Fear God or Fear Man?

The following is an excerpt taken from a pamphlet created by SYFC (Singapore Youth For Christ) in a series called 'Age of Opportunity'. As it is addressed to parents, I've adapted it so that it addresses us youths.

Do you know the way peer pressure works and the way the pressured responds?

1) Numbers usually win. The more people there are to persuade you, the more easily you will 'accept' what they say.

2) Giving in is the safest (or easiest). Most often, we choose the way of least resistance.

3) Cite no choice as excuse. In Exodus 32:21-24, Aaron insisted he was in no position to argue or turn the situation around.

4) Put the blame on others.

We, teenagers are easily susceptible to peer pressure because we are in the process of taking over the reins of managing their relationships from our parents. When we are young, parents determine who we spend time with. However, as teenagers now, we seek to distinguish our individuality while wanting acceptance from peers, so we are highly sensitive to how others view us and if we are accepted or rejected.

In this transition is much insecurity - we fear how others will view our true self and so will adapt to what we think are acceptable to others. We need to counter this fear or man, by going to God who can change our hearts to fear Him. "O fear the LORD, ye his saints: for there is no want to them that fear him." Psalm 34:9 shows us that when God is the one we live for, the one we seek to please, we will be fulfilled.

We need to treasure God's acceptance over man's acceptance such that we can choose to do what is right over compromising our values to gain friends. Practically, we are to see how we may relate our choices and values to our friends. For example, we can learn how to say no graciously and thus maintaining the friendships will go a long way. While we do not want to be influenced negatively, we hope that we can be the positive influence to our friends. What better way than to share with our friends the hope we have in the gospel!

May we constantly pray that we can rise above peer pressure to do what pleases the Lord. :)

~Song Jia

KS RETREAT 2012 draws nearer and nearer! Have you booked 18-22 Dec (5-day camp!!! :o) on your 

calendar yet? 

Registration will be opening soon in September, so do look out for it! More details (including the theme) will be coming your way soon :) 

KS RETREAT 2012 :D

Official Announcement:


KS Retreat 2012 will be held from 18 - 22 December (Tue - Sat). More information will be coming your way in the coming months. Please inform your parents, siblings, grandparents, uncles, aunties, cousins, nephews, nieces, teachers, classmates, dogs, cats, hamsters, fish, birds, airlines, travel agents, teachers, principals, HODs, CCAs etc. to avoid any conflicts in your schedule. Thank you.

The Rare Jewel

" Not that I speak in respect of want: for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content."
- Philippians 4:11


Paul, the holy apostle of Christ, speaks thus of himself: that he has learned, or rather, has had to learn, to be content. It is learned, for it is not something natural. We all have to learn this skill of contentment by the Word of God and the Spirit's help. This contentment I speak of is specifically Christian contentment, a jewel with which only Christians can be adorned. 


Jeremiah Burroughs (1599-1646) was an English puritan preacher who possessed in his character two seemingly contradictory traits: a fervent zeal for purity of doctrine and worship, and a peaceable spirit. He was outstanding among his fellows in the latter. He wrote the book "The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment", a most worthy textbook of the uninspired kind (meaning apart from the Bible) on this subject. He did not add an "Epistle to the Reader" as puritan writers like John Owen or John Flavel do, providing glimpses of the author's heart and mind as he presents his discourse to the reader, telling of the motivations of his writing. Doubtless, though, Burroughs had intended to instruct fellow saints who were downcast during the "sad and sinking times" (in his own words) in which they lived. He saw how a contented Christian could scarcely be found, hence the title of his book. I will draw mainly from his book.


We must begin with a definition of what Christian contentment is. I find it meet to quote Burroughs in full: Christian contentment is that sweet, inward, quiet, gracious frame of spirit, which freely submits to and delights in God's wise and fatherly disposals in every condition. Notice it is inward, and not merely an outward calm that remains undisturbed whatever befalls. For it is a very easy thing to achieve, without any learning, to by sheer violence of will restrain outward manifestations of discontentment, while murmurings are festering inside the heart. "Truly my soul waiteth upon God" (Psalm 62:1), your soul must be at peace. It was an easy thing to appear calm when the dismissal time in BMT was continually pushed back and my platoon mates grumbled incessantly, but it was a difficult thing to control my own grumblings inside. Notice too that to be content, one must freely submit to and delight in God's wise and fatherly disposal in every condition. It is not only submission to God's hand, saying with a disgruntled spirit, "this is the Lord's will, He will do as He pleases." but a submission made freely and delightfully, " Rejoice in the Lord always: and again I say, Rejoice." - (Philippians 4:4). We have to have this joy in the Lord always. It is easy to say that something is of the hand of God when it profits us, but what about when it is something unpleasant? When the stress of examinations was overwhelming me and my results were sub-optimal, I could hardly rejoice in the Lord, for I had not learned contentment. It hardly entered into my mind to see this as from the hand of God, and part of His loving dispensations towards me. Hence, I could not freely and delightfully submit to His disposals.


Very well then, so much for what contentment is, but is it so big an issue? It certainly is. Consider the words of Jude 14-16: " And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints, To execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him. These are murmurers, complainers, walking after their own lusts; and their mouth speaketh great swelling words, having men's persons in admiration because of advantage." hard speeches spoken against God, murmurers, complainers. These are among the sins that are especially highlighted. What kind of spirit gives rise to these? A spirit of discontentment. Murmuring is a sin of great ungodliness, for it is rebellion against God. It is contrary to the worship of God that is in contentedness. In the worship of God we humbly bow before Him, and declare Him Lord, but in murmuring in our hearts we tell God that He has not done for us as He ought. Must God indeed give you good success? Must He grant you to fulfill the lusts of your heart? Must He make you free from the obligations of school or work? If in any condition we murmur in our hearts, we are accusing God of withdrawing His love (which is eternal) from us. Consider the murmurings of the children of Israel in the wilderness, and the judgment of God upon them.


Ah, some may say, you do not know what a terrible condition I am in, and you tell me to be content! You can most certainly talk about contentment when you are having peace. But be in my place, and you would not be talking about contentment at all. To such I would reply, that holy Scripture tells us to be content, and therefore all are bound to this. We all go through our own sad and sinking times, but even the darkest pits of hell on this side hell cannot excuse us from this duty. The duty to be content is upon us both in good times and bad. When I had to leave church early on the Lord's Day because the army forced me to, I knew I had to be content. No matter how much I was displeased at it, I had to delight myself in the Lord.


As you may now already know, it is a very difficult thing to be content, or else we would not have to learn it. So how may we learn it? By Scripture, and by a proper, Spirit-guided reasoning from the truths thereof. Burroughs gave many directions to the attainment of Christian contentment, I shall here only mention a few, particularly those which I have found most helpful to me in my current difficulty, and I trust that they will be helpful to you too.


The first is to consider the greatness of the mercies of God which He bestows upon us, particularly our salvation and the many spiritual blessings. " Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits:" (Psalm 103:2) Remember His abundant goodness to us in every way, consider how His mercy faileth never. How can we be discontented with lacking what the ungodly can have, when we already have what they cannot have? "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ:" (Ephesians 1:3) How ashamed we should be, if we vex ourselves over vain things when we have God as our inheritance! Do not we as Christians already possess so great a treasure? He has blessed us in heavenly places. Should we be angry at losing earthly things, which are so lowly and insignificant in comparison? In my life I have known some losses and wants, some of which put me in a state of depression. We all go through some of this. But why must we cry over losing a few dollar bills when we have a full vault of gold?


The next direction is to consider our lowliness, and how much we deserve to suffer and die. We are so lowly. What are we compared to the glory of God? We are mere mortals, we are weak, and our lives are fleeting moments. We are sinful and rebellious against God by nature. How great is the magnitude of grace God shows towards us by not utterly destroying us! And dare we now be discontented with our conditions, seeing we still have breath? "For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust." (Psalm 103:14) See how Scripture describes us. We are dust. Do you treasure dust? I think not. Yet the Lord takes pity on us in our ever-so-mean conditions, the problem being we do not see it, and think He ought to do more for us. Let us be like Mephibosheth, who said to David, "What is thy servant, that thou shouldest look upon such a dead dog as I am?" (2 Samuel 9:8) Many times in my work I feel so helpless against the winds and waves that toss and buffet, but I remember how I do not at all even deserve to be alive, and that it is ridiculous to be complaining when I am not in hell.


The third direction is to see God's hand of love in everything He makes us go through. We all know what Romans 8:28 says. But do we truly appreciate the meaning of "all things"? Not some things, not most things, but all things. The flood of assignments to finish, the ridicule you suffer for being a Christian, the loss of a gadget you rely on, not being able to be with the guy/girl you like, and so on. Anything and everything that happens to a child of God is going to contribute in some way to his or her final good. That is the precious promise of Scripture, and it is because of God's love for us that He makes all things work out for our good. Seeing this, how can we be murmuring against God in doing something for us out of love? It is difficult to see how a trial can be sent our way because of love. But on this matter, Scripture already tells us why trials are valuable (James 1:2-4). See then how gracious God is, by giving us reason after reason in Scripture to trust in Him and delight in Him. Murmuring on our part, therefore, should be inexcusable.


A final consideration I would include here, is that we have a sure insurance in heaven. Insurers pay us a sum of money (under certain conditions) when we suffer losses against which we are insured, like houses or cars, even parts and functions of our body. Christians have a full insurance, which is in heaven. All losses we suffer here on earth will be more than made up in heaven. "This world is not my home, I'm just a passin' through. My treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue." Think about the words of this familiar song I quoted here. We have treasure in heaven, it will pay for all. What good can we possibly lose here that will not be repaid in heaven? An eternity in the presence of God awaits us, free from all evil, all sin, all sorrow! Will you then be discontented with your current state, as if this will be your lot forever? But a little while, and we shall pass through the gates of pearly splendor, into an eternity of joy. "For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory;" (2 Corinthians 4:17)


There is yet so much more to be said about this weighty subject, but I trust that this will suffice. I pray that the Lord would help us to learn this skill of contentment, especially in this age of abundance, where people expect much comfort and are apt to show their displeasure at the slightest of trivialities. I trust that you will find contentment to be indeed a very precious jewel, when you meet with sad and sinking times of your own.


"Do all things without murmurings and disputings: That ye may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world;" - Philippians 2:14-15

Written by: Asaph

New songs!

Dear KSers, in lieu of the past church camp, the songs in the playlist (found at the bottom of this blog) are songs taken from the camp booklet. Hope you enjoy listening to them! :)

If there is any song you find awful and would like it to be taken out, or any other song that you would like to here, please do comment on the tagboard at the side :)

Have a blessed day!

By this we know He abides in us, by the Spirit whom He has given us.

Find a friend, and pray for one another!

Read 1John 3:23 - 4:13 together.

There are many ‘spirits’ in this world which oppose the Spirit of truth: these are teachers and teachings which reject Jesus Christ as Lord. We encounter them frequently, not only in religions and cults which openly declare that Jesus Christ is not the Son of God, but also in worldviews and ideologies which subtly deny the need for us to believe on Jesus Christ

• What spirits of error have you encountered?
• In trying to follow the example of the prophets, we will encounter false prophets. Do you ‘test the spirits’ by the Word of God? Are you certain of the truth revealed in the Bible?

We are reminded of Jesus’ command for us to love one another, the reason being that love is from God, and because God is love. The hallmark of any Christian body should be love. If we abide in Christ’s love by loving one another, we can be sure that the Holy Spirit abides in us too.

• It is not good enough to know the truth, but we must let our light shine through ‘our acts of love and deeds of faith* ‘. Have we been doers of the Word?
• Do we abide in Christ, and He in us?

God’s love was manifested when Jesus Christ gave His life so that we might live. He said, ‘Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends’ and did it! No other religion or ideology has a founder who did such a thing.

God has given us the Spirit of truth – we do not have to fear other belief systems. Elisha only said, ‘those who are with us are more than those who are with them’. Since the Holy Spirit was given to the church at Pentecost, John could write, ‘He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.’

Note that only those who belong to God will hear the truth. So let us not be disappointed if our evangelism appears to be fruitless at times, as it is only natural for sinful man to reject the truth. Yet they still need to hear it, because they will not find the love of God anywhere else in the world.

1. Pray that God will send the Spirit of truth to convert hearts, and bring them to repentance and faith in Christ Jesus.
2. Pray that our faith may be strengthened.
3. Pray for one another.

* Phrase taken from the song ‘Speak O Lord’.

This is part of a series of prayer guides which was originally written by Timothy for a christian fellowship, to be used when groups of two or three would meet to share and pray. The idea is to hear God speak to us through His word first, and afterwards we speak to God in prayer. It is reposted here in case anybody would like to use it like a devotional, and to encourage us to pray together. Bear one another's burdens in love; cast all your care upon God, for he cares for you.

"Abide in My love"

Find a friend, and pray for one another!

Read John 15:1-17 together.

If we belong to Christ, then we must grow in Him. Just as how a branch of the vine depends on the root to supply water and nutrition, so we must depend on our Lord for grace. This dependence is total, for without Christ, we can do nothing.

• Do we realize that everything we have comes from God? Are we humbled by this?
• The result of abiding in Jesus Christ is that we will bear fruit in our lives, for the glory of God the Father. Do we share this purpose? Then God will answer our prayers.
• Here is a warning that we do not cease to be fruitful, lest God punish us in eternal fire. Since we were, undeservedly, ‘grafted’ into the church, we are to be useful servants of Jesus Christ. Are we ungrateful sometimes, when we forget to honour God? Ask for forgiveness.

For us to abide in the love of Christ, we must obey His commandments. What wonder it is, then, that He gives but one simple commandment: to love one another just as He has loved us! Jesus would go so far as to lay down His life for us, while we were enemies, to make us His friends.

• Likewise, our love should be unconditional – since love covers a multitude of sins. Do we freely forgive our brothers and sisters too? Do we love our neighbour as ourselves?

What privilege it is for us that the Son of God should call His servants friends! Yet even the apostles still called Him Lord, and we should too. For although we now we have peace with God, we recognise that we were chosen out of love. Yea, we had to be redeemed by Jesus’ blood before we could bear fruit; therefore we are forever indebted to our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

There is not another government or religious system which is so thoroughly grounded in love. Jesus would have His kingdom founded upon love. As we remember the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ this month, let love become the motivation of our evangelism.

In conclusion, Jesus commanded us to love so that our joy may be full. Rejoice, for we are saved! Rejoice, for if we abide in His love, God will give whatever we ask in Jesus’ name. Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.

1. Pray in thankfulness to God: He loves us, and has given us everything we need, most of all salvation through Jesus Christ.
2. Pray that we might always speak the truth in love.
3. Pray for one another.

This is part of a series of prayer guides which was originally written by Timothy for a christian fellowship, to be used when groups of two or three would meet to share and pray. The idea is to hear God speak to us through His word first, and afterwards we speak to God in prayer. It is reposted here in case anybody would like to use it like a devotional, and to encourage us to pray together. Bear one another's burdens in love; cast all your care upon God, for he cares for you.

“LORD, open his eyes that he may see.”

Find a friend, and pray for one another!
  

Read 2 Kings 6:8-23 together.

God wrought many miracles through his prophet Elisha. In this particular account, we find a glimpse of the war between Israel and Syria, when events led to an army of Syrians becoming blinded upon a word spoken by Elisha.

• Notice first, how the life of the king of Israel was protected by the prophecy of God, as long as he obeyed it. When we feel anxious, do we also turn to God’s word?

Elisha’s servant was scared out of his wits when the Syrians surrounded the city. Yet Elisha prayed for his eyes to be opened, and the servant saw the awesome power of God’s angelic army.

• Sometimes we feel trapped by our struggles in life: although our lives are rarely at stake, do we entrust ourselves to God, believing that if God is for us, none can be against us?
• Elisha already had a calm confidence in God’s power to save, but he wanted his servant to have that comfort too, and so he prayed for his servant. Let us strive to follow Elisha’s example, and always be willing to pray for those who are in distress.

The second time Elisha prayed for eyes to be opened, it was for the Syrians. How we ourselves were like them, when our eyes of faith were first opened! We saw God’s almighty power to destroy us, and trembled at his righteous judgement. Yet, just as how the Syrians were shown mercy, God had mercy upon us, and forgave us by the blood of Jesus Christ. So we too are set free, howbeit not to return to our old master, but to serve our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
~

For it is written in Colossians 1 that the Father has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins … And you, who once were alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now He has reconciled in the body of his flesh through death … if indeed you continue in the faith, grounded and steadfast, and are not moved away from the hope of the gospel.

1. Pray, giving thanks to God for salvation.
2. Pray for our friends (if not ourselves) who are struggling to believe or are still unbelievers, that their eyes might be opened so that they may see the light of the gospel.
3. Pray for one another.

This is part of a series of prayer guides which was originally written by Timothy for a christian fellowship, to be used when groups of two or three would meet to share and pray. The idea is to hear God speak to us through His word first, and afterwards we speak to God in prayer. It is reposted here in case anybody would like to use it like a devotional, and to encourage us to pray together. Bear one another's burdens in love; cast all your care upon God, for he cares for you.

Hey KSers!

To relieve memories of the past KS retreat 2011, I've added some songs from the camp booklet to the blog. Couldn't add all, cos some weren't very recognized songs, but hope they bring back the times of SYLO together in the evenings. As you hear 'Onward Christian Soldiers',  be reminded of the school anthem and the school pledge! Shine for Him as a student! :)

P.S. These songs will only be up for a month.