GOD IS PRESENT

When God created the world, He lived within the very creation that He created. He is present and actively involved in the happenings in the world. The Holy Spirit is at work upon all flesh today. Just like in Genesis, when darkness covered the earth and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters, the Spirit of God today is hovering over the darkness of the human heart, waiting for the Word to be spoken. And when the light of the gospel, spoken through you, shines into the darkness of a human heart, regeneration takes place in the individual. The Holy Spirit enters that person and begins the creative process of bringing light to the darkness and order to the chaos.

So many times, as we live life in our "Babylon," we are too busy identifying the work of the devil within the sinner that we fail to see God at work in that person's life. The Holy Spirit is hovering over the sinner, waiting for the Word to be spoken so that He can do what He does best—redeeming the lost. But if we don't see how God is working in the sinner, we may even regard him or her as an enemy. We can miss out on the very one that Jesus sent us to. They are not the enemy, they are our mission!

BRINGING A NEW SOCIAL ORDER

In the Bible, we see that Jesus spent most of His time building relationships with the people whom He wanted to minister to. This is because relationship precedes ministry. You cannot minister until you have established a relationship. The most important element in a relationship is trust. You cannot address the issues of someone's life if he or she doesn't trust you. Only when there is trust have you earned the right to speak directly into that person's life.

As such, Jeremiah 29:11 was a prophetic word of encouragement and empowerment to a people in captivity. The people of God were in Babylon which is a type of the world in which you and I live today. When we see the polarity of its culture and the many beliefs that exist, it mustn't scare us off and intimidate us in any way. God has a great mission and purpose for us right here in the world!

Unfortunately, what many believers have done is to withdraw from culture and form exclusive religious clubs. As a result, we have lost a lot of ground and territory. God wants us to be proactive and to get involved. While we must not become like the world or follow its demands, we need to realize that we are the answer to culture. We are to bring in a new social order which is the kingdom of God. This new social order is what builds man, it will not destroy him.

God told Israel in Deuteronomy 4:5-7: "These laws that I give you will become the envy of every nation. The other nations will say to themselves, 'What nation is there with such great laws and their God so near to them?'" This body of law in Scripture is the new social order for all mankind. We Christians should be experts on family matters. We should be so successful at family issues that the world would come to us and say, "How do you do it?" We should be experts at raising children. We should be experts at education, because we know that education is not just the transfer of information but the impartation of life. We know the many truths pertaining to life from the Word of God which is hidden from the world.

AN AGENT OF THE KINGDOM

In Matthew 12, Jesus was in a discussion about Satan. He says, "But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, surely the kingdom of God has come to you." The kingdom comes when Jesus exercises His spiritual authority over the demonic. The kingdom of God is presently here in spiritual form and in the hearts of men. The kingdom of God will ultimately come in its full physical manifestation at the return of Christ. But you can bring a glimpse of the future into the present by exercising God's spiritual authority in the here and now. Jesus was actually saying that the future could be brought into the present by the kingdom of God. Every time someone is healed, or someone experiences a supernatural miracle, a portion of the future kingdom has just been brought into the present. And the kingdom of God comes in dynamically, powerfully and with authority. It delivers, uplifts, builds and strengthens!

As such, our role as an agent and ambassador of the kingdom is to bring that piece of the future into the present. We are to give our world a revelation of what the future is going to be like. Every time we heal the sick in Jesus' name, we present to the world a glimpse of a future where there is no sickness or disease.

The more we understand the relevance of Jesus to His time, the more empowered we become to represent Him dynamically to our time. When we have knowledge, we have power because knowledge translates into authority. If a person is ignorant, that person becomes weak. Ignorance produces weakness. With the abundance of information and knowledge available to us in our day and age, the only reason for continuing ignorance is stubbornness—the refusal to be taught. Proverbs 12:1 says that in order to learn, we must want to be taught.

LIVING IN SYMBIOSIS WITH THE WORLD

The word "symbiosis" means the living together of two dissimilar entities in close association. Every day, we Christians have a close association with the world we live in, yet we are so different from the world in our value system. That immediately puts us in a crisis of being in the world but not of the world. So how can we influence the world and not be dominated by the world? This is a very real struggle that we face each day. We wrestle to understand our relationship with Christ and with the culture in which He has called us to live in.

Remember what Jesus says in John 17:6, "Father, I do not pray that You take my disciples out of the world, but while they are in the world, protect them from the evil one." Our greatest value to God is not in heaven but here in the world. It is in the here and now that we can witness the dynamic power of God to change lives and transform entire cities. I don't want to go to heaven just yet, I want to see the power of God in the land of the living!

Besides, heaven is not even our final destination. Heaven is merely a holding place until the time when God restores order to the earth. At that time, He is going to bring us back to the earth to establish and accomplish what He has always intended to do through Adam before the Fall. The crowd who think, "I want to come to Jesus so that I can just go to heaven," have missed the point. It is not about getting to heaven. It is about manifesting the kingdom of God on the earth, in our world.

God's objective is to create a society of free moral agents who love Him out of their own free will and choice. Yet these believers understand that their freedom springs from their submission to the sovereignty of God. In our world today, people think that freedom is the absence of submission. But in the kingdom of God, our freedom comes from our submission. In the kingdom of God, the way up is the way down.

So the challenge for us is to learn how to adjust to our culture without compromising our conviction. Culture holds us just as the ocean holds the fish. The fish that is in the ocean is totally enveloped by that ocean, and yet, it has its distinct identity. So the question is how does that fish navigate in that ocean without being consumed by it?

Likewise, we also face the challenge of living in symbiosis with the world. Certain questions will begin to surface, like: "Where do I draw the line between the standards of God and the ethics that are placed upon me by the society in which we live?" That is a real struggle for us, which is why all the more, we need to stay closer in touch with God, tapping into His wisdom and His character.

Once you learn the character of God, His character will teach you things that He would not do, even if you have not learned them yet from His Word. HT

This article is an excerpt from the conference held at City Harvest Church in August 2006. For details on the audio series, please visit www.attributes.com.sg.


» Interview With Rev. Dr. A.R. Bernard