Living by Faith

In our second large group meeting, God really blessed us with a wonderful night of worship and of studying His word. A huge shout-out to Vivian Lam for opening us off with an amazing worship session! After that, we were blessed to hear Richard give another sharing about a really important theme: what it means to live by faith and how should we reflect it in our daily lives. The passage is taken from John 5:1-15.

The Healing at the Pool on the Sabbath

¹After this there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. ²Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, in Aramaic called Bethesda, which has five roofed colonnades. ³In these lay a multitude of invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed. ⁵One man was there who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. ⁶When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him, "Do you want to be healed?" ⁷The sick man answered him, "Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am going another steps down before me." ⁸Jesus said to him, "Get up, take up your bed, and walk." ⁹ And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked.
 
Now that day was the Sabbath. ¹⁰So the Jews said to the man who had been healed, "It is the Sabbath, and it is not lawful for you to take up your bed." ¹¹But he answered them, "The man who healed me, that man said to me, 'Take up your bed, and walk.'" ¹²They asked him, "Who is the man who said to you, 'Take up your bed and walk'?" ¹³Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had withdrawn, as there was a crowd in the place. ¹⁴Afterward Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, "See, you are well!Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you." ¹⁵The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had healed him.

Once we learn to see ourselves in the place of the crippled man, we get an appreciation of how great and merciful our God is that He would send his son, Jesus Christ, to die for us, even in our pitiful, broken states. We can also learn from Jesus, who performed a miracle on the Sabbath because it gives glory to God.

Richard preaching

Afterwards, we had a chance to get into small groups to discuss the applications that we can draw from this text. A big thank you to all the DG leaders for leading your groups, but also thanks to everyone else for contributing to the discussion and for encouraging one another to dig deeper into the Word. But most importantly, all praise and honour goes to our Heavenly Father:

"Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen."