Counting God's Blessings
In Retrospect and
Looking Ahead

Devotionals -- Recalling the Past

Week 1 (1984-89) - English / 中文
Week 2 (1989-94) - English / 中文
Week 3 (1994-99) - English / 中文
Week 4 (1999-04) - English / 中文
Week 5 (2004-09) - English / 中文

^{Elder Joseph Lee}

As we celebrate the 25th anniversary of RCCC, I would like to highlight several key events from 1994-1999 and to reflect on the spiritual lessons we learnt so that we can encourage one another as we look forward to the future.

1. Calling of Pastor Setiawan to be our Senior Pastor in 1998.  Since Pastor Chen’s departure in late 1994, the church had been in search of a senior pastor to shepherd the Mandarin speaking congregation.  Although Pastor Setiawan was aware of RCCC’s pastoral opening in 1996, he did not apply for the position.  During these 4 long years when we only had an English Pastor (Pastor Jireh) to minister to the entire church, Mandarin speaking members became anxious, frustrated and restless, a situation not too dissimilar to the one we are in now.  However, God has His timing. As we continued to look up to Him and humbled ourselves before Him, He opened the door and led Pastor Setiawan to our midst when he received the letter from our church the second time 2 years later.  God taught us to be patient and wait upon Him.

2. Purchase of the new church site.  Our church’s desire to relocate started shortly after it moved into the Wake Forest Road building in 1988.  However, opinions varied as to the optimal location (Cary vs Raleigh) and approach (build new facility vs buy existing building).  After examining multiple sites throughout the Triangle for many years without success, we were made aware of the availability of the current site in 1999.  It is exciting to experience, when God opens the door, how our congregation came together quickly to purchase the land and build the facility.

3. Initiation of Cantonese Ministry.  The desire and need to reach out to Cantonese speaking non-believers has been expressed by several members in mid to late 90’s.  Shortly after his arrival, Pastor Setiawan encouraged and challenged several core families to get out of the “comfort zone” and put their faith in God to accomplish the vision.  After much prayer and preparation and with the loving support of the Mandarin speaking congregation, consecutive Cantonese translation was instituted during Mandarin worship service in 1999.  This arrangement lasted till 2004 when a separate Cantonese worship service began after Pastor Yip had started his ministry at RCCC a year earlier.

As Henry T Blackaby said in his book Experiencing God, “When we obey God, He will accomplish through us what He has purposed to do.  When God does something through our life that only He can do, we will come to know Him more intimately.”  When a God-sized assignment comes, we have to trust and obey what He says He will do.  He is the one who accomplishes the assignment, but He does it through us so that we will come to know Him better and be blessed in the process.  We can see in Moses’ life that he began to experience the full nature of God in the act of obedience and out of his comfort zone.  There are many examples in the book of Exodus of God speaking to Moses, Moses obeying, and God accomplishing what He purposed to do (Exodus 7:1-6, 8:16-19, 17:1-7).  Jesus also emphasized the importance of obedience to God the Father in his teachings to his disciples.  Being obedient to God’s commands is a manifestation of our love to Him (John 14:15-23).  As prophet Samuel said, “To obey is better than sacrifice and to heed is better than the fat of rams” (1 Samuel 15:22).

 As we enter the 2nd quarter century of our church history, we’ll undoubtedly face trials of various kinds. Some will be similar to what we have experienced in the past; others will be new and different.  Let’s not forget our God is faithful and loving.  How He has blessed and led us in the first 25 years, He will continue to do so if we can humble ourselves before Him, trust Him and obey Him.  Amen.