The Power of Fasting

I have been fasting regularly since 1986. In the early days, I would fast once a week for 24 hours, from 6:00 a.m. on Wednesday to 6:00 a.m. on Thursday. However, since 2004, I have been going on 21-day full fasts once every 6 months. Once, in 2007, I fasted for 40 days.

When Bad Things Happen To Good People

Recently I was invited to speak at an Indonesian church an hour outside of Jakarta. The senior pastor was diagnosed with liver cancer a year earlier. The doctors attending to him explored the possibility of a liver transplant. After much effort, the money needed for the operation was raised and a liver donor was found. On the eve of the surgery, as the doctors were doing a final pre-op examination, they discovered that the cancer had spread throughout his body. It was now too late to do a liver transplant and the procedure was called off. The pastor and his family were devastated by this unexpected turn of events. Upon hearing the news, the assistant pastor was so grief-stricken that the next day, he suddenly collapsed in the middle of the church service and died. Forty days later, the senior pastor passed away. Without any clergy in this fledgling church, the housewifely widow of the senior pastor had to conduct the funeral service on her own. Some finger-pointing members started questioning if the untimely deaths of the top leadership were due to divine retribution, or whether the church was cursed. Over the next few months, attendance began to dwindle. As I ministered in the church, I could sense an unspoken question in the air—why do bad things happen to good people?

Wholesome Shallowness?

In 2007, my wife Sun released a music video of the hit single,“China Wine,” the result of a creative collaboration with reggae wunderkind, Wyclef Jean. That video garnered a lot of attention on YouTube with more than two million hits over two dozen fan sites. It received rave reviews from industry insiders as well as youths who love dance pop the world over. Not surprisingly, the video also raised quite a few eyebrows within the religious fraternity who felt it was inappropriate for a Christian to be featured in a dance video.

Racial & Religious Harmony

On August 16, 2009, I was invited to the National Day Rally held at the NUS University Cultural Center. The National Day Rally is akin to the State of the Union Address delivered by the President of the United States. In our case, it is an annual address that the Prime Minister of Singapore makes to the entire nation.

What City Harvest Church Is All About

This is the 20-minute message I shared on August 2, 2009, at the second 20th Anniversary service held at the Singapore Indoor Stadium.

What an awesome thing it is for us to be celebrating our 20th Anniversary as a church. Let’s face it, to have come through all these years, against incredible odds, is nothing short of a miracle.

Postmodernism: A Balanced Approach

What is postmodernism? Should Christians and churches that are more contemporary in their worship and ministry style be immediately labeled as “postmodern”? Is it a total godless, secularization of society and the Church? More specifically, is City Harvest becoming postmodern in its quest to be culturally relevant?

Is Plastic Surgery a Matter of Vanity?

Plastic surgery is a branch of surgery that deals with the remodeling of any portion of the human body that has been damaged or deformed. The word “plastic” is derived from the Greek word plastikos, which means “to mold.” Hence, it is the remolding and reshaping of body tissues—bone, fat, muscle, cartilage, and skin. It is largely concerned with the reconstructive work of the face and exposed parts of the body.

Do We Need The Ten Commandments?

In Exodus 19, God called Moses up to Mount Sinai and told him that if the children of Israel would obey Him and keep His covenant, they would be His special people. He then gave them “The Law,” which is also commonly known as the “Mosaic Law” or the “law of Moses.” Although the name was attributed to a man, we must be mindful that the One who gave it was God Himself. Moses was merely the “messenger boy.” James 4:12 makes it very clear that there is really only “one Lawgiver”—God.

The law consists of various parts. The most important portion is the Ten Commandments, also known as the “moral law,” as they express the morality, values and character of God. The commandments were engraved on stone tablets and are recorded in Exodus 20: 2-17 and Deuteronomy 5: 6-21. Because there are ten of them, they are also commonly called the “Decalogue” (Gr. dekalogos), which means the “ten words” or “ten pronouncements.”

What’s Up With Masturbation?

The word “masturbation” is thought to have been derived from the Greek word mezea, which means “penises.” It could have also been derived from the Latin words, manus (“hand”) and turbare (“to disturb”). According to the Microsoft Encarta Dictionary, masturbation is to “give yourself or somebody else sexual pleasure by stroking the genitals, usually to orgasm.” Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary states that “the stimulation can be performed manually, by other types of bodily contact (short of sexual intercourse), by use of objects or tools, or by some combination of these methods.”

There are archeological records of humans masturbating that go back as far as 6,000 B.C. In the land of Sumer, often known as the “Cradle of Civilization,” the ancient Sumerians believed that masturbation was a technique used to increase a man’s sexual prowess. It was viewed as part of normal activities for daily life, neither to be shunned away from nor considered taboo. The ancient Egyptians viewed masturbation superstitiously while the ancient Greeks were rather casual about it.

Can Christians Drink?

At its 36th Bi-Annual National Conference held on April 23-24, 2007, the Assemblies of God in Australia introduced a new code allowing AG pastors to consume alcohol. However it also urged extreme caution when drinking, and highlighted that drunkenness is prohibited.

According to the Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, throughout the first 1,800 years of church history, Christians consumed alcoholic beverages as a common part of everyday life and nearly always used wine (fermented grape juice) in the Eucharist or the Lord’s Supper. Many of the early church fathers allowed wine drinking in moderation. The Catholic Church requires properly fermented wine in their Eucharist. The Reformers from Luther and Calvin to Zwingli and Knox strongly supported the enjoyment of wine as a biblical blessing. It was said that Calvin’s annual salary in Geneva included seven barrels of wine. Even the conservative and strict English Puritans were temperate partakers of wine and ale, which they considered as “God’s good gifts.” It was in the mid-1800s when some Protestant Christians moved from this historic position of allowing moderate use of alcohol to the total prohibiting of all drinking.