meditation

hmm.. just did my QT for the day..for ODB which told me that if we open our hearts to the saviour, He will open our minds to the word. Then I did one from acts web..the second part of trust which tells us to “acknowledge and own your fears. Trust God and accept responsibility and seek the help you need to overcome them.”

And then i thought I’d meditate on the 3 verses which are used so commonly in spreading the gospel and which was mentioned in the facilitator’s training today.

Romans 3:23

23for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,

Hebrews 9:27

27Just as man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment,

Romans 6:23

23For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in^[a] Christ Jesus our Lord.

they all sound bleak but are so true and so in need for non-christians to know of the drastic consequences. It’s so easy to paint a nice, happy, warm comforting picture of christianity but this is the serious and grim side to it.

-minrui was saying that after her 3 months in US, i was the only one with so much change in my life. I myself wonder why there has been so much change. But somehow i suddenly feel this burden placed within me for this gospel rally and what a strategic position the Lord has placed me in to do this work for Him. I just hope that I won’t burn out and die with so many commitments on top of a heavy semester.. but then again I have a great God! somehow..i’m not really worrying all that much. I better start worrying more and stressing myself out more otherwise i won’t study lols.

to pray for:

the sensitivity in spreading such messages to non-christians.

overcoming of fears against conversing in chinese and taking the proactive step out to talk to others

the right things to say on thurs

the people who will be coming for the Q n A.. that their hearts and minds be open.

hah! i shall use A.C.T.S to pray today.

Father in heaven Lord..it’s just so amazing and beautiful the small little things You do in our lives..placing us in such strategic places in all parts of the world to fulfil ur commission and expand Your ministry Lord. Father I see the love you have for all in the world.. that You want us to go forth and spread the word to all who have yet to know and hear of Your mighty love..and Lord I just give thanks that You have made all things fit together so nicely the way the pieces of a jigsaw do. Lord I come before you today to ask for Your forgiveness in all that I’ve done.. the thoughts I’ve had and the things I’ve sinned upon.. I pray lord that with Jesus’ blood You cleanse me on all idolatry in my heart..be it academics..or serving You with the concerns of what people think or say in mind.. Take these away from me and Lord help me to focus on nothing but You in my heart lord..on consecrating myself and putting aside myself to be holy like You. I just give thanks Lord that I am able to come to You.. unworthy and defiled by sin.. to ask for Your forgiveness and that I know and I am assured that Lord, You have died for me with Your holy blood and cleansed every sin, be it big or small.. such that no sin is too great to be unforgivable.. Lord I’m sorry for a narrow and unmagnimous heart..help me to love and to give in the way You did to man on earth Lord Jesus..Father I come before You once again Lord to commit and uplift to You the gospel service on thursday. Lord I pray for all the non-christians who have been touched and nudged by the spirit to come to give You a chance lord.. I pray that they come with open hearts and that they come to realize how undeniable this faith is and how true it is Lord.. that they come to accept You as a personal saviour too and to enjoy the wonders of Your love and providence on us Lord. I pray too for all the facilitators and christians workers who will be there Lord.. I pray that Lord you place in us the sensitivity toward these seekers..that we will know the right things to say to them and bring them before You oh lord. Help us to overcome our fears.. and not to focus on our own inadequacies but to bring them before You in Your wisdom, Your power and Your strength, to rely on what You can do in us and through us as Your vessels Lord. I pray too for Dr Stephen Tong that You anoint him and speak through him to the congregation Lord..that You bless him with the wisdom to touch the hearts of these non-christians.

Father Lord.. I know that You are in control and that You will be there with us through the whole session Lord. I pray for Your continual grace to be upon each and every one of us who will be there on that day.

In Jesus’ most precious name

amen.

Trust

This devotional from Daily Encounter is particularly striking to me, addressing the issue toward our fears..and as for a person like me who fears many things and has many concerns and doubts about myself within me.. it’s speaks out to me greatly, like God gently advising me and encouraging me with His word.

TRUST I

Proverbs 3:5-6

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight [or direct your paths].”¹

A Daily Encounter reader asks, “Will you please write a daily on trust?”

Lack of trust is caused by fear. And fear comes in many shapes and sizes. Some fears are healthy. Others are crippling. We rightly fear driving through a red traffic light or driving down the freeway—the wrong way. Major fears and seemingly unfounded ones almost always have their roots in a past fearful experience.

I used to be terrified of public speaking and this, according to what I have read, is a common fear. I was scared to death that when I got up to speak, I’d run out of things to say and make a fool of myself. This was heightened because of my insecurity. In younger days it took me several years to get up enough courage to ask for a date because I was afraid of rejection—another common fear.

An even bigger fear for me was being afraid to love. “How could this be?” you ask. “How could anyone be afraid of the very thing we all need the most?”

The love I was afraid of was not that of friends, but the love between a man and a woman. I was usually attracted to gals who weren’t interested in me (romantically that is). This kept me safe. And as long as I was just a good friend with the woman who is now my wife, I was fine and felt safe. But once Joy started loving me, I freaked out—big time! I panicked a blue streak and wanted to run for my life.

Fortunately I knew it was my problem. But had I not thought so highly of Joy, I would have run from love—again. I also knew that if I didn’t get help to overcome my fear, I could spend the rest of my life running from love. It took me a long time to see this.

My fear of love and inability to trust had deep roots in early childhood. I grew up in a very dysfunctional home. I had an absentee father (emotionally speaking) and never felt that he loved me. My mother set me up to be the “little husband” in the family and I felt over-leaned on and smothered. And I also had an aunt that killed her own baby and apparently attempted to kill, or at least hurt, me when I was a baby. (She committed suicide.) I also lost a little sister to whom I was very much attached. She died when I was only five. So in my childish mind I had come to believe that if you love me, you will leave me, reject me, smother me, or you may even try to kill me.

This deeply buried fear I brought unconsciously into my adult life and spent most of my life running from love. It was this fear that got triggered when Joy started loving me. (By way of interest, some years ago a psychological test showed that I had a buried terror. At the time, I had no idea what it was.)

Many adults who were abused, abandoned, neglected, or felt rejected in childhood also struggle with similar or related debilitating fears.

So you ask, “How did I overcome? How did I learn to trust?”

To be continued…

my prayer modeled after suggested prayer:

“Heavenly father Lord, yes i will praise you..for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Lord I give thanks that there is no one on this Earth that will ever understand me in such entirety.. in the way that You do. You know my every thought, my every fear, my every concern…even at times where I feel so misunderstood…that no one understands me. Father help me to understand myself more.. and the causes behind some of the irrational things I sometimes do. Help me to admit and face all my fears and to bring them to You for your healing, and guide me to the help I need to overcome them. I give thanks Lord, for hearing my prayer..guide me with Your mighty hand..and bestow upon me Your strength for someone as weak as I am lord..for I am nothing without You. Thank You lord..for hearing my prayer.

In Jesus’ most precious and Holy name I pray..

Amen.

UDS-Consecration

I just attended uni dedication service and i found the speaker’s message really good, to the regret that I did not have paper and therefore did not jot down what I found very insightful and impactful.

Just a basic few things that struck me..

that consecration is not something that we put ourselves to only after we become christian, but rather, consecration, (or holiness, or sanctification, which all fall under the same root word in the hebrew language) is something that God has set us apart for when He chose us to be His children.

and that the unique attribute of God, is His holiness. [alas, i cannot recall what else was said about this!]

In that manner, how we as students on campus should consecrate ourselves and set ourselves apart as Christian students would be :

1) to not live an idolatrous life

2) to surrender our all to god

3) to pursue holiness

For the first, in accordance with the first commandment of the 10 commandments of God, we are to worship no other Gods. But it isn’t as literal as not just worshipping Gods made of wood and stone, but in fact it is our direction in life, our personal valuation toward things. Things we put our effort and our time into. In fact, in a quote made by Rudyard Kipling,

The ‘eathen in ‘is blindness bows down to wood an’ stone;
‘E don’t obey no orders unless they is ‘is own;

A lot of times, when people say that they worship Gods of wood and stone, in actual fact what they truly live by and they truly believe in is in themselves, living by self direction. Hence, a lot of us at many points in time tend to submit to idolatry. To consecrate ourselves and to be holy is to truly live out this first point of having no other god, no other focus than that of the Lord Himself.

And when we serve, sometimes we serve with idolatrous desires for ourselves.. we serve thinking that God will definitely bless us with good grades, with the As we want just because we give our time up for Him in service. So then, what is the focus of our service? Is it for our own glorification, or is it for the Lord’s? Are our purposes right in service to Him?

The second point in surrendering our all to the Lord: We sang a song just now,

“I surrender all, I surrender all, All to thee my blessed saviour, I surrender all.”

Yes it is easy to sing, but how many of us actually surrender it all within our hearts to God? A lot of times we end up reserving some part of ourselves, not in full surrender to God.
True surrender is that when God gives us hard trials of the heart..with regards to school, family, loved ones..when things are not going well with regards to that, are we still able to give thanks, and to continue to surrender ourselves to Him, to allow the manifestation of His will?

I was particularly struck by a verse brought out by the speaker, which I happened to also read yesterday when I was searching for a verse on being joyful.

Habbakuk 3:17-18

17 Though the fig tree does not bud
and there are no grapes on the vines,
though the olive crop fails
and the fields produce no food,
though there are no sheep in the pen
and no cattle in the stalls,

18 yet I will rejoice in the LORD,
I will be joyful in God my Savior.

Then, Habakkuk said this in the context in anticipation of a vision He had in which the wayward Israelites were due to be conquered under the cruel rule of the Babylonian nation. But yet Habakkuk surrendered his all to the Lord, and remained joyful despite the bleak metaphorical analogies made.

How many of us, are able to be like Habakkuk, in the face of trials, obstacles, which pain the heart the most, to lift up and continue to praise Him and give thanks to Him, to continue to surrender our all?

With regard to the last point, the pursuit of holiness, What i remember most poignantly was that many of us spend our lives in the pursuit of happiness, and there are times where we don’t seem to achieve this.. many times we see that our lives are dotted with periods and times that are challenging to us to remain joyful. But if we change our focus and direction toward the pursuit of holiness instead of the pursuit of happiness, we then realize the meaning, and the purpose of all that is happening to us.

Indeed, a message that speaks out to me in many ways.

Joshua 24:15-24. What ifs

“What-ifs” have dubious merit—we can always second-guess ourselves. But we cannot underestimate the impact of our choices. One choice can produce lifelong consequences, for good or bad.

Joshua’s counsel is a good place to start. “Choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve,” he told Israel. “But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” (Josh. 24:15).

Serving God will not always be the easy choice. But it is a choice that brings the kind of consequence we can live with. — Bill Crowder

What you will be tomorrow depends on the choices you make today.

________________________________________________________

Sigh. how true that the decisions we make do so much to affect our lives in so many ways. Reminds me of how concurrence was mentioned in last sunday’s BS.. that God’s will is manifested through our own personal free will.

On the other hand this leads me to ponder upon the many important choices that i have to make. What then, is the right way out? God has been graciously blessing me all this way..through the first year of uni.. and He’s such a creative God I see him blessing me in just so many different ways. Now too, as I move into year 2, I see the Lord blessing me in ways entirely different from that of the way He blessed me in year 1, and all too fitting to serve what I need most at each point in time! How can it be any less true, that God has everything woven intricately into His perfect plan, even the smallest of choices and decisions that we make?

I guess.. the answer is all right there in the ODB article today. That it doesn’t really matter what choices we make, what we choose to do with regards to anything in our life. The most important choice that we should make is to serve our Lord with all our heart and everything will just somehow come naturally to us, no matter where we are and what situations we are placed in.

Indeed, “as for me and my house, we will serve the lord.”

Have faith and be joyful!!

1 Thess 5:12-18

Final Instructions

12Now we ask you, brothers, to respect those who work hard among you, who are over you in the Lord and who admonish you. 13Hold them in the highest regard in love because of their work. Live in peace with each other. 14And we urge you, brothers, warn those who are idle, encourage the timid, help the weak, be patient with everyone. 15Make sure that nobody pays back wrong for wrong, but always try to be kind to each other and to everyone else.

16Be joyful always; 17pray continually; 18give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.

Philemon 1:8-19

From today’s QT:

Paul knew what it meant to be given another chance after past wrongs (Acts 9:26-28). He knew personally the transformation God can accomplish. Now he saw it in the life of Onesimus. The Lord can chisel His image on our flawed lives and make us beautiful and useful too. — Albert Lee

Christ takes each sin, each pain, each loss,
And by the power of His cross
Transforms our brokenness and shame
So that our lives exalt His name. —D. De Haan

zc’s prayer requests: for upcoming test on friday and sat. That he studies for right thing and does not feel too stressed out and worried about the syllabus

Yes Father Lord.. I’ve seen how you’ve sculpted and modeled each and every one of our lives.. how much all of us have been changed by Your love and Your sacrifice for us on the cross. How we grow in You to become better people.. and how we learn each day lord to live our lives to honour You and to glorify Your name. Lord I know i’m a sinner.. I know i’m essentially flawed by my sin despite Your perfect and beautiful creation lord.. I pray lord that you forgive all my flaws forgive every bad thought that has transpired in my mind.. every unkind thing, insensitive thing that I’ve done..and Lord I pray for your guidance to be upon me to transform me and make my life one that is beautiful and useful for You lord. Help me Lord to continue to stay focused as work piles on and the semester gets busy..Help me not to lose sight of my priorities and to maintain a good balance between serving You and spending personal time with You on top of studying hard to glorify Your name. Father Lord.. I’d like to lift up zhen chang into Your hands.. that Lord I pray you be with him..calm his anxious heart about the lack of a syllabus and a clear guideline as to what to study Lord. Father I pray that You let him remember that You are always in control and that You already have all Your plans set out for us and that all we have to do is to do our part and to wait for You to do Your work lord. Father I pray that you help him to reap the results of his hard work and that for his exams this friday and saturday..he will be able to recall whatever he has learnt and apply them in the period of time where he is tested lord. I pray that lord You be by his side and give him Your wisdom, peace and strength to tide him through this exam lord. Father I pray that with his heavy workload he continues to stay focused in You and continue to share a close personal relationship with You. Help him lord, to lift up his burdens to You in prayer just as I do so for him Lord. I’d just like to commit him, his burdens, and his exam this friday and sat into Your hands Lord..and Lord Father I give thanks for listening to my prayer…

I pray all this in Jesus’ most precious name

amen.

18 Aug 2008

Psalm 84

Indeed, how lovely is His dwelling place.. that all too often we take for granted the chance to go to church to worship Him, and even at times we dread waking up early to get to church. It is a 福气 and a grace that God has granted upon us to worship Him and fellowship with other brothers and sisters in Christ in His dwelling place.

Lionel’s prayer request: to pray for wisdom and discipline in not only my studies but also with my walk with God, willingness to commit everything to Him, the wisdom to plan my time well and to make Godly decisions in evryday living Also to pay attention to the people around him

Heavenly father lord, I’d like to commit Lionel into your hands.. Father it’s so true that Lord what he requests, many of us need Lord. I’d like to pray Lord that you grant Lionel wisdom and discipline, for his studies as well as his personal walk with you Lord. as with everyone who is serving you while studying.. I pray lord you grant us the ability to manage our time and balance our lives well with You Lord..help us to stay focused on our priorities in spite of many responsibilities and work and stress that is piled up on us Lord.. be with us and give us Your added strength and ability. Help Lionel too lord to commit everything into Your hands..for lord You know that at times the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak and all too often we end up relying on ourselves instead of in Your strength Lord. Help him as well as all of us to be able to make godly decisions, decisions that are focused on You, decisions that reflect us as Your children to others Lord. Help us to not be judgmental..to love and care for the people around us, and to constantly stay strong and happy for we have you as our Lord. Help Lionel to pay attention too to the people around him and to be sensitive to the needs of those around him. Help him not to be caught up in his own comfort zone and to forget that there are people out there that need Your love lord. Lord I’d just like to commit this dear brother of mine into Your mighty hands.. and I pray all this in Your most precious and holy name, Amen.

Galatians 5:13

“Through love, serve one another.”

God never puts you in the wrong place to serve Him.

Dear lord father I thank you for all the grace you have bestowed upon me. Father I don’t deserve much but yet you have blessed me. I thank you for the results that You have given me and Lord i really don’t deserve the credit but you do. Father i thank you for your constant encouragement for me. Despite being so tired after a long day..father help me to be fresh and rejuvenated in Your word…and to never tire of serving you..of glorifying you and doing my best for You. Father never help me to be disillusioned or to forget who I serve or why I serve. Father I pray..for your strength and your wisdom to be upon me for this upcoming semester. Lord for I can achieve nothing without You. Please be by my side.. be with me each step of the way through each difficult point..help me to see what’s truly important and lay what isn’t as important aside. Help me to put You as the top priority and help me to seek You and Your kingdom first lord..and place everything secondary.

For all the people I love too, I pray that you be with them.. strengthen them and bless them in whatever struggles they are going through..and continue to help them to stay close to you. Keep them under your mighty and comforting wing oh lord. I pray for mama’s recovery..that You lord will personally heal her and help her recovery quickly lord. I pray that all of us around her will be able to show her the care and love that she needs to have a fast recovery. Lord I just pray that You continue to let her know that You will always be there for her and help her to have faith and rely on You for strength, for company, and for love.

Lord I just once again give thanks for everything and Lord help me to stay strong in my faith in face of doubts that have arisen.. Thank you lord

In jesus’ most precious name

amen.