God has given His people many promises in the Bible–meditating upon these promises will unleash victory in a believer’s life, teaches Kong Hee.
CN PHOTO: Sarah Choo
In the third and last instalment of the series on the topic of meditation on Feb 27 and 28, Kong Hee, senior pastor of City Harvest Church taught the members that meditation is the key to God’s promises.
Kong began his message by sharing his own story. Growing up, he was often scared and shy, and he hated confrontation. In the early days of his ministry, Kong would find himself unable to speak into the microphone and constantly relied on the sound team to increase the volume so that the congregation could hear him.
“However, when I started meditating on the Word of God, I found that I could speak loudly and I could look at angry faces without being intimidated,” he revealed.
That was how Kong discovered the power of meditating on God’s Word. He told the church that meditation helped his “root system” grow deeper into the Word. He encouraged them to not just know the Word of God but to meditate on it. After two years, he found himself becoming an effective preacher for the Lord.
Reading Acts 19, Kong expounded on how when the Ephesian church trusted in the Word—“So the word of the Lord grew mightily and prevailed” (Acts 19:20)—so much so that the Ephesian church became the third most powerful church.
Quoting Joshua 1:5-7, Kong said, “God guarantees power, protection and prosperity. But there is a key condition.” And that is to “meditate on God’s word day and night” as revealed in Joshua 1:8.
“We have 50,000 to 70,000 thoughts every day and 95 percent of these thoughts tend to be negative. What we fear or dread will eventually happen, and will become a self-fulfilling prophecy!” Kong said.
How can one stop from worrying, when there is so much to think about?
“Write a verse on a Post-It note and stick it where you can see it.” Kong said. “Put it on your bathroom mirror while you’re brushing your teeth, put it on the fridge just as you’re making breakfast. Ladies, put it on your makeup table while you’re doing your makeup!”
Kong pointed out that God said in Joshua 1:8, ” This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth…you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.” It is definitive, absolute and a guaranteed promise from God that when His people meditate on His word, they will prosper.
“Shalom”, a common greeting used by Christians, means “completeness in health, prosperity and peace and God guarantees peace for our lives,” Kong continued. “It means complete peace for your life so that you can be in God’s perfect plan.”
He shared an encouraging testimony of Andrew, an Indonesian architect, and his wife, Mila, a lawyer. Andrew and Mila were well-to-do but due to lack of self-control and poor planning, they started spending more than they earned and were soon in huge debt, to a point that they could no longer afford their car and personal driver and had to rent a motorcycle from the driver of Andrew’s father. They could not even pay for their daughter’s school fees.
Even after they declared bankruptcy, the creditors kept on hounding them for repayment. At that point, Andrew’s aunt approached Mila and told her to keep proclaiming and meditating on God’s promises—specifically Isaiah 61:7. Though skeptical at first, Andrew realized that it cost him nothing to dream so he started envisioning projects chasing after him, instead of him chasing after the projects, and that his company would be well sought after in other countries as well.
After six months, Andrew was approached to design a small hotel and that quickly led to other projects designing hotels in Indonesia. In 2015 alone, Andrew was involved in 20 projects, each increasingly bigger. When Andrew fixed his thoughts on God, God’s guarantees and promises kicked into action.
Kong went on to teach on how meditation on God’s word will also guarantee patience and victory over anger. He urged the congregation to meditate on the word so that Satan would not have a foothold, as written in Colossians 3:13.
CN PHOTO: Flynn Lee
In closing, Kong encouraged the congregation that God guarantee permanent victory over Satan. Addressing the issues of addictions and sins, the senior pastor explained that light breaks darkness and the more one meditates, the less Satan can dominate over his life.
He cautioned that deliverance by itself is never a permanent solution, however, and permanent victory comes only when the believer fills himself with the Word.
Kong gave an altar call for those who needed healing and deliverance and hundreds responded to the call before service ended.
“I feel that even though God guarantees us those few things, we’ve got to stay rooted in His Word so as to not get stumbled, shared Soon Liwen, a 23 year old student. “By meditating on His Word, we’ll ultimately see the victory that God has promised us.”
