FOREWORD
Our ministry is to channel funds and people to areas that are part of Southeast Asia.
- We will make known and promote the needs for humanitarian work in these areas.
- We will work with groups that give building and other material support to projects in these areas.
- We work with Christian groups that want to send people or desire to help selected areas for ministry in Southeast Asia, or any individuals that have the heart to help those in need in Southeast Asia. T.S.H.I. will help connect them with a qualified project.
- We will help get qualified people to these areas through our network and through partnering with those that see a vision to send help to Southeast Asia.
- We believe that it is the native person who will have the best and quickest inroads to His/Her people. T.S.H.I. therefore will consider giving support to any qualified project that will teach and then support native people as managers of any project in the Southeast Asian area.
THE SOWER’S HANDS INTERNATIONAL
Beliefs and Statement of Faith
The Bible
The Holy Bible was written by men but divinely inspired though the work of the Holy Spirit and is the record of God’s revelation of Himself to man. It is inerrant in the originals and has retained its original purposes and intent of meaning until today. It is the only avenue of God’s written purpose and plan for man. Throughout the Holy Bible, a thread from beginning to end, proclaims mankind’s fall into sin and need of salvation through Jesus Christ’s sacrifice, meaning by His death on the cross and the promise of God to give man a new spiritual birth by the resurrection of Christ from the dead. The Holy Bible reveals the beginning of man and the end of man. It also informs us that God is the final judge of man, giving man eternal life or eternal death. The Holy Bible shows us that God’s judgments come forth from His righteousness and His authority to judge and to make decrees because of His moral perfection and ownership of all things. By this authority of God, the Holy Bible states that man is at God’s mercy and is in need of God’s grace. Therefore godly men must judge all things of man by the truth revealed in Scripture, whether it be lifestyles, religions or philosophies. We therefore proclaim that this scripture is the foundation of the Christian life and should be studied and meditated on by all men and women who proclaim faith in Jesus Christ.
God
There is one and only one true God and He has always been God and He will not change. He is eternal, with no beginning and can never have an end, and nothing else is or ever will be equal with Him. He is the creator of all things, seen and unseen, all things known and unknown. He is ruler of all Creation and has been in perfect control of all that is and those things that will be from the beginning. He is what holds all of creation together. He knows all things that can be known without having to have learned it, there has been no time that He has not had this perfect knowledge. No one has ever been His counselor, God is Holy in all aspects, nothing, when compared, is like Him. He is perfect and complete in all other attributes. He reveals Himself to us as The Father, the eternal Son incarnate in Jesus Christ, and Holy Spirit, and is revealed to man in these three persons with distinct and unique works being done by each, but without division of nature, essence, or being.
God the Father
God the Father reigns over His universe and His creation. He is in control of all things according to His predetermined purposes. He is head of the Godhead. He is Omniscient and Omnipotent. Jesus called Him his ‘Father’ and obeyed every thing His Father willed.
God the Son
The eternal Son of God, the second person of the Godhead, in His incarnation as Jesus Christ he was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary to become a man in all aspects. The Eternal Son perfectly obeying the Father’s will, took upon Himself the demands and weakness of human nature, laying aside His divine attributes for a time. Christ Jesus, the man called the ‘Only begotten of the Father’, was truly a man, yet without sin. He, in his death on the cross and resurrection from the dead, paid the debt of all sin and made provision for all those that believe by faith to be granted eternal life and forever be with the Lord.
He was raised from the dead with a glorified body. He descended to Sheol to conquer death in victory without suffering and then ascended into Heaven and is now is exalted at the right hand of God, where He is the One Mediator between God and man. The glorified Jesus will return to earth with the glorified saints in power and in glory starting a 1000 year reign on earth. He will then judge all men on earth at His coming either to eternal Life to live with Him or eternal death to live away from Him which the bible calls the second death or what most men understand to be eternal Hell. God the Holy Spirit
The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God. He indwelt men in the Old and New Testaments to write the Scripture Christian Bible. He convicts the world of sin, of righteousness and of judgment. The Holy Spirit seals the believer at salvation as the guarantee of God that total redemption of both Body and Spirit will be done in Gods time at the rapture. The Holy Spirit lives in every believer and empowers Christian to grow in Christ likeness, God also gives gifts to all believers for the edifying of the church by His Holy Spirit which enables them for the work of God as God sees fit. The Holy Spirit baptizes all believers with same Holy Spirit into the Spiritual body of Christ as the universal Church ( Body ) of Christ this is not done by water baptism. This spiritual baptism by and through the Holy Spirit is the only baptism needed for salvation which is ‘being born again’. By His leading and teaching the Holy Spirit leads men to believe the truth and will always direct man to exalt Christ and not Himself.
Man
Man was created by God, in His own image. Man was innocent of sin in the beginning when he was created and was given conscious choice by God. Through the temptation of Satan, man chose to transgress the command of God. By ADAM’s choice, He sinned against God and brought sin and death to mankind and all of mankind has fallen under Gods condemnation.
Only one act can bring man out of this fallen state of sin to salvation unto a holy state of regeneration and sanctification; that is the act of faith in Jesus Christ’s person and work, revealed in the Christian Bible. This revelation of Christ’s death on the cross for sin and resurrection from the dead for our new life is the work of Christ alone. This redemption is for all that believe by faith in Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection from the dead. This enables men to be saved by faith and be placed in the universal church of God, the body of Christ, for the glory of God through His Son Jesus Christ.
Salvation
God’s Salvation is first realized in mans spirit by being born again but salvation includes regeneration, sanctification, and glorification.
- Regeneration is the act of God given to man at initial salvation it is an act by which the believer’s dead spirit is made alive and renew by the Holy Spirit. This spiritual new life is only realized in the Spirit of man, not in the physical body of man.
- Sanctification is a spiritual act of God, beginning in regeneration, by which the believer is set apart to God’s purposes, and is sanctified and enabled to progress toward spiritual maturity (this being the understanding of Biblical truth and having the will to follow and be obedient to its meaning). This maturity will be seen in a believer’s lifestyle by the controlling of his sinful nature. The fruit of spiritual maturity will be observed by others also as he is obedient to the Word and trusts the power of the Holy Spirit to confirm those things in and through him. This spiritual maturity is not by man’s power of will but by the power of the Holy Spirit.
- Glorification – The receiving of man’s new spiritual body is the end of the salvation work done to the believer, ‘man’s glorification’, changing man’s corrupt first birth of flesh into a spiritual incorruptible body in the eternal state of the redeemed, revealed in Scripture, enabling the believer to live with God in Heaven. This new Spiritual body will be like Christ’s, glorified body, incorruptible and eternal. It is given to the believer, both to the dead and alive at the rapture of the Church, Christ’s “second coming”, to those that have died in Christ first, then to those that are alive at His second coming.
The Church
The church of the Lord Jesus Christ are men and women that have personally believed in and are trusting Jesus’s death and resurrection for forgiveness of their sin and their new life in Christ. These men and women can be seen in local groups or as individuals world wide. This ‘body’ should be admonishing, exhorting and encouraging each other, exercising the gifts, rights, and privileges given to them by His Spirit. Associated by a similar belief in the faith and fellowship of the Gospel, committed to the Bible’s teachings to extend the Gospel of Jesus to the ends of the earth. In all these things, praying to God for His direction, not leaning on their own understanding, but in all things seeking God and trusting God, as they are lead and directed by God.
This church, operating by the Holy Spirit’s guidance and enlightenment of Scripture, under the Lordship of Jesus Christ, will strive to have its members put each other first and live with each other as amiably as possible, treating each other as brothers and sisters, forgiving each other and admitting faults one to the other. Leaders and members have no right given in Scripture to be a lord over others’ faith. The interaction and work done together by the body will not have oversight as the world rules and judges each other, but will practice and have faith in the principles that Scripture states for unity and cooperation. The body should be examples to each other with all teaching, admonishment, exhortation and guidance done in peace and in love to bring growth or restoration as needed, not desiring their own individual wills to be done, but God’s will to be done in all things. Each believer, trusting that God is working in other believers in the same way He has worked in them, showing mercy and grace to all.