Called to be different!

In Oct 2008, God showed me His Word in Romans 12:2 'Do not be conformed to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.' I did not fully understand what God meant but I knew that He was bringing me through a process of change. Around the same period, He also showed me Isaiah 54:2 'Enlarge the place of your tent, and let them stretch out the curtains of your dwellings; do not spare, lengthen your cords and strengthen your stakes.' This verse greatly excited me because I knew God was enlarging my vision.

When we started attending New Creation Church in Nov 2008, the process of transformation began. Then we came to a point when we needed to make a decision for we heard God saying to us like He did to Abram in Genesis 12:1-2 'Get out of your country, from your family and from your father's house, to a land that I will show you. I will make you a great nation; I will bless you and make your name great; and you shall be a blessing.' It was tough making that decision to leave our old church, our friends and all our growing-up memories. Yet it was the love of God that compelled us to move on to a new place where we practically knew no one and we had to start all over again. We did not even have a care group then.

But after 3 years in NCC, I must testify that God is so good to us. He never calls us to leave something without the intention of giving us something better. But we must make a decision to let go of our past for God is always doing something new. God gave us spirit-filled and like-minded brothers and sisters in our caregroup in NCC. He gave us a new family, people who really cared for us and whom we cared about. Not only that, we could feed on the teachings of Christ by our beloved Pastor every week. We loved the worship, the sermon and the leaders in the church.

I never knew that God was setting us apart by calling us into this church. In the process of renewing our minds, He also enlarged our visions. He taught us to dream big dreams and pray bold prayers. Slowly, we just began to separate from the crowd. I did not fully feel the effect of this change until recently. I thought it was because I stayed home for too long that I could not really connect with the outside world. I actually felt rather cut-off from my old friends & colleagues because my main connection was with God, then with Heng, then with my caregroup brethen.

But God opened my eyes to see that some friends are with us for a season. There is nothing bad or disloyal about moving on and leaving our past behind. As Pastor Joel explained, some friends are like 'scaffolding'. God put these friends for a period of our lives to minister to us but at some point we grow and move on. If we continue to hold on to these friendships, we might be held back from our divine destinies. So we have to learn to understand these changes in seasons in our life and move on.

I always pride myself as someone who could talk to anyone about almost anything. Yet recently I find that the topics I used to talk about no longer interest me as much. I felt energised only if I could share God's Word, the goodness of God, the love of Jesus or testimonies of God's glory. But not everyone could share in this excitement with me (thank God I still have a group of brothers and sisters I could relate to). Hence, slowly I found that I do not share many common topics with them and I cannot relate to them as much as before. The more we knew about the gospel of grace, the more distant we grew from our old friends and even our family members.

For a while I really felt sad because I loved my friends and I did not want to drift away from them. But when I saw that this was all part of God's good plan, I was at peace and relieved that I am not the oddball. God opened my eyes to see that I should rejoice because the transformation of my mind has yielded results. This is the right path in God's plan to increase our greatness. He has begun to separate us from the world in the area of our beliefs and thinking.

And in the process, we may feel lonely and think that we are in the minority. God showed me that with Him on my side, we are the majority. I did not realise that I was called to be different until now. And being different takes courage because the world wants people to conform, to be similar to them. Friends like you when you are similar to them but when you become different, they start to feel uncomfortable before you and think that you have changed.

I have a choice: to go back to where I was before or to keep moving forward with God as He takes me to scale greater heights. The choice is obvious. I will surely move forward on the path to greatness for He has called me and set me apart! All glory to Jesus!