PASTOR SIMON ENG MESSAGE
Hi HIM Family,
It's great to be able to share our time together again. Let me share my heart with you and what I have learned during this recent travel.
Ministry in Quito, Ecuador & Lima, Peru
I was visiting our church in Ecuador in Quito and I was visiting our church in Lima in Peru as well. These are Spanish speaking countries. We've planted two churches there. I want to share with you the experience that God taught me and what I saw over there. The people are very, very religious. Besides the practices of going to religious services, they also have the worship of festivals whereby saints are being paraded and celebrated. They also have certain things that they put in their homes which are a means of protection, you have the cross and something else which they mix together with it as well. I see within the lives of these people, the brokenness in their marriages. Marriage and divorce is like 50% and over and it's strange if you would see a marriage that goes beyond 10 years in that sense.
And I saw the poverty of the people. They don't earn very much, a lot of them are poor. And these are signs and symptoms that tell me that things are not going right and they don't see the favour of God, they don't see the blessings of God even though they are committed religiously. And I felt the potential and the opportunities, my dear Brothers and Sisters in HIM family, to build really vibrant, biblical churches whereby biblical values are being taught and encouraged in the people to live out correctly. I believe there is potential in us being able to really build a biblical community whereby husbands and wives and parenting and children and whereby even as a community we are able to live as God's people. I think it is going to be extremely attractive.
[HIM Quito, Ecuador Conference 2012]
The challenge is for us, not only in South America, but it shows me on a broader scale, how important it is for us to be able to build vibrant, biblical churches. The quality of what we speak in the bible, the core values, are being able to share biblical values and foundations with these people. I emphasize to all of us to really ensure that we are building this kind of foundation into our people.
I also believe, that there is another value that we need to incorporate into our pioneering, into our building of the churches, and that is spiritual warfare. Engaging with principalities and powers in the name of Jesus. You know, when I look at these situations, and I look at the people, my heart is crying and out and wondering what am I going to do to help these people. And I believe that it is through Christ, it is through a spiritual work. It is believing that God is able to touch these people. And I believe therefore, spiritual warfare needs to be engaged by us to engage with principalities and powers. You know, Paul says in Ephesians 6, "It is not flesh and blood that we deal with." Conditions that we see, situations that we see, you know, challenges around, there is a spiritual principality and power behind it. And we've got to get in with the name of Jesus. We've got to exercise authority to be able to break through and see more souls being won into the Kingdom of God.
So I am encouraging us with this message. Learning from what I've seen, learning from what I hear the Holy Spirit wants to do. Church we've got to get into really serious building quality and biblical quality into our churches and our people. And we've got to really engage in a level of warfare so that we are able to take from the strongmen. So that we are able to defeat the strongmen of the place where we are. I want to continue to encourage us with the times that we have to seriously establish this foundation and allowing the Holy Spirit to help us. To lead us, to guide us, and allowing the favour and the supernatural power of God to be able to see breakthrough into new ground and into the areas that we desire to build our people and win more people into the Kingdom of God. I trust that these would be areas that we can learn. That's what I'm hearing that Holy Spirit teaching me.
I pray to God that would continue to cause us to flourish wherever we are, God would enable us to be fruitful wherever we are so that we can build vibrant, biblical churches and build Christ-centered disciples into our community. Amen. God bless you.
Pastor Simon Eng
President of HIM
www.byhim.org
