St James' Church

Have you ever wonder how we should respond to the sermons we hear every Sunday? Since I became a church-goer at 13, I must have listened to over a thousand sermons.
Before I can finish processing the one I heard last week, a new one comes hard hitting, in the face and soul-piercing. Often, I find some of the sermon series in SJC coming at me in that manner. It is easy to forget what was said, given our limited ‘storage’, as a more current one replaces what was heard a while back.

I am grateful for the early ‘discipling’ which I received which instilled in me a discipline of listening and jotting down notes (not so much the sermon outline, but points which I felt the Lord is speaking to me about).  If the preacher is interesting and funny, it will be an added bonus. But most of the times, I receive the word as one from the Lord, even in the hands (or mouth) of an inexperienced or dry preacher.

Of course our hearts can grow cold. When this happens, even the most anointed sermon can produce cynicism in me. The preacher did his part and the reward is from the Lord (not from me, as my commendation adds nothing to him). I am the one who loses out as I leave the service untouched and unhelped.

However, when I am alive to the Lord, every sermon becomes a word from Him. He speaks feeds and transforms. I am reminded at the start of the Service (in the liturgy) to love Him with all my mind, heart, soul and strength. When I don’t receive the Word as I should, over time, my mind shrivel, my heart will go wayward, my soul become distracted and finally, my strength become misdirected (often to ‘go and sin some more’).

The very opposite happens when I truly sit at His feet. The preacher may be very human with his terrible mannerisms, beardy, sweaty, too loud, too soft, too wet (he anoints the mic and those in the front rows), too long winded, shirt untucked, less than brilliant, hair so unkempt that there seems to be flies around it (maybe a modern version of John the Baptist) and worse of all, one who ends every sentence with an ‘ah’ in a dramatic American Pentecostal accent! We hardly meet these preachers in modern and sophiscated Singapore but I recall my earlier years in Malaysia where literally ‘all sorts’ graced the pulpit. Yet, such moments have changed my life and ‘discipled’ me.

We have an interesting line-up of new preachers (from our midst) for the month of August: Ps Sai Moi, Glenn Lim and Peter Hsu. Brace yourself to hear not their words, but what the Lord will be saying through them.

Continue to pray that the Word of the Lord, here in St James’, will both be preached and received every Sunday.