Sun Ho is the Co-founder and Executive Pastor of City Harvest Church. She oversees the strategic and creative management of the church.
“Sun, no matter how painful things may get, God’s eternal purpose will get done.”
This was a line from one of Kong’s letters to me when he was away. And though there were times I found myself questioning it in the midst of my deepest pain, I have seen its truth come alive in City Harvest Church over the last 30 years, and especially in the last decade.
As I look back, I am filled with gratitude toward God for the way He continues to be with us, in spite of our weaknesses and limitations. We may be a fallen people, but He never abandons us in our brokenness. Each week, the weight of His glory still rests so evidently upon us because He has chosen to adopt us as His own children in Christ, sons and daughters that He would never leave or forsake.
I thank God that He has never been unreachable to me, even in the most difficult seasons of my life and ministry. There have been moments where I felt so alone; on the verge of hopelessness with no prayers left to utter. But the Holy Spirit has always been there – my closest companion through my darkest valleys.
King David described it perfectly in one of my favorite psalms: “Where could I go from your Spirit? Where could I run and hide from your face?” (Ps. 139:7, TPT). His presence is always near to me through both the good and the bad, and I can confidently say that I am blessed and assured of my future because His Spirit of glory rests on me (1 Pet. 4:14).
As a church, I love how we have cultivated greater depth in our spiritual freedom and worship. Every time we worship, I am not only blessed by the tangible presence of God, I’m also so moved by the sound of our voices singing our hearts out to Him. Through our fervent prayers and prophesies, we are contending for more of God’s Word to become truth among us – for the realities of heaven to be experienced on earth! Healings, miracles, signs and wonders are becoming a way of life at CHC, and more importantly, we have learned to hold on to who God is to us, in spite of what we may be going through.
Our congregation is maturing into a more devotional, prayerful, and prophetic people than any other time in our church history. The faith, resilience and obedience we have come to embrace as traits of “CHC under pressure” have enabled us to become a glorifying witness for Jesus in our generation – a testament of His immense love, faithfulness and saving grace. These are life-transforming lessons that can only come through the process of fire and molding in God’s hands. I thank God that He counted us worthy to experience what we have gone through, so that we can be transformed into greater Jesus-likeness in our lives (Rom. 8:28-29).
In the last decade, I’ve had the great privilege and joy of experiencing first-hand the coming together of our church staff and leaders, uniting as one spiritual household and serving the Lord like never before. We each had to overcome our own battles – with fear and uncertainty, with criticism, with self-doubt, with hopelessness. Different people battling different things at different moments, but all sharing in the same struggle we faced when we made the decision to stay on in this house.
I am so thankful that we have faced our greatest challenges together … as one family in Christ. I have no doubt that our resilient and united faith is why God’s presence, power and glory is still so evidently experienced in this house. In particular, I saw how pastors Aries Zulkarnain and Bobby Chaw placed their lives on the altar and stood in the gap to take on the mantle of senior leadership in this church together with me. Through the most pressing of times, they allowed God to calibrate them, to anoint them and to mature them. And the fruit of their surrender is so precious! I am forever proud to be called their friend.
As co-founder of this amazing church we call home, I feel overwhelmingly honored to be given a front-row seat in a real-life, Book-of-Acts revival that began in 1989 and continues on today. I am more confident than ever that what is written in the Bible is so true: “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him” (1 Cor. 2:9, NKJV). As I look to the future, I see myself guarding the gospel faithfully, spreading it actively, and living it out bravely with my friends and family in City Harvest Church.
