The Praise & Worship team started off the worship service with a few worship songs, and the worship team leader leading the congregation in prayer, which was then followed by Upa H Zabiak dedicating the offertory.
Pastor Lamkhanthang lead the Mass Prayer. Some important points he mentioned to keep in our prayers: for the upcoming Joint Worship Service being held on Nov 27 & 28, he urged the congregants to take part if they have the time. He further appealed to the masses to attend the weekly worship service held on Tuesday, with the topic being “Miracle of Prayer”. Remember also, as the year is nearing it’s end, to reflect back on how God guided us up to this moment, healthy and safe. With the election right around the corner, he reminded us to pray for the voters, as well as the candidates, that the elected persons will be people whom God would want. Nextly, pray for the upcoming Advent Christmas program, pray for a good turn up. And lastly, pray for Manipur.
Pastor Thang continued on with the sermon of the day. He put a question to the masses: What does it mean to serve God? Is it isolated to only those who hold a certain position in the church? Most absolutely not! Being a committee member, a leader, or a pastor is not the only way one can serve God. The focal point of Pastor Thang’s message is on the ‘how’, as in ‘how do I serve God from where I am?’ He named a Christian writer, R T Kendall, who, having worked for the kingdom of God for 70 long years, was asked a question on how youths and newer members of Christ can work for God. What is a good way to start this journey. His response(in paraphrase) was that one did not need a degree for that, meaning one did not need to go to Bible College before one starts working for God. For we want to work for the kingdom of God, there is but 2 things that we should remember.
In the first, know your Bible, and in the second, pray alone. If you keep doing these two things, God will use you more than those with better degrees and qualifications. Rather, these are the qualifications needed to work for the kingdom of God. The more you get to know God, the more you know how little a piece of paper means to Him. Pastor Thang mentioned an unnamed man who knew this so well that they burned all their degrees. Since God’s criteria and our own is so different, Pastor Thang questions whether the BCD graduation can really be called a graduation. It is a rhetoric, with the intention behind the question being if we can really be useful to God with all our different degrees and graduations, or if God is looking for a different kind of qualification. It is really important that we realize that any one of us can hold a position, but if we do not spend time with God and ask for His guidance, it will be for naught. Meaning, even if we hold a position, God might not be able to use us if we just stay within our walls, not reaching out to Him. How much God uses you will also correlate highly with how much time you give to God.
Pastor Thang read a passage from the Bible here, Acts 4:13. A few things to note here, one, the leaders were astonished. The leaders(people who held positions) were surprised and confused by the confidence of Peter and John. They realized that Peter and John had unusual confidence, passion, and profound insight into the Scriptures. They also saw that Peter and John were “uneducated, common” men. And two, how were they so bold and confident? The long and short of it was that they knew Jesus and had been with Him. They had the confidence to speak so confidently because of their training under Jesus and the empowerment of the Holy Spirit. It is not that one tries to be brave, but rather, one becomes brave because they know God will be there, and they know Him intimately. When you care more about God, the cares of the world become trivial. Confidence and boldness helps us a lot in our daily lives. Not the fickle and pretentious kind, but the kind that cannot be shaken, the kind that overflows from within, the kind that will come from God. Going back to the verse, Peter and John’s bravery was astounding, but what was even more so was the fact that they were not high-ranking officials in society, but only mere fishermen. And yet, they seemed to have a deeper knowledge of the Scriptures than most, eve the teachers. That kind of knowledge could only have come from having spent time with God. We see that He is not impartial to the educated and uneducated, but anyone and everyone that is willing to serve, and gives themselves to God He will use for His kingdom, and for this we praise our God. Pastor Thang further iterates that mastering a subject does not mean mastering the world. But if you spend time with God, you will learn how to traverse it. And so, not being with God daily can be, and should be a very scary thought. Walking with God, we will know the next step to take in this journey. If you take away one thing from this sermon, take away this: don’t care about your earthly qualifications, or how the world judges things. Just keep spending time with God and He will guide you, and you will have an assurance and peace that will not come from your surroundings, but from within, directly from God. Pastor Thang ended his sermon with a prayer.
Following this, the Praise & Worship team took to the stage once more, and the service was concluded with everybody saying the Lord’s Prayer.
