29th Oct 2012. By Natasha Kim, CM –
City Revival Church, Subang Jaya is strategically located inside Holiday Villa Subang Jaya. It was first established in the year 2003 and it is one of the very first churches that I have been to that has its services in a ballroom of a hotel. Led by Rev. Suresh Sundram the Church has grown in that short period of time to over 400 hundred faithful members. Prayer and Youth meetings and other events however, are held at the church office in Subang Business Centre in SS15 Subang Jaya.
During the service, the seats were quickly filled up as more and more members kept entering. As the praise and worship began, one could immediately see the cheerful Rev. Suresh constantly jumping for joy as he moved to the rhythms played by the worship team. He just might be the most upbeat Reverend I have seen so far! Although the church is still very young compared to many other bigger and older Churches, one can see the potential in this ever growing Church that is, imparting love and impacting lives!
Out of Darkness, Out of your Comfort Zone into the Light of Belief
On this particularly hopeful Sunday, Rev. Jim McLaughlan preached on the important subject of Christian faith. He hails from Gold Coast, Australia and constantly travels to Malaysia to preach the Word of God to many. He has a lot of character and brings forth a lot of feel to his sermons, for example, he makes a lot of body movements and facial expressions while giving his sermon which makes him quite interesting to watch and listen. He has a powerful prophetic ministry and is a dynamic speaker used greatly by the Lord.
He began his sermon with a reading according to Hebrews 11:6 which says, “But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.” With the above scripture text , Rev. Jim stressed that, “It is important to underline that it says he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him, not when “I feel like” or when you just occasionally seek Him.” We are indebted to God because of the grace of God, and after giving our lives to God, Jesus Christ lives in us. The higher way for every Christian to live is to live their life in Christ through faith, and not a faith that you can see with your eyes or by natural instinct but a faith that you live by in the Spirit of God. “God has a remarkable plan for you and He wants you to believe it into existence”, he says. It definitely takes faith to move outside of your environment and out of the comfort zone of your life, to go to a place that is distinctively different from what your environment is, to make a difference. “Out of your comfort zone is when you begin to start to live by faith”, he adds. Most Christians never get out of their comfort zone. They start doing the same thing over and over again and lived by their own existence and by their own limited human strength and gifting.
Rev. Jim stresses, “Faith is the attribute or attitude whereby believers abandon all self-reliance and all self-control, all of what they can achieve and of what they can do, in their own efforts to obtain what God wants to do on planet Earth. They fell helpless at the knees of Jesus Christ and they shall say in humbleness that through Jesus Christ has this man been made whole.” God hangs around people who believes in Him and lives through faith. The Lord Jesus Christ loves that type of response from people, and wakes them up at night because he wants to talk to them. When God answers our prayer, it is a completed joy. We are excited at the completion of a task and that is the same with prayer. We ask that the “subject” is completed! When the prayer is incomplete, all we have to do is just keep praying and keep believing in God. Slowly but surely God answers the prayer, and Rev. Jim says, “One day, we are going to get a certificate from the Master saying that our prayer is complete. From there, we move on to the next task. When His provision is provided, it is so timely and wonderful that it brings blessing to our lives.” We can call on all the provisions of God for what we need and know that He will provide to us in His time. Every single one of us needs to have an experience to prove whether or not we can live by faith in God.
In Galatian 3:11, the Bible says that “For the righteous shall live by faith.” The Bible exhorts every believer to have faith in God. Amen!
To find out more about City Revival Church in Subang Jaya or to listen to their sermons, visit http://cityrevival.org.my/
