By Asst Ps Lai Keet Keong
As I reflect on the year 2022, I cannot help but marvel at the transitions after transitions we went through as a nation, a church and individuals.
As a nation, we seem to have stepped out of the shadow of COVID and reclaim a measure of freedom socially. Trace Together has become a vague memory of the past and we can breathe easier as we go about maskless most of the time. As a church, we embraced the milestone of the removal of restriction in our services’ headcount. We now have the liberty finally to praise and worship God vocally. We have in fact added back quite a few pews as we accommodate the increasing attendance. Services have once again become more vibrant and enjoyable as social interactions are allowed. We launched our inaugural CRUX Young Adult Service during Easter. What a joy that is after years of envisioning and months of planning. The coming year aptly marks the celebration of our 65th Anniversary. Indeed, God is our sure and steadfast rock through tough and turbulent times. On a personal level, we certainly experience the ironic tension of liberty and trepidation as the economy attempts to adjust to the new normal. Many are returning to offices and schools, catching up with both business and personal travels, and feverishly making up for more than two years of social lost time. Our schedules and calendars are once again getting filled out with meetings, appointments and of course parties.
Sometimes all these seem almost too much to take in all at once. That is why 1 Corinthians chapter 2 really resonated with me. In faithfully serving the Lord to preach the gospel, the Apostle Paul’s world was radically turned inside out in every way imaginable as he had to grasp with personal paradigm shifts in his outlook of God. His personal values, convictions and relationships were changed as a result. He recognized his own weaknesses that comes with so much lack and the unknown that in verse 3 he wrote, “I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power.”
Fear is a normal and sometimes necessary human emotion generated when we felt most vulnerable to help us respond intuitively to urgent and desperate situations. Even the strongest and the smartest are not exempted from such emotion. The same chapter then provided some antidote to our fears. It challenges our dependence on two types of wisdom – the power of God’s wisdom versus the futility of the wisdom according to the world. While it is practical and natural to fall back on google searches, social media or our past experiences for solutions through worldly wisdom, the apostle recommended divine wisdom that rests on God’s power and His mind. As children of God, we are totally capable of grasping such divine wisdom. 1 Corinthians 2:12 affirms that: “What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us.”
What is divine wisdom? It is wisdom in consultation with God. To recognise that the eternal God is interested and actively working in our lives. He invites us to see His ways, follow His leading, and seize His divine will. So, while we continue to try to understand the many transitions and experience the myriad of emotions, let’s pause, push aside the many voices around us and give some space to listen to His Spirit. The encouragement is that the Spirit who searches all things will certainly reveal to us. This is His promise to us!
Supernatural faith rests its full assurance in a good God who has the wonderful things and plans prepared for us. Yet these remain incomprehensible to our natural minds and could only be discerned and received with minds that are aligned with the Holy Spirit. May we be blessed as we learn to discern spiritual realities explained by God Himself to our spirit (1 Corinthians 2:13).
It is my sincere and earnest prayer, that 2023 will be a year of divine wisdom and spiritual breakthrough for us as a Church, as we press on in faithful service till Christ comes again.