A Christian Response To Covid-19 Pandemic

Rev Albert Kang speaking online

The Covid-19 virus or now scientifically referred to as SARS-CoV-2 is affecting millions around the globe. At the time of this writing, the news that came from the USA is not good at all – the number of people infected has surpassed that of China. In fact, on 11 March 2020, the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 to be a pandemic.

Grace and I have to observe the Movement Control Order (MCO) implemented by the Malaysian government. After staying home for 12 days, we are feeling a little like caged animals. There are still two more weeks of MCO to obey. 

Despite how we are feeling, it is better to maintain the physical distance from all our brothers and sisters in the Church until this crisis is over. Physical distance does not mean that we no longer can socialize. 

We are glad to be able to connect through the internet and maintain our social interactions with each other. How should we as believers and disciples of Christ respond to this pandemic?

1. Time to Build Your Faith – The Lord is still in control of this world and its situation. We should never succumb to fear because “God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.” (Psalm 46:1). In the Gospels, there are numerous records of the disciples being afraid and the response from our Lord Jesus was always for them to fear not. 

Today, amid this difficulty, we, the modern disciples of Christ, have to do the same – we are to “fear not”. Apply the law of displacement by displacing the feeling of anxiety with the powerful Word of God. 

As you read the Bible, the Holy Spirit will help you to comprehend the deeper meaning of the truth of God. When fear shows up, your faith that has been greatly enhanced by God’s Word, will hit it like an avalanche. Not even death will frighten you because the promise of God cannot be denied – when you have eternal life, what can anybody do to you?

2. Time to Pray – Paul the Apostle challenges us in Ephesians 6:18 to pray at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. 

The power of prayer lies in you confessing your sins to your loved ones who are now living together with you in the same residence. With a clear conscience, you will be able to pray with power and authority for one another and even receive the healing you need. 

The prayer of a righteous person has great power indeed. Begin to pray also for the people affected by this pandemic especially the patients to get well and medical personnel who have been working overtime to take care of the patients.

3. Time to Practice Physical Distancing – As many who have been to our Church, know that how the brothers and sisters in Faithline Church are very loving and really enjoy socializing after church services and cell meetings.  

However, in this time of crisis, you can continue to socialize with each other through the internet. For the last few weeks, we have been using a video-conferencing app to meet online. 

The Movement Control Order (MCO) cannot control our spirits and souls to engage with another person and the best part is that during our online worship, the Holy Spirit is in every home and saturating us with His presence. The Word of God continues to touch lives and many have gone on a soul-searching mission while having more time for themselves and their loved ones.

4. Time to Exercise Good Hygiene – I heard this idiom “Cleanliness is Godliness” even before I knew God. Now is the time to bring this idiom to work for everyone. The advice that is coming across loud and clear is for you to wash your hands regularly with soap and water. The scientists are thrilled by what this simple soap-and-water could do to the virus. It actually kills the virus. You can use alcohol-based hand rub if soap and water are temporally not available. 

It’s a good practice to cover your nose and mouth with a disposable tissue and if you have to sneeze or cough, flex elbow when you do. Don’t touch your face, especially your eyes, nose, and mouth. If you have to go out, put on a mask, carry a small bottle of disinfectant, and be sure to stay at least one meter or three feet from anyone. Please remember that the infected person may look perfectly healthy and still be able to infect you. Be responsible and stay home and self-isolate from others, especially when you are not feeling well.

Finally, remember that you have been given this privilege to spend more time with God. Your days of busy-ness are being put on hold for a while. Learn to praise and worship God no matter how tough this time might be. 

Learn to be thankful to Him for the provision that He has given you. If you are the one preparing all the meals, thank the Lord for giving you the creativity and strength to churn out all these wonderful meals. 

If you are one eating, then thank God for this blessing and be sure to thank the one who is cooking. In all things, be patient and forgiving. Always be kind to one another. If you are upset, instead of verbalizing with harsh words, go to your prayer closet and talk to God. 

May the Lord bless you and prosper your soul as you spend time with Him.

Rev Albert Kang

Lead Pastor 

FaithLine International Ministries

Staring At Your Mountain

Your problems and worries may be like a big mountain before you. You have to make a definite decision to move your mountain. You may think that it is impossible. It is possible and many other believers, who have bigger problems and bigger mountains than yours, have proven it. They have successfully moved their mountains by their faith in the promises of God. Many of them are doing this miracle daily.

Staring at your mountain will not get it to disappear. Complaining about your mountain will not move it. Scolding others because of the mountain will not work either. The only way is for you to muster your faith and speak to the mountain.

"Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you." [Matthew 17:20]

You have to command it to go in the mighty name of Jesus. That's a decision you must make for yourself. God is waiting for you to make that decision. The power to move your mountain is readily available for you the moment you decide to take that step of faith.

"Everything is possible for one who believes." [Mark 9:23]

Albert Kang

Becoming the Person that God wants You to be!

No one can stop you from becoming the person that God wants you to be... except you. 

King Saul was appointed by God to be the first king of Israel. He did not serve God accordingly and decided to be "the person that he personally wanted to be" (1 Samuel 15).  That was when all the blessings stopped and his calling as the king was passed on to a young shepherd boy named David. 

It's important to know your calling and be faithful at what God has called you to do and to become. 

No matter how famous or popular you have become, obedience is still the key to God's heart. 

It is only in pursuing after the will of God in your life that you'll find true spiritual fulfillment and joy of service. 

Rev Albert Kang

Not Everything Under My Control

I have this constant fear about giving the impression that as a pastor, I have everything under control. I am afraid that those who hear me preached might think that I have such a connection to heaven so much so that I have all the answers. Nothing is further from the truth. 

There are days when my faith got shaken. Time and time again, I am placed in a waiting mode that I wonder what God is going to do. Yes, I do get impatient with God and if I had my way, I would have taken off running. But I have learned that it would be absolutely foolish and futile if I were to do that. 

Like every child of God, I am making my fair shares of mistakes, using my fair shares of doubt, and letting the Lord down more regularly than I like. However, one thing I lean heavily upon, in spite of my weakness, is the abundance of God's grace and mercy. His hands of restoration are always there to put me back on my feet whenever I cry out to Him. I am forever grateful that when I am weak, I have One who is strong. Thank you, Jesus, for loving me, in spite of me. 

Pastor Albert Kang

The Toughest Sermon To Prepare

Preparing a sermon is easy and yet it is not. It's easy because the Holy Spirit is actively helping me to prepare it. It is tough, because the same Holy Spirit is convicting me of the very things I would be admonishing others to do or not to do.

For example, the sermon that I preached last Sunday at High Praise Church. After the service, most comments from the congregation were good because it spoke to their hearts. Even Grace said it was a good sermon because it ministered to her. However, my dear wife knew the 'anguish of soul' that I had to go through just to get this sermon out. Let me explain - the sermon was about becoming a Grace Giver. 

Apparently, the topic was not a problem because having been a recipient of God's grace,it should be an easy task to produce an acceptable sermon. As the sermon preparation progressed, my heart became heavier and heavier. The Holy Spirit was not telling me what to say to the congregation but was dealing with the discrepancies in my own life. Every word that I penned became sharp arrow of conviction. There were so many long pauses for prayer in between the preparation, so much so, that it took a much longer time to complete the sermon.

Being a recipient of God's grace many times over, I should be the most gracious person. The Holy Spirit showed that it was not the case - I was seldom as gracious as I should be. In many relational encounters, my inner spirit was more adversarial and not at all loving. It was warlike and lacked the ingredients for peace. It was only through self-control, social graces and the ability to mask this innate struggle that made me looked and sounded like a peace-loving person. The Holy Spirit had nothing to do with pretense and fake stuffs. 

The danger of having pretended for a long time was that I somehow thought the pretense was the genuine product. It was like a story that I heard in Cambodia about the Cambodians drinking fake whisky of a particular brand for so many years that when the real whisky arrived, they rejected it. 

This was not the first time that the Holy Spirit used my own sermons to convict me of sins or mistakes in my life. I remember one occasion that I had to pull off the highway so that I could weep and repent. It happened after listening to the recording of my own sermon about the difference between a 'driven person' and a 'called person'. King Saul was such a 'driven' man that he failed in fulfilling his call to be the leader of Israel. David, on the hand, was a 'called' man who took his call seriously. Even though he made many mistakes and committed serious sins, he always returned to His God for help. Acknowledgement and repentance were the first steps David took to receive forgiveness and then to his spiritual recovery. Driving that drive, the Holy Spirit revealed that my 'driven' life had to be replaced. I had wanted my church to become a mega-church that I stopped at nothing to achieve it. The Lord was not happy about aht and He wanted me to repent of that. Alone in the car, by the side of a busy highway, I sought His forgiveness.

It was because of God's grace that He allowed the Holy Spirit to reveal the present discrepancy. God had nothing to do with my pretense and wanted to remove the false display of peaceful attitude, intentions and motives. They had to be genuine or God could not do a deeper work in my life. 

I should not live a lie any more. This hypocrisy had to be overwhelmed by truth. His grace and mercy provided that revelation of truth which made it impossible for me to hide behind any excuses. The light of His loving truth was powerful. It shone through every dark corner of hypocrisy and self-deception. 

It was humbling but not humiliating. It was redeeming and not destructive. It a surrendering of one's will to the One whose will provides a much better proposition. It was a confession unto the grace of God and not the judgement of God. 

He had reprimanded me so that I could be a better servant. He had accepted me as who I was when He saved me but now He is changing me to be like His Son. The conviction was not for the purpose of crushing my spirit but transforming it. 

This overpowering experience does not mean that the Holy Spirit is done with me. No, He is not leaving me alone. Sad would be that day if He would no longer speak because I no longer have the capacity to listen. As my relationship with Him is dynamic, He will continue to guide, correct and adjust me on my pilgrimage. The journey of being more like Christ continues. 

The grace provided is also dynamic and it will carry me through. This is a good feeling. I know that my Redeemer cares enough to teach and guide me. I am thankful that my experience of His grace is not just at the point of my salvation but an ongoing experience that brings joy of transformation. 

"Dear friends, we are already God's children, but He has not yet shown us what we will be like when Christ appears. But we know that we will be like Him, for we will see Him as He really is." (1 John 3:2)

Rev Albert Kang
20 August 2012

Too Many Things?

God has created many things in the universe. Everything has a different value to different people. It is up to us to evaluate whether it is the thing that we are called to encounter.

We are not expected to experience every single thing but only those that are related to God's plan for our lives. God gives us wisdom so that we are able to make appropriate choices of the things that we need to experience and encounter.

To be greedy for every thing will cause us to loose focus on those important things that we are supposed to do.

Remember, people fail in their God-given assignments not because they are not pursuing their goals. They fail because they are pursuing too many unrelated goals. They ultimately loose focus on those things that are crucial to their God-given dream and waste their lives on empty pursuits.

Rev Albert Kang

Moving On Into Your Future

Moving On Into Your Future

Stop staring at the closed doors. 

Stop viewing your life through the rear view mirror. 

Stop running backward with eyes on your past. 

Stop chaining your future with your past. 

Stop trying to be the person that you were in the past but start becoming the person that God wants you to be - now and for the future. 

God was there for you in your past but those seasons are now over. Whether your past was good or bad, God does not want you to dwell there. He has new seasons for you.

Only by living in the present and facing the future, you will be able to become the person that God wants you to be. 

Move on, Egypt is behind you. The wilderness is behind you. Time to move on to the Promised Land. 

Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:13-14)

Rev Albert Kang