Dear all prayer warriors,

"This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us- whatever we ask- we know that we have what we asked of him." I John 5:14-15

We thank God for His goodness and faithfulness in answering many of our prayers and seeing us through throughout the past few years in GAP. I'm very encouraged by all of you, for taking the time to seek and listen to the Father.

To all who are from GAP, press on in the Lord and prevail in your prayers until we see spiritual breakthroughs in ym! Your labour is not in vain- whether we've only two or three youths praying or fifty youths praying, God is still faithful in listening and answering our prayers. Prayer ministry is vital for it is the life wire that plugs into God's power house and command the spiritual forces to subject to God's will. There is Power when there is Prayer! Let us continue to pray that God will raise up more intercessors in ym for His work sake.


Sharing from GAP Retreat:

• Mark 9:36-37, 10:14-15 - How do we have faith like little children?
• Mark 10:17-31 - The rich man had followed all the commandments of the Lord, but one thing he lacked, he could not fully surrender everything he had to Christ. We could do everything right and yet failed to surrender our lives to Christ.
• YM not praying enough
• Need to pray for the parents
• Pray that the youths will surrender their lives to Christ.
• Pray for more intercessors. Pray for gifts of intercession; Matt 7:9-11 - ...how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!
• Mark 9:22-23 - ...Everything is possible for him who believes. Do not doubt what God could do in YM. Don't doubt God, have faith! Believe that God will bring revival.
• Breaking mindsets! Lean not on our own understanding, but trust in the Lord!
• I asked God why we come to church? Why the camp & Sunday ym worship so different? God said, "You leave that to Me, you pray!" Isaiah 54:14
• Personal holiness - God honoured Daniel and his friends when they walked in the fear of God, not men.
• Pray that we will love one another. I John 4:7-21...Whoever loves God must also love his brother.

We hope to extend the retreat to two nights next year so that we could spend more time listening and praying to the Father. See you all on friday.

The Key to Revival is Prayer,
Sandy

God is moving. lets start praying for a deeper hunger and desire. for revival. its that word again. do u squint ur eyes doubtfully at that word? fatigued by e mention of revival? i was. i shunned tt word. it didn't seem possible. an unlikely reality. didn't even dare ask for revival during prayer anymore. cos we kept "going around in circles". felt discouraged. but during e retreat, and even after tt, God kept prodding me about it. like hey c'mon. don't be defeated by the devil! don't believe His lies! its time for us to rise up and take our rightful place as children of God. army of God. to be honest and tell God, help our unbelief! grant us faith! cos God wants to send revival in YM. He wants lives changed permanently for His kingdom. tt's His will.

but the question is; who's willing to pay the price? to be the one who will "stand in the gap..make a difference, bringing hope to our land"? to get on the knees; cry out for a desire for Him. for revival. for fire. for His presence and glory. for His love. for the fear of the Lord. for His truth to be preached boldly, the truth that sets us free to live victorious as children of God. to fight a battle with the flesh and the devil from morning to night.

it's humanly impossible to want to pay that price by ourselves. to want to be that guy/girl 2 b crying out for revival by our own strength. but we can do all things thru Christ who gives us strength. He will sustain us if we will just ASK for that strength. for Him to help us make a difference for His kingdom.

lets persevere on and listen to God. to be humble and honest b4 Him. n ask God to increase our faith n our desire n our love for Him in our daily lives. and encourage one another towards love and good deeds!

jiayou everybody! God's people always have the victory if we just trust and obey! lets learn to depend on God for everything man. =)

there's a stirring in the Spirit
there's an urgency in this hour
we as children must obey
can you hear
the footsteps of God?

by His grace, d.

received 24th June--email to leaders by Adriel Loh


Dear leaders,

I was standing at the back of the hall last sunday during the worship. The worship going great and the youths was responsive. However something seemed missing. As I began to pray for the youths, I sensed a grieving sadness from the Lord. The Lord was grieving over his people. I sought the Lord as to this cause and this is what He said to me, "My people do not desire me enough." Suddenly I realised what He meant. We acknowledge Him with our lips but our hearts are far from Him. The Lord began to show me that the reason why we have not experienced the fullness of His glory and His presence in our congregation was simply because we, as a people, did not desire Him enough. There was no hunger, there was no thirst, there was no earnest longing and urgent supplication. We do not receive because we do not ask.

I then sought the Lord as to how we could bring our youths to desire Him more. And He gave me the impression of a flame, a flickering flame. And the Lord said, "Tell them to remember the time in the past when they had felt to close to me, times when my presence and power was so real. Remember these times, and long for it again." To many of us, we were holding on to these past memories that had become like a flickering flame, on a verge of being snuffed out in the winds of passing time. But the Lord wants us to desire the fire of His presence, how it was once like. The Lord wants to rekindle this fire of His glory in our lives. He longs for the time when His people desire Him and cry out to Him in tears and supplication for His presence. He wants us to want Him, to want to so much that we will pay whatever cost to get Him. He wants us to fall on our faces and desire Him so much that we will give our lives for Him. For then, He will pour out His Spirit without measure. We will see His glory descend into our church and the fire of His presence envelope us. On that day, His glory will abide in the midst of our congregation that the unbelievers will see and be drawn in.

The cry of His heart is for us to desire Him. Do we desire Him enough?

In His love,

Adriel

received 16th June 2005, exhortation to leaders

Dear all,

The attached for your reflection and prayer. Since the beginning of this year,when i prayed abt what God will say to us as leaders and what we need to take heed, i felt that over the past few mths, time & time again over prayer, God is saying, "I want My people to be holy". Although the speaker did not speak on holiness, i was thankful that Adriel addressed the issue on sat nite during the retreat.

What did you hear my friends over the retreat??? The words, "...getting rid of the accursed things in our lives..." kept ringing in my ears even till now. I believe that it is by removing the idols and sins, esp habitual sins(strongholds) in our lives that keep us pure and blameless before God and men. Our words are powerless to the youths unless we live up to what we preach.

The book written by Henry Blackaby on, "Holiness, God's Plan for fullness of life" address the problem 1st with, the loss of the fear of God. Some of us who are Christians for many years and may find that the problem with loss of fear of God is very real. I don't know about you, I been reading books on the Dark side of leadership cos' i need to examine my own spiritual life and guard my heart from pride, self-righteousness, etc... Let us walk humbly before the Lord.

Thanks to all of you for making this retreat a meaningful one. This is again the beginning, the outcome of the ministry will very much depend on how we live our lives and respond to our God. Sure we've learned a lot from the book of Joshua.

All by the grace of God,
Sandy


The attachment:
=============================================

1 Corinthians 3:11 Build Foundation : Jesus Christ

How do we see the ministry?

We are building a spiritual house unto the Lord.

We are fighting a spiritual war.

If you see the ministry as an organisation/company, then we will run it like the world -- and form more committees etc...

If we want to build a ministry, we play by different rules.


What are the spiritual rules?


Rule No

1) Spirit gives birth to Spirit & flesh gives birth to flesh.
Jn 3 : 6

If we run the ministry by the flesh, then we'll produce flesh.

Joshua 5:13-15 God was preparing Joshua to possess the Promised Land. He taught Joshua the principles.

1st principle -- God is in-charge. Not you or me.
God says, "I am in charge" and you are to enquire from me God sets the agenda

2nd principle ? God says, "Take off you sandals, for this is holy ground."

Joshua 7
Attack at Ai, Joshua consulted his committee and did not consult God.
Anything that we do without consulting God gives birth to flesh. Only spirit gives birth to spirit. Joshua and His people defected at Ai.
Achan's sins -- It was exactly the two things that the Lord taught Joshua at Josh 5:13-15.
1st -- "You did not consult Me"
2nd -- covetousness -- no holiness. Result 36 men died.

As a Leadership -- We need to deal with the accused things in our lives.
1) There is pride in our ministry -- we've an issue here.
God is the one In-charge.
2) Sexual Immorality
3) Unforgiveness
4) Anger?etc.

We need to:
1) give up our rights.
2) total surrender
3) surrender our will and say, "not mine but Yours be done".


Search me O God and see if there is any sins within me. When there is sins in my life -- no anointing.

Only a Spirit-filled leader can produce a Spirit-filled youth


The price of sin in our lives is a price too great to pay because you and I have to pay with the souls? of our youths (that's the price)

2nd thing (principle)

God sets the agenda

2 Chronicles 20
What do we do when we're in trouble?
King Jehoshaphat fell on his knees and prayed
Stand still & see the salvation of the Lord
The Holy Spirit is interceding for us all the time.
Transformed leaders for transformed youths.

=====================================

Several things came up through prayer over the past few months/weeks and I thought I would like to sum what I shared during the leaders' retreat here:

1. The Lord has given the leadership anointing. However, when there is disunity amongst us, we forfeit that anointing. Many of us judge each other, cannot forgive one another and push for our own agenda during meetings. We need to repent and reconcile with one another so that we will receive that anointing. The Lord convicted my heart that even I myself am responsible for some of this disunity. We need to seek the Lord in prayer as a leadership for His direction.

2. During prayer meeting on the friday before the retreat, the Lord showed me that my life was not totally surrendered to Him, and that the leaders' lives must be totally surrendered to Him. Sin in our lives will hinder God's work in our ministry and will obscure His glory.

3. We were asked to read the letters to the seven churches in Revelations and seek the Lord with regard to two questions: 1. What is the spiritual state of our ministry? (i.e. which description fits our ministry most?) 2. What do You want us to do about it? The first question aroused unspeakable grief which i believe the Holy Spirit put in my heart, which was also shared by Wai Lup. I did not have a definite passage from the seven letters, but with regard to the second question, the words "repent" and "obey" keep coming up (Rev 3:3)

At least two other leaders shared and confirmed Rev 3:1b-2 "I know your deeds; you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead. Wake up! Strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your deeds complete in the sight of my God."


========================================

We need to repent of our sins and obey the Word of God. Talking about unity does not amount to anything until we obey the Word of God. That is where we need to surrender, because the path to obedience is a straight and narrow road that few walk in it. Even when leaders have different views about various issues, but when we obey God, we still have that spiritual unity because Christ is our Head, and by His grace He will enable us to move together as a ministry.

Have you ever seen an uncoordinated person? How many times have you burst out into laughter when your friends looked silly? When we talk about the body of Christ--the church--and we imagine that all of us are different parts of the body, and if some of us are doing our own thing--Christ is not in control of your actions--then wouldn't that Body look uncoordinated? What if some parts are faithfully doing their best, but a few are not? Then how? Do these renegade parts look silly? Well, the more important thing is that they make ALL THE REST look silly. As I was praying and thinking about it I wanted to laugh but I hesitated because it is something serious and it could well be how we look like now. Many of our brothers and sisters may be doing a good work but because of one or two unyielded parts their work is negated or detracted from.

Obedience to the Holy Spirit.


We also need to repent of our sins. What is the gospel about? Jesus Christ died for our sins. In Luke24:46-48, Jesus says "This is what is written: The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things..."

We need to know the power of repentance and forgiveness in our lives before we can preach the gospel. For what kind of gospel are we preaching if we ourselves are not 'witnesses of these things'? It will just be a fuzzy idea of what we think it's supposed to be like, but we don't know. And how will other people get a good account of the gospel if those who tell them don't know?

We need to love one another and forgive one another in the ministry. The Lord places a huge importance on forgiving one another. He tells us in Matt 5:23-25 that if our brother 'has something against you', to 'leave our gift at the altar and reconcile with our brother' before coming back to offer the gift to Him. He tells us through the parable of the unmerciful servant (Matt18:21-35) that if we do not forgive our brothers, our Heavenly Father will not forgive us.

Up till the retreat, i had been been very irritated with a co-worker in Christ. The Lord revealed that to my hardened heart and I struggled very hard to go up to the person and apologise. It was not easy, but God's grace is enough.

We need to live out God's Word in our ministry. When we choose to obey God, when just even living out one command which seems absurd by the standards of this world, which perhaps leaves us trembling from fear and loss of pride, there is spiritual power. Because God is in charge and it is no longer us who is in charge.

Repentance...and forgiveness


jiemin

received 13 Jun 2005, in response to leaders' retreat held on 11 & 12th June 2005

Hi my fellow workers in YM,

We talk a lot about unity in the retreat. And so I would like to share the below verse with you. There are 2 different kinds of unity mentioned in the NT. The unity of faith & the unity of the Spirit. Each has a slight difference in meaning.

We?ll look at the unity of the Spirit here. Unity of the Spirit is essential in order to function in our diverse spiritual gifts & yet live peacefully with one another instead of judging one another unbiblically.

Operating in different gifts has the tendency to invite people?s judgments to yourself because others (likely those who have different gifts as you) may not understand why you are doing this/that. Yes. We, as spiritual men, are to discern/test all things but not judge unbiblically.

You will notice before unity of the Spirit can be achieved, each one of us must have the desire to walk (and thus to walk) in "a manner worthy of the calling". So how does God describe a believer's every-day walk that's worthy of his/her high calling?
Ephesians 4:1-3 gives us the answer.


Ephesians 4:1-3
I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord,
entreat you to walk in a manner worthy
of the calling with which you have been called,
2 with all humility
and gentleness,
with patience,
showing forbearance to one another in love,
3 being diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit
in the bond of peace.


Notice a worthy walk does not begin with an activity that we have to do. Neither does it talk about the achievements we ought to have in our ministries. The Holy Spirit through Paul zooms past all peripherals & deals directly with the REAL ISSUE -- THE HEART ATTITUDES.

A) 4 KEY ATTITUDES are mentioned. What are those?
Simple comprehension.
1/ all humility
2/ gentleness
3/ patience

B) How do these attitudes manifest in a fellowship?
1/ showing forbearance to others in love
2/ being diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in peace

Let's do some word study. I'll be succinct. Word Study is essential to know what a word really means; thus we can appreciate the passage better. The result is we can take the RIGHT ACTION and not actions that we perceive we should take!

A1) HUMILITY (tapeinophrosune)
- the humble opinion of yourself,
a deep sense of one's (moral) littleness,
lowliness of mind.

(The 1st attitude begins in the MIND! Your perception of who you are. Do you define yourself in terms of achievements, talents, social standing, economy, appearance , education, spirituality?
Jesus hate pride in all these & says "apart from Me (Jesus), you can do nothing" -- John 15:3.
Here, false humility like self-abasement is not intended.)

A2) GENTLENESS (prautes)
- as a quality of gentle friendliness
(as strength that accommodates to another?s
weakness)

A3) PATIENCE (makrothumia)
- a state of emotional quietness in face of
unfavourable circumstance; slowness in
avenging wrong

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Difficult to walk like that everyday, isn't it??
That is why Paul first gives us chapters 1-3 describing the tremendous richness of blessings & love & grace that God has poured out in our lives as believers. He informed us of our glorious positional truth before he urges us to action - "WALK WORTHY OF YOUR CALLING".

And just before chapter 4, he prayed a "turn-on-the-engine" prayer at the end of chapter 3. This is what I pray too for us all.

Ephesians 3:16-19
...that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory,
to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man;
17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith;
and
that you, being rooted and grounded in love,
18 may be able to comprehend with all the saints
what is the breadth and length and height and depth,
19 and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge,
that you may be filled up to all the fulness of God."
Glory to God.
Amen.

KellY

[received 12 Jun 2005]

Hi Blogmaster(i don't really know what's your name)

My name is Jason/Hsien Xian from the youth ministry of Revival Centre Church called Revival Generation. I happened to stumble upon this Wesley YM blog and i've read some of the entries and i must say that i've been encouraged by it. So here i am, not asking you to put up my email on the blog but to share with you something that God has been doing in the midst of this small youth group in Revival Centre Church.

Last week, we just had a camp called Camp Accelerate. Basically, the main aim of this camp was to cause every single camper to accelerate beyond what we think we can and to what God wants us to be. We had some evangelistic programme planned on wednesday night, the 3rd day of the camp and what we intend to do is to send out the camp groups onto the streets and invite people down for a BBQ, praise and worship and a short sermon. The saturday before the camp, the Spirit ofGod visited our youth and a cry of desperation started to arise from within our hearts, a cry that we've not heard for a very long time. Many youths came out and cried out to God to save our generation, and one particular youth who came out prayed this prayer .."God, we ask for 100 people to be saved, and we know that 100 is not difficult for you, so give us 200 .. "and she went on and on till she reached 700 salvations. To be honest, when i heard that i was skeptical, but God began to do a work in our heartsand we prayed in faith.

Throughout the camp, we carried a deep cry of prayer and intercession and on the day we were sent out to invite people from the streets, people that we don't even know, God opened the doors for us to bring people down into our campsite. We had 150++ invitations andout of that, 32 of them came to know the Lord Jesus Christ on that night.

Just only yesterday, we gathered together out of desperation and went out onto the streets of Orchard and began to invite people and share with them the gospel of Christ. In our service alone, we had 10+ salvations out of the 20++ people who came and not including those whom some of our youths shared on thestreets and accepted Christ.

I pray that the youths in Wesley will also begin to catch what God is doing in our generation. There is a great need of the youths in this generation and we must do something about it. They need a saviour and His name is Jesus Christ.

Yours Sincerely, Jason

P.S. Please do visit us at our website. =)

http://www.revivalgen.org/