by Flor Esteban
Our church, Eaglepoint Penang, is one of the many churches in Malaysia that’s taking part in this year’s National Evangelical Christian Fellowship (NECF) Malaysia 40-Day Fast and Prayer. Year 2010 is NECF’s 10th year anniversary. The theme this year is “Uniting The Generations for the Nation”. For the duration of the 40-day fast and prayer (it started in August 8 and ends in September 16), the church meets every Thursday at 8:30 p.m. to pray as a group. For the rest of the week, we have people who have signed to pray daily.
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| The Prayer Booklet |
Last night (August 26), was the 19th day. As in the past 2 Thursdays, people came to praise and worship the Lord and to pray for Malaysia. Pastor Mike Gayatao (Senior Pastor in Victory Santa Rosa), who is visiting from the Philippines shared a Word from Psalm 118:24 and Luke 2:41-44.
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| Pastor Mike |
He first spoke about Psalm 118:24 where it says “This is the day that the Lord has made; let us be glad and rejoice in it.” He said that the D-day was when God made peace with us 2,000 years. So, we can now rejoice! Thank you Jesus for dying on the cross for us. There is nothing now that we need to do to appease God. Nothing that can separate us from God’s love. Yes! Incidentally, this was the same verse that I wrote in “What’s on your mind?” when I signed up for Facebook last Wednesday. Now, I have a new insight into this Word.
Next, Pastor Mike talked about “The Boy Jesus at the Temple”, Jesus and his parents went to Jerusalem for the Passover Feast. Jesus was then 12 years old. His parents didn’t notice that Jesus stayed behind while his parents were returning home. It was only after one day that they realized that Jesus wasn’t in their company so they went looking for him. Pastor Mike reminded us that just like Mary and Joseph who assumed that Jesus was with them, we too could easily get lost in the midst of our daily activities – praying, fasting, reading the bible, serving in the church, parenting, etc. Even during Christmas, we could lose Jesus in the middle of the holiday preparations. So, we have to be careful lest we miss the point of why we’re doing what we’re doing! What a timely reminder! Let us go back to our first love, the Lord Jesus! I pray that we will act more like Mary than Martha. Thank you, Pastor Mike, for the great sharing!
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| Sharing of the Word |
The rest of the evening was spent praying for the nation. The prayer focused on IT and Communication. Everyone prayed to God - thanking Him for the gift of the information technology, asking for forgiveness for abusing the said gift many times and asking for wisdom on how to use the gift wisely like reaching people for advancing His kingdom. Before we closed the night, we also prayed for some people in the church.
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| Praying for Pastor Jojo |
As I write this, one of the songs we sang keep playing in my mind - “Arise generation no longer forsaken. Arise, Arise, Arise, Arise.”
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