2 May 2009

Hi, I am Zheng Xuan and today I am going to share with you about how I caught the passion to run with the vision of building church a strong 120.

I always enjoyed church, hanging out with people and enjoying fellowship. However, I did not think that reaching out and bringing the gospel to my unchurched friends is important. Although the Bible teaches us so, I did not take it to heart. Therefore, reaching out to people became a chore for me. However, my leaders, Chenxi and Marcus will always have very inspiring stories and testimonies to share about evangelism. I will always be so inspired after hearing from them. As I was inspired by stories of how one person can make a difference in their school, I began to start to step out of my comfort zone and tried to reach out to my friends.

A few weeks back, I brought four of my friends from my school, NYJC to church. And out of the four of them, two of them received Christ as their Saviour! However, they did not come back after that. Thereafter, I began to lose confidence in my EV life. Due to this, there is always a fear in my heart whenever I wanted to invite friends from my class down to church. Although I will always go and invite my friends with a mentality that they will come down, but deep down in my heart, I knew that I did not have the faith to see them staying in church.

As I began to ask my leaders questions, I began to realise that I had been relying too much on my own strength in my EV life. I tried to bring the gospel to my friends with putting God in the equation. I did not pray and ask God for it. After realising that, I decided to put my trust in God and pray to Him daily for my friends’ salvation and for them to one day become as excited about church as I am. The Kingdom of God is built upon precept upon precept; I need to seek God first before revival can come through me.

Now, EV has become a lifestyle for me instead of a chore. I will naturally EV and love my friends as much as I can. If I love God, I will obey His commandments. Matt 28:19. However, I will never forget how my leaders have spent so much time on me, inspiring me with stories, especially Chenxi and Marcus. If not for them, I will not have EV as part of my lifestyle and if they have not spent time investing in my life, loving me and encouraging me, I will not be able to love people the way they did to me.

Now, I just want to expand my contacts and get to know more people in my JC. Not just that, I want to get to know more people from my secondary school. I want to bring the God I know to people around me. The vision verse for this year is Luke 2:52 “And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature and in favour with God and Men.” Now, I am given the opportunity to chair a youth group in the resident’s community. Whenever we have a heart for people, God will always open doors for us to reach out to more. Like what the verse mentions about growing in favour with God and men.

The vision for this year is to grow a church of 120 disciples, who are strong in culture and discipleship, 120 sons and daughters in the house of God. I really believe that we will be able to achieve the vision for 2009. However, in order to achieve it, we have to constantly pray and have faith that our friends will definitely come to know God like how we have known God. I just want to encourage you to continue to believe that this year is going to be a year of growth and explosion for our church and continue to trust God that He will help us to extend our reach to more people! Let’s really have faith to see the vision come to pass!

Thank You.