By Bishop Dr. Ong Hwai Teik

 "Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labour in vain"

The cover photograph of this month’s Pelita shows one of our Methodist Churches under construction. It reminds us that the Church of God is continually “under construction” as the Lord Himself provides various gifts “for the building up the body of Christ” (Eph 4:12).

In the last issue, I shared about the centrality of the Person, Presence and the Power of the Holy Spirit in birthing the first Gentile church at Antioch (Acts 11). That church was a “church after God’s own heart” that became the launch pad for the worldwide mission of the Gospel. As the life of the Church was wrapped around the centrality of the Person, Presence and Power of the Holy Spirit, “persecution could not finish them off – in fact, it made them shine” so that “a great number who believed turned to the Lord” (Acts 11:21). 

The second imperative of being “a church after God’s own heart” is the call from Psalm 127:1 – "Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labour in vain." This calls us to take note that the primary and only Originator of the life and existence of all communities, including the home and Church, is none other than God. We must therefore be fully dependent on the Lord of the Old Testament temple and of His New Testament Church.

Flowing from this humble posture of actualised dependency on the sovereign God, we as God’s people are divinely called to play a vital supplementary, responsive and operational role in these communities. There is an important role for us in the building process of God’s Kingdom; otherwise the Christian faith in God becomes one of passive fatalism.

We are called to “humble ourselves” in 2 Chronicles 7:14 - "if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face..." This most famed, enduring and endearing verse in the book of 2 Chronicles, explicitly expresses the necessary stipulation for a nation, a people of God, a community – to experience God's blessings. This humbling of ourselves in seeking the face of God to be gracious to us, will include “words and deeds” of falling before the Almighty in prayer, ceasing to sin, intentionally discontinuing to frame our daily living by proud self-centredness, and collaborating perseveringly with the Holy Spirit in yielding our desires to the Lord’s Word and will.

• It was when a desperate nation humbled herself to observe A Silent Moment of Prayer to Almighty God that Britain was able to be blessed with endurance and victory in World War II in the famous 1940 Battle of Britain aerial warfare. Katherine P Carter (The Mighty Hand of God) shared how that this call to pray for the nation to all Britons when the Big Ben struck 9 pm, had a correlation to the witness of one of the captured German pilots. "With the striking of your Big Ben clock each evening at nine," the Nazi told the British Intelligence officers, "you used a secret weapon which we did not understand. It was very powerful and we could find no countermeasure against it..." Katherine P Carter goes on to opine that “In fact, this very powerful weapon was heartfelt nation-wide prayer.” (Amongst other things, the German pilots saw more British planes in the air than there actually were!) Let us humble ourselves to pray for our church and our land especially in this season of the impending 13th General Election as we seek the Lord’s blessing of intervention for our nation.

• A group of 40 from the Methodist Church in Malaysia visited the Bupyeong Methodist Church in Korea in November 2012. This church is firmly grounded in prayer which lies at the very foundation of their church values for all ministries.

The team of 20 pastors lead the people of God at their daily 5 am Morning Prayers. As they humbled themselves, prayed and sought God’s face, they grew from a humble church birthed on 24 May 1940 of less than a hundred to the present membership of 3,200. That church overcame hardships and witnessed multiple miracles from the Person, Presence and Power of the Holy Spirit over their 72 year history.

• Lent season (which began with Ash Wednesday on 13 Feb lasting till Easter), is a most appropriate time to be reminded about deliberately humbling ourselves, praying and seeking the Lord’s face – like the humble penitent tax collector in Luke 18:13. It is to make some time each day to sincerely examine our inner self and life, so that we can have purified hearts and minds. That will lead to a fresh renewal in our personal as well as church life. It will lead us back to the days of our “first love” – a recommitment to our baptismal vows when we first eagerly came into relationship with our beloved Saviour. Will you humble yourself before the Lord this Lent to recover, renew or grow deeper in your prayer or relational time with God each day, and within the community life of your church?

• This posture of humble dependence on God is captured in our Methodist Church in Malaysia Road Map (launched on 2010), Objective 2 (under A. Evangelism and Church Planting, p 16) – To put prayer at the heart of the ministry of the church in order to seek God for revival and empowering for the advance of the Gospel.