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Hello, I'm Pastor Richard, and November is our Missions Awareness Month. I'll be sharing from the Book of Romans as well as a few stories from my own missions experiences. May you receive God's encouragement today. It is really a privilege to be able to speak today for our Missions Awareness Month and our Mission Sunday. I know there are others here who also have lots of missions experience, and so I feel very honored that I had the opportunity. Why are we still here? Why is it that having believed the gospel, believed on Christ, then we're not taken up into heaven at that point for salvation? Why are we still here? If God wanted, you could believe in your heart and well, just be taken up. Wouldn't that be wonderful? You miss out on a lot of the trials and troubles and heartaches, but he doesn't do that. So why are we still here? Please turn to your neighbor and in one or two sentences uh just give your your feeling. Why are we still here? Are we still here that we can worship God? I mean, we do, and that's part of it, but I just want to share with you from the book of Revelation, chapter 7, verse, beginning in verse 9, it says, After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages standing before the throne and before the Lamb, blue in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb. And all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying, Amen. Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever. Amen. Church, if the purpose is to worship the Lord, I must tell you, we know from this glimpse into the future, we're going to be so much freer in worshiping the Lord in the future. So I don't think that explains why we're still here, why he doesn't bring us immediately to be with him in heaven. Is it because we still need to clean up our act? And let's be honest, um, whether you're standing in the front or you're sitting in the pew, cleaning up our act uh is going to take a lifetime and then some, it seems. God is faithful, and as we continue to come to Him and confess our sin and receive forgiveness and allow His Spirit to transform our lives, we are being transformed. But you know what? When we are one day brought face to face with Him, only at that time are we going to see that work completed. We're not going to see it completed now. So why is it that we are still here? I want to suggest to you that there's just one thing that we can do better now than we will on the other side in eternity. That's to share the good news with others. The good news for God so loved the world that He sent His one and only Son. The good news that there is someone who can take the burden of failures and mistakes and things off of our shoulders that we can have freedom and joy in our lives. The one thing that we can do better now than on the other side of eternity is to share with those that we meet who are hurting, who perhaps have an emptiness, who have come to that realization that I believe we all come to, that we can't do it on our own. We can't be who we want to be on our own. We need Christ. And so the mission, as we're talking about missions and missionaries today, the mission is to share the good news of Jesus Christ with those who don't know him yet, those who are uh marginalized, those who have already recognized that need in their lives for him, to share that good news. Now, most of us are familiar with the great commission given by Jesus in Matthew chapter 28. Uh, these verses will be very familiar to us. It says, Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age. And having uh, of course, been involved in bereavement ministry, and I think many of us will know as well, those final words, when you know that your time has done, those final words are not just things you anyhow say. They are the important things because you know this is your last chance to speak them. And so these words of Christ, I think they carry extra weight with that. There's no beating about the bush, there's there's not a parable here at the very end. It's very straightforward. Disciple and baptize and teach. Now, some of us sitting here, perhaps even are aware of the very first call to missions in the Bible, found in the book of Genesis. Yes, Genesis. Genesis chapter 12, verse 1. Now the Lord said to Abram, Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you, and I'm going to make for you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. And so, really, the the story that we have in the Bible is about God revealing Himself to mankind because we need him, because there's something inherently broken inside of us because of sin. Sin is not just about the acts that are wrong and displeasing to God, but there's something broken in us, and we need Christ. Now, speaking of missions, Saint Francis of Assisi is famously quoted as having said, preach the gospel at all times, use words if necessary. And within my generation, I think, and perhaps for others as well, these words feel like they touch upon a very important truth. And that's because I've grown up seeing marketing and advertising and politicians who they want to sell something. And when they speak, it may not be the truth. It can be at times very manipulative. And I'm not saying this about everyone, obviously, uh, this is a generalization, but growing up, I see this again and again. People are just wanting to sell something, they're trying to get you to buy in however they can, and they're very much willing to bend or grate the truth in order to do so. There's a lack of lack of ethics. And so when I read these words, preach the gospel at all times, use words when necessary, it strikes something in me. And this is even a prominent religious figure, and I think that we will all be familiar with the most recent case of Rabbi Zacharias. The talk, the talk soon right on. The talk was good, but in the end, we found out the walk was not lined up to the talk. Preach the gospel at all times, use words when necessary. There is something about our actions, our walk that is integral, essential to preaching the gospel. And yet, in our passage today, Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit, he writes, faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ. And so the truth is it needs both. And I've seen this on the mission's field as well. Brothers and sisters who have sacrificed, who have really committed their lives to serving even unreached people in areas that are very uncomfortable to live in and are remote. And yet I don't know that I ever heard them share about Christ. Instead, through their actions, through their integrity, through their walk, they showed that they are devoted to someone, but somehow the words weren't there. I don't want to criticize them in that, but I have to believe that our witness is not meant to be a silent one. Amen. Our witness is not meant to be a silent one. That is not God's desire for. Instead, we're we need to have the walk, we need to have the talk. If either one of these is missing, then the power is missing when we witness to Christ. When we witness of God's word in our lives. Here in Romans, uh the apostle Paul is writing about the pathway to salvation, and perhaps some of you grew up like me learning the Romans robe, and it takes out different verses in Romans, which really guide us through salvation because it's it's very clear the way that Paul presents us. And Paul, he's working backward in our pastor today, he's working backwards from believing in the Satan power of Christ onto salvation. He says, Well, how can they believe? They have to hear it, they have to hear the good news. How can they hear the good news? Someone has to be sharing it. How can the good news be shared? Well, somebody has to embark on the mission. And friends, this mission is all of our mission. All right? We're not all called to be missionaries overseas, but the mission to share the good news of Christ is all of our mission. However young we are, however aged we are, it is our mission. It is, in fact, I would say, the central thing that we are still here for. My first missions trip was all the way back in 1990. And that first trip was to Scotland. And I went there not because I had uh this deep spiritual encounter with the Lord giving me a vision to go there. It was because I wanted to see castles, and I thought, wow, this would be a great place to go for missions. And so stayed in this place, Crossbasket Castle, for six weeks. But before I went for that, this was a good group called Teen World Outreach. It was a group of teenagers, all teenagers. And I think for many here in Singapore, we don't dare to let our children out of our sight for six weeks with someone else. But this is what happened during that time. And part of the one-week training we had before at Boeing was about how to share our testimony. Most of us, we're all teenagers, we never, ever, ever shared our testimony. And the thought of doing so uh was very it produced anxiety. And the person who did this with us, uh, did this part with us, his name was Harry Bellicu, and I really appreciate it. He had a very dead hand humor. When he told a joke, there was not even the hint of a smile. And so most people they would not dare laugh. He would say the most outrageous thing, and there'd be no reaction from everyone because they didn't know if he was joking or not. They were very uncertain. I love that kind of humor. And so uh Harry Belicum, he said, Look, you've got two minutes for your testimony. Here are the three parts before, how, and now. Very clear. Before, how, and now. Before, this is how I was. How? What happened? Well, Christ came into my life through a Sunday school teacher, through this, through that, whatever it may be. Now I'm different from before. These are the ways. But I'm not the person I was before. Teenagers, we all learned this. You know, uh, it was the first time for almost perhaps all of us to share our faith. Some they started off and they're talking about the childhood growing up in disappointment, and this happened, and that happened, and major crisis, and they were crying. And you know what? At the two-minute mark, you just come alongside. Thank you. It's been two minutes. Um let's just pray for you, and then you need to work on this. Uh, don't spend all your time in before. And so I I really appreciate him going through that with us. We would have morning calisthenics, we had this obstacle called the whaling wall. The whaling wall was a little over two meters high. It was a plywood thing built out of the field. We had to get our whole team over this as part of the physical training. Why we need physical training? I'm not sure, but we'd have it. And so we had about 16 of us on the team, including someone who was perhaps around 100 kg, and we had to get everybody up and over the city. There was no rope to climb. We had to lift up the first couple people, they had to pull us, and praise God, we we built uh team unity through this very challenge. Now in Scotland, we stayed the six weeks in the castle, and we went and we would do street drama. We'd also hand out leaflets, all right, gospel tracks. That was that was those days. And so we went, we would paint our face with white. If you've ever seen pantomime, uh, you don't speak, you just act out, and the white really emphasizes the facial expression. And we do this drama, and there's this drama about Jesus and Satan in a boxing match, and Jesus is knocked down, but he comes back up and he wins, which theologically is very incorrect, uh, they're not equals, but never mind. We had this drama and we did it, and then afterward, we would speak to everyone who'd pump around, come around. We'd probably do this at a park, and there are people watching, and we'd just share with them about Jesus. And you know, at that time, way back in 1990, God gave me the first opportunity to lead lead people in committing their lives to the Lord. There's these four people at that time. I remember from one of the times we did this, and I had the privilege of sharing the gospel and leading them in what we would call miscommerce prayer. And I must trust that God continued on work, brought other people into their lives after we left. But God used it, He uses all sorts of things. So, why am I saying this? Missions is generally divided into two categories, and that's evangelism and mercy ministry. So this was an example of evangelism. We were there to share the gospel to those who hadn't heard before, or perhaps they had heard. In fact, we know from those who have done surveys, the average amount of times that someone has heard the gospel before they give their life to the Lord, give their life to Jesus, is seven times. Seven times. And so, even when we share with our coworkers, with our friends, even with family members who uh are not yet believers, the burden is not on us to see them believe and make the decision. That's God's work. Our work is just to share the good news for God's above the world. The other side is mercy ministry, and so uh later after this time in Scotland, I felt God calling me to full-time overseas ministry, and I had about six and a half years with YWIN, and that was the beginning of it, and it was the greatest time of spiritual growth in my life was that half a dozen years, and there were so many incredible opportunities and travel. Uh, I'd been able to have traveled to dozens of countries thanks to God's goodness and the opportunities, and so part of that time with Wine Way was focused on mercy ministry. And the first was I was based in Germany, and we went for outreach to Mongolia. Has anyone here ever been to Mongolia? Wow, okay, a couple people have. Incredible. For the rest of you, we're not talking about Inner Mongolia, which is part of China, we're talking about the country of Mongolia, sandwiched between Russia and China. And so during that time uh we had ministry to screen children, and I think we can go on to the next slide, please. Next time, maybe okay. Um, yeah, there's Mongolia. And so we went to the capital of Ulam Vaktor, and there in Mongolia, it was winter, we were there for January and February. Every day, the temperature was negative 35 degrees. Every day, every single day. People would ask me after I came back from the trip, Richard, what did you wear? Well, it's quite obvious. I wore everything, everything. Uh I remember that my eyelashes would have icicles, little tiny icicles on them. It was so full every single day. And so part of what we were doing was we were ministering to the children because at that time, and this was back in 1998, I think, at that time the alcoholism rate among adults in Mongolia was 80%. Four out of five adults would be considered alcoholics. To get a one-liter bottle of babka cost 20 cents. It was far, far, far cheaper. You'd have trouble even buying a can of Coca-Cola, and the price would you wouldn't believe it. But babka is very cheap. And so um this was this was the problem. And so children would run away from home as early as possible in many cases because of abusive situations that didn't stem from this, even at five or six years old, sometimes they would run away from home. But the winter was negative 35 degrees. You're a child with nothing but the clothes on your back, how do you survive? And so, what they would do is they would go and they would be underneath the street because the heating in this place was from a plant outside of the city, they heated water to very high temperatures, it would be piped in under the street, into the city, and then up into the apartment flats using radiators that would be the radiator. So the children would hide underneath the street where the warm pipes were. And so we would come by, and the local we were connected with knew where they would be, which places to go, and we would open up the manhole cover, the circular cover, and they'd be there underneath in the dark, getting warm, and we'd give them hot tea and sandwich and whatever we put in. This is part of mercy ministry. We need the walk, we need the talk. This was about the walk. This was showing, you know what? God cares for you. You may be hidden even underneath a street at a young age, hidden away where people don't even see you. God sees you. God cares. Uh there was a trip. Uh I was based in England for a while, alright? And this was at a place called the King's Lodge. At the King's Lodge. Thank you. Uh based at this place called the King's Lodge. This is in Nuniton, England, town in the Countryside, and I spent several years there on staff with YWAN for discipleship training schools. And these were some of the most wonderful, wonderful years of my life. And I there's many stories. I guess I don't want to go into all the stories, but from this place and these people, we went to Kosovo. Kosovo is uh back before we had Yugoslavia, it broke up into different places, and so Kosovo is next to Albania, next to Serbia, uh not far from Greece. Uh Massiva. Okay, so it's in this part of the world, and we went there. A huge team, all right. I better make sure I focus on the right thing. So, okay, gonna be here all day, otherwise. The major ministry we were doing in that place was ministry to widows. Uh, we were in this place called Jacoba or Takovish, and this was a town where during the war, and this was kind of an ethnic cleansing thing, I guess. The all the ethnically Albanians, the men in this town were all taken away or killed. The elderly, uh, the working age, even the young ones, and so mostly it was widows, women, and children who were left in this place. And again, this was another winter trip. And there's so many stories I could tell, but I'll just focus in on one, and that is that we would go house to house, maybe four or five houses, every morning, visiting households, visiting these widows, and hearing the stories. And when you go into the house, you'll be served tea or usually coffee. The coffee is the Turkish coffee, the small cup with a thick mud of coffee in the bottom. It is extremely strong, and you want to blow a bit at the top to blow away the grains of coffee, and if you try to drink to the bottom, you're gonna be chewing mud. When you smile, you'll have all the mud among the teeth. And so by the end of four or five visits every morning, I'd be shaking from the caffeine because every house you must have the coffee. This is part of the culture. But I remember in particular one visit, and this visit was this this uh one widow, uh, she was elderly, I don't know her age, and she had all those wrinkles. I don't know if it's a funny thing to say, but I love when I see all those wrinkles, they're so nice, they're so nice, and she had a beautiful smile, and she shared the story of what had happened to the men from their household. And I don't want to repeat the story, it's not a nice story to repeat. But she had this beautiful smile, she seemed so kind, she had these wrinkles, and but you know, uh we we prayed for her as we did every every visit, and I think we had about a hundred or a hundred and fifty dollars to to give to each household to to try and at least give them a little help. And as we were getting up to go, she said, Thank you so much, thank you. And just one thing if you see any Serbians out there, kill them where they are. So terrible to hear that. This beautiful smile, she'd been hurt so badly, and I think we can understand it would be so hurtful. And she needed, she needed the love of God. She needed to know that forgiveness can be only found through the work of Jesus on our own. We cannot forgive other people, other people cannot forgive us. We we tend to hold brudges, we get bitter about different things, but it's only through the work of God in our lives that we can let God have the justice we can say, I don't feel like it, I'm still hurt, but you know what? I forgive, I let go of this, and so we we this was a part of the mercy ministry there, was going around all these households. One other thing from that time, we of course we had to have a translator, and so we had this uh young woman who was the translator going around with us uh for visit previsit, and uh we learned to work together. And the translator's family invited uh me to come over for dinner with them one evening, and I thought, well, this is nice, this is a chance to connect with more people. Do you know what the agenda was behind this dinner? They were very shameless. What do you think of possible women? And then they kept talking about the train states for their daughter and trying to set me up with her. You never know what you're going to encounter when you're on the field. So, friends, uh, there are many stories. I could spend all day telling stories I'm not going to. Um, but I just want to maybe have a few clear things to say uh before we bring things to a close in a bit. The mission, the mission, which is all of our mission, it's not just for those who choose to accept it. It's your mission, whether you like it or not, to share Christ with those around you. The mission is holistic, right? It needs words and it needs the walk or the actions. Cannot be lacking in these. It needs words and it needs actions. And the gospel, the good news about salvation, and we're not going to go into a word study of salvation, but this is something holistic. It's not just a get out of jail free puppet than that. It's about having joy, true joy. It's about God's work and it's about wholeness, it's about many things. And so the gospel is holistic. It's not just about uh trying to ask people to pray a sinner's prayer or commit their life to Christ, it is so much more. The mission is part of fulfilling the Great Commission, and we read that in Matthew chapter 28. Disciple, baptize, and teach. Disciple, baptize, and teach. The mission is especially to reach those who have not heard the good news or who are really in a place of need. And the mission is not just about overseas, it's not just about going to other places. Now, don't get me wrong, it is my hope that many of us will go overseas. Here in Singapore, it is easy. It is so easy to find a church. They're all over the place. Where I was in China some years ago, it was not easy. It would take you four or six or eight hours to get to a town where you'd have to find an underground church, because the nearest official church was 12 hours or more on the bus. So many had never heard of Christ. And even if Christ had appeared to them in a dream, for them to find out more, it is not so easy. How's that going to change? Paul made it very clear. How are they going to hear? How are they going to believe somebody has to be sent? It's not, they haven't even had a chance to accept or reject Christ. And God chooses to use us to share good news. But that doesn't mean there's no needs here in Singapore, also. Again, our co-workers, our friends, our family. And perhaps they've heard about Jesus before. But just as we learned, on average, it takes seven times as someone hearing the gospel before they find they are ready, before somehow God has done a work in their heart that they are ready to accept that's your voice. There are many blessings that come for those who go on missions. And I know many of us here have been on trips and so happy uh able to join the team through West Timor this last time. And that's as we go, you know what? God blesses us sometimes more than I would say we bless others. Every time that I go on a trip, that attitude of gratitude is renewed. I don't need to complain about the little things anymore. I realize, oh, God has really blessed me. He's done so much for me. I have so much to be thankful for. And those who go for missions, it's not just for some spiritual superstars who walk on the clouds, and uh I don't know. Uh that's not the case. It's all of us, it's you and it's me. We may even have some doubts about our own faith. We're not sure why this and why that, but we know that God is true and we're willing to just step out. And you know what? He meets us and he uses us to be blessed to others and he blesses us at the same time. For missions, in the old days, we think the skirts and and and uh the dress shirt and the knees are worn out, and and uh you know there's tears in the clothing, and people are now 20 years behind the times and fashion. That is not what missions look like anymore. Let me just encourage you, missions today, if you have a degree, but you have a little views for these are pluses, all right? And so I would hope it is my goal that God has perhaps even spoken to a few of us here, even before this today on Sunday. A heart to go out to where there are not many working, or there's no one working, those those fields, so to speak, where no one is plowing, no one is scattering seed. Because lives will be changed as a result of you saying yes to the Lord. Amen. All right, I don't want to continue on much longer, but just to say, as uh Reverend Daniel did say next year, consider joining us for our West Timor trip. In fact, as I have heard from those who've been a part of this long before me, we want to see uh new blood, we want to see fresh faces, we want to see new people coming into this. Because if it's only the old guard forever and ever, um eventually you're going to end up with a crisis. And so, especially if you have never gone for a trip, consider going with us. It will be a week that I believe will supercharge your own pay, it will change your lives, and I can tell you from experience from this last trip, you will be a blessing to many, many, many people. Some of you, maybe you're not able to take that time. Here in Singapore, there are different opportunities, and I know YWAM here in Singapore is doing plenty of outreach. There's also other opportunities, Willing Parts, where they have a kitchen and they start off early in the morning, 365 days a year, and prepare meals and take out the needy here in Singapore. There's also even the the Pi Nana program that we're part of here. I think some have responded and volunteered to say, Yeah, I'd like to try that out. I'd like to be a part of that. That is the hands, the walk bar, right here in each. Let's share the good news through our walk through one. We pray that you've been ministered to by the word of God today. If you'd like to know more about Eastern Christian Church, please visit our website at yccanglican.com. Have a blessed day.