Asia Conference 2008: Being In The World But Not Of The World

Date: 19 November 2008
Speaker: Kong Hee
Venue: City Harvest Church (Singapore)

Acts 17:16-17
Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him when he saw that the city was given over to idols. Therefore he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and with the Gentile worshipers, and in the marketplace daily with those who happened to be there.

Paul did not despise the culture of the lost. He was faithful to His God, but he was flexible in connecting to the world. We were told to take dominion, not to be afraid to engage the world.

Holiness is not measured by the outward appearance. It is an attitude of your heart, holiness is obedience.

Galatians 5:25
If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.

John 17:15
I do not pray that You should take them out of the world, but that You should keep them from the evil one.

John 17:18
As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world.

Light shines the brightest when amongst darkness.

1st Space - The Church

Most of us are in the 1st Space. We naturally gravitate toward and stay there because we feel safe and secure in it. We need to make the 1st Space more friendly to the lost.

2nd Space - The Marketplace (business, education, government, arts and entertainment, mass media)

This is where we live in for most of the week. More time is spent there than in the 1st Space. The 1st Space is the training place in preparation for the 2nd Space.

Acts 17:18-19
Then certain Epicurean and Stoic philosophers encountered him. And some said, “What does this babbler want to say?”
Others said, “He seems to be a proclaimer of foreign gods,” because he preached to them Jesus and the resurrection.
And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, “May we know what this new doctrine is of which you speak?

3rd Space - The Elite Circle

This is the realm for the society's elites. Wealthy, influencial and powerful people, principalities of power. You cannot access this Space at will. You have to be taken in. You have to earn the right to be invited in.

Acts 17:22-34
Then Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, “Men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you are very religious; for as I was passing through and considering the objects of your worship, I even found an altar with this inscription:

TO THE UNKNOWN GOD.

Therefore, the One whom you worship without knowing, Him I proclaim to you: God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands. Nor is He worshiped with men’s hands, as though He needed anything, since He gives to all life, breath, and all things. And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also His offspring.’ Therefore, since we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, something shaped by art and man’s devising. Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent, because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead.”
And when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked, while others said, “We will hear you again on this matter.” So Paul departed from among them. However, some men joined him and believed, among them Dionysius the Areopagite, a woman named Damaris, and others with them.

Types of non-believers you will meet:
People who will mock you.
People who are unsure but wants to know more.

When moving into the 3rd Space, you are bound to get criticized and misunderstood. But persevere and press on!

Don't be so pre-occupied with being in the 1st Space that you forget about moving in to the 2nd, or even hate those moving into the 3rd.