Sunday, 19th December 2023
Pastor Ewen Chow
It’s not easy to follow God’s way, it’s not easy to smile at people who are against us. God is teaching us to be humble, Jesus came 2000 years ago not to judge us but to deliver us. God wants to save us from where we have done wrong and where we have sinned. Even though when we received Jesus, we become a new creation, but we are still sinners, we still have a lot of things in our lives that need to be changed and restored. God wants to set us free, and true freedom is not what the world tells us, but to live out who we are as God first created us to be.
God wants us to receive, to hold, and to pass on everything God reveals to us, and when we are able to do this, then we can be set free. In this life, we will experience hardship, sickness, darkness… but God wants to restore us, to redeem us, and to set us free. God does not create us just the spirit, but also our body and soul. Our health in our spirit is as important as our health in the body and in the soul. So many people in this generation cannot manage their emotions and feel depressed. God has given church the authority and tool to help these people, and to reveal that God also can take over our soul, which include our emotions.
Why Do We Need to Be Redeemed?
The devil come to kill, steal, and to destroy, even thought it’s not always the devil, who brings to bad things in our lives, a lot of times, it may be our sins or the choices we make, but we should know that the devil never wants us to live a good life. Job 1:9-11 told us that the devil wanted Job to suffer. At the end Job overcome, he said he finally saw God, not just heard of Him. Today we are the followers of Jesus Christ, we don’t need to see God to know there is a God. Because Jesus already revealed this truth to us. Furthermore, we know that when Job was restored, God’s restoration was doubled, what he received back on the earth and in eternity were doubled.
The Promise of Redemption
Everyday David had was gone, his children, his possession, even those following David wanted to kill him, but through God David was strengthened. I Samuel 30:8 told us that David sought God, and God gave him an answer to pursue his enemies and receive everything back. This is the promise of redemption from God for us today, we will be able to pursue our enemies and to receive back everything we have lost. I Samuel 30:18-20 also mentioned that no only they got everything back, they also received more than what they had before. Whatever is redeemed will be more that what we have in the past!
What Do We Want To Redeem?
The Father wants to redeem all His children, Jesus wants to redeem our authority in this world, Job wanted to redeem what he lost, Paul wanted to redeem a life without the thorn, David wanted to redeem his family and possessions, so what do we want to redeem? What is it that we have lost? So often we don’t know where we got hurt, we thought we have done healing and deliverance, but it never seem to completely heal. When we are going through this redemption process, a lot of people will talk to us about a lot of things, we will feel confused, we will feel discouraged, we will feel disappointed…
Do we know God’s grace is sufficient for us? We must continue to follow God with hope. Can we have this hope despite of all the hardship and difficulties? In the Bible, the valley of tears is the valley of drought. God will not let us stay in drought forever, this is just a process, He will lead us out of the darkness and into the light!