Last year, we declared 2018 to be a year of activation. Though we had some challenging times and difficulties as a local family of believers, if we look back on the things that the church has been empowered to do and the revelations or remembrances of God’s promises, we can see just how much God has been faithful to us as a body of Christ.

The world that we live in today is so far from what God had created in the beginning. It is heartbreaking to see the stark contrast of how the Garden of Eden was painted in the account in Genesis to all of a sudden having natural disasters, war-torn countries, and hearing the cry of the oppressed and victims of injustice.

When we got saved, most of us were taught that heaven and hell is real, that Jesus is the only way through whom we can get to heaven, and that we are to live our lives fully submitted to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. But not all of us who got saved were taught that all of us are called to do great and mighty things for the Kingdom of God. ALL OF US, not just a select few or “chosen ones” in leadership positions in the church, are called to bring heaven on earth in the here and now.

How is it that in the Presence of God, there is fullness of joy? Because in His Presence, there is light. And Jesus is the “true Light which gives light to every man coming into the world” (John 1:8) “The Light shines on in the darkness and the darkness did not understand it or overpower it or appropriate it or absorb it [and is unreceptive to it].” (John 1:5, AMP)

Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s promises, despite of Israel’s failures to keep their covenant with God in the Old Testament. He was God who became human so that he can model for us the abundant life that God had intended for us ever since creation. But more importantly, Jesus modeled for us what being in and carrying the presence of God is like.