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...

"There is power in the words that we speak. We speak them today, and tomorrow they will manifest. We need to be very careful. We can build or destroy. Let’s trust in the Lord and speak positively. The Lord is going to be with us and will help us."

-Pastor Stephen Mubanga preaches from Numbers 14.

We may sometimes feel that God needs us. We strive to do all these things for God and others, thinking we originate everything that God is doing in our lives.

Of course God wants to use us, but as we seek to do the works of God, our “nets” may break if we don’t know that Jesus has already done the work. We try to juggle everything but our capacity for life and ministry gets overwhelmed.

If you don’t want your capacity to break, if you don’t want your net to be torn, you have to understand that He actually does everything. Jesus is inviting you in to what He has already done.

So throw down your net and follow Him. Take notice of what He is doing and join Him. You will find that as you do so, your capacity will grow in such a way that your net will not break and you can hold the weight of glory! You will no longer produce things of no lasting value, but rather you will bear fruit that will last!

Rajeev Nandakumaran preaches from John 21, Luke 5 and John 15...

Hope is an anchor to the soul, but faith is an activator of the present. Hope is lousy for now. What's needed for now is faith. Faith changes our present. It changes the way we are now in the present moment. Faith comes by hearing, and happens when God in His Word enters us and makes us different. Most Christians live life in time hoping for something to happen and they wonder why nothing changes. When nothing changes, they lose hope. God is present immediately, even if there is a process of being set free, of healing, of redemption that we are going through. God does not start with hope, but with what He has done through Christ on the cross. Even if we have yet to experience the fullness of what we hope for, today we can experience the fullness of God that will activate things that will bring us to that future.

Pastor Michael Koh preaches from Isaiah 52, Hebrews 11 and John 11.

"Our problem in America is that we don't want to look bad. What God wants to do is to cause the ugly and the misshapen things in this world to confound the wise. If you reject that, you are actually rejecting the calling of God. Don't give excuses by saying, "No, I'm just not good enough." That is not humility; that is pride. You have to be willing to be held up by God, and look as foolish as you are. God would rather use someone whose misshapen flesh is held up by Him in humility, than someone who is really good at things but the goodness that they have is shallow; the more you get to know them, the more disappointed you are in their life. The anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses because Moses rejected the humble way. God allowed Aaron to speak on Moses' behalf, and this led to the separation of words and the Being of God. We have silver tongue orators who lack substance. The substance of God makes the mountains melt. A silver tongue doesn't cause anything to melt.

"When God is with us, we, in our flesh, are still lousy. But God will hold our flesh up, so that people will believe. Only the Holy Spirit, not our mouth, skill or brilliance can cause belief to come. He doesn't need you to be that good. He will just pop out of you. Does He pop out of you? He only pops out of a dead person, a staff thrown to the ground. You will make mistakes. You will not be that glorious in the flesh. It will be just you. But God will pop out of you and stand in front of you. He holds up our flagging flesh. Forget about trying to look better. God's power is predicated upon a barren womb. God doesn't say he will make you look good, He says, "I will be with you."

-Pastor Michael Koh preaches on Exodus 4...

Exodus 4:10-14 - "But Moses said to the Lord, “Oh, my Lord, I am not eloquent, either in the past or since you have spoken to your servant, but I am slow of speech and of tongue.” Then the Lord said to him, “Who has made man's mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the Lord? Now therefore go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak.” But he said, “Oh, my Lord, please send someone else.” Then the anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses..."