Psalmist Retreat 2007

This retreat was a great time for us to come together as a ministry and and have a time for fellowship, laughter, fun, and not to mention eat nice food. Kelvin brought his wii and we had a great time playing on it of which tennis was the most popular and boxing was the most entertaining. Vincent and many others put in a labour of love this time to prepare each elaborate meal for which they are to be greatly appreciated.

What I believe many of us gained from, besides the fellowship, was certainly the time of sharing by pastor Chi Shyan. On the first session he shared from Exodus 17 where Moses and Joshua engaged in combat. Unlike Joshua who was in the frontline of combat, Moses was on the mountain top lifting up his hands and interceding for God to help. Although most of us can relate to being in the frontline as Joshua was, we sometime may forget that someone has to pay the price of intercession in the fight and how these roles, neither of which are superior, are interdependent for the battle to actually be won. God has given us different gifts and callings and thus we are independent of the mode in which He has called us to serve for God's glory to be manifested. Another important lesson was later in the chapter, where after the successful battle, Moses returned to build an altar to God to give thanks. Personally I can relate to Moses before an uphill task like the battle Israel faced. More often than not, I forget God's provision soon afterward and sometimes even forget that God was the one who has blessed and me and start to have illusions that it is by my own strength that I completed the task, when it was insurmountable when I called out to God in the first place. Hence, this lesson was really instructive and relevant to my life.

The next chapter pastor touched on was Exodus 24, where Joshua was willing to go where God led. Being a worship ministry, Psalmist is essentially asking the congregation to come up to worship God and encounter his presence. As an analogy to where God leads us to; from the peak of the highest mountain, the other mountains appear insignificant. Hence in His presence, our previous circumstances or past seem insignificant. However, the call to go is not an easy one to fulfil. Often we are eager to ask people to come; which is spurring them on to achieve certain things that we may have experienced and would like to share with them. The call to go, is fraught with uncertainty and thus it takes a much greater deal of effort. Joshua was about 45 at this point in the Bible, thus it is a lesson that age is not a factor when it comes to God's plan to using us.

Dallas shared that evening, getting us to reflect on our offerings to the Lord. The first part called us to reflect on who is our empowerer. In this rhetoric, the answer should inevitable be God but in our circumstances, it could be other reasons. The second part was whether our hearts were willing to respond and do God's work with the skills that God has endowed them with. The third got us to think about our own personal response and how we treat our offering to God.

The third and final session was this morning, by pastor. Sharing from Exodus 33, it was a chapter where Moses set up and used the tent of meeting to encounter God. The lesson here was that like Moses going up to the tent of meeting, for us to meet God or be set apart by God, besides aspects of the spiritual, physical effort is also needed for us to prepare ourselves. To want and achieve this communion with God requires from us time, energy and discipline. He shared on 2 groups of people who come to church on a given sunday morning during worship. The first is that of spectators, who are just there to observe the worship and not actually engaging in it, which is on the entirely superficial level. The second is a group that is dependent on the annointing of the worship leader or team. This is not something for us as a ministry to judge but rather to answer God's call to improve our serve to lead His people into worship, not just as musicians, but as worshippers. However, despite ample preparation or planning, not everything always runs to plan. This could actually be a humbling experience that God wants to impart to us, and perhaps could be His way of leading us to enter unchartered waters. Many of us view the people of that time to be much luckier than us, as they were able to see the manifestations of God. Despite that, they still hardened their hearts time and time again and turned away from him. We sometimes despise them for their weak will and their inability to remain faithful despite the experience of what God did for them. Thus it could be our argument that if we were living in those times, we would certainly not have any such premonitions to turn away. However when we consider what they experienced, even extraordinary things that happen regularly in their time, could well soon become ordinary. Hence, we may not require such manifestations of God in this day and age, where He has provided us the bible which is a rich source of His word. The questions pastor posed us to challenge ourselves were: 1. If there was something we desire in our ministry on a personal or ministry level that we do not have now. 2. If we were going to do something about it.