We are all involved in an ongoing spiritual battle with an enemy who will never let up. The Bible tells us that ‘we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12). Even when we are being treated badly or influenced to do wrong by a particular person, we still have to recognize who our real enemy is. This will be our first step in standing strong against him and the people he influences who will try to influence you.

Just as God has a plan for your life, so does Satan. Satan’s plan is to destroy you. “The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy” (John 10:10). Satan never takes a day off, so he is constantly trying to see his plan for your life fulfilled. That’s why you have to watch out for bad influences. The Bible says you have to “be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.” (1 Peter5:8)

In order to avoid these bad influences, you need to come under the influence of the Lord. Pray that God help you to discern the influences around you. If you are close to God and His word, He will reveal the enemy’s work in your life. He will show you where you are inn dangerous territory. He will give you discernment when you are being set up and allow you to see the truth.

If you have already come under a bad influence, God will give you the power to stop to it. He promises that you can “resist the devil and he will flee from you.” (James 4:7)

Post script: The next post would be about how can we stand against bad influences.

Wall Street shares plunged as panicked investors made a frenzied rush out of stocks and into bonds in the face of more weak data and a breakdown in efforts for a bailout for automakers.

Singapore slid into a recession. All these may sound very distant to you?

More goods being stuck for too long means that the companies will try to reduce the amount of output, which may lead to the layoff of staff that they do not need. Laying off of staff means that employment rate goes down and the number of jobless people goes up. This in turn affects the spending power of people affected, i.e. people will spend less. People spending less means that there will be lesser business for companies out there, which means they will be struggling to keep afloat and will hence lay off more people to survive. Eventually, everyone gets laid off and all businesses will close because no one is buying anything.

It is definitely not something you should sit on the fence and shake your legs. I don’t mean that you can do something to stop all these from happening. But, a power prayer is awaiting for you! Pray now and ask God to guide us through all these rough times and make us strong. Let’s see how amazing are our prayers!

Personally, I believe that our heavenly Father looks out for us and protects us from danger far more than we realize. We have no idea how many times we have just missed a dangerous situation and have been kept out of the way of something harmful. But this kind of protection is not something we can take for granted. We have to pray about it.

Part of being protected by God has got to do with obeying Him and living in His will. When we don’t do either of those things, we can come out from under the umbrella of His covering over us. We are unable to hear His voice telling us which way to go and what to do. How many times would people have been spared from something disastrous if they had only asked God to show them the way and then followed His leading? If only they had been communicating more often with Him so that they could recognise His quiet voice speaking to their hearts. If only they had taken the time to ask God for direction. If only they had been listening to God when He spoke to them through His word or through an authority figure He had put in their life.

Your prayers for protection over school/ work are also very important. Whenever you attend classes, ask God to pour out His Spirit on your school/ workplace and protect it from any danger or evil. Pray for peace among the other students. Pray that any plans for evil will be exposed and thwarted.

Just remember that if there is ever anything that concerns you about your safety or the safety of others, let that be your cue to pray about it. Don’t leave your life to chance in any way when you can cover it with a prayer.

Lord, help me to remember that no matter what bad times I go through, or what kind of dark clouds settle on my life, You are my Comforter. Only You can lift me above the storm and into Your presence. Only You can take away whatever loss I experience and fill that empty place with good. Only You can take the burden of my grief and pain and bring something positive out of it. “Hear me when I call, O God of my righteousness! You have relieved me in my distress; have mercy on me, and hear my prayer” (Psalm 4:1)

When I go through tough times, I pray that I will have a greater sense of Your presence with me. I want to grow stronger in these times and not weaker. I want to increase in my faith and not be overcome with doubt. I want to have hope in the middle of them and not become helpless. I want to stand strong in Your truth and not be swept away by my emotions.

Help me to remember to give thanks to You no matter what is happening because You are greater than anything I am facing. I know when I pass through the waters You will be with me and the river will not overflow me. When I walk through the fire I will not be burned, nor the flame touch me (Isaiah 43:12). That’s because You are a good God and have sent Your Holy Spirit to be my comforter and Helper. Thank You that You will fill me with joy and peace so that I will ‘abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit” (Romans 15:13).

In Jesus’s precious name I pray. Amen

As mentioned in the previous post, I will be sharing about ‘Four Good Reasons for Bad Times’

1. Sometimes difficult things happen to us that the glory and the power of God can be revealed in and through us. When Jesus passed by a man who was born blind, His disciples asked Him if the man’s blindness was because he had sinned or because his parents had sinned, Jesus replied, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed in him” (John 9:3). You may not be able to understand why certain things are happening to you at the time, and you may never know why you have to go through them until you go to be with the Lord, but when you turn to God in the midst of a difficult situation, He will bring good out of it and that gives people hope.

2. Sometimes God allows us to go through difficult times in order to make us into better people. The Bible says, “Since Christ suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves also with he same mind, for he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin” (1 Peter 4:1). This means our suffering during difficult times will burn sin and selfishness out of our lives. God allows suffering to happen so that we will learn to live for Him and not for ourselves. So that we will pursue His will and not our own. It;s not pleasant all the time, but God wants us to let go of everything else and cling to what is most important in life – Him. When you hang on to Him through the tough times, He will give you strength.

3. Sometimes our misery is caused by God disciplining us. It never feels good to be disciplined, but we always learn something important from it. It saves our lives. “No chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful; nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it” (Hebrews 12:11). God is always trying to teach us something int the difficult times we go through. “Do not despise the chastening of the LORD nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by Him; for whom the LORD loves He chastens, and scourges every son whom He receives” (Hebrews 12:5-6). When you go through bad times, ask God to show you what you need to see in the situation. Whatever He teaches you will make you stronger.

4. Sometimes the sorrow, sadness, grief, or pain of difficult times is entirely the work of the enemy. It’s not your fault or anyone else’s. The enemy is always wanting you to make you miserable and destroy your life. But God wants you to call on Him so that He can deliver you from the enemy. He wants you to trust Him in the middle of them. No one wants to hear about how good pain and suffering are for them. When you’re experiencing trouble, tragedy, loss, devastation, or disappointment, you can’t think beyond the fact that you are hurting and you want to be free of the pain. But you must remember that if you will pray and praise God in the middle of your pain, He will defeat the enemy for you and bring good out of it that you can’t even imagine.

Ponder over the four points, and whisper a prayer… Tell God how you feel currently. Thank Him for watching over you regardless of good or bad times? Or sorry for blaming Him for all the tough times you have been experiencing…

Have you ever taken off in an airplane on a cloud, gray, dreary, rainy day? Every time I think about it, I’m always amazed at how we can fly right up through dark wet clouds that are so thick we can’t see one thing out the window. And then suddenly we rise above it all and have the ability to see for miles. Up there the sky is sunny, clear, and blue. I keep forgetting that no matter how bad the weather gets down below, it’s possible to rise above the storm to a place where everything is fine.

Our spiritual and emotional lives are like that too. Did you know that when the dark clouds of trial, trouble, struggle, grief or suffering roll into our lives and settle on us so thick and dark that we can barely see ahead of us, there is a place of light, calm and peace that we can rise to? If we take God’s hand in prayer in those difficult times, He will lift us up above our circumstances to the place of comfort He has for us.

One of my favourite names for the Holy Spirit is the Comforter (John 14:26) Just as we don’t have to beg the sun for light, we don’t have to beg the Holy Spirit for comfort. Whenever you are going through a bad time, pray that the Holy Spirit will give you a greater sense of His comfort in it. That’s something He wants to do. Jesus said, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” (Matthew 5:4). It’s a done deal.

Though times happen to all of us at one time or another. Pain and loss are part of life. Everyone will have someone they care about die, or move away, or get divorced. Everyone will lose something or someone at sometime someday. Everyone will experience disappointment, discouragement or some kind of disaster. The next post will be about different reasons why these things happen, but no matter what happens, God is always there to bring good out of it when we invite Him to. He will help us to overcome our pain and see your faith grow in the midst of it!

As a part of the youth fellowship committee, we are supposed to do at least three times per week; minimum.

But still, please do keep me in your prayers and do not hesitate to inform me if you have a prayer request!  

Love, Darrell.

Protect Your children lives, as they accept
The blessings of this hour
For though, their souls are well adept
They’ll thrive amid Your power
And journey through the days ahead
According to Your will
With many passages to tread
And dreams, left to fulfil just to glorify You.

Dear Lord, please bring Your lasting peace
To those who mark their birth
Please bless this day with clouds of fleece
And all the joys on earth
Lord, keep their souls forever near
Entrust them in Your care
As they begin another year –
This is my birthday prayer.

Lord, let this feast of my birth be a reminder to me of all the gifts and blessings I have received from You this day and all the days of my life. On my day of celebration, I thank you for my life and all of my blessings and ask for another year filled with Your presence in my life that I may continue to grow in your love.

Gracious God, I thank You for enabling me to celebrate my birthday. Lord You have been good to me all these years and I thank You for all the blessings I have received but especially for life itself.

Every one of us has a purpose in the Lord, but not everyone realizes that. When we don’t have a good understanding of who God made us to be, we strive to be like someone we are not. We compare ourselves to others and feel as though we always fall short. When we don’t become who we think we’re supposed to be, it makes us critical of ourselves and our lives. It causes us to be insecure, oversensitive, judgmental, frustrated and unfulfilled. We become self-absorbed, constantly having to think about ourselves and what we should be. It forces us to try too hard to make life happen the way we think it is supposed to be. In the extreme, it makes us to tell lies about ourselves and become dishonest about who we really are.

When you’re around people who don’t have any idea about who they are and what they are called to do, you sense their unrest, unfulfillment, anxiety and lack of peace. It makes you uncomfortable around them. God doesn’t want that for you. He wants you to have a clear vision for your life. He wants to reveal to you what your gifts and talents are and show you how to best develop them and use them for His glory.

Let’s get something straight: Everybody makes mistakes. Nobody is perfect. We are all capable of doing something wrong.

There! It’s out in the open.

I said this because many people then to look at other people and think they have it all together and you don’t. When you do that, you are putting impossibly high expectations on yourself.

This post is not about trying to live up to a certain standard. It’s about letting God become your standard. It’s not about trying to be perfect. It’s surrendering your life to God and letting Him perfect you. But in order to see these things happen, you have to be completely honest with yourself and God about you are at the moment.

Sin is an old archery term that means missing the mark. If we don’t get things right on target in our lives, we miss the mark God has for us. And then we don’t get to experience all the good things He has planned for our future.

Sin destroys us. We may think we can get away with not living God’s way, but sin will always bring destruction into our lives. The good news is that God loves us so much that He has given us a way out of the destruction that comes because of our sins. It’s called confession.

Confession is something you can do anything you come to God. It’s telling God what you have done and saying you’re sorry. You’re not telling Him something He doesn’t know. He already knows! He wants to know what you know. And that you have a heart to change.

Having a change of heart is called repentance. In order to do those two things- confess and repent- you have to look at your life closely. Proclaim confidently, “Lord, show me what is in my heart and mind and life that shouldn’t be there. Show me where I am missing the mark. Help me to see the truth about myself. Help me change.”

It takes courage to pray such a prayer. Sometimes we are afraid to let God expose our heart because of what He might reveal inside of it. But we can ask Him for courage to do it. In order to receive all that God has for you, you have to be willing to clear the slate with Him. You have to invite Him to expose any sin in your life, and let Him create a new heart in you.

God doesn’t want you walking around feeling guilty. He wants you to get sin our in the open before Him so you can be free of it. Carrying around the guilt of past mistakes will limit what God wants to do in your life. It will make you feel bad about yourself. Guilt is not attractive, and it does not feel good. If you want to get free of the guilt of all past mistakes, then be willing to do these two things:

1.     Confess to God of any sins of thoughts or action that you know you have done.

2.     Repent of the things you have just confessed.