and greater things through Jesus. Our prayer may not always be answered and we may think that what we pray is not God’s will.
Faith is not seeing the waste be seeing the gold. But it’s not what we seek or what we find but what we believe. In Esther 6, the king asked Haman what to do with a person delight in honour, Haman thought it was for himself and he even talked to his wife and asked for ideas about how to kill Mordecai when he received the honour from the king.
Haman thought everything was according to his plan. On the other hand Mordecai knew Haman always wanted to kill him and he asked Esther to help saving the Jews. He told Esther that you became the queen was because of a time like this. At the beginning Esther thought it was impossible, because if she went to see the king the king would kill her. Mordecai didn’t give up, he continued to persuade Esther until she woke up, stopped finding an excuses, believed and followed. Esther then asked every Jews to fast and pray.
The miracle happened, God let the king woke up and read the history book, then he realized that Mordecai saved him before but didn’t receive the honour so he consulted Harman for ideas. Mordecai and Esther took the first step to pray, and God used a plan out of their imagination!
Harman looked at the fact and thought his plan of killing Mordecai is coming true. He thought the timing was perfect and it was the confirmation, but little did he know that God’s plan is not what we can imagined. Is this us? We often seek confirmation but we didn’t see our problems. The Israelite thought they were doing the right thing when they didn’t see Moses coming down from the mountain. They made an idol for themselves to worship and they even still thought they were worshipping God.
We didn’t want to humble and obey. Our heart become hardened and when we hear the teaching we didn’t think it was talking to us. A lot of Christians were struggling about if they should listen to God or listen to Pastor, but we forgot one thing that no authority is not from God. We forgot where Pastor’s teaching and preaching were coming from – God.
God created Adam and told him not to eat the fruits from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Then God created a woman for Adam, and Adam passed on this message to Eve. The devil is very smart, it came to tempt Eve instead of Adam. In Genesis 3, the devil said to Eve, “Is this what God really said?” The devil challenged the message Eve received from Adam and was shaking Eve’s trust from Adam, her spiritual covering.
Same with Harman, he thought God will follow his plan, everything he planned to do, but things didn’t turn out as he thought. The king asked Harman to honour Mordecai with the ways he suggested. God used His own way to carry out His promise. How should we respond? When we see things happen according to our desire, do we just stop there and relax?
Even after the king gave Mordecai the honour, he went back to sit at his gate and continued to do his job. He didn’t boast about what happened to him because he knew God let all these things happened not just for him to stop there. Mordecai still remembered he needed to go back and safe all the Jews from being killed.
Whereas Harman went back to his wife and mourning. He relied on the things happening around him and he relied on his own confirmation. So when the result was not what he expected, he felt defeated.
In Psalm 23, God told us He is our Shepherd and His rod is to comfort us. The Shepherd uses his rod the hit the sheep so the sheep will walk the right path. It’s not a comfortable process but God will be with us no matter what. So we should not choose the easy way. The devil didn’t want us to arise and shine. The devil will want to do everything to shake our faith, Jesus knows this and that’s why He told us that He has overcome all things. We face a lot of challenges every day that shakes our faith, but one thing is we must know that the devil can only try to make us afraid and to step back.
This world influences, we were taught that our ‘doing’ is more important than our ‘being’. We forgot that God provides for us, instead we always worry. When God called us to follow Him, we would struggle and our faith is still built upon having peace and confirmation. It’s time to stop focusing on the ‘doing’, and examine our ‘being’, who God has created us to be. Our God will never put us to shame, so let go our attitude of feeling impossible, don’t just seek for the confirmation, but by faith, be renewed and refreshed.
Live by faith not be sight!