Devotional for the Week

Devotional for the week –13 July 2009

Sermon Title: The Wake-Up Call
Scripture Text: Ephesians 1:4-12

Birds were created to fly and chairs were made to be sat on. Imagine birds trying to swim or chairs being used as writing tools. The result would be hilarious, awkward even, simply because those birds and chairs would be doing things they were not destined to do. So too is it with man who was created for fellowship with God. In today’s scripture we are reminded that that “he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.” (verse 4) God wants an intimate relationship with us. We are “adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ” (verse 5) so that “in him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins” (verse 7) We have an identity in Christ. And through Christ, God “made known to us the mystery of his will” (verse 9). We have a destiny.

INTIMACY with God gives us our IDENTITY which reveals our DESTINY.

This is the formula for life. Knowing our destiny enables us to navigate through life’s storms.

Life Without Christ

Today Pastor Glenn Lim is a youth counsellor and trainer. Yet it was not so long ago that he was a rebellious youth, engaged in conflicts with his parents and school authorities. He recalls how his reactions were the result of 2 missing ingredients in his life – a sense of insecurity (he did not feel accepted in his family) and a sense of insignificance (he was always compared to his brother who was smarter than he). He felt that nothing he did was ever good enough.

And so he searched for a new identify and found it in being a gang member. Being a good musician, he joined a band that played in clubs, thriving on the raw emotions of heavy metal music. His school grades plummeted and in Secondary 4, he was expelled from school – an event he viewed then as good. Who needs school?! After his National Service, with his band, he went to the States where he was exposed to drugs. He recalls how despite being high and surrounded by band members, he felt empty and lonely. To shake the feeling off, he sought new highs – he began to bring drugs with him back to Singapore where his friends would celebrate his return with parties where the drugs were the highlight. The amount of drugs he brought in was small at first but became larger and larger until 1994 when he was detained at the Woodlands checkpoint. The amount in his possession was so large that he would likely to be sentenced to life with 24 strokes of the cane. That was his wake-up call. Desperate, he broke down and called his parents who managed to bail him out.

With a four-month window before his trial, he sought a miracle. He turned to Teen Challenge. He wanted to know God… if there was one. Feeling he had nothing to lose, he turned his life to Christ and asked Him to take over. For the first time in his life, with nothing to live for anymore, he felt he belonged, he was significant, he mattered to Christ. He had a sense of identity.

Then the miracle happened. At his trial, the judge dropped the sentence from life to just 6 months…with no strokes of the cane! He was the happiest inmate ever, sharing with fellow prisoners the Gospel that set him free. Upon his release, his former friends asked him to rejoin them. But by then Glenn Lim had a firm relationship with Christ, knew clearly who he was and the destiny he was to fulfil. He stayed on with Teen Challenge moving on to become a youth counsellor and pastor. Today, he works with government platforms that deal with youths.

Hearing the Wake-up Call

Pastor Glenn Lim is not the first person to experience God’s wake-up call. God has been calling throughout history. In Exodus 8, we read of how God sent a plague of frogs to destroy Egypt because Pharaoh would not set the Israelites free. The frogs were everywhere, in the Nile, in the palace, the bedrooms, in the beds, even in the ovens and kneading troughs of the Egyptian people. And then in verse 9, we hear God’s wake-up call to Pharaoh, delivered through Moses "I leave to you the honour of setting the time for me to pray for and your officials and your people that you and your houses may be rid of the frogs.” And in verse 10, we hear Pharaoh’s reply. “Tomorrow," he said.

Today, God is again issuing His wake-up call. You may be facing a problem at work, dealing with a child you just can’t handle, living with a spouse that you just can’t get along with anymore, suffering an illness that causes you great pain. Today, God is asking you to wake-up to the grace He offers. For he says in 2 Corinthians 12:9, “My grace is sufficient for you for my power is made perfect in your weakness.”

Glenn Lim accepted that grace and found his identity and his destiny. Will you?

Prayer Response

Lord, thank you for the wake-up calls you send me. They tell me you care. You tell me to let go, Lord, of the pain, of the suffering, of the struggles, and let you take charge. Yet, like Pharaoh, I am afraid to let go of what I know because I can’t see what is ahead and I fear. But Lord, that is what it means to have faith in you - to know that no matter how bleak things look now, You have a plan for me so good that it will outshine any plan I make for myself. All I have to do is respond to your call. And Lord today I say `yes’. I accept your grace and invite you to take over my life. Help me to keep my focus on you, Lord, my rock and my salvation. Amen.

Devotional based on a sermon by Pastor Glenn Lim.

(C) BMC 2009 All Rights Reserved