*Bring a friend this weekend. Don't wait any further!!
Dearest S28,
I've decided to post all those who sent in, I feel all the posts are inspiring too. :) Keep shinning & never forget what our Saviour & Friend had done for us. Cheers!! Each one of us have great calling ahead!! *smile*
Impact of Drama – By Joanne
The Easter drama was great! Wow! Lots of people came on sat, the auditorium was full of people. I've learn a lot in the drama.. God gives people to make choices in their lives. If we've faith and believes in the Lord, we can live a new life again. The sad thing was that Jesus was innocent and had to the one sacrificing for the sins that people committed. This was to be done as told by our Lord Jesus.
I used to think that Easter is about eggs hunting only. Lol. This year will be my 1st time celebrating Easter day and with such meanings behind it. Fruitful!! :)
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Easter Reflection – By Hui Zhen
I was super joys during service and fellowship after svc =)
was really impacted but the drama and that's me feel so delight to serve a great God..
When Dr.Silas keep saying bad things about Jesus and Jesus wasn't upset at all and I really gotta learn from him..=P
and really more about Talleah, Linda and etc.. chatted with them while waiting to go into the svc.
during praise and worship was great too! After svc, fellowship time! was happy to see new friends staying back for a while to let us know them more. we played alots of cards game. Indeed, good friday is a fruitful day =D
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My reflection of Easter day – By Jelyn
Early morning, I woke up on this Good Friday morning. Breathing in a deep breath of oxygen, I thank God for His wonderful day each and every morning. Jesus, my redeemer lives on this day! (:
The moment we reached church, my friends are all amazed by all the lightings of our church and the buildings. They couldn't believe that this is actually a church. I smiled proudly, as this is the house of God and i am a refugee of this house. We played some icebreaker games like taboo. I'm glad that all those people couldn't guess the word ' cute ' as one of the penalty words is Jelyn! haha.
The highlight of the service: The final solution
I feel that the greatest thing of all is when God's love was demonstrated when Jesus volunteered to sacrifice himself rather than sacrificing Silas. Jesus is willing to be the one to be crucified on the cross, to carry our weight of sin even when Silas didn't believe him and even regard him as an enemy.
This shows that God lives up to His covenant, ' For I am with You, ' says God.
Through this whole drama, I felt that we're like Silas. Even though we made rash decisions at times, we did wrong things, we sinned, we run into condemnation, BUT GOD saves the day. He will still bring us out of the whole condemned life and give us a chance to turn our life 180 degrees around. God gave everyone a second, third and even fourth chance to live life to the fullest. The ultimate reason why God lives in our hearts : He loves, He care, and He gives.
Without love, we're nothing. True indeed.
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Impact on Riversidians – By Riverside Prayer Group
It was enlightening! Our hard work and prayers have finally paid off. Although little friends came, we're still glad that James' Family is saved, Shiyun is saved! It seems to us that Riverside Revival is coming!
Again, the drama was the highlight of the service. The Final Solution: A New Messiah?
Through this whole drama, 2 parts that impacted all of us:
1. When Jesus was tortured and crucified.
It was heartbreaking, but true indeed, He carried the weight of our sins for us, so we can live life to the fullest! How great is this sacrifice!
2. Jesus's miracle healing and Forgiveness
Faith is the key to everything. Without Faith, the blind would not get healed, we would not be saved through Jesus.
God is good! Good Friday is the day that we must take time to confess our sins to God.
Our redeemer lives today! :D
Accept that God is real.
Believe in your heart that Jesus resurrected.
Confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord!
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The Impact of Easter! – By Amelia Oei
Easter has been a great weekend for me.
Filled with blessings and challenges as well.
The drama was fantastic.
Dr Silas, someone of great influence at that point in time.
Someone who seemed great to everyone, but yet still imperfect by his own strength to be successful in life.
I was listening to one of Phil Pringle's sermons, and I was reminded of e drama, how the story unfolded.
Success in life comes through hard work and leaning unto God. That God always calls us to do something
that is way beyond us, so we can work through him together with him.
" Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit." Zechariah 4:6
Easter is all about the resurrection of Jesus. About how we serve a living and almighty God.
Each one of us faces many problems, most of which seemed always amazingly big to us.
But God is able to resurrect it! IF, we choose to trust in him, to surrender and humble ourselves.
To simply sometimes come to end of ourselves and say God you are the vine and I am the branch.
Always attached to you to grow, to prosper, for your glory.
I learnt a new perspective from the drama.
Once again, I’m reminded of the love of God.
How it never ever runs out. How no matter what you do, he's still faithful. Always by your side.
Each time I watch how Jesus sacrificed himself, going through turmoil and torment, and ALL FOR ME?!~
I'll tear at the fact that he's such a good God.
Im always impacted by this verse.
"All things will work for Good to those who love him and are the called according to his purpose."
Indeed at the end, Dr Silas and his resurrected daughter became witnesses for God. He became a
changed man. Changed not by his own strength but by the touch of God.
Pastor Kong mentioned about how a paralysed man at the Expo svc felt a surge of faith to rise up and walk
the moment he said that God can resurrect your situation! and he Pushed his wheelchair, and got up
and started walking! Faith produces action. and with one Action, it produced a miracle.
I believe, God is indeed LIVING and REAL.
This is the almighty God we serve! Praise him! :DD
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Reflections – By Crystal
What's Easter to you when it is mentioned? Seeing kiddos dressed in bunny attires and painting those nicely decorated eggs with their love ones??? Surely not!! Those bunny characters are only out to attract kiddos because of their endearing nature. If you were to place the scene of Jesus dying on the cross to the children, they wouldn't understand it would they? Thus, Easter bunny and eggs are used in place to act out Jesus' intentions. Back to the point, Easter is the celebration of Jesus' victory over death and mankind's hope for eternal life. Sounds scary at the mention of death?? You shouldn't be so.
I believe many of us were awaiting for the big day to arrive because finally we could see our seeds that we had all conscientiously been praying for and reaching out to, come to past. =)
Starting out the Easter morning with the busing system sure was worth it. Though, the bus wasn't that rowdy, it could somehow feverishly satisfy our intentions of bringing the people together. Considering it the first attempt, I believe the many upcoming busing system could work well if we could pop in some games to warm up our morning blues. The first timers are usually substantially quiet considering the fact that some may be introverts. No matter how hard we tried even by sending the most outspoken cum amiable member didn't really work. There's only one way and that is through consistent prayer and fellowship. Hence, we should have the "never give up attitude" as always to bring the whole cell group to a higher level. (:
Upon reaching our very own church, we occupied a section of the church cafe. Games that were planned were not carried out thus, we settled in with our very own trademark game - bridge, whereas the other groups preferred their classic chatting, in getting to know the new friends aka VIPs. After a few gratifying games, we conveniently took off to queuing at the stairs in hope to get pretty good seats and true indeed, we did so.
After all the anxiety that the seats would be taken up, my friends finally perched in to the reserved seats. They were all in awed when they saw how our service looked like because my goodie friend thought that our church was the traditional kind. I could see her being diverted by the loud praise and calm worship songs. & I was pretty amazed at her participation in raising her hands during worship. =))
Next up was the drama which was the major highlight of the whole Easter production.
The Easter drama - The Final Solution started off with showing the profiles of various jail convicts and their behaviour in jail and it ended with the reunion of both father and daughter. The portion which particularly impacted me was the part where Dr Silas was being exceptionally nosey with his daughter's life and ended up injuring her which resulted in death. Another eye opener was Jesus' being whipped repeatedly and carrying the hefty cross.
To begin with, Dr Silas' sternness towards his daughter is a form of displaying a father's love towards his own flesh and blood. Most parents would usually rebuke their children when they are in the wrong line. In this case, Carmen was at fault as she was clubbing and being in love with someone of the same gender at such a young tender age of sixteen. No parents would allow such despicable acts!! However, we can't solely blame Carmen for behaving this way. Having lost her mother at an early age due to some unforeseen circumstances, she blames her father for it and in turn chooses to be rebellious and doing things that no parents would allow. Dr Silas on the other hand should have been sensitive to the way of correcting his daughter by choosing a different method of handling her instead of resolving to violence and such harsh tones.
Despite watching the scene of the latter one umpteen times, I still repeatedly get touched by it. It always never fails to remind me of the consequences of sinning as well as how Jesus' actually sacrificed himself by bearing all forms of torment and condemnation. Reminiscing through about that one whip that Jesus gets and how much sins we've committed is totally a disgrace. Through this scene, we should always be on our toes of behaving well in our mother Earth if not we will all have to abide to punishments in the after world.
Before His death, Jesus had promised eternal life to those who followed Him. If the story ended at His death, Jesus would have been no more than a religious figure with a finite life span. But the fact the Jesus rose from death demonstrated He has the power over death, and only through Him can people have hope for eternal life. Jesus said, "For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life" (John 3:16).
The whole drama was truly captivating even though I had to watch it a mere three times. To mark the end of the service , our all time favourite Pastor Kong preached an impacting sermon which was short yet virtuous as I could even bring back a vivid memory of all the pointers till today (as I pen down my thoughts).
Altar call was great as I see many souls responding and my friends as well at Service 5. This is also time where I think back of how I first got saved. Hees.
Easter is truly a time whereby I step out of my comfort zone to get to know even more people instead of clinging on to really close members. & it also gives me a reminder of how those pain stricken times which Jesus suffered because of his unconditional love He has for us.
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Just a public holiday or a celebration of historic event that took place?
It’s Easter, the first major holiday’s event of the year for all Christian. The amount of people who attend is un-countable, by looking down you see each other’s people head popping out filling the whole place, ranging from all ages/different generation in the house of God. Although the waiting in the staircase was un-bearable hot, and long, but it quite worth it. Helping each other getting a seat, securing the seat, although it may be a simple act but it clearly show that how united and caring the cell group’s members can be to each other, and it not only that we could even see people helping other to get a seat, even though they may not know them, that is the true nature of human that is being hide deep in everyone’s heart.
And the drama was useful in telling us the story, as most of us and newcomers are either lazy or do not know the story of why and how Jesus died. And the later part of the drama has shown everything that is needed for a new Christian. This is quite meaningful, although I do not like this year drama as much as last year’s Easter drama but overall it stills a hard work for them having to rush to expo, from Jurong west, and rush back, for the whole 3 days. As the old always say “one min on stage, ten years of hard work behind the stage”.
And the games we play at the rooftop was fun, as it help us to understand each other more and have joy and laughter together. And that the special thing about being with such friend, they never failed to put a smile on your face. And also they won’t betray you or anything, but will try their best to help you, and this is what I call the true’s friends. Where else can we search for such friends?
Overall this Easter I believe it fruitful and enjoying and it will be the stepping stone for everyone for a better event such as the next major holiday’s event Christmas, aiming for a better drama to be present again, trying to put a smile and knowledge with wisdom in to every single one in this nation!
