Mission Sharing EM

· 4. Aaron Lee (20mins)

· - Destiny begins in TCM

· - Discover God and discipleship in BCC

· - Answer the call

· - Barrers and power to overcome

· - Church is growing (Harvest is great, workers are few)

Good Afternoon everyone, many times when I get to come back to Singapore or meet friends in Thailand when they come to visit me, I will get asked about my journey of making the decision to come to the mission field. I have been away for 2.5 years and I see many new faces in the Church. So I just want to share my journey together with all of you.

I first came to know about Brighton Community Church when I was in Chiang Mai with my school for a community project. I was studying in ITE at that time. During that time, I was already exploring Christianity for my life and I was looking for my purpose in my life. When I was growing up, I did not do well in school and I felt like a failure. I had very low self-esteem and I found no purpose in living life. I was depressed. So I was looking for the ultimate purpose of life so that I would not kill myself.

So when I was in Chinag Mai, Pastor Aaron Koh was there helping too. The teachers who brought us to do the project many of them were Christian. So they asked me if I was Christian. I told them I wanted to believe in God but I did not go to Church. So they knew I was seeking. One of the teachers reached out to me and led to to receive Christ. During the trip they introduced me to Pastor Aaron. They said I needed to meet him because we had the same name. Never would I know that we would meet back in the same land that we first met 18 years ago. So later on I received Christ and Pastor Aaron invited me to visit Brighton. I remember the first time I came, the worship band was rehearsing and I was watching brother Danny play bass and it thought how cool is that. Because I was picking up bass at that time.

That started my journey in finding my destiny in my life though at that time I had no idea. My journey started by attending CG regularly. Where God taught me about accountability and community. Even though this might seem like something very basic, it built the foundation of my walk with God. In my ministry today, I deal with issues regarding this week in and week out. Member had conflict and then want to leave Church, members not willing to account to each other for their lives. I get to share from my own experience about how to be accountable to our community and also to reconcile with fellow brothers and sisters. I was an extra care member before and I ran away from the fellowship and accountability in the Church too. All these experiences of how I found God’s faithfulness and grace in my life helped me to minister to my members.

Then later on, I learned about service. I served in the worship team. First as a bass player. I was so lousy when I began. The band that I was in at that time was very talented and I was the most untalented one. I played wrong chords often. It is not which Sunday di I play a wrong note. It was how many did I play that Sunday. So it was very stressful. Sometimes when I play wrongly, Janice would turn around and give me the death stare and James will shout the rights chords to me. Ahh those were the fun days. Many times I wanted to give up and wondered why am I serving? Is it an obligation? Or is it an offering that I wanted to give to God? This process nurtured my heart to serve out of my relationship with God. Without which I would burn out because my focus would be wrong and it would not be sustainable. This lesson helped to do what I’m doing now by having myself grounded in why I came to the mission field. Because I hear the call of God and I desire to go where he calls me. And I find joy in being here in this place of my destiny serving my master.

After that God called me to lead a cell group. Stressed. Why does it always get harder? In the beginning I refused to be a CGL because I know that it is going to be hard. I not only have deal with my own problems now I have to deal with other people’s problems. I struggled when leaders asked me to rise up. I knew I was going to make mistakes and I was afraid of the responsibility. But in the end I decided to trust God and say yes. Through being a CGL, I realised that I needed to depend on God to change people. I couldn’t do it. Every time I tried in my own strength, I would get very disappointed because the member would not grow the way I want them to grow and not at the pace that I wanted them to. I learned to depend on God and pray and really minister to members out of love and not motive. Motive to want to make myself feel good about myself because I think I made them grow in their walk with God.

I learnt that the ministry that God gives me will only grow when I depend on God for the results. had to learn to not just look for immediate results. Life changes take time. It taught me to be patient and persistent in my ministry. To focus on the leading my sheep to their destiny step by step and always pointing them to God. Not myself. God is their answer to all the issues in their life. Not me.i can pray for them but they got to trust and obey God.

All along this time, I was asking God for his plan for my life and God says for now do this and I needed to obey God and do the specific ministry for that season. After that God will reveal the next step. But in my spirit, I felt that God would ask me to do something big. That got me worried and excited at the same time. Through this process of allowing God to lead me and train me, I leant that if i am to fulfil what God has planned for me, it starts with obedience now. because if i cannot even obey his simple instruction to deal with my life, to trust him, to serve the Church and be humble to go through the process, I have already proven myself not willing to pursue God’s plan for my life. The assignment from God now in my life is part of that destiny.

I have verse that I like to keep in my heart

1 Corinthians 2:9 ESV

9 But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him”—

I like this verse because it talks about God revealing his salvation plan to man to those who love God. I want to see the salvation plan that God has started in my life continue to be revealed to others through my life. I want to see what no eye has seen, no ear has heard, no heart has imagined what God has planned for my life.

Who would have thought that God would call an ITE kid who did not do well in school to go into the mission field and later on to lead a Church and then to preach to the people in their own language?

Did you see this coming? I didn’t. But i have had people who prayed over me prophesy over me about these things. 2 people told me that God call me to be a Pastor, brother james pang told me that God is preparing me for something in my life. he said that he saw a bottle with water in it with a cap on it. and the water was bubbling up and soon the cap will burst open.

All these happened many years ago and when I heard them, a part of me said to myself. You must be crazy, how can this be? But I kept these things in my heart. looking back now, I am shocked. because these things seem to have come through.

Because of these things that God had laid on my heart, I told God that I am willing to go wherever he will call me to go. So when I was looking for my life partner, I was looking for someone who was open to missions too. So when I was courting Cheri, I asked her if she was open to missions. She shared that God has also spoken to her about missions too. So during our courtship, we spent time to pray and asked God what he wanted us to do. God gave Cheri 2 visions. One was something like Noah’s ark. we were on a very big boat and Cheri and I were standing right at the front of the boat and there were many people who followed us. There was a dam that was about to burst and we had gathered all the people into the safety of the boat.

Another vision was that of a Key and a door. The door was a tiny door in the wall. When she looked into the key hole in the door, it led to another country. And the key to the door was kept high up where we could not reach. We were not ready to get the key yet. So when we received these visions, we felt very excited and asked each other was this going to happen.

So Before we got married, I asked Cheri again if she was sure she wanted to marry me because if God called me to missions, I am ready to go. I told her it was not going to be easy married to me. She thought about it for a while and she said yes she will follow me wherever God leads me. Both of us have been on mission trips to Chiang Mai a few times and for myself, as I went to the mission field, I I saw the needs and the struggles of the thais. I thought to myself since a need for the gospel in this land, what am I doing hiding here in SIngapore trying to survive here and being concerned about running the rat race while there are people out there who need the Gospel but don’t have many to bring the gospel to them.

So I told God that I was ready to go if he would call me to go. So eventually, Cheri and I got married we were busy starting up our new lives together when pastor Sally came to us and asked us if we were willing to go to Chiang mai to help to teach the leaders there about listening to the spirit. So we went and did our session. During our session, the holy spirit came and ministered to the members as they practiced hearing from God. We were amazed at the work that God was doing and after the session, we talked about what happened and both of us felt God calling us to the field again. prayed to God and told God that I am ready to come if he would call.

So after the trip, Pastor Sally met us up and asked us if we would be interested to be missionaries. She was praying about it and god gave her our names. She challenged us to consider if this was something we were willing to give our to do. When she shared this with us, We felt like there was a fire burning inside of us. We were excited and afraid. God is calling us now. It’s very scary when it become real. We went back to pray about it and in our spirits we knew this was it. So we agreed the very next day.

The things that made the transition hard was the language and culture. We had to learn the language from scratch and we had to minister to members there. So it was very difficult in the beginning. We couldn’t do much because of our language. just listening to thai for the whole day and not understanding everything was very tiring. Our daughter Alaryse was 5 months old when we moved to BKk, so we were new parents too trying to adjust to many different changes.

The culture here in Thailand is also very different, it is a predominately buddhist country, so becoming Christian is difficult when all your friends, family, your school culture are buddhist. You immedietly become very different once you become a Christian. So there is social pressure not be become Christian. And from what I notice, some people simply shut down once they hear that we are Christians. We do events and invite people that we meet to come. They are okay with the social events. But once you bring up Christianity, their attitude start to change. they don’t want to hear about Christianity.

Most thais have only one aim in life. To make money. So they spend most of their time looking for opportunities to make money. They will sell things on weekends to make money. So it’s very hard to invite them. Many of our friends we know in Chiang mai work at the market and they don’t have off days on weekends. So the whole culture makes it hard to even bring them to Church. And many of them worship many different gods in their homes and they even rear spirits in their family lines. So many of them are afraid that if they convert to Christianity, they or their family will be harmed.

So after seeing all these things, we realised something. That when we go out and invite strangers to come to our events, the chances of them staying is very low. But when our members bring their friends to come. Many of them are willing to join us and get to know us. So far, we have members bringing friends who are Christians don’t have a Church. So we have about 3 youths who joined us who are Christians and have become our assimilated members. We have a few working adults who came to join us too who have come from BKK. They are young Christians but have been hurt by their previous Church. So came to Brighton and decided to make this their spiritual home. We are ministering to them and helping them to grow in their walk with God.

God has been bringing people into our Church through walk ins and friends brining friends. I have been praying and asking God to show me the way to reach the thais.

In a book that I read, it says that Jesus focus was not primarily on the multitudes but on men whom the multitudes would follow. This is a book called the Masterplan of Evangelism written by Robert E Coleman in 1964. It’s a very old book but it has very powerful and practical insights about how Jesus went about his ministry. And in 28:18-20

Matthew 28:18–20 ESV

18 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Matt 28:

It says go and make disciples of all nations. We have about 35 adults who come regularly and many of them just come to Church. They are Church goers. Not yet disciples. If we can raise up more disciples in our congregation. These disciples will bring their friends and family. It has already started slowly to happen. The members who we minster to who begin to grow in their walk with God naturally share Christ with their family and friends. It might seem slow now, but if we can make disciples in the Church as our culture, we can bring in the multitudes.

I have many members and I only have myself and Cheri and staff and leadership team. Some of my leadership team are still young and also need to be discipled. We have people wanting to be discipled but we do not have enough disciplers. Will you answer the call to make disciples of all nations?

When you sin and you decide to come to God for help, you are growing in discipleship.