STEP BY STEP

WE’RE MOVING FORWARD

By Pastor Joseph Agius

 I give glory and honour to our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, for His wonderful presence in our church. Like all members, I feel blessed and honoured to serve Him at Word of Life. Through the years we have seen many positive things temporarily hampered with negative ones. But the trend has been upward.  All glory goes to Him, the keeper and head of the church.

This testimony is being written to encourage the readers to be willing to accept new steps the Lord may lead an individual, or the church as a whole, to follow. The Lord is widening the vision for our church; which is made up of individuals, like you and me.

We need not be afraid of steps we have never taken before. God reveals things progressively. There are also what we call “seasons” in one’s life. As we have spring, summer, autumn and winter for a complete year, so every life and church goes through different seasons to be found complete in the eyes of God.

Let me first briefly share with you my personal testimony and then have a look of how the Lord led Word of Life through different seasons. We will look at a new step the Lord is taking us in.

MY TESTIMONY

Since I was born again, the Lord always led my life with Him in steps. Briefly, after I was born again, he gave me a great desire to read the Bible. In my first year of Christianity, I read it through three times; seven times the New Testament. In this period, the Lord was preparing me for my present ministry. Meanwhile the Lord also led me to help the pastor of the church where I was born again in his work. I used to accompany him in his various ministries, such as home/hospital visitations, street evangelism and church-administration work. Little I knew that the experiences I was getting will be helping me in what the Lord had planned for my life and ministry. Later, after Word of Life was born, I could glean from the experiences I gained to serve the Lord.

Word of Life was born as the result of evangelism. It was then for the first time I faced the need of teaching the new believers coming out from the Roman Catholic Church and pastor them. They needed encouragement and guidance. I never had any systematic study of the Bible before; therefore I saw a great need to give myself to study the Bible. My prayer was “Lord, lead to a good Bible school, one that correctly divides the Word of truth,” and He did. So, even in this new situation, the Lord was leading me in steps.

In the first few years of ministry the Lord led me to start two other new works; Jesus First Center in Gozo, and the Evangelical work in the prison. Therefore in that early stage I was a church planter, in a modern term, a “Church Pioneer”. This means that through evangelism, people were saved and organized as a church. As mentioned above, the Lord was urging me to study systematically the Bible. Of course, every Christian should do that, but with the intensity of urging I was feeling, I knew the Lord was preparing me for a new step.

I realized that the Lord was preparing me through my studies to become a teacher. I just love teaching, and I wish and pray that many will be called for this important ministry. There is no greater satisfaction for me than exposing the depths of the Word of God. It is what I want to live for. To keep the teaching ministry a person must work hard and never cease to “dig” in the Word to “extract” the precious jewels from it. Knowing the Lord and how He worked in my life in the last eighteen years, I am expecting Him to direct me in a new step, hopefully very soon.

THE CHURCH’S TESTIMONY

As I wrote in the introduction of the essay, I am writing to give an example of how the Lord leads people in steps to do His work. The most important thing in my opinion is the individual’s willingness to obey when God leads the person to do something for God’s Kingdom and glory. Hearing and obeying God’s voice is especially important.

It is important to keep in mind as you continue to read that in August of two years ago, our dear friend, brother Darrell, was led by the Lord to pray for Malta. He did not even know were Malta was. He made his research and found us. He came to Malta and together we went to the four parts of Malta and claimed the liberty of the Spirit on the Maltese Islands. The Lord was and is still doing work in the spiritual realm to prepare for us His work. As I shared with you many times, there are a number of people and churches praying for us regularly. We should really thank God for them.

Our church is going to a new step. As you all know by now the Lord has spoken to me about this time a year ago regarding the future of the church. I kept waiting on Him and talked briefly with one or two of you about His plans. But at the beginning of last summer, I felt I knew what the Lord wants from the church. It is a new step. I could see it clearly when the Lord sent Paul and Mary Clync and their family, to Malta. As you very well remember, they did a three day puppet show in Sliema. The church’s attendance and participation encouraged me to put in practice what now was sure what the Lord wanted the church to do.

I can remember that in Word of life, for a number of years we had a balance of Bible Studies and preaching. Later there was a time where the emphasis was put on sermons of faith, healing, and maturity. We experienced many manifestations of the Holy Spirit in those days. After this time, the emphasis became teaching and remained like that for few years.

But, for the last three years, the Lord led us into two new steps. The first step was to start home groups. We can testify that these groups helped Christian grow and committed to the church. The second step was the direction for more intense worship. As you all know, the Lord wanted us to worship Him more in our services. To understand more clearly how to enter in the Most Holy place, we analytically studied the pattern of the tabernacle. This pattern became a guide for our worship services. We prayed and worshiped until the Lord spoke and said that for a time He only wants worship from us. The Lord promised us that He will meet our needs without the need to pray for them as we worship. We are all witnesses that He kept His Word.

In order to help us be obedient, the Lord gave us brethren with musical gifts and talents. We are still growing in the area of anointed worship, but the presence of the Lord is there every time we approach Him with a clean and servant heart. There are many more steps to take in this area, and as we take them one by one, the Lord will manifest Himself in a way more than we ever experienced before.

The latest step the Lord is leading us in once again is street evangelism. Many know that we were many times discouraged with street evangelism. In fact we did not have a program for evangelism for a number of years. Some did their part with one-to-one evangelism at their place of work. Praise the Lord that souls were saved. I am pleased to see new believers growing and being committed to the Lord and His church. But the Lord wants us to spend more time in the streets of Malta and also Gozo. We have a program, and December is the month that we, as a church, will together launch this program to continue evangelizing our country.

In this process, we shall see that were will be other positive steps develop as the results of evangelism are realized. Individuals in the church will learn how to share the gospel with the Maltese; becoming bolder; learning to love and care for the lost; learning techniques in counselling; and other techniques that will help them to share the gospel with the Maltese. Of course, I am sure that the commitment to Bible study and worship will be increased in the process as the members see the need to teach others. The Christian Character will become stronger as people give their life and time for the service of God.

CONCLUSION

As the reader could see, step by step we are going forward. The Lord has spoken and we shall obey His voice. I can see encouraging days in front us as we walk together united in the peace and love of our Lord, Jesus Christ. He is Lord; He alone is worth of praise. The Maltese need to hear it, and together with other Evangelical churches on the Island we will reveal to them what was hidden from them for so long. Take a moment and praise the Lord for leading step by step in His footsteps.

In few weeks time we will enter into a new calendar year. We were promised a year of new beginnings. The time has come. Let us together take a step of faith towards the “ultimate goal” Jesus had, which is to preach the gospel to all nations make the disciples out of them to serve Him