Empowering Myanmar Through Faith: A Testimony of Miracles

It is my privilege to invite you to today's sermon podcast.

I have made the Apostle Paul's prayer request my own.

When he states in Ephesians 6.19, Pray also for me, that whenever I open my

mouth, the words may be given to me, so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel.

May today's sermon come alive to you and aid you in your understanding of God's

plan for your life. Thank you, Pastor.

Is my joy to introduce Jubilee to you.

Many of you have known him. He's been here before. We've supported ministry for a number of years.

We have a quilt here that was done by Eula Dunn, who was one of her last ones

that she did, and she gave it and said, you use this. And so we're using it.

It's going to be in our district convention and assembly,

and he'll be up on the he'll be there in reality and we'll also have a big picture

of it in the auditorium for his presentation on Wednesday night in your bulletin

there are two things that Jubilee is sharing with us one is an updated Hi Kids Myanmar.

And it tells you a lot about the Mission Challenge for Children and Youth.

This year expanded to 24 countries around the world.

It began with one camp for children and youth in Myanmar.

And God has blessed it. The camps alone will have over probably 25,000 this

year attending, even though they have to do it in smaller groups than before.

And last year there were 22,000 children, youth, who professed to meet God in their lives.

And that's a tremendous thing.

Jubilee is going to share a little bit toward the end about schools of hope.

Eighty percent of their children have no school to go to.

Many of them have been bombed and burned and destroyed. and they're in the midst

of civil war where they're killing each other.

It's a terrible situation. But in the midst of that, High Kids has developed School of Hope.

School of Hope. And these have spread this past year into 19 areas of the country,

110 locations, and they're hoping for at least 150 locations starting in June of this year.

You can look in your bulletins, and this, you'll see a map of where those have

been, and they hope to place them in many other places across the country.

Now, it isn't like any school you've ever attended, I'm sure.

It is small, and you'll see some of the pictures on the other side of this insert,

and you can see how big they get.

They don't go beyond 20 students.

And there's a reason for that, because...

In the fighting and so forth, schools are often targeted. And so many children

can be killed at one time in that kind of situation. So they are meeting in

homes and smaller places to protect the children.

And last year they graduated from completing academic work for their grade,

2,200. They want to graduate at least 3,000 this coming year.

So what does it cost?

The cost is unbelievable. It's $25 for an entire year for one child,

entire school year, 10 months.

Can you believe that? It's because anyone that gives from the outside is supporting

training for the teachers of those classes and also for curriculum.

They take care of all the other stuff, food, a place, the volunteers to actually

do the teaching and so forth.

And the high kids clubs oversees that and administrates those schools across the country.

I don't know where you can get a better bang for the dollar these days.

It goes a long ways. Without further ado, friend of many, many years now,

we're getting up into the quarter century mark here or beyond.

Jubilee, thank you for coming for me and Mark. Challenges this morning.

Tell us what God is doing. in that wonderful place.

Thank you, thank you I'm so glad that I could be here For me,

this is back into heaven again,

You might not realize what is life in other parts of the world Especially in my country.

So we live under fear and no freedom at all and our daily news is about killing each other.

And no future economic system is collapsed.

So we do not have a government. Education system is collapsed.

But it is really amazing work that the Lord has done in Myanmar.

All the records that Robert has shared were not the work that we are doing.

All these ministries were accomplished by your prayer support,

your financial support.

We are accomplished.

We do accomplish together this mission. Because without your prayer,

I will not be here today even.

Because 90% of visas for Myanmar's season are rejected this day.

Because nearly 60 millions of people want to leave the country in any possible

way because living in our country is waiting for the destruction day that might come any time.

We hear airs fright, bombing, gun shooting, artillery shell drum.

So we cannot travel place to places But today, I would like to bring a message

About how a living church survives The power of a living church.

Regardless of all these problems today, I would like to share about how Myanmar churches are growing.

How the Lord is making wonderful miracles.

And how the Lord protects His people. How the Lord nurtures and how the Lord

bless churches in Myanmar.

Regardless of all problems we went through, Church of the Nazarene grows three

times bigger right now. Amen.

Ten years ago, we had only 40 local churches in two districts.

Today, we have five districts. Hallelujah!

We have 150 local churches more. Amen?

This year, since six months ago, we launched a new ministry.

We call it Myanmar Diaspora Ministry.

So I am assigned as a coordinator for Southeast Asia Field.

So since six months ago, we started.

Now we have seven churches in Thailand. Amen?

Most of them are in refugee camp.

So that is the church that I want to share about. The church is a spiritual powerhouse.

Because Acts 1, verse 8 says, But you will receive the power when the Holy Spirit comes on you.

Acts 1:8

Those who receive Jesus Christ as your own personal Savior, you like or not,

you receive the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen?

The Spirit of God never left you. The Spirit of God gives you a power to love,

a power to pray, a power to sing a song, a power to support,

a power to care, a power to...

Even go to the most difficult places.

So look at all the services we offer around in this church.

All these come from the Lord. All these are the gift of the Holy Spirit and

the talent that God has given us.

So there is no other organization, such a powerhouse bigger than the church itself.

Look at this is the picture of hydraulic powerhouse in Myanmar.

So, so many water run through so many pipelines, and each pipeline will run the dynamo.

And all this power come together, and this powerhouse collect all this power

and then distribute to a bigger capacity.

The same thing when we come to the church.

We are here bringing all our little power that the Lord has given us.

Not even little, great power the Lord has given each, every one of us.

And from here, when we serve God together, so many things could happen.

Amen? That is the story of churches in Myanmar.

Number one, what are the characteristics of this, the power of the church?

The living church, one of the characteristics, number one, is the living church

grew through sufferings.

If we look at Matthew 16, verse 18, And I tell you that you are Peter,

Matthew 16:18

and on this rock I will build my church, and the gaze of hate will not overcome it.

The word hate is all about suffering. We went through this suffering in Myanmar.

Look at the civil war took place for the past four years.

We really went through a lot of suffering.

But all this suffering never able to stop our growth as a church of God.

Amen. So recently we have the worst or the greatest earthquake ever happened

in Myanmar, 7.7 magnitude.

It destroyed 150,000 of houses.

And we lost 30,000 people totally lost all their houses.

And nearly 10 people died. But our military news only broadcasts,

you know, that number is just around 4,000.

But three more people die.

But everything is, you know, misinformation in communist country.

So we went through all this suffering.

But we not only survived, we grew. If you look at Myanmar history,

that is, 25 millions of our people are right now in a humanitarian crisis.

We do not have food to eat.

Economic system collapsed. Jobless population is everywhere.

All foreign companies withdraw. All the companies in the country collapsed.

25 millions of our people are suffering and 15 millions of our people left the country.

I really want to stay and live in the U.S. Because this is heaven already.

So the definition of heaven for Myanmar is we will not suffer persecutions.

We will have enough food. That is the definition of heaven.

So in the U.S., you have beyond our heaven. Amen.

So, United States of America is the dream of everyone in Myanmar.

They really want to come and they don't want to go back home.

But for me, I always said, if I do not go back home, it will contradict the faith that I have.

That Myanmar will become a Christian nation in the next 50 years. Amen.

We have to reach and disciple 20 millions of people for Christ The Christian

population in Myanmar is only 4 million.

We need to grow another 16 million to have 20 million so that this nation will

become a Christian nation, a mission nation for Asia.

Because when I look around our church, especially Christians.

Myanmar Christians are the best candidates for world mission because we suffered

200 years of persecution for being a Christian.

We survived 75 years of communists and dictatorship control.

We stand firm in our faith.

Who else will be better candidates for the mission of God?

That is what I give to every young children in Myanmar. we are called to serve,

not only in this country, but also around the world.

One day, we will have so many missionaries around the world.

That is the dream because we, a living church, we survive through suffering

and the Lord can use us mightily. Amen?

You look at, there is the earthquake situations. That is just one of the photos I took.

I was able to too and last week we sent a team to do relief work thank you for

your support we were able to help nearly 4,000 families,

we were able to help bring help and relief work to 1,000 children and 500 parents adults,

so we distribute rice cooking well and then we also help Our leader who lost

all their home because of this, and then we helped.

Our help was very little, but that really encouraged them. And they received

your support with cheer.

Because we know that even though our government do not care us,

we understand that there are so many people around the world who care us.

So your support really helped to give comfort to so many people in Myanmar.

So now we are preparing to do trauma care and counseling for children.

So we will continue helping so many children in need in this particular epic center of Atkwik.

Because we need to help 150,000 families who lost properties and life.

A living church develops people for ministry opportunities.

So many times in the church, we believe ministry belongs to a professional trained pastor.

But what we realize is ministry of God is not a professional ministry.

It is dependent ministry on the Holy Spirit.

Without the power of the Holy Spirit, we can't do much.

But with the Spirit of God, we can do everything.

Amen? That is what our Bible said.

We look at Acts chapter 16. We see the story of Lydia.

Acts 16 · chapter mention

Paul was preparing to go to inland mission in Asia Minor, but the Spirit of

God stopped him to go there.

The Spirit of God did not allow him to go to Asia Minor, but he saw a dream

and a vision from Macedonia call.

And then he did not know where to

go because he'd never been in that place but the Spirit of the Lord led him

to Macedonia and he arrived to Philippians and then he met women called Lydia

who was praying outside with some few women and Paul preached and she accepted not only she accepted,

she brought her whole family and her whole family come to Christ not only that,

she invited Paul and Silas and Timothy to our home to start the best local church in New Testament,

the church of Philippians.

Philippians were the church who support two times and even sent a servant to

see Paul, how he was doing in Rome.

None of other churches support like the church of Philippians.

That is the picture of the church that we want to see in Myanmar and Southeast Asia.

We call it Lydia Mission.

So I was invited to refugees six months ago.

I met the two ladies there, and they both were refugees.

One of the ladies from the middle, she was there in a refugee camp for 30 years.

She was waiting to go to another country, but her visa was not granted.

And then the other one, she was a university, highly trained university graduate.

And she is engineer, electrical engineer.

She has a good pay salary while she was in Myanmar.

But because she protests for military coup way back in 2021,

and her life was at risk, so she ran to cross the border and live in Thailand

and stay in refugees camp. I met them.

I preached there. and encourage them to start their small group ministry.

Last March, I brought my DS, my former disciple. Now he is a DS. I'm his disciple now.

And so I brought my DS, South End District's Repentant, to see all this ministry

because South End District did not want to adapt this overseas mission,

refugee mission that might compromise the problem could come to Myanmar churches.

But I told to my DS, DS, if the Lord say yes, read the story of Peter.

Lord, these are unclean. I never eat this stuff, you know.

But God's Spirit say, if the Lord say holy, why do you say it is unholy food?

It will compromise our mission

but I said the Lord is leading us there

is a huge potential mission in diaspora we

can plant a lot of churches because 10 millions of Myanmar people are right

now living in Thailand and only 2 millions of them are registered by the government

so 7 millions of Myanmar people who are living in Thailand are unregistered

I said This is a potential mission field.

We don't have to go. There are so many people we could train.

And then I equipped them for the past three months. They started two local churches.

So that was the digression of two local churches in one place with our DS.

Last March, before I come here. Praise the Lord.

Now they plant two more churches within a month. Amen? Let's give our hands.

They are not educated. They are not even the other one never being in school.

She could not write. She could not read.

But we developed mobile education programs. So we are now giving online class.

So they are now taking court of study to become a Nazarene pastor.

So my philosophy is we do not wait to start the ministry until they graduate

from Bible college or seminary.

Those who are called by God, they can go and start the ministry and we will

provide education because the Spirit of God can mentor them and train them,

teach them everything what the Lord Jesus wants them to know. Amen.

So now we have 10 students and we plant new church in Japan through Myanmar migrants.

One church in South Korea. and I hope we will plant more churches in USA because

a lot of Myanmar people keep coming from refugee camps.

Why don't we plant Myanmar churches in USA too?

There's a great opportunity.

So that is how the Lord bless. We develop people for ministry opportunities

and the people are called by God and many churches are planted.

So we want to build a body of Christ that is transformed by the Holy Spirit,

not transformed by our culture, not transformed by the Constitution we do have,

but transformed by the Holy Spirit.

Because the church belong to God and let the Holy Spirit reign and control over us.

So that is, I think, every now in our essential book, A church is a cluster

of believers not building our property anymore.

So we have to build people. I have a great dream in Myanmar.

Many young people will become a minister of God. So we are providing a lot of

training for young people.

Because the Lord can call them.

If the Lord has called Samuel at the age of seven, The Lord has called Timothy, Titus, Joseph, David.

Look it. They all were called by God when they were teenagers.

I want to see more teenagers in ministry.

They're really passionate. Because in the ministry, they experience God and

their behavior and lifestyle has changed through the transformation of the Holy Spirit.

So many times we believe a life of a young boy or girl could be transformed by education.

But what I have seen in my country, only the Holy Spirit can change their attitude.

Only God can change and transform their life in a better way than any education

system we do have. Praise God.

So even though we have only probably 20% of children can go to school,

80% of our children cannot go to school this time, but we do believe the Holy

Spirit can educate them.

That's why a living church equipped next generation for Christ.

As a church, we really have to equip next generation, next generations.

If we look at Matthew 18, Jesus said, Anything you do to this little one,

you are doing to me. Jesus represents.

Jesus allows children to represent Him.

Anything we do to children, we do to Jesus.

And Jesus also said, if we look at this, Jesus really value.

Jesus really allowed to get involved children in His ministry.

Traditionally, it was impossible to go to Rabbi while He was preaching,

but Jesus accept children.

So, when the disciples were fighting who is going to be the greatest one in

heaven, and Jesus brought a little child and said.

Him in their middle. And then he said, unless you become light little one,

you will never go to heaven.

So brother and sister, the church, we really have to equip and invest on children.

We have to trust upon children.

While I was 13, I received Jesus Christ.

And as soon as I accept Christ, the Holy Spirit filled me.

And I was empowered by the Spirit of God. My father was alcoholic.

My father was a busy mom for eight children.

And they were fighting so often. And I start sharing the gospel to my sibling.

We start family devotion. If our parents are fighting in the kitchen,

we will be worshiping in a sitting room.

If they're fighting in a sitting room, we will be worshiping in the kitchen.

My father was alcoholic. I said, Dad, if you go out and drink alcohol.

It is very difficult for us. We have to look after you so often because you could not make home.

So we have to look for you.

Can I serve you at home so you can drink alcohol? I can share about God.

And then my father agreed. So I served alcohol. I served him and I preached him.

It took one month and then later on my father said, Son, I feel pity on you

because, you know, you are holier than me.

You are better than me. I better go to camp.

And he decided to go to Christian camp and he received Christ.

And that was the year we start a Christian family journey way back in 1986, 1989.

I was only 13 years. I want to see every child in Myanmar to experience the

God that I have experienced when I was 13 years.

I really long for those moments.

Brother and sister, when I prepared

to become a pastor, I went to Bible college and all this power gone.

I was trained and educated in a very Western theological training.

I went to Calvinist Bible College.

And then after I graduated from Calvinist College, I went to APNTS.

And there I graduated to become a Nazian pastor.

What I mean, I really miss the moment how the Holy Spirit empowered me during

those years when I was a teenager.

That is the reason we develop a lot of children ministry.

A lot of children ministry. That is one of our School of Hope program.

That is our school of hope.

After a military coup, civil war, children cannot go to school.

A lot of children suffer domestic violence, domestic abuse, sexual abuse,

physical abuse, mental abuse, because they are not allowed to go out.

But at home, very tiny home, so children suffer a lot. So we want to create

a place where children are safe and rejoice.

So we develop this school program. So minimum number of children are 12,

maximum 20, not more than that.

So we opened this school in many homes, 110 homes.

And through our Hope of School program, thousands of children come to Christ.

Not only that, we receive nearly 800 parents come to Christ because they are

seeing the transformation life of their children and the transformation of their

children's life transformed their life. So many parents come to Christ.

One of parents' testimony I want to share, she said, thank you for opening a

school of hope in our village.

Because of this school of hope, my son and my daughter have received Jesus Christ.

Their life has been changed. I really want the same life that they have.

Then I went and learned along with them.

And then I received Jesus Christ at the school of hope.

How many parents will be?

So brother and sister, may I bring.

May the Lord make you grow through suffering and challenges in life.

May the Lord call you into ministry opportunity wherever you are.

May the Lord help you to equip next generation for Christ. Amen.

Thank you. I want to thank you for joining today's sermon podcast.

You can find a copy of today's sermon as well as other sermons and the sermon

outline from today on our church's website,

www.mvcnaz.org It is my prayer also that you will seek out a church home that

recognizes the authority of the Bible.