On Sunday, the September 2, 2012, I attended City Harvest Church at Singapore Expo Hall 1. Due to renovation at Suntec, the Church shifted its Worship service to Expo for a period of 6 months starting September 2012. After a beautiful praise and worship, Pastor Phil Pringle, senior Pastor of C3 Church, Australia, gave sermon on “Faith”. “We think we need a refreshing through hearing something new; but most of the time, we need to be reminded of the things we already know, so that it comes back to the central focus of what we are all about,” Pringle said as he embarked on the topic of faith.
Mark 11:21 – What Jesus spoke to them happened. There is power in God’s Word in your mouth. Whatever negative you’re speaking brings curse. You’re made in the image of God. Have the Faith of God. “The words ‘Have faith in God’,” Pringle pointed out while sharing from Mark 11:21, “means to have the faith of God!” He likened faith to a battery. “When we use it, it runs low, and we need to recharge it by hearing the Word of God,” Pringle said, referring to Romans 10:17. Galatians 3:11 – The just shall live by Faith. You get Faith from the Word of God.
Romans 10:17
New King James Version (NKJV)
17 So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.
Like battery, our faith becomes sometimes low. So as you recharge battery, you must recharge Faith by hearing the Word of God. Faith is an atmosphere that Power of God travels that brings miracles in your life. Unbelief is an insulator to the power of God working in the lives of Christian, said Pringle, emphasizing that faith comes about from a decision to switch it on. Hebrews 11:6- But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. Exhorting the congregation with Hebrews 10:23, to “hold fast the confession of our faith without wavering,” Pringle noted, “You need faith when you need faith, and the problem with our problems is that the problem tries to overwhelm our faith.”
Romans 12:3” For I say through the grace given to me to everyone who is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly as God has dealt to each one a measure of faith.
Romans 10:10 speaks on how do you believe. For with heart one believes to righteousness and with the mouth confession is made to salvation. You and I reprogram our mind by our words. All of our mind has to be renewed by speaking the Word of God. By speaking certain reality into our world, you’re going to change your life. You must speak and believe. The solution to that, according to Pringle, is to constantly have the Word of God on our lips. Highlighting how powerful spoken words can be when a person’s mouths and hearts are in agreement, Pringle painted an analogy of a person’s heart being a computer, and his mouth the keyboard.
Hebrews 10:23: Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful.
“Fear [and] timidity [are] not from God. The devil tries to make us think that timidity is from God but fear robs us of power, love and sanity,” Pringle explained, drawing from 2 Timothy 1:7. This is a tactic of the devil, to cause Christians to question who they are in God. Revealing what a Christian’s true identity should be, Pringle taught from James that we should not forget the manner of man that we are. “We will be blessed when we operate out of an identity that is rooted in the Word of God, and we have to see ourselves as the Word of God sees us, and continue in the image that God sees us as.”
Faith is Spirit. If you live in fear, you’re robbed of the power. Fear is self centered.
James 1:23-25
New King James Version (NKJV)
23 For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror; 24 for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. 25 But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does.
I speak things into my life that does not exist. Start to reshape your world by Word of God. Isaiah 43:18-19. Rear vision mirror is smaller than front screen. 1 John 3:2, Genesis 1:27, Colossians 2:9-10. Start to believe that what you say will come to pass.
You must overwhelm problem by Faith rather than other way round. Word of God is a 2 edged sword that defeats the devil and builds our Faith. Devil comes to steal the Word of God sown in us.
Preoccupation with the past prevents us appropriating our future, If you are always thinking about what was, we will never think about what will be. Don’t based your future on your past and present, but base it on God.”
1 John 3 and Genesis 1 state respectively that Christians are children of God, and they are created in His image. Pringle assured the church-goers that should they ever feel inadequate at anything, they can always go back and look in the Bible for their identity.
Reminding them that Jesus Himself constantly established and reaffirmed His identity in God to Himself and to others, Pringle also pointed out how the devil attacked Jesus’ identity and that he comes to steal, kill and destroy through the stealing of the Word of God from the lives of believers.
3 Now when the tempter came to Him, he said, “If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.
“What do we say to ourselves today? We have to confess what God says about us in the Bible,” Pringle said. “How do we talk to ourselves? Don’t lose the image that God has of us; who I am in God is who God says I am! Do I believe my context and circumstances, or what God has told me?”
Pringle used the children of Israel as an example to show that miracles do not inspire faith—the Israelites saw many miracles but still lacked faith. It is the Word of God that inspires faith.
Numbers 13:33 mentions overcomers like Joshua and Caleb. Negativity can kill you. John 18:31: Freedom comes from Truth.
Pringle ended the secret to getting the Word of God deeply entrenched in one’s life: it is to meditate on the Word.
“Christian meditation is not emptying your mind, but filling your mind with the Word of God,” Pringle taught. “Meditation is the digestive faculty of our souls, and our appetite for the Word reflects the state of our spiritual vital signs.” The benefit of thinking about the Word of God is that it transforms the Word from being merely information in our heads to revelation in our spirit.
He gave examples on Elephants, Eagels, John Cunningham. Whatever you’re facing, you can overcome by Word of God. The service ended with altar call invitation to those who have not accepted Jesus’ as their Savior.
After Service, I went to Exhibition and got some items before heading to Emmanuel Assemblies of God for Malayalam fellowship.
Praise God for a wonderful weekend.
