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We talked about being with Jesus, right? Jesus called the disciples to be with him that he may send them out. Part of the whole deal is that as they be with him, they will become like him. Because, like the disciples of those times following the rabbi, they were expected to walk in the footsteps of their rabbi. Observing them and imitating them carefully. But you see, Pastor, we live in a very different time. We don't have a physical Jesus to follow. But Jesus said, It's to your advantage I go away. Because when I go away, I send you another helper, paracletos. Someone exactly like me. It's the Holy Spirit. So via the Holy Spirit, we can have Jesus, the rabbi, with us. And through the revelation that he brings to us in Holy Scriptures, we can understand how Jesus would shape his lifestyle if he were you. Busy mother, changing diapers, a doting grandfather. How would Jesus' lifestyle be like? As a young, career-driven person, how would Jesus behave and act? How would his kingdom values be demonstrated through your life? The Holy Spirit helps you with that. How will a missional life look like in the twentieth century Singaporean Anglican Church? That friendship you have with Jesus teaches you. He guides you, he leads you into all truth so that you can imitate and form a lifestyle and practice the ways of Jesus in your particular life. Living in a Chinese home, Jesus will teach you how to relate to your parents who are Buddhists or who worship Shiva. Jesus said this to his disciples. A disciple is not above his rabbi. But everyone, every disciple, when he's fully trained, when he has been with Jesus for a long, long time, will be like his teacher. He will become like his teacher. Jesus saying, if you follow me, you will be like me. You will become like me. You will be formed. You will be shaped. Like the porter molds the clay, and you'll be more and more like me. We call this spiritual formation. We are everyone being formed in our spirit, in our inner man. Whether you like it or not, you are being formed. You may not know it, but unintentionally, you are being formed. These are several ways you are being formed. I'll give you the slides. I'll give you the slides. You'll post it in the chat group, right? The stories we believe. What is the story we believe? My father was not a very responsible father. He was an inverterate gambler. You can find him at the races. You can find him in the illegal gambling dance of Jalan Vasa. He gambles away his money. Sometimes I see my mom and dad quarreling. Sometimes I see my mom going to her elder brother and pouring out all the stories. These things shape me. They mow me. They impact me. But one good thing my father did for me, and we are not very close, as most Asian fathers are not very close with their sons. One day I remember he said to me, Your writing is good. He read something, my composition or something. He said, Your writing is good. And the child that I was believed him. Actually, it's not that good. But I believed him. And because I believed him, I kept reading and I kept writing, and I dared to write. And that's why I started blogging. Even though my blog post has grammatical mistakes, I believed the story my father told me. And it shaped me. It shaped my life. And during my retirement, that was I think during the pandemic or before the pandemic, during the pandemic, I was invited to a dinner, and there was uh uh someone with the gift of prophecy, prophet. His name is Amos J. Ratnam. So we had a meal together, and after that, he prophesied over each and every one of us, and he told me this is what the Lord says: write books, write, write, write. And so during the pandemic, I was occupied with writing. I will write, I have the idea of what I want to write. I want to write about the gospel and what the finished work of Christ accomplished for Christians. So I use the English alphabet A to Z. You know, it's like Psalms 119. The Psalms 119 follows the Hebrew alphabet. So A for access to God. So every time I write a chapter, I will throw it into my blog. And after I finish everything, I collect everything and rewrite and revise and printed the book. Why? Because I believe in the story that was told to me. Your story may be a bad story, like Anthony Yo, a lecturer, a counselor, famous counselor trainer. He told me, he told the class, because I have a short tongue, my teacher criticized me and scolded me in front of everybody and embarrassed me and said, You, you, Anthony, how come you have muggled in your mouth? How come you're talking like that and put me outside the class? He said, It's card him. And he believed the story that is not good enough. We are all being molded by the stories we believe. Whether it's the media, whether it's your parents, whether it's significant others, whether it's friends, one common story that many Singaporeans believe is that money equals happiness. If you have money, that's all you need. All your problems are solved. You heard that story before? It forms you. It shapes your life, shapes the direction you take. Someone said, the story you live in is the story you live out. Now say after me, the story you live in is the story you live out. So you like it or not, the stories you believe, informs your life. Secondly, habits. I talked about this just now, right? You want to hear another confession? I know you all love to hear confessions. During the pandemic, I just retired. Only once in a while I preach through video. I have to record myself and then it goes into the video. What do I do the rest of my time? My grandchildren were far away. Oh no, they were in Singapore, but not much contact. What do I do? Dad, you want Netflix? You want Netflix? You know, we can have two, three persons in account. I got Netflix. So my wife and I. Suddenly we got something to watch besides channel 5, channel eight, CNA. You know it's binging. We binge on Netflix during the pandemic. So many shows of documentaries to K dramas. You know, and sometimes when you have done so much binging, you sit down and you think, I wasted my time. You feel that? Huh? Do you notice when you do an activity, you sit down and you sit there in the presence of God, you get a sense. Is it good for you or bad for you? Is it life-giving or is it deadening? You get a feeling. Is God communicating with you? This feeling. Are you taking from the fruit of life or from the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil? Life there. And the Spirit speaks to us, to us through that. And he's saying to you, go for that which gives life. Habits. We developed that habit of painting, watching. And nowadays, scrolling. You know, TikTok. And they followed TikTok, YouTube followed TikTok with shots, and Instagram followed with reels. It's so amusing, you can just go on and on, non-stop. And before you know it, what eleven o'clock already? What is this doing? It's forming you. It's forming your life. You heard of being amused to death? Being amused to death. It's a very real thing. How are you going to pay attention to the sermon on Sunday when you need amusement every five seconds? Pastor, your sermon is boring. We are so conditioned to thirty seconds of amusement. Anything serious? So much Bible verse. You have to ask yourself, what are you being formed into? Are you going to be so addicted to amusement that you one day lose appetite for the word of God? You read the scriptures. No amusement. Put it aside. We are being shaped by our habits. It either forms us or deforms us. The habits we do do something to us. Say this together with me. The habits we do do something to us. Next relationships. From the time we are young. We grow up watching them. They model for us the values, perspectives in life, lifestyle, their ethics, their habits, their communication patterns with each other. They convey a lot to us. They are forming us. Someone said after you become a Christian, Jesus is in your heart. But your grandpa is in your bones. But your grandpa's values who affected your papa affected you and formed you. It's in your bones. And sometimes after 10 years of Christian life, we are still grappling with some of these values handed down from grandpa to you. The environment shapes us. Think of Singapore. We are always being told we are a small country. We all must work very hard. See very productive. Otherwise, the economy will go down. So we become very obsessed with productivity, efficiency. It's true, but it's shaping us into a people. It's forming us. Malaysians don't like us. You know why? They don't have the same environment as us. We are productivity driven. We are efficiency driven. For them is relax relationship. Cannot get along. We are being shaped by our environment and we grow up very different as people. We are being formed. This is spiritual formation done to us that we sometimes are not aware of, and certainly it happened to us unwillingly. We become very competitive, arrogant. That's how Malaysians feel about us. Very competitive, very arrogant. Our experience formed us, right? The pandemic formed us. Do you remember the pandemic or you forgotten about the pandemic? How many of you rush for toilet paper? Nobody, very good. You know what I learned during the pandemic? You didn't need a lot of money to survive in Singapore. During the pandemic, you spent so little. Everything is cooked at home. I realized I can live with little. I can survive in Singapore with little. I cannot travel. Now travel takes a great expense out of our budget, isn't it? Sickness. Free vaccine. Everything is free. The best property to have in Singapore, which all of you should eye, because it's an investment that yields the greatest dividend, is called godliness with contentment. Say amen. Godliness with contentment is great profit, great gain. Do you believe this story? If you believe this story, it will form you and you will act accordingly. Yeah, I know those days. I try to be prim and proper. When they show the online worship, I try to wear like properly, you know. I don't watch in my pajamas. Don't try to do. But after some time, you relax. It shapes you, right? It shapes you. Some people are so formed, so hardened, they don't go to church anymore. They just watch from home. When new creation re-began services after the pandemic, a friend of mine who attends at church regularly showed me a video. The upper balcony is all empty. Where are they? Where are they? The pandemic has formed them. They stand at home watching the online service. They're all very quiet. Am I speaking something you don't like to hear? No, right, others, you wouldn't be present here, right? All these things form us. Whether we like it or not, whether we know it or not, it's forming us. Christian formation is different. It's intentional. You have to be intentional about it. You have to deliberately aim at it and plan for it. Next slide. We know, okay, we'll say here, we know that all things work for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose, for those he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son, so that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. This tells us God's plan. God's ultimate aim for your life is not that you will be happy and live a long life and never die of sickness. God's ultimate plan is that each and every one of you can be formed into the image of the likeness of his son. If it means martadan, so be it. If it means going through a prolonged illness, so be it. If it means losing your job that will form you, let it be, because it sets you free from certain things in your life. You get what I'm saying? We always say all things work together for good. For our good, for our happiness, for our welfare. No, it's so that you may be formed into the image and the likeness of Jesus Christ. Some of the things that happened to me I don't like. My wife was 51 days in the hospital last year. My wife is a very active woman, pickleball. Pickleball is not a new game. It's been here for years, she has been playing for years. L4, L5 in the spine. Bacterial attack. And it attacked at the spine area. And when the doctor did uh MRI, she he said he described it as potholes on the road. Only this one is on her spine, potholes. The bacteria had been attacking. She was in such excruciating pain. She can't even sleep. How many of you have had back problems and before you can't even sleep? Right? The pain is so terrible, it shoots down the right leg. And sometimes when she sleeps, she has to sleep on the chair, grabbing a pillow because getting sleeping on the bed and getting up, getting up is excruciating. I pray, but my prayers were not answered instantly. But the Lord gave me a verse while she was in hospital. It's a famous verse. When you pass through the waters, when you go through the flood, it will not overwhelm you. You will not be drowned. When you pass through the fire, you will not be scorched, you will not be burned. Remember that verse in Isaiah? God gave me that word, and then I understood. She will go through this trial, but she it will not harm her. It will not harm her. You will not even smell smoke on her body. So after 51 days in the hospital and going through physiotherapy, I see my wife playing pickleball again. It's like she never went through the flood and never went through the fire. But she had to go through that period of challenge and difficulty because God is not just interested in keeping you happy but informing Christ in you, both for her and for myself. I had my eyes open to how difficult it is to be a caregiver. How many of you are caregivers? Your mom, your dad, elderly. Oh, I tell you, it's really hard to be a caregiver. Because not only was she ill, when she was ill, she couldn't take care of a single elderly brother I have to take over, and he has a lot of medical appointments. God was forming us into the image. Sometimes there's no other way except through pain. Because pain is a good teacher. Say this: pain is a good teacher. We don't like this teacher, you know. We all have teachers we don't like. Sometimes the math teacher. For me, it's the Chinese teacher. We don't like them, but they're good for us. But my Chinese teacher didn't do me any good, actually. And when you think of uh uh God's purposes, it fills us with hope when we go through difficult situations. Amen. We can look and know that God is working in us. Something that is eternal, something that will go beyond time. The little sufferings that we go through is nothing compared with the glory that is to be revealed. Next slide. So we want to be formed, we want to be changed, but sometimes we use the wrong strategy. What is our strategy? Willpower. I tell you, I don't have a strong willpower. How many of you have a strong willpower? How many of you is as disciplined as Mr. the late Li Kan Yu? How many? You read the story of his life, he's super disciplined. Willpower. Wow. Many of us don't have that. Next slide. See? You think I can do it. You want to cut off the T. Willpower. These are misleading strategies. You can never have the image of Christ formed in you through your willpower. You need to cooperate with God. But if you think you can just rely on your human strength and willpower, I'm a disciplined person. I will grit my teeth and live a holy life. F9. Not F1, F9. Show fail. Second, more Bible. If I have more Bible knowledge, I will change. I tell you, this is not true. More knowledge will help you. I study four years in Trinity until I'm by the third year. I want to get out and start the ministry. I'm already oozing Bible verses from my nose, nosebleed, and ear bleed. And I have a lecturer who has all this knowledge. But he went into gambling. Can you explain how some of these people who have so much knowledge, but Christ is not formed in their lives, can you explain how? It's possible. So don't think you have more Bible knowledge. Your life will be changed. Not necessarily. Especially if you don't respond to the truth. Not everyone who says, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, except those who do the will of my father. The wise man is the one who hears and hears and what? Does the word is the one who built his house upon the rock? More knowledge? Good. You want to go BSF? Good. But remember, teach them to do, to observe all that I commanded you. Not to teach them to know about all that I've commanded you. That's the key. What is the last picture in the bottom? Do you know why? It's not sleeping. This is being zapped in the spirit. Now I don't know. But sometimes we think of some kind of instant experience that will change your life. Often called breakthrough. And it doesn't work that way. It doesn't work that way. This, if you are your whole strategy of change, is to get that instant change, that breakthrough, or that zap, the spirit zapped me, and then my life is changed, you know, from a selfish person to a loving person, from this kind of person. No. It's a slow process. Character formation is a slow process. Gifts, you can get it instantly. Character is fruit. Fruit doesn't grow. You don't get durant. One night you see the flower, the next day, the duran. You see that? How many of you have a tree like that? Today I saw the flower. Oh, wow, my duran tree has flowers. Next day it became a durant. Fruit don't grow like that. Takes time. A gift. You buy a durant and give somebody is instant. But not the fruit. So, what are the things that change us? What are the strategies we need? Next slide. This is the one. The teaching of the world, anointed by the spirit, bringing revelation, bringing the desire to change, bringing motivation. This is what will transform you. I'm praying that in these four or five sessions, the spirit is stirring your heart. The church has been praying. The Lord will use these messages to stir you up, to revive you, to have the motivation and desire to change, to be a real disciple of Christ. Teaching of the word in the anointing of the Spirit is important. All scripture is inspired by God. 2 Corinthians 3, 7, 16 and 17. Profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness. Why? So that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. Secondly, practices. If you look at Jesus, alright, don't please don't think that everything came to him automatically. He was also human. He had to be formed. He was put in a holy family. Joseph, righteous man, godly man. Mary, wonderful, wonderful mother. He grew up in a wonderful, godly home. He was formed there. He went to all the synagogue schools. He was being formed by scripture. Jesus is human and he was being formed. And he also had certain habits. If you read the gospel carefully, it was his custom to go to the synagogues. He observed the Sabbath. He prayed. He knew the scriptures. He had habits that formed him, that changed his life. So a winning strategy for change, for us to become like Jesus, is to develop spiritual habits or practices as the Spirit leads us. Next is community. The church. And you are blessed to be in an Anglican setting because from the ancient of days, you have the observation of the seasons, which brings you through the gospel every year, the liturgical seasons. The means of grace, like the word and the sacrament. Do you know that when you observe the seasons, you're going through the gospel again and again? Advent to prepare you for the coming of Christ, Christmas. And after that, you go through all the gospels in the liturgy is to teach you about the life and the ministry of Christ and the finished work of Jesus, culminating in his death, his resurrection, ascension, and then the outpouring of the spirit which formed the church. And then the scriptures change to the epistles to talk about the church life. And it goes again, over and over again, it's forming you. The seasons are forming you spiritually. The sacrament, the means of grace. You receive the word, you receive the holy communion. It feeds you, it grows you, it forms you. This is the community. And then there's the culture of the church that forms you for good or for bad. The small groups, right? The small groups that you are in, in the homes where you meet, it forms you. The community is a very important part of church life. In Acts chapter 2.42, it says they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship and to the breaking of bread and prayers. Next, the Holy Spirit. Okay. The Holy Spirit is involved in all this, right? In all this, including our suffering and what we had to go through. The Holy Spirit uses all this to transform us. I love this verse in 2 Corinthians 3, 18. Take note of this verse. Take note of this verse. 2 Corinthians chapter 3, verse 18. In the RSV it reads, and we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness. From one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. Remember the picture I showed you? Jesus and Minus. One eye is looking at him, and Minus' eyes is beholding the glory of the Lord, and he himself is being transformed until he became a saint, and they put a halo around his head. When we behold his holiness, we have been, do you notice we have been singing songs about the holiness of God? When you are worshiping, you are beholding. When you're praying, you're beholding. And as you behold, he is transforming you. Not conforming you to the world, but transforming you into the likeness of Jesus. What do you want? Do you want to continue to allow the world to shape and mold your life? Are you becoming what the world wants you to become through all the exposure to the different experiences I talked about? What are you becoming? Are you becoming just like your friends, talking about the things they talk? Non-Christian friends, holding to the values they hold, whether it's LGBT, whether it's the use of money, whether it's what drives your life, what are you becoming? Are you becoming more and more like the people of the world or like the Lord Jesus Christ? This is the question I want you to face and ask yourself, what am I becoming? Next question is, what do you want to become? What do you want to become? Because if what you want to become is totally different from what you are becoming right now, you want to change. You want to have a change strategy, you want to make a decision today, an intelligent decision. I want to change. I have to stop this. I have to stop this habit. I have to stop this relationship. I must not allow the media to influence me this way. I must and I must do this instead. Not in a legal fashion, because, but as a response to the holiness and the grace of God in my life. I respond. In love I respond. Love has a powerful transformative effect. When I fell in love with my wife, I'm a very dull boy. I only wear pastel, plain shirts, gray, blue, white. After I marry her, she bought me a striped shirt, orange, white, blue stripes. I wore it. I still don't believe I wore it. For a wedding. Why? Love. Can you tell me a story like this? Did your love transform him in some way? It's the other way. You know, I know someone who is a spent trip. Spend money like anything. Buy branded boots all the time. But when she fell in love with a man who is a saver, suddenly she stopped buying those things. From a possibly high maintenance woman, she became a low maintenance woman. Why? Love. And I hope that as you experience the love of God, his holiness, and his grace, something will click in you and say, I'll do this for Jesus. I'll do it. Almighty, who puts his hands on my shoulder. Say, be my friend. I want to let him change. I want to make a decision today. I don't want to continue becoming what I'm becoming. I want to become like Jesus. What is the Holy Spirit communicating with you? You see, stirring in you a holy dissatisfaction with where you are heading, with what you are becoming. You see, giving you a desire to become more like Jesus. I want to be like the Saint Minus with an eye on Jesus, beholding his holiness, his love, his grace, and letting that form my life. Or perhaps he's putting in you a strength to lay aside pride, to lay aside a bad habit. Holy, holy, holy Lord, God Almighty who was, who is, and who is to come. All glory and honor, praise and thanksgiving be unto you, Holy Father.