Dear Students From Pastor

July 2020 Edition

Dear Students

I pray that you’ve all had a fruitful June! I especially hope you’ve enjoyed Tumpang Tanya, Pastor as much as we have enjoyed doing it for you! I think questions and answers are a great way of doing discipleship and evangelism and I hope that you have found that true and useful in your endeavours to reach more people with the Good News!

Well, with June behind us – Welcome to July!

How amazing! We’re already into the second half of 2020 and, thank God, we’ve survived the worst of the global pandemic – and live to tell it.

I pray that we will all have something awesome to share with our generation and the generations to come – that God is truly good ALL the time! If not, don’t worry, there’s still time. The secret is to look for opportunities in every obstacle.

I know that most if not all of you have really been challenged in one way or the other over the past 3 to 4 months especially. Some have struggled with loneliness. Others have wrestled with being homesick. Then there are those of you who have had financial difficulties, while some have suffered from different kinds of anxieties ranging from uncertainty about your studies to uncertainties about your future job prospects.

I hope most of you have heard the message on overcoming worry, anxiety and fear that I recently preached. But if you haven’t, I encourage you to ask your leader how you can get a hold of it. Now, while it’s natural to be worried, anxious and fearful in times like these, God has a better and higher way for us. A way that usually works directly opposite and in counter-culture from what the world would naturally and expectedly follow.

God’s way is supernatural.

If you didn’t already know this, let me share with you that in my 50 years on this earth, I’ve heard time and again about how people with the right attitude (at what seemed to be the wrong timing), took advantage of the times they were living in. It wasn’t because of luck but look (what they see) that they were able to breakthrough when others only managed to breakdown. They saw what others didn’t – or couldn’t – simply because they were looking for it. It was a matter of choice and not just chance.

These people became richer even as others became poorer. Simply because they looked for opportunities rather than opposition. Some invented something out of nothing even as others complained that they had nothing for which they could do something. Simply because they were looking for solutions rather than dwelling on problems. New businesses were started even as others stopped. New ministries were birthed even as others died. And the list goes on and on.

Truth is, it’s in the wilderness that most miracles happened.

It’s been said that opportunities are often disguised as obstacles – and that’s why so many people miss it. But it takes the special few who will turn the test into a testimony, the issue into an idea, the waste into wealth, mistakes into ministry, boo boos into books, scars into stars, lemons into lemonade… and rotten cabbage into kimchi! And the good news for all of us is that it doesn’t take that much to be counted into that “special few”. In the words of Jesus – just believe! Nothing is impossible to them that believe.

History will judge us for how we have responded to this history making pandemic. Our sons and daughters will ask us one day, what did we do with this golden opportunity that God had presented equally to all of us? Yes, the chances before us may not be that equal. Some may have it easier than others. I’ll give you that. But the choice is the same. It’s whether we’ll take it and make it or we won’t. And often, it’s the ones who have a more difficult time that need the miracle the most – and so they’re usually the ones who seal it.

The choice is ours. But the time is short. Now is the time to take advantage. Now is the time to act. Let’s not just survive but thrive. Let’s not just leave college or university with a title but a testimony.

As always, praying for you and believing in you,
Pastor