We believe that God wants to heal and transform us so that we can live healthy and blessed lives in order to help others more effectively. This statement of belief is the heartbeat of Audacity Malaysia. This is why we are who we are. This gets us up in the morning and this gets us burning the midnight oil.
Right at the birth of the church, we heard God said, “The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly” (John 10:10). The abundant life that Christ came to give us has been our focus for the last 16 years.
We understand that a genuine encounter with the living Christ leaves us transformed for the better. Whether it is from flakiness to stability as we see in the apostle Peter or from doubt to faith in Thomas or from greed to generosity in Zacchaeus, the consistent testimony of Scriptures is that knowing Jesus is a journey to a better us.
It is a journey that every member at Audacity Malaysia is invited and enabled to take. For us, Jesus is alive and the Holy Spirit is actively at work to transform the people of God. The church is the community where personal growth takes place.
It is not possible to follow Jesus without being deeply impacted and undeniably transformed.
Hence, every believer must have a story of the changes that God wrought in him. The transformed life is the loudest testimony that God is more than a knowledge to be gained, that Scriptures are more than words to be memorised and the Cross is more than history.
My personal story has been that of rejection, insecurity and performance orientation to that of peace and freedom. For the longest time, I feared the judgment of man and struggled with comparison. Much of my earlier journey comprised hours of personal prayer and Bible reading, sometimes late into the night or rather early morning where I deeply encountered Jesus. It has been a long journey of inner healing and renewal of the mind but one that leaves me deeply grateful for the love and keenly aware of the power of God. Without such transformation, it is not possible to do the ministry that God called me to for the last 25 years.
I am continually amazed by the relentless faithfulness and grace of God that continually pursue us. It is not that we are worthy and it certainly not because we are smart. We are often too ignorant and sometimes too proud to understand the bondages in our hearts and the foolishness of our minds. Still, Jesus is determined to set us free from the effects of sins and to turn our curses into blessings.
The grace of God compels our transformation, the shedding of our old man. The love of God insists on blessing us, clothing us with acceptance and authority (Luke 11:22). We are thus re-created in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17).
In transforming us for the better, we are made ‘transformers’ for others. In blessing us, God turns us into ‘blessors’ to others. Through us, our families and friends are to be blessed. From the very beginning, this has been the intention of God, that his people will be a blessing.
“I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing”.
Genesis 12:2, NIV
The church is the heir of the Abrahamic blessing. God still blesses his people to be a blessing. No follower of Jesus should miss out on the tangible power of the Cross to transform, heal and bless. Unless we have thus experienced God, our religion is but a form of godliness with no power (2 Timothy 3:5).
With our eyes firmly fixed on Jesus, let us continue to look to all that God has for us! Our relationship with God may have a beginning but it has no end. We are not seeking to arrive. Rather we are seeking continuous growth. In God, there is more than we can ever fathom. The depths of God can’t be exhausted. He is still doing more than we can ever ask or think!
Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.
Ephesians 3:20-21, NKJV