As we anticipate SBC’s 70th anniversary celebrations in August, I am filled with gratitude to God for his amazing grace in my life. Almost 50 years ago, in 1973, I graduated from SBC! During these decades God has led me to equip myself and to invest a good part of my life to teach and mentor students and alumni in my alma mater.
Psalms 32:8 and 27:4 have been precious promises that have kept returning to me over again these past decades, encouraging, prompting, propelling and guiding me:
I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you. (Psalm 32:7). God first used this Psalm to direct me when I was confused and in a quandary prior to graduation in 1973. I had no clear direction when most of my friends knew exactly what they were going to do. It was in this frantic confusion that God ministered to me through this Psalm. When I surrendered my future into his hands, he took over. Step by step he unfolded his plans clearly to me. As I continued in life through the different seasons and crossroads, once again God’s promise assured and comforted me – God alone will instruct me…but I must be able to read his eye as it was through his eye that he would counsel me! This meant that I needed to be close to him in order to hear and recognize his voice and his steps, just as I can hear and recognize a loved one through observation of his eye – whether he is happy, sad, angry, and so forth! My LORD the Good Shepherd has led me all these 50 years even as the hymn so aptly describes this:
All the way my Saviour leads me, what have I to ask beside, can I doubt his tender mercies who through life has been my guide…for I know whatev’r befalls me, Jesus doeth all things well! (All the Way My Saviour Leads Me)
I chose Psalm 27:4 as my life verse upon graduation:
One thing have I asked of the LORD, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to inquire in his temple. (Psalm 27:4).
I chose this verse because I desired more than anything else to sit at God’s feet and worship him because I loved him and wanted to give him the first place of honour in my life. I must confess that I failed many times to honour the Lord because of my pride, self-sufficiency and selfish ways. Yet each time I strayed and was ‘prone to wander’, the Lord restored and refreshed my soul even as I returned to sit at his feet to behold the beauty of his presence!
All these 50 years I can testify that the LORD has been my good Shepherd and I have lacked no good thing!
As we celebrate 70 years of God’s goodness to the Singapore Bible College, I want to acknowledge that God is good all the time! He will continue to be our good Shepherd and SBC will lack no good thing!
May each of us as alumni of SBC continue to fix our eyes on Jesus the Author and Perfector of our faith. May we walk humbly before God and seek his face daily, communing, tarrying and enjoying his presence, even as we go about doing his business with the strength that he alone can provide. Like Mary of Bethany, let us sit at his feet daily and worship him in spirit and in truth and then take Jesus’s yoke upon ourselves and serve him with joy and gladness.
Congratulations SBC on your 70th anniversary! May Jesus find each of us faithful even as He remains faithful!
