Thursday, June 17, 2010

Project Report #36 - 7 Tenants of Prosperity

Hey people, it’s been awhile since I updated my blog. So much has happened in the past one year that has really blew me away in terms of church, my career as well as my own personal life. Testimonies after testimonies kept pouring into my life, God is indeed so faithful.

Let me begin by updating you on what has happened in December of 2009, Harvest Generation had it’s first Christmas play and we had a crowd of 220 over people over 2 days of the play, this is excluding the number of the cast and crew. Really praise God that our vision for last year came to past, that we will see 200 people in our church.

After Christmas, I was invited to go on a Singapore trip with my girlfriend, Carol and her family. Weeks before the trip, around Christmas time, her parents gave a very expensive facial pore cleanser thingy and a small silver paper box, which I found a bit weird at first. When I opened it up on Christmas Day, there was a large sum of Singapore Dollars in the box. The money was solely for me to spend on shopping in Singapore. Again, I was left speechless.

So we went down to Singapore, stayed in the awesome Hilton Hotel at Orchard road, and spent a few days there walking in EVERY mall there was there. We ate at really awesome places and I had the privilege to meet-up with Carol’s aunt and her family. They were really awesome and hospitable people. At the end of the trip, I manage to buy not one, but two Ed Hardy t-shirts at the Ed Hardy boutique in Heeren mall! It was my first time buying Ed Hardy for myself, breakthrough! We spent the New Year’s there, it was such a great way to end the year 2009, relaxing and having fun. This is my first testimony in 2010 of God’s providence, but it doesn’t stop there.

Right after New Year, after the Singapore trip in January 2010, I got news that a couple who was very close to me wanted to bless me with a Blackberry. I tell you, I was astounded! About a year or so back, when Chris got his Blackberry, I immediately fell in love with it. It was such an awesome tool to use to communicate with people, manage my schedules and surfing the net without limit. So I just turned over to my lovely girlfriend, Carol, and just told her, “I believe we will have this one day, together”, I prayed, and about a year later, it happened! So now, Carol and 1 are proud owners of the new Blackberry Bold 9700, Praise God! This is the second testimony of year 2010 for me, but it doesn’t stop there either.

The first few weeks of working in the New Year, my boss gathered the entire department to give us an annual summary of our company’s performance for the year of 2009. He said our company really did not do well enough, that we actually loss in the first half of the year. But thankfully, at the second half, our company managed to make enough to just cover the loss with hairline profits.

Due to this, we as employees were all very disappointed and de-motivated when our boss announced that there will be no promotions, raise and even bonus for 2009. Then at the end of the meeting he announced that the company however wants to honour five employees for outstanding achievement by giving them a pay rise. Then he started calling out the names one by one, after he called out the forth name, I was thinking to myself “Lord, could the next person be me?”. Then my boss turned and smiled at me… and he called my name! I got an 11% pay rise despite our company’s poor financial performance! Praise God! This is my third testimony of God’s providence, but again, it doesn’t stop there.

February, Chinese New Year came, I was just doing what I do every year, buy stuff for Carol’s family, for Ps Ryan’s family and for some of my friends that I wanted to visit. At every visitation, in my mind I was not even thinking about how much the ‘ang paus’ would be, because every year, I really don’t expect much. A little of my ‘ang pau’ history, I was never brought up in an environment where I’ve gotten few hundred in a single ‘ang pau’ pack before, and accumulatively it has never surpassed RM500 in total collection. That’s why I didn’t expect much. But this year, God broke my mindset.

As I visited every single family that invited me to their house or for dinner, they gave me ‘ang pau’ amounts in a single pack that just blew me away. Compare to the things I bought for them, my stuff seemed like nothing! It really taught me a lesson, if you are faithful to sow and not hold back from blessing people, God will definitely bless you back with so much more. Ps Ryan has always told us to be generous because it really attracts God’s favour and blessings, and really, I am experiencing it now! This is my forth testimony of God’s providence, but yet again doesn’t stop there either.

Let move on to the month of May, we had the privilege of having Ps Saras, from City Harvest Church Penang, in our church to speak to us. Ps Ryan, Chris and I had the privilege of chauffeuring him and his team around during their stay here, brought them to Pyramid to do some shopping. Seeing how Ps Saras can afford to have really expensive things, it really broke my ‘rigid’ mindset that day that God’s people can have the best things in life as well. It just made it so much clearer what Ps Ryan and Rev T. T. Quah has been teaching us, that serving God full-time doesn’t mean you have to live a second-class lifestyle.

The Holy Spirit used Ps Saras in such a powerful way over just one weekend, the direction of the church was made so much clearer. Ps Ryan and the leaders as well as the member were all spurred to bring church to another level. Now the church is more united and together than ever before, we’re expecting more that what we did before. We are all praying and believing that we will hit 100 members by August of 2010, I know in my spirit that this can happen. Building church is really exciting!

In the last week of May, we as a leadership of Harvest Generation Church, went down to Singapore to attend Asia Conference organized and hosted by City Harvest Church. We had the privilege to listen to great men of God speak, people like Rev. Dr. Cho Yonggi, Dr Reinhard Bonnke, Dr. A.R. Bernard, Dr. Phil Pringle, Dr Lee Young-Hoon, John Avanzini, Steve Munsey and of course Rev. Dr. Kong Hee himself. Our spirits were all so drawn towards what God had to say through them.

Before the trip I told Carol, “When we go down to Singapore, let’s break our mindset and buy something nice from one of Rev. Dr. Kong Hee’s boutiques, be it Ed Hardy, Christian Audigier or whatever”. So she happily agreed. We took out some money from our wedding savings and converted it over to Singapore Dollars.

When we were at the conference, the money we brought was not spent on buying stuff. At every session, speakers like John Avanzini kept on challenging the people give an offering beyond even what we can afford. Me and Carol were very deeply convicted in our hearts, so we gave amounts that we’ve never given before. It was difficult, but it was a breakthrough for us. Every other leader were also challenged to sow, and they did!

God is no man’s debtor, even as we sowed, God supplied all our needs and even our wants! At the end of the trip, although we sowed almost all our money into the offering during the conference, Carol came back to Malaysia with an Ed Hardy top, a pair of Laguna Beach jeans and a pair of Miss Me jeans. I came back with an Ed Hardy t-shirt and 2 Christian Audigier t-shirts. We paid for everything without owing anybody or and credit card any money, and we’re not living in lack.

This is first time that me and Carol bought these kind of stuff together because we use to not be able to afford it. It wasn’t only me and Carol that experienced this, all the core leaders came back with funky attire. Below is the picture of me and Carol in the our first Ed Hardy attire which we bought together in a single receipt. This is my fifth testimony of God’s providence, but it doesn’t stop there also.


Asia Conference was a life changing experience for us as a church as well as individually. We’ve learnt to love each other more, we are even more united than ever before, learnt to sow more than ever before, and we learnt to treasure even more what matters most for building church and our lives as well; Love the Holy Spirit, Love the Word of God! Pray, Pray, Pray!

When we were back in Malaysia, the atmosphere of our church really changed. The Holy Spirit moved even more powerfully in our prayer meetings and services than before. Now every week, we just can’t wait to get to cell meetings, prayer meetings and church services to see and experience what God has in store for us. The leadership is so aligned and united than ever before.

Now we move to the month of June, I was pleasantly surprised that the same couple who blessed me with the Blackberry earlier this year heard that my laptop and desktop had died on me. A little history, earlier this year, my laptop and my desktop just committed suicide, both couldn’t function properly because suspected that lightning struck it. So they asked me, “What laptop do you want?”. I was a bit reluctant to answer because the laptop that I’ve been trying to save for was quite high-end and expensive. So I told them I needed some time to think it through.

In my heart I was bombarded with the poor-man mentality of “Just take the second best of what you actually want, just settle with the basic of the basic”. But I know I will not be happy with just getting any Dell or HP laptops. So I prayed and Holy Spirit convicted my heart by asking me “What do you really want, Aaron?”. The question is what do I WANT, not what do I NEED. I already knew in my heart what I really wanted.

After a few days thinking and prying through, I gave this couple a call to thank them for their generosity. Then they said to me over the phone, “Just choose ANY laptop you want that you think is best for you, don’t worry about the price. Me and aunty, we want to bless you with it”. So I mustered up all the courage in my heart, I just said “Well, ummm… My dream laptop is the MacBook Pro”… But with a slight doubt in my heart I continued by saying “Is that ok with you both?”. The couple replied me saying “Yes, just get that one, don’t worry about the price”. Again, I was left awestruck.. I was gonna get the laptop of my dreams!

About half a year back, I was at a Mac Reseller store in Pavilion KL with Carol and we saw the MacBook Pro which was just released at that time. I just turned to her and said “Let’s pray and believe that one day we will have this”. Then she said “Yeah, the MacBook Pro would be very useful for your music and the iMac would be very nice for decoration in our home next time”. It was a bit of a ‘duh’ moment when she said ‘decoration’ but I am very happy guy to have a girlfriend that believes with me for not only spiritual and ministry growth, but even the quality of our lives. So I said a simple prayer together with her and we just believed that it will happen.

So on the 8th of June, 2010, I got my MacBook, Pro, 15 inch, Intel Core i7 processor and everything was paid with cash! No loans, no credit card debts! Praise God! This is yet another testimony of God’s providence over me and Carol’s life. I am proud to testify that both of us have not held back and in our giving, be it tithes and offering, or just blessing the people around us, even when we were financially tight. God has really added so much to our lives, more than what we can even imagine. Below are the pictures of my new MacBook Pro. This is my sixth testimony of God’s providence.


Other things that happened in the month of May and June, I did some exhaust upgrades due to my faulty muffler box which had a hole and some bodykit work on my car because the current bodykit at that time was cracking already due to age. Below are the pictures of some of my exhaust upgrade work in-progress and final product at AH Exhaust, USJ 1. I was very satisfied with the quality and the sound of my muffler is superb!


Below are the pictures of the latest bodykit work in-progress.




The pictures of the final product of my car bodykit work will be uploaded soon.

Before I end, I just want to say that God is indeed so faithful. He is a God that will never give us things that are second best, but it is our part to keep sowing, keep believing, ask specifically and keep expecting. I can confidently say that God has added so many things in my life that I once thought I can never have.

Above all these material things that God has blessed me with, the greatest thing that God has given to me is my relationship with Carol. Next to God, the closest person to you is your girlfriend, fiancĂ© or wife. I’m glad that God has placed such a God-fearing, Bible loving, Spirit filled, loving, caring, supportive and of course, extremely beautiful girl in my life. Carol is my girlfriend you know, don’t play-play ah!

This is my seventh testimony of God’s providence in 2010. Can’t wait to marry her... soon =)

That’s all for today, people~! God Bless and have a great day ahead!