June 07, 2009
Welcome to Skyline!
They call it the magic fruit. It’s a plain looking berry that tastes rather bland. I first tried it on my visit to the wonderful world of local and exotic plants at the Tenom Agricultural Research Station. But the uniqueness of this South American fruit was in its after-effect. Everything I ate after the berry tasted sweet. Lime, bitter gourd, lemon, chilli-pepper; it was a weird experience but incredibly satisfying. If only there was an equivalent magic fruit in life! Then hatred would turn to sweetness, offences wouldn’t hurt and bitterness would lose its hold on us, I thought.
There was only one setback though. After a while, everything just tasted “mono-licious”, you know, just uniformly sickly sweet. You lost the incredible richness of the infinite flavors in food. Taste-wise you become entombed in a plastic world of sugar-coated everything. If that was all anyone could taste in life I would pity him.
CS Lewis once said that to love is to make ourselves vulnerable. Someone might misunderstand or reject the love that reaches out. The only way to make sure we are never hurt is to entomb our love in a casket, so that it never sees the sun. But there in this safe dark world, we find that the love we have sought to preserve for us tragically shrivels and decays until in time, it becomes useless dust.
The key to offences is not a sugar coated pill of superficial sickly Hollywood love but forgiveness. That is what we have received unconditionally from God. Jesus Christ became the propitiation for our sins; His death took away God’s holy anger from us; like water sucking heat from a red hot iron (1 Jn 2:2). There is no magic fruit in the Christian life. Only the Cross, but by it we can taste all the flavours life throws at us and come through it wholesome, free and alive. Because only the Cross can process the bitter rejections, spicy hurts and sour memories that come our way and draws out the life giving nutrients for us to live fully unto Him.
2009 Year of Discipleship

May 31, 2009
Welcome to Skyline!
Change is coming to the way we do church. Firstly the charismatic renewal is no longer an issue. We need the power of the Holy Spirit if we are to grow the church and impact society. No two ways about it. Ignore that truth and the church will sink to irrelevance and buried in oblivion. Healing, miracles, spiritual warfare, prophecy tongues and visions are part of this church, period. We don’t fuss over it. We just encourage everyone to be filled with the Spirit and experience His power!
Secondly big churches will shrink and smaller churches will multiply, while other churches will explode in numbers. Every church has its season of growth, rest and re-growth. Just make sure the rest isn’t too long and is used for hearing God and realigning with Him. If we hear Him we will know how to readjust. Corporate giants that didn’t see the changes will soon be, or are already, yesterday’s news: GM, Chrysler, AIG, Lehman Brothers, United Airlines. Sadly churches have gone down the same road too. You see the empty buildings.Their names are largely forgotten.
Thirdly God wants the walls between the church and community to come down. Recovery of the church’s flavor to society as salt and light is paramount. But it is not enough to feed the poor and do good. New paradigms must include engaging, influencing and transforming the market place and equipping the church to be a daily 9-5 window force that brings God’s kingdom into our city. Social justice, new innovative ways of doing missions must be the mark of these community-sensitive churches. We need to speak out about injustice, join NGOs and pray for our land.
Fourthly the opportunity for evangelism remains huge. Outreach in Skyline on our Sunday service should be only the tip of the outreach iceberg. In our Tamans and neighbourhood, we should be sharing about Jesus. Many churches have woken up to the absolute necessity of intentional discipleship. We can still exist without them. But it’d be like trying to touch society through catalogue books rather than blackberry, email, sms, i-pod, podcast. Either we change or we get exchanged.
2009 Year of Discipleship

May 17, 2009
“Hello uncle!” the young lady cashier at the newsagent addressed me. I was queuing for a paper. “How much?” I asked as I picked the Star. “One fifty, uncle,” she replied. That was the second “uncle” she had unloaded on me that morning at KLIA. Yeah sure, I had just flown in from Melbourne overnight and probably looked a little below my best. But then, at 56 years and still full of beans, rarely had any stranger addressed me as “uncle” repeatedly. Age is only a number right? Then the Lord reminded me that on a biblical lifespan of three score years and ten, I had only 14 years left. Scary. Anything beyond that is pure grace. So I’m claiming it to the full. I adjusted my uncombed hair, accepted my “new station” in life and walked away, grateful for my life thus far and excited about the years ahead. God had used a simple Malay girl, of all people to remind me again to make my life count!

Whose life is it anyway? I thought. What keys are necessary to crown the Lord the owner of my life always? There are three. The first is Relationship with Him, the second is Reality of Him, the third is Responsibility to Him. Relationship with Him shapes lifestyle. Lifestyle in turn is made up of godly attitude, belief, habit & behaviour. Godly Attitude is intentionally living for the glory of God regardless. Belief is more than doctrine. Its essence is a deep conviction we are attached to Him, dependent on Him and called by Him. Godly Behaviour springs from a deep experience of God’s goodness. All three are held together by the cultivated Habit of meditation, prayer and solitude.

Secondly what is my experience of His Reality in this changing world of pressure, workplace demands, and job uncertainty? Reality starts with a paradigm shift of ownership to stewardship of our business and finances, our families, our talents and our work. Caesar is not Lord of our work; God is. If He is real then He is present, if He is present then His power is present, if His power is present then we can expect miracles. That’s reality! Our Responsibility then is to be salt and light in the workplace to bring about transformation. But God must first transform us from the inside out. That’s the basis of our New Creation sermon series today.
2009 Year of Discipleship

May 24, 2009
Welcome to Skyline!
American Idol season has drawn to a close. Have you been watching? It’s not my cup of tea, but my daughter Sarah drew me into a few shows this season. “You’ve got to hear Adam Lambert dad, he’s really good’ she would enthuse or “Do you think Kris Allen will win?” I had to know who these guys were. Once in a while some family members would join in. We’d sit and pass judgment after each performance, thinking somehow our views could sway the votes of the millions of viewers out there. But really, it’s the judges’ opinions which carry influence. One of them is Simon Cowell, an ultra cynic with a super-acerbic tongue who has almost reached diva status. His judgments are annoyingly spot on. And he rarely shows mercy. I find him amusing. Nancy dislikes him. But know what? We’re both so glad God is not one bit like Simon Cowell!
Why? For a start if He was, he’d tear me to bits with his damning critique. I’d have to be pitch-perfect to even get a look into heaven. My mistakes would be amplified for all to hear. He’d pick so many holes in me I would leak like sieve. I’d get zero love, no empathy, little sympathy and only left-over fragments of reluctant praise. I’d then be democratically thrown out by the angels on an sms vote! How terrible if God’s last-day judgment of each of us were to be like an Idol contest. We’d all be judged, condemned and booted off. After all, God’s standard is so infinitely higher than that of Simon Cowell’s and His judgment so totally beyond mortal reproach!
So what hope do we have of rising to our destiny? God’s acceptance of us is the key. “God shows His love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us”. The price of our imperfections has been paid by Jesus! No condemnation awaits us for the power of the Spirit has freed us from the vicious cycle of sin-and-death (Rom 8: 1-2). We are free from our past and curses! Free from bondages and sin. God’s given us keys to break out of the cycle of timidity and inferiority into humble boldness! That’s what this New Creation sermon series is all about. It’s about you living as a new person in Christ Jesus. It’s about us in Skyline being that certain kind of disciple of Jesus that will make the difference!
2009 Year of Discipleship

May 10, 2009
When I am down and, oh my soul, so weary; When troubles come and my heart burdened be; Then, I am still and wait here in the silence, Until you come and sit awhile with me. You raise me up, so I can stand on mountains; You raise me up, to walk on stormy seas; I am strong, when I am on your shoulders; You raise me up: To more than I can be
Remember the lyrics of this popular song? It has touched millions of lives since its debut 10 years ago. It has inspired Olympic champions, stirred a nation to rise from the ashes after the September 11 tragedy, formed the background music at the Nobel Prize ceremony and the funerals of celebrities. For me it summarizes the confluence of the two greatest influence in the life of every believer, that of our mother and that of Christ. To every mum present, Happy Mother’s Day! To every Christian, Jesus is alive today; the resurrection of Jesus forms the subject of our final sermon in the series on Mark’s gospel today. Listen on!
Think about your mum. Imprinted in the mind of every man and woman is a debt we can never repay. She raised you up not just in age but also in substance so you can stand stay on wind-swept mountains and walk on foam-raged seas. I remember how the care of my mum kept me from going under when I had my acute appendicitis and nearly died as a teenager. She raised me up. So thanks a million mum. Happy Mother’s Day! How does the song end?
There is no life - no life without its hunger; Each restless heart beats so imperfectly; But when you come and I am filled with wonder, Sometimes, I think I glimpse eternity! That’s Jesus. May you see Him lifted high! May you be overwhelmed by the glory of the resurrection today and catch a glimpse of eternity!
2009 Year of Discipleship