The recent “In His Presence” Leadership Conference which featured Rev. Edmund Chan as main speaker, impacted many people including CCF pastors and leaders whose insights you will read below.
Consequently, recognizing the potential of Edmund Chan’s messages in helping develop the inner life of people, Pastor Peter Tan-chi has called for the production of the videos from the conference to be used in all CCF Dgroups. Pastor Jonathan Fenix of the CCF Training Department announced that said videos will be made available starting on February 19, 2012.
Intimacy with God is NOT the key to blessing; it IS the blessing. It happens when I spend unhurried time daily — listening to God and yielding to His will for my life. Consequently, I become rested, instead of restless.
Intimacy with God is not the key to blessings, it is the blessing! It should then be my continuous pursuit. I need to completely surrender my every desire and goal to God in order to realign my will to His.
The heart of disciple-making is cultivating one’s inner life. There’s no better way to impact our disciples than by our own lives. And we achieve this by looking after our personal spiritual, devotional and domestic life. It means that we are doing what the Lord is teaching or telling us. Bottomline is OBEDIENCE to God.
My relationship with Jesus should be my daily priority. The quality of my service to God is an outflow of my intimacy with God. Falling into the performance trap can hinder me from experiencing God’s rest.
Ministry is the outflow of our inner life. Thus, we need to take care of our roots. Fruits in our ministry will then follow.
Our service to God should be the outflow of our intentional, dynamic and sustained intimacy with Him focused on knowing Him more, experiencing Him more and trusting Him more, being compelled by His love. In spite of circumstances and obstacles in and around us we should seek greater intimacy with God. Modeling by leaders (of this intimacy) is the key.
The conference was not to rally CCF to become bigger but to help it become deeper and healthier. The effect on me was to develop a mindset of seeing God at work in any circumstance.
What impacted me most about the conference was the example of Ptr. Edmund’s own intimacy with God and love for His word. Also of great impact were the testimonies of accomplished marketplace people who gave up promising and lucrative careers to go into fulltime ministry.
Intimacy with God leads to blessing is partly true but true blessing is being intimate with God in His presence. By His grace I want to make it a lifestyle to be in His presence. I’ll surrender lesser ambitions and seek God above all.
Surrendering to God the things we are holding on to is not losing but allowing room for God, for He alone can storm the impregnable, device the improbable and perform the impossible. Giving up then will not be a struggle.
Listening to God is key for a leader but to do this we need extended time with God.
I learned that seeking God’s will is not about asking Him, ‘What can I do FOR you?’ but asking Him what He wants to do THROUGH me.
Preoccupation, one of the marks of intimacy, means these to me:
God’s goal and focus for man.
The conference gave me a new perspective – that of seeing myself yoked together with Christ through intimacy. As I face new challenges and difficulties I need to constantly look to Him and learn from Him. I need to keep in step with Him. Going ahead or falling behind will cause me unnecessary heartaches and disappointments. I need to go by His foreknowledge and His strength.
Intimacy is at the very core of our Christianity. Our life for God and others must emanate from an outflow of our life with God. Intimacy is the blessing Not the means to blessings. So I must decide what God has called me to do in my life; do it faithfully to the best of the ability He has given me and say “NO” to everything else. The Christian life is all about pleasing God, following Him and becoming more like Him. Christ likeness is the goal.
The biggest lesson God reminded me of is through the testimonies of the Singaporeans. When God called them to full-time ministry they gave up more than just the big salary. They also exhibited humility by joyfully taking on simple tasks in church. They did not only give up money but also prestige and position.
I was blessed by Reverend Edmund Chan’s testimony regarding his 20-year experience in obscurity. From this, I learned that intimacy with God does not happen overnight. God will do whatever it takes to prepare a person for the “greater works” that He has prepared for us to do.
My personal insights are numerous, but the one that struck me the most was when he said “Intimacy is not the means to blessings, intimacy is the blessing!” The entire program of Rev. Chan aligned very well to our current Intimacy with God series.
Live