Thanksgiving

Attended the Literature ministry thanksgiving session from 1pm - 3.30pm today. When hcls approached me to share 2 weeks ago (or was it last week? i can't really recall..) I was like, NO. I am a small fry etc.. that kinda thing. Thinking back I am glad God had not punished me there and then for not being willing to give thanks! After some sort of counselling from hcls that the sharing was basically to give thanks and how I have benefited from serving God, I decided to share.

I did not regret my decision but instead I prayed that the Lord would cause me not to be nervous but instead be joyful to share of God's blessings and amazing work which I have experienced in the ministry. He really strengthened me during the sharing!

I guess my sharing was not about the effort I had put in or the work I had accomplished, those are far far and way way too insignificant to what God had done for me and besides what I can do is solely a result of the God's enabling, hence nothing of my own credit. Firstly, I have to thank God for allowing me to serve Him. That in itself is already a mind blowing fact! I was once a sinner but am now accorded the righteousness of Christ and am now able to serve the Holy God.. Has the origin of all wisdom, the creator of the heavens and earth, which is so manifest with His unfathomable wisdom a lack of common sense or logic? Why would He want to have anything to do at all with His created being who has now become rebellious, ungrateful and utterly depraved? The only reason for all that Christ has done for us, His sacrifice to pay for the penalty of our sins is but one - love. God is love. I truly give thanks to God in my heart for His love for one as unworthy as myself.

I also shared 2 stories with my fellow laborers in the Literature ministry.
1) I was tidying up the bookshelf on a Sunday afternoon, when an adult male came to me and asked for a recommendation for a book for a new believer. I recommended him the book 要道琐谈 and then we ended the conversation after he thanked me and took the book. That night, xmls contacted me to ask if I had talked to a man this afternoon and I replied, yep. She then told me that the man called up the church and told her about me and then xmls had the opportunity to talk to him about the spiritual problems which he encountered. I think it is indeed God's blessing that He uses even such simple means to create an opportunity for someone to come into contact with the gospel and to experience Him.

2) I was on duty, I think on a Saturday night, was off my shift and resting, feeling very drained already. Brother tian meng sms-ed me that there was this guy who went to the book shelf to take a book to read, and then he heard the evangelistic meeting being broadcasted through the speaker and he headed to the hall to hear the message! I think it is really amazing how God arranges for such precision in opprtunity and timing to bring someone to hear His word.

Many a times, I go for tracting and come back, being just relieved that the word of God has been revealed to those recipients of the tracts and thinking that it was hard work just to get the word of God out there. Now I realise that I have been too narrow minded in thinking of the way which the Almighty God works!

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,"
declares the LORD.
"As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
(Isaiah 55:8-9)

Indeed, the Lord works in ways which are humanely impossible to act upon nor the mind being able to conceive of!

It is a great comfort to know that the surety of the effectiveness of God's work and the accomplishment of His will lies not on feeble man but entirely on the Almighty God!