Sunday, 26th February 2023
Pastor Abraham Liu 劉彤牧師
1 To Guard Your Heart and Mind
God wants us to guard our heart, not our property, not our saving, but our heart. Because everything comes from it. What’s inside our hearts determines our fruits. We don’t take much notice of what we are thinking, we feel that nobody knows what we are thinking so what’s the issue? David made a big mistake when he didn’t guard his heart. He slept until the sun had set and committed adultery. We must submit our heart and mind to God.
The Holy Spirit lives within us, He is always with us, and He knows what is inside our heart and mind. We have this treasure in our lives but so often we don’t appreciate it. We still do what we feel like doing, and not following the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Can we learn to set our heart in the Holy Spirit? Always come to God and ask what pleases Him and what doesn’t please Him.
2 Pray and Seek God’s Guidance
When we’re praying and seeking our direction in life, we must humble ourselves and seek God’s guidance. Paul taught us in Matthew 7:7 to ask, to seek, and to knock the door. When we ask, we should not ask for physical things but wisdom. Wisdom is the most important thing we need in life. Because every problem we faces is due to our lack of wisdom. When we have wisdom, then we will not have any problem in life. Therefore this is the one thing we must ask. We must humble ourselves and admit that we are lack of wisdom. God will not dislike us for not having wisdom, He will give it to us when we ask Him for it.
Then we must seek, but what are we seeking? To seek His kingdom and His righteousness. The Kingdom of God is the Work of His Hands, therefore seeking the Kingdom is to understand what God is doing right now in this generation. And to seek the righteousness is to seek what God wants us to do. Let us wiser our eyesight so we don’t just see what is in front of us, but what God wants us to do. We’re so easy to focus on the tasks we have to do everyday, and fail to see what God has appointed us to do.
If Esther did not seek God, then she would never know why God made her the queen, and she would never complete the task God assigned to her to save the Israelites. God wants to use us in great things, but if we only focus on ourselves then we can never seek the kingdom and the righteousness of God. He wants to reveal His heart to us.
We also need to knock the door, the door of opportunities from God. We might have a lot of resources in life but we don’t see much results from these resources. On the other hand, there are people with little resources but have accomplished great things in life. We must ask these three questions, what resources do we have? What passion do we have? And what dreams do we have? The answers to these questions will reveal to us the opportunities God has placed in front of us.
Most importantly we must pray, without prayer we can only see good ideas but when we pray, we can see God’s ideas. When Nehemiah prayed, he saw the opportunities form God and he made requests boldly. The king fulfilled all his requests and Nehemiah experienced God greatly.
3 Follow God Diligently in Life
Don’t just talk the talk but to walk the walk. When we follow God in life, we must be diligent, many things may look small, but God treasures the little things we are doing for Him. We often want to follow God when we are ready, but we can never be ready. God’s calling is always now, His blessings are also always now. This is the time we must live for God, right now, right here.
When we decide to follow God and to live for God, then first we must adjust what we value in this world. If we still value the things the world values then we can never follow God fully. Jesus’ parable about the banquet tells us that when the master is inviting the people for a feast, everyone has their own excuses not to attend. We know the Kingdom is precious, but if we see our property, our finance, our family… more than God, then we can never follow God.
Also our priority in life should be adjusted. When we first seek the Kingdom and righteousness of God, then everything else will be given to us. No matter what we do, we must do it wholeheartedly for God, to always testify for God, and to always live for God. This is not easy, but no matter where we are or which generation we are in, it’s never easy. Because this world is full of temptation, only when we diligently follow God, set our hearts to follow God no matter what, then we can experience breakthrough.
Breakthrough starts from our hearts. What’s inside our hearts determine what will happen in our lives!