3 Words for the Church by Pastor Daniel Yaw

This month we celebrate 13 years of God’s goodness upon FCC.  Happy 13th birthday to FCC!  It has been 13 wonderful years of blessing, challenge and adventure.

There is indeed much to give thanks to God for this past 13 years.  There have been ups and downs and I think there are more ups than downs.  Praise the LORD.

As a pastor, I have 3 words to share with us as I will be speaking briefly on the Anniversary Day.

1）Evocating / Remembering (The Past)
The psalmist says, ”Bless the LORD, O my soul… and forget not His benefits….”  To remember is something that the Lord constantly asked of his people.  In our mortal life, remembering becomes a task with age.  It takes effort and surely the LORD knows that.

So we are asked to remember.  But more than remembering I thought of this word “Evocate”, which means to summon from the past a feeling that steers us into action.  So it is not just remembering on a rocking chair, motion with no movement but a remembering that impacts us that God will continually be faithful.

As we see the faithfulness of God from the beginning at Aston Road to what we are now and looking forward to what we are going to – we praise the Lord.  The faithfulness of God steers us to have greater faith in Him.  That is what remembering should do.  It does not just remain status quo or being contented where we are.  But the recalling of God’s goodness will indeed inspire us to trust Him even more.

It is like saying, “He has done it before, therefore He will do it again!”.  I hope that with each new phase and new challenges, we will always rise to the occasion because we REMEMBER how God has led us in the past. 

2）Embracing (The Present)
Though we don’t like what we see in the present, we must learn another word – to embrace and not to complain, having faith that God has an ultimate plan to bring glory to him.  To embrace is to believe and learn to rise above all circumstance and adversities.  We must learn to see what God is doing in us and through us.  In the words of the Apostle John in Revelation, he heard the Lord said, “Behold I am making all things new!”

Ultimately it is about the purposes of God and His glory.  Just like the healing of the blind man in the gospel.  He was born blind, said Jesus, “Not because of his sin nor because of his parents’ sin.  This has happened so that the work of God may be displayed.”  It shows to us that in the midst of crises and difficulties, God’s work can and will be displayed for His glory.

We therefore recognized though with some feelings of frustration over the prolonged dilemma of the pandemic, we embrace the fact that God must be doing something in our midst.  We can see our we are challenged all the more to trust God.  We are people of hope and bringers of hope to a world that is crying out in fear.  We have the faith to trust God because in everything we have our destiny in God.

We embrace today, with an anticipation of the Lord’s return.  So have faith, not fear because God is with us.

3）Extending (The Future)
My last word has to do with the future.  Extending is about believing what God will continue to do what he has begun in us.  It is extending the grace of God in all aspects of life and service.  What I was approached in the past that we should put our sermons in video form, I felt rather intimidated and said, “No la, not up to standard leh” and yet today, the Lord has steered us and we have no choice but to do this.

Isaiah 54:2 says, “Enlarge the place of your tent,  - stretch the curtains, lengthen the cords, strengthen the pegs….. for you will spread abroad to the right and left”.

After many years of waiting – we finally obtained the permit to renovate our new place.  Would it not be His wonderful timing that now we can prepare with the “new norm” as to how things will operate?  Even as we “extend” our borders and the place of our tent, may we do so with God’s purpose for the community in mind.

May we find in Him faith to allow Him to do his work – new as it may be to extend the grace of God.  Let us not grow weary in doing good and working out the purposes of God.

Conclusion
Let us remember these three words for Faith Community Church.  Evocate, Embrace, Extend – May God’s peace be upon us!