**1100 DAYS of prayers now!!!
Please sign up for the new 11th 100 days 24 hours prayer campaign,
I need your prayers!!!
Please click link below.
**NEW link for the 11th 100 days 24 hours prayer campaign(from August 25 to December 03, 2012).
The easiest way is to take one hour slot for the whole week. What you need to do is very simple. Choose one dayThe easiest way is to take one hour slot for the whole week to pray for me, my family and my ministry, remembering the ministry of ACiC(ACiC has two Networks: ACiC, Anglican Coalition in Canada and AI, Asian Initiative). You may use the whole hour in prayer or you can still do you work in your office but use as much time as you can to pray and the other time work prayerfully that hour to pray for our ministry. This campaign is also to teach you that you need somebody to pray for you daily. I have been prayed for hourly the past 1,100 days and I have never experienced this kind of peace and protection before. It's just beyond words can express. If I did not listen and obey to Jesus call 1,100 days ago to start this prayer movement, I think I would be pulled into darkness and discouragement already! I deeply believe that this is a way to draw as many participation as we can in prayers. I encourage you to participate. We need you to join us! Trust in the power of prayers!
Today's Reading: Matthew 9: 9-17
**For a simple and good way of Daily Devotion method please click this link: Subject Shifting Devotion.pdf.
Please click this link to read Matthew 9: 9-17
Bible Study
Today's passage starts a new world, God's new world. For the past many chapters, Matthew shows us the authority of Jesus about his teaching, over diseases at a distance, over the storm, over the demons and the authority to do what only God does, to forgive sins and to free and resurrect someone from the bondage of sins. Now in today's passage the new days has come.
N. T. Wright says:
It simply means that morning has broken on a new day, God's new day, and the practices that were appropriate for the night-time are now no longer needed. In the middle of all this newness sits a surprised and grateful man, who centuries of readers have supposed was the writer of this gospel. If that is so, we find Matthew, the tax-collector, telling the story of his own calling in the middle of a long list of healing miracles...
Think for a moment what life would have been like for Matthew, day after day and year after year. Suppose it was you. You would sit in your hot little booth, waiting for travellers to pay the toll as they passed from one province into the next. They wouldn't enjoy it and nor would you. Then think what it would be like having a young prophet with a spring in his step and God's kingdom in his heart coming past one day and simply asking you to follow him. Yes: it would feel exactly like a healing miracle. Actually, verse 9 hints at something even more: it would be like a resurrection. 'He arose.' says the passage literally, using a regular 'resurrection' word, 'and followed him'...
God's new world was being born, and from now on everything would be different. The question for us is whether we are living in that new world ourselves, or whether we keep sneaking back to the old one where we feel more at home.
I do hope bishop N.T. Wright's wonderful message helps us to be willing to enter into this new world and not sneaking back to the old one.
Let's have a time to be still and give the Holy Spirit space to speak through the passage of scripture we have just read. Offer this time up to Jesus as you listen to him, while listening to "Chariots of Fire"
Spiritual Journal
What I heard from Jesus today is: Enjoy Jesus new world! Don't sneak back to the old one please!
What I got today from Jesus is a confirmation and an invitation.
A confirmation to me that I need to enjoy the new world Jesus gave me since I was born again when I was 26 years of age, especially since I joined AMiA in 2004. I have seen everything so much alive when I become one of AMiA's clergy and later a bishop. It is somewhat like what Matthew wants to show us in the healing of the paralytic and the calling of Matthew would be a resurrection. And I left the old world, and follow Jesus into a new world of Jesus' Kingdom ministry.
The invitation for you today is for you to enter into Jesus new world, being resurrected, rise up and follow Jesus each day to celebrate this new day and Kingdom ministry.
Don't sneak back to the old one where you feel more at home please!
Dear Lord Jesus,
Help us to know that you have brought the new world, the new day to us and that we need to rise up and follow you daily, not sneaking back to the old one where we feel more at home. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.
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Chinese praise song - 雲上太陽 The Sun above the cloud
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