How do we move from an intellectual, abstract knowledge of God to an intimate knowledge of God and His power to transforms lives? We must experience it for ourselves. If we stay at a distance, in a place where we maintain control and stability, we may have an intellectual grasp, but we really know nothing. Rather, we must enter in and fully engage ourselves in what God is doing. God has a tremendous treasure for us. As you enter in, you may not know if you'll make it out alive - but God is there and you will come to know Him.

Will you take the plunge and cross over to what God is doing, or will you remain at the outskirts? We can pray for God to shake the earth, but it may be possible that the earth will not shake until we cross over. Are you up for it?

Pastor Michael Koh shares a message from 1 Samuel 14...

We may have been abused, hurt, or disappointed by others in ways that have caused us great harm. As a result, we may carry a grudge and want revenge against them.

However, carrying unforgiveness is like living in a tiny room where you cannot breathe properly and it's very hot. That becomes the state of your heart. When you decide to forgive, you open big windows and the air begins to blow in and circulate. Then you are able to enjoy life.

God has forgiven us so many things. We should also continue to forgive much. Jesus tells us that we must forgive not seven times, but 70 times seven. It may be painful, but with the help of the Spirit of God, you can surrender every grudge and hurt to the Lord. The enemy used those people to do what they did, but God used the very things they did as your training for greater things. Trust in the Lord that He may set you free and have His way in your life.

May God help us forgive one another.

Many people are not willing to be committed to experiencing the power, presence, reality and wisdom of God. They are willing to know things about it, but there is some barrier that is preventing them from being committed. It is a commitment to the thing that God is calling you to that is important, that will cause you to really know it. We have to commit ourselves to a relationship with God in which we can hear His voice.

This commitment is really a key thing. Without commitment, you actually will not lose yourself in it. You will always stand at the outside, and you will use the formal knowledge in your head to keep you at a distance. You may be surrounded by people who move in the power of God, but never experience that yourself. You could be surrounded by people who talk about testimonies of how they were transformed, but you are never transformed because you have never immersed yourself into the power of it. You need to immerse yourself in God. For you to immerse yourself, you need to leave your life and die into him. You have to let go of control of your whole life and commit yourself to this thing that God is doing.

When you take the plunge, you will be free from the previous imprisoned life that you had. If you stay and don't give up, God begins to open up the spiritual realm and suddenly you will see God at work.

Pastor Michael Koh preaches from 2 Kings 5...

The Kingdom of God comes as a seed. If you can detect the seed when it is small, and you grow it, you will see the seed get stronger and stronger. The things of God are built up incrementally. Invest your time in prayer, your devotional life and fellowship. You will build yourself up. In life there are many destroyers, but your builders will outpace your destroyers. God is training us to hear His voice amidst all the other voices. The voices of the builders will become stronger than the voices of the destroyers. You will feel the hand of God upon your life and experience His peace.

Those who wait upon the Lord will renew their strength. To wait is to give your full attention to the one you are waiting upon. When we give God our full attention, we set our heart towards God and praise Him for God Himself. We give up the utilitarian ways in which we praise God so that something good will happen. We will never be free if we use God to get a good life. God is not to be subsumed under the American Dream. God is God. Everything else is to be immersed into Him, surrendered to Him. When we praise God for Himself, the gravity of God's weight begins to pull us to Himself. We don't worry about circumstances any longer. We will be dead to all else, and our minds will be free. We get to a point in which we know that whatever God says, we will be okay. The voice of God gets stronger and stronger in us. We can say, "God, I just want to be in you, whatever you do in my life." When we pray to God for God's sake, not just for a desired outcome, our hearing becomes pure. Whenever negative things happen, we will be able to trace the movement of God through them.

Pastor Michael Koh preaches from Luke 18 on January 6, 2019...

As we enter 2019, we may feel nowhere nearer our destiny and the goodness of God. When we think of tomorrow's prospects by today's calculations, we can get really hopeless. We may feel depressed that year after year we have not moved and can't crossover. We may feel that nothing will happen unless our circumstances change.

In the year ahead, there are many invisible crossings. If you go by feelings, observations, calculations, circumstances or a ledger-like thankfulness - you will not get across; you'll just feel the distance. The Kingdom of God - the activity of God - will not come in ways that can be observed by circumstances or through our senses. You have to know it in a different way. The Kingdom of God is in our midst; it doesn't matter if you feel it or not. It is still true. If you go only by the way of observation, you won't find it. When the Holy Spirit comes into our midst, we can experience a crossover. Nothing is stuck anymore; all the fixed things are up for grabs. Anything can happen. You are on the verge of God working. God wants to make us aware of how close He is, even though we may feel He is distant. God wants to make us aware of invisible things.

How can we be aware of God and how He moves? It is simple; by praising God until thanksgiving arises in us. You have to let go of everything and give thanks to God. Gratefulness takes the focus from your experience of good to the One who gave the good. It is refocusing our attention from ourselves to be completely set out towards Him. To surrender to God is to surrender to Him in thanksgiving and grab hold of being thankful for the small things. If you can be thankful for the small things of God, and allow thankfulness to consume you, you will be absorbed into what God is doing. It is the heart of thanksgiving that frees us up from ourselves. Thankfulness breaks the darkness. Wholeness will come. Faith will enter. As we praise Him and give thanks without calculating, God gives us a foothold to take us out of our stuck places. He is here, moving in our midst.

Pastor Michael Koh preaches on Luke 17...

Christmas tells us that God is not going from us; He is coming to us. We have to know how to respond to His coming. If we focus too much on our own shame and reproach and our past experiences, we will be cynical and skeptical and not believe the great things He wants to do through us. Jesus comes to not only remove our reproach, but also to heal us and prepare us for the immense thing that God is doing. We may need to keep silent and keep our eyes on Him for awhile, but the immensity of God will grow and be born in us. Praise God!

Many of us may feel so far from Him, so far from joy, that there is a crumbling that has taken place. We may feel barren and fruitless. We don't see how things can change. We may feel specially chosen not to be chosen.

If you identify with this, the coming of Christ is an invitation to come into a path where God will restore your life. He is born unto you, in a way that is intimate to you - not in a bulk, one-size-fits-all, kind of way. He changes your heart and sets your heart free. Your longstanding, unfulfilled yearnings are met in Him. God's goodness rests upon you, no matter what your circumstances. He will change your inside, and there will be external signs as well.

Pastor Michael Koh preaches on Luke 2...

We are called to be servants of God. Our ultimate purpose in life is to be His servant, not just a successful version of ourselves. The good news is that God is committed to awakening us as His servants.

In the process of awakening, God first prepares us by giving us seemingly menial tasks for which we may receive no external validation. If we take delight in what God is calling us to, he will make us into servants of Him. God next activates us by speaking to us. To hear what He is speaking to us, we must be alert and understand the spiritual significance of the assignment He has for us. With hearing, boldness comes and we can overcome fear and barriers in our path. God then uses us to bring His salvation to the ends of the Earth.

Jeehong Min preaches from 1 Samuel 17...

When God speaks a Word to you, it has power. No word uttered by God is devoid of power. It is filled with God himself. The word will not return void. It has trajectory and will accomplish the purpose for which it has been sent.

How do you receive the Word? You prepare room for it by letting the Holy Spirit overshadow you. The emphasis is not on us, but on God working. Even our own goodness has to be overcome. We allow God, through the cross, to bring us to nothing. When we worship God, we worship until we have nothing left and are not aware of ourselves, then we become free and God does amazing things. God will free us from fears and give us the power to do that which we cannot do.

A godly vision really has to come from God. The Greek word for “vision” is órama, which means a sight divinely granted. God will show you that which no human being can impart to you.

Pray that your eyes be opened, that the church’s eyes be opened and the eyes of the world be opened. Every other strategy known to man will fall short. The best of men are men at best. When God starts breathing, when God starts opening eyes, that’s when the things of eternity will break in, that’s when Kingdom will come.

In some ways, our fears are a result of more than just fearful things. They are a result of the fact that we are not dense enough, not substantial enough. In the presence of someone more substantial, we are threatened, and in the presence of circumstances that seem so strong, we crack.

How do we stand in the midst of dense, powerful reality? How do we stand before God? The great news is that God is putting substance in us.

The Lord has paid the price and died so that we can meet Him face to face. We can look up to him and not hide our face from him. We can look to him and find that he, in his mercy, receives us. That is the biggest loss among Christians - we don’t look at him face to face. We miss out on a precious opportunity and would rather relate to God on a secondary, cheaper level. The problem with us is that we have seen so little light, our lights are so dim, that we have leveled it off down and we have opted for a certain comfortability with God, so God becomes the sum total of all our projections of good. No, God is other. He is other than that.

The problem with consumerist Christianity is that we always think of God in relation to a problem or an injustice or something about us, so much so that our relationship with God is curved back in upon ourselves so that it is really about us. God is wanting to speak to us and draw us into relationship with him, even though it may seem quite useless to our mind. God is saying, "I want to give you myself. I want to set the agenda and conversation." When we come before God, we die to all other things. If that doesn’t happen, you are just going to have God among the other things you have on the agenda of your life.

Today’s Christianity has too much emphasis on technique and less on the presence of God. We therefore lack density. When we are planted in the house of God and the presence of the Lord, we will flourish in the courts of God, where we do things in front of other people. When we are planted in God -- not in ministry, not in justice, not in ethics, but in God -- then we will flourish in the courts of the Lord. That is the way God wants us to be.

Pastor Michael Koh preaches from Psalm 34, Psalm 97, 2 Chronicles 20, and Deuteronomy 32 on Sunday, November 11, 2018...