CEPC Culture
Matthew 16:18 “On this rock I will build my church and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.”
I believe that when Jesus mentions the word “rock” is not only refer to Peter but to all Christian as well.So Jesus is entrusted His church building project to all believers not only to Peter, Paul, Timothy or church pastors and leaders but all believers. So now you are involving in the church building project whether you like it or not. Isaiah 54:2-3 Enlarge the place of your tent, and let them stretch out the curtains of your dwellings; do not spare; lengthen your cords, and strengthen your stakes. For you shall expand to the right and to the left, and your descendants will inherit the nations, and make the desolate cities inhabited. In verse 3, “your descendants will inherit the nations” have the same meaning as “spread abroad” and it was referring to the tradition about Jacob in Gen 28:14. God had promised Jacob in a dream that he would “spread abroad” in all directions and bring blessing to the nations or every family will be bless through his descendants. Here we can find the same idea in the command of Christ “make disciples of all nations” in Matthew 29:19, is to make all nations to be fill with the blessing of God. So here it is very clearly stated God want His church, His kingdom to grow, if not He would not ask us to go and make disciples.
So as a church God is calling us to be like the Israelite, be ready to “spread abroad” to “make disciples of all nations”. But how all these thing can be done? Isaiah 54:2-3 show us we need to “enlarge the place of our tent” means we need to accept new peoples and nations into our mid, we need to change our tradition and life style. We use to be quite and wait for people to care for us, now we change, we need to be the one who always talking and encourage people. We use to have breakfast, lunch and dinner with our best friends, now we change, and we need to enlarge our circle to invite people into our lives. Instead always being inward looking now we need to be outward looking, we can’t always focus on our own problems, we need to reach out to people who don’t know Christ and help them in their lives. We need to sacrifice a bit in order the new members or friends can feel welcome in our church. So as a church we need to get ready to enlarge our tent. The purpose of the church! "I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you." The bible tells us that people are going to be bless through us. So as a church we bring blessing to people lives not curse. We Christians should always been welcome by people into their house, fellowship, gathering and meeting, because they know when we Christian are there, things going to turn badly to good. We carry God’s blessing. But how do we carry God’s blessing?
<"If Your presence does not go with us, do not bring us up from here." Moses understands that is the presence of God that help them over come all problem and difficulty. If without the presence of God they have nothing and they are nothing but a group of people who lost in the wilderness. He understands the important of the presence of God. Today in our church is the same thing; we need the presence of God more than anything else. So many churches too focus on the system, structure and technology but forget that as a church the most important is to have the presence of God in the church. We can sing all the Hill songs, planet shakers, hymns or any type of songs but if God is not in our mid, we are just having a good karaoke singing session. We can have the best speaker come and speak about God, revival, love and all kind of topic, but if God is not here with us, we only have the information but no transformation. But when the presence of God is with us, no problem is too great for us to over come it because God is with us. When the presence of God is with us, there will be healing, miracle, sign and wonder happen week after week because God is with us. 1 chronicles 13: 1-14 "When the presence of God stays with Obed-Edom, God blessed his house and all that he had." The presence of God bring blessing. Obed-Edom has a great experience of God’s blessing through God’s presence. Not only he has been blessed but all that he had also been blessed. That is why every Saturday service we need to make sure that the presence of God in our mid. In His presence there is strength, joy; peace, power, love and anointing to help us over come the obstacle in our lives. In His presence there is healing for those who are sick and broken heart. More important thing is in His presence we know God is with us. The bible tells us when God were with the Israelite, His presence look like a pillar of cloud by day, pillar of fire by night. God’s presence is not some thing in our imagination, we can not see it but we can feel and sense it. When His presence is here the atmosphere change, people can feel it.
Genesis 12:2-3 “I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”
God want to use us to be a blessing to others by carry His presence into our community. So as a church is our duty to carry His blessing into people lives. We need to feel welcome by people around us, like in school, in the restaurant, every where we go we bring blessing. People are happy to see us.
God’s presence is some thing human eyes can not see but our church culture and our character is some thing people can see from their physical eyes.
GEPC Culture As a church the most important is not how beautiful the building is but how beautiful is the church culture is. We need to develop our GECP culture that can help us to reach out to more people and lead them to Christ. The culture of GEPC: G: Giving E: Encourage P: Polite C: Confident Giving
If a brother or sister be naked and destitute of daily food and …ye give them nothings which are needful to the body; what doth it profit? So learn to give your money to the poor and needy by doing it you are actually leaning money to God. We need to learn to give our time to God by praying, study His word and serving Him. We need to learn to give our time to others by spending time together with them, helping others in their studies and pray for them. God want us to imitate His generosity and grace by giving. In OT times the entire nation of
Israel
in every seventh year need to cancel all debts and God will favor their land with abundant crops and freedom from invasion. It is about trusting God and let Him in control of our lives when we giving ourselves to others Generous people focus their time and energy on what they can give or help others rather than what they can get from others. Lots of people have the wrong attitude about giving. The wrong attitude about giving is based on how much we have. But is not what we have made the difference. It’s what we do with what we have. People always tell God “if I have 1 million I will give RM 100,000 to the church and RM 100,000 to the poor, if I have 48 hours per day, I will spend 3 hours in prayer and study the bible, after my exam then I will start serving in cg and church…” but God is asking what about now? What about what He has already give you? Your 24 hours and your money in your wallet now?
"We make a living by what we get but we make a life by what we give!” Encourage Romans 1:11-12 So many times after we have done some things for people or for the church and we are waiting for some words of encouragement, not to praise us but to encourage us to move forwards. Most of the times words of encouragement didn’t come but words of criticism come even you don’t invite them. It is our culture that is hard for us to encourage but is easy for us to pull people down.< So from today onward start to appreciate others and don’t be stingy with our word of encourage. By saying “thank you” is the simplest way of encourage others Polite 1 Timothy 5:1-2 Here the bible is teaching us how to treat every person that around us. We need to treat those older men as father, older women as mother, younger man and women as brothers and sisters. We need to greet those who are older than us when we meet them in church or in any where else. Please don’t think that is cool when pastors or any older person come into the church and you just sit there and keep quite or pretend that you didn’t see them at all. Many of us are lazy to take the initiative to greet those people who are older than us, which is a very bad testimony. Respect your elders.
All the brothers listen carefully, we need to treat our sisters as ladies, we need to help them to carry their staff whenever we can, open door for them, company them go home and always remember “ladies first”. And all the sisters say “Amen”. Confidence Isaiah 30:15 Isaiah tells us that confidence is our strength, not our cleverness, our IQ, our physical out look or our money. When we are weak and poor, our confidence in God is our strength. We are human and we have limitation, but we can become great and strong because we have God inside of us.
Philippians 4:13 passage shows that some time there is some thing we can not do it with our physical strength and our cleverness, but with God we can do all things. We need to let God involve in every thing that we do and let Him be the center of our lives. Unless God is the center of our efforts, our labor will be in vain. Deuteronomy 28:13 It is God’s intention for us to be the first and not the last, walking in confidence not fear. Confidence is not only a feeling but a decision. When you feel scare and worry, you choice to pray and trust God and go on to face your fear that is confidence.
i hope all of us will develop the CEPC culture!
