23 April 2014 by Natasha Kim CM-
Calvary Church has been staging Easter & Christmas presentations as a gift to the city of Kuala Lumpur for the past 29 years. This year in 2014, over the Easter weekend, over 19,000 people flocked to the Calvary Convention Centre, Bukit Jalil Kuala Lumpur for the Good Friday & Easter Sunday Services and the ‘The Star of Wonder’ magical presentation. The Creative Arts Ministry of Calvary Church Kuala Lumpur staged a touching musical entitled “The Story”, that creatively portrayed the crucifixion and the resurrection of Jesus Christ during the Good Friday & Easter Sunday Services.
Then, on Saturday 3PM and 7PM, and on Sunday 7PM, Calvary Church collaborated with Gateway Entertainment of Faith Community Baptist Church (FCBC) Singapore to stage the ‘Star of Wonder’, a magical presentation. It featured world-renowned Elite Diamond Merlin Award recipients, Senior Pastor Lawrence Khong and his daughter, Priscilla. The father and daughter team as well as the production crew, have been performing in various countries, including the USA, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore. Over 160,000 people have been inspired by the performance. Breath-taking illusions such as the Double Levitation and The Head Chopper and the well-choreographed dance kept the audience at the edge of their seats.
However, it was Lawrence Khong’s personal stories of triumph that captivated many hearts. He attributed Jesus Christ to be his source of hope and the love of God that motivated him to overcome all odds. He began by reciting a verse from the Bible according to 1 Corinthians 13:1-13. “Through the storms and challenges in my life, I’ve really experienced true love; true love from God, my Father in Heaven, and love from my fellow family members,” said Lawrence. The popular phrase, “Home is where the heart is” means that home is more than it’s walls and windows; it’s more than the things we possess inside the home. “I remember a friend once told me, my home is just the place where I keep the things I buy. That’s so sad. Material things cannot define our lives. Home is a place where my heart longs to be,” he shared. No matter where Lawrence is in the world, at the end of the day, his heart longs to be with his family.
4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13: 4-13)
“What are you looking for? Now If I were to ask this question to a hundred people I would get a variety of answers, but I’ve discovered that behind all the differences of answers, there is actually one common answer, and that is that we are all looking for happiness in life,” he said. The sense of meaning and happiness is what everyone in the whole world yearns for deep inside. He then posed a question to the crowd, “Why is it that so many people are looking for happiness and could not seem to find happiness?” It is a fact that so many people are suffering in the world, people are hurting from the words or physical abuse of other’s and there are relationships that are falling apart. “Many are happy, but deep in your heart, you know something is missing,” said Lawrence.
Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. (1 Corinthians 12:12)
The Living God is our true fulfilment to Life
Lawrence continued on, and offered an answer to this question. Our body consists of three components namely body, soul and spirit. “Until all these three components are filled with satisfaction and joy, there will be something missing,” he said. He then began to illustrate this by using a few props that consists of three parts to help the crowd better understand. First, he talked about how people often try to satisfy their body and their senses. People put in a lot of effort to satisfy the desires of their bodies. “People think that the more money you have, then you can satisfy whatever you want, but that is not true,” he shared. Many things that people acquire, thinking that it will be able to satisfy their need for happiness is plainly an illusion, for they are never truly satisfied even after obtaining it.
It is our souls that define the individuality of a person, it is our true self! “It has to do with our intellect, emotions, and our will,” he shared. Some people in this case, try to pursue their intellect. However does that mean that the pursuit of knowledge is enough? Lawrence shared that at this point of time, we have the most knowledge that the world has ever known; however, due to that as well, the world has more problems than ever before. Some go with their emotions and think that finding their true love will satisfy them. However, that too is an illusion because some of the biggest hurts we can experience come from the people closest to us. “Life is just not about what we understand, or what we feel and what we do,” he shared.
Then the LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. (Genesis 2:7)
When God made us, He breathed his spirit into us. Our spirit is an immortal being. Just as God filled the earth with light, he put his light inside of us. “This light will fill your heart and bring joy and peace into every other pursuits of our life,” he shared. “One might ask, if God’s presence is supposed to fill us with light and peace, why is there so much darkness in my life? The Bible tells us it is because we have walked away from God. We have detached ourselves with the living God and have gone our own ways,” he said. When this happens, we fall short of the glory of God. Simultaneously, when a light bulb is detached from it’s power source, it’s still a perfectly good light bulb. There’s nothing wrong with it, except that there’s no light! A separation from God always means death, because when we die, there is no light in us. “That is why when the light has gone out, we may be okay intellectually, or emotionally pretty stable, or maybe we are very successful and we can enjoy all the things that our body craves for. But because we don’t have the light of God inside us, there is only darkness,” said Lawrence.
For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:23)
Good Friday and Easter is about a God that so loved us that He does not want to see our light go out. He has created us beautifully and does not want to be eternally separated from us. “That is why God came in the form of Jesus Christ. He came for one purpose, to turn on the light in our life so that we can enjoy everything that God has given to us. The only thing Jesus needed to do was to die for our sin, for the wages of sin is death,” Lawrence shared. God does not want us to die, He showed us His love by dying for the sins of humanity. And when Jesus died on the cross, He wanted to walk out in exchange with us, a divine exchange. “He took upon himself all the sins of the world and paid for it. I can’t die for you sin because I have to die for mine, but only the sinless one could, so that He can gift us the forgiveness and righteousness of God. Jesus came as one of us to die for us on the cross!” shared Lawrence.
In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. (John 1:4)
God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthian 5:21)
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