Sunday, July 03, 2005

Which church to go?

Yesterday, my tuition gal sms to ask me of my opinion of city harvest church because she will be visiting it today. Well i didnt told her much, so as not to confuse her; instead i just briefly told her that CHC is a good place for fun and loud musics but she will learn nothing about Jesus Christ.. and that i told her that she may go there to take a look and we shall discuss it today during our tuition session.

I was so glad to hear from her today that she had finally decided to believe in Christ. Thanks God for His mercy towards her. Then we spent like 1 hr or so talking about it before our lesson. We started off with how's her time in CHC and who brought her there etc, since she went there this morning, she said "woah their music is really loud.. but the speaker was good" "my friend brought both of us there.. but she is a lesbian" "i feel like going for their this talk by A.R Bernard"... i was quite dumbfolded with her reply.. then i wondered how to advise her on church choosing, without being judgmental towards CHC..

... I started by telling her a bit of the church scenes around us.. explain very briefly on the different denominations we have and also the charismatic nature of CHC. I pointed out to her that Christianity is not a religion where we do and don't to earn salvation and Christianity is not about us.. of how we can live a successful life. Christianity is all about CHRIST, God's king to save, judge and rule.. it's about the r'ship of the Creator and his creation. About we human, the creations kept telling our Creator that we dun need Him; that we want our own ways.. tt we rebel against Him. Instead of calling God God, we invented something that we want to be god. So God being a righteous God have to punish us for our wrongs, that's y we were dead, no gd r'ship w Him, no gd r'ship w ppl around us... we'r like dead ppl! It is only through Christ and Christ alone that we can have reconciled r'ship w God and be able to know Him. And it is upon knowing the Creator that we can understand the creation. That's why i told her that the key to note when choosing a church is that the church teaches Jesus Christ, our Lord and God faithfully and truthfully.

One can easily spot a church that did not teach Christ truthfully, for example if a church said that 'Christ did not really died' we can know for sure that the church is not teaching the right stuff. But how about churches that invented a Jesus that love to be clapped for and see worship as singing songs...? .. how about those that only tell you half truth? for example 'you must study the word of God because it will teach you of how to live ur daily life and bring you great success in ur marriage, ur business and investments.' but never talk about the suffering as christian. How..??=S The latter is so subtle, and hence so difficult for her, even us, to be reckoned with, what's more she's a new believer.

umm.. i started to wonder if i should just give her some advice and allow her to look around on her own.. or should i just recommend her and bring her to a church.. Anyway, i think i had done both le.. i had invited her to the friendship service in ARPC whilst trying to find out more about TNYF... at the same time worriedly i told her to go look around first lahz.. =S yar.. i know that it's quite irony but what to do.. can only pray to God laz...

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great challenge, isn't it? But praise God that through you someone is now interested in Christ.

Think whichever church your friend chooses isn't as important as continuing on your part to pray for her to know the true gospel, and for you to witness the gospel to her as you have been doing. More than that is really up to God.

To be honest with you, spoke to someone from CHC before... got to a point that he felt that I was basically not giving him any ground to defend his church, and that his pastor was God-inspired anyhow. :( And that if the pastor was wrong, it'd be between him and God. God's purposes would be fulfilled.

I pointed out that the listeners - the ones with weaker faith in the salvation of sin through Christ - would probably be the ones to suffer... but my friend refused to acknowledge any "wrongdoing" still. Very sad, that he even felt that it was ok for church sermons to entirely circle around how to manage time well and manage ourselves well, rather than center on Christ.

Keep doing what you're doing! I think it's very encouraging already. Keep following up and talking to her, even outside of tuition time if she so asks...

BTW - "my friend brought both of us there.. but she is a lesbian" .... this is really just outright rebellion against God's word lor. Sigh. And "woah their music is really loud.. but the speaker was good" - did U ask what the speaker spoke abt, and what was good about it? I'm curious actually :P

Unknown said...

Carry on praying for her, as the people around you do too. ;)

weez9al said...

i roughly read her sermon outline.. it's on 'your purposes here'... i told her that the sermon may not be sharp about our purpose in Christ. I see that the sermon is like PDL beating ard the bush.. Anyway.. Pastor Kong is really a dynamic speaker, so no doubt my tuition kid will find his sermon good.

Anonymous said...

Hey... any news on this?