Apart from emu gully last year, I don't think I have ever been pushed to the limits before. But that time was a physical strain in the sense of exercise and pushing my body to the limit for the sake of the team. But this time, I think I stand in front of a period that requires more mental strain then I've ever faced.
Just a list of stuff I need to do in the next 2-3 weeks.
- An architectural review to a panel of professional architects (ie. working)
= 6 sections
= 4 floor plans
= Site plans
= 1:100 model of the site and 3 buildings
= all the above arranged for a presentation due by June 1
- RICE design team
= Flyer design
= Poster Design
= Gotta meet the design deadline of June 10... but thank God I'm not working by myself on this one... but I have to learn how to use photoshop properly.
- Church Worship team
= Gotta try and practise songs at least once every 2 days lol... cos one of our members have other commitments and I am filling in for guitar.
- Bible study
= I am the bible study leader for this coming week... So I gotta prepare answers and discussions and stuff for the topic so I need time to do that.
= Also we have a memory verse "pop quiz"... and gotta memorise 4 pretty long passages...
Seriously I doubt I will have enough time to do everything. Such a coincidence that everything should collide on this fortnight... I swear I'm gonna need a miracle to do all these things... and although I know God will provide and make things work... but I think I'm getting pretty darn anxious lol... Just gotta pray that I can do everything. Hope those of you who read this will also pray for me lol... I think I'm gonna need it.
Anyways MUST get back to work...
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Monday, May 18, 2009
Focus
Some days I find that life as I know it is so distracting. I feel that there are so many petty desires in my life that just bog me down and hinder my every movement and every thought. Just to think of all the things that one doesn't have, material or not, just really puts a hole in the hull. Just thinking about these things causes me to trudge through a day in misery unable to work or be productive, unable to feel joyful. Thinking about me, and the things that I wish I had, that I don't have makes me sad.
I find that I can only really become joyful when my focus becomes fixed on something greater than myself. When I devote my time to conversing with people about God, doing research and doing my best to spread God's word I find that I experience a joy that I cannot normally feel in my life. When I go to be part of worship at church, I feel a joy that I cannot find anywhere else. I just wish that there was no need to do anything than to do these two things in this life. I wish I wanted nothing more than to do these two things and nothing more. Life would be so simple, so joyful. But yeah...
I heard a passage on sunday, went something like this. Philippians 1:21 "For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain." Some days I just wish that I was able to be an unrelenting disciple, wanting to serve and nothing more. I have prayed that God take my worldly attachments and desires away from me, that I could live solely for Him. But, God has chosen not to do that, though I know not why. But nyeah.... Confusing... When one doesn't know what God wants of him...
Life isn't a walk in the park huh? With the storms and the calms... The highs and lows... Sometimes God feels so close, yet sometimes feels so distant... But hey... Enough of this..
I find that I can only really become joyful when my focus becomes fixed on something greater than myself. When I devote my time to conversing with people about God, doing research and doing my best to spread God's word I find that I experience a joy that I cannot normally feel in my life. When I go to be part of worship at church, I feel a joy that I cannot find anywhere else. I just wish that there was no need to do anything than to do these two things in this life. I wish I wanted nothing more than to do these two things and nothing more. Life would be so simple, so joyful. But yeah...
I heard a passage on sunday, went something like this. Philippians 1:21 "For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain." Some days I just wish that I was able to be an unrelenting disciple, wanting to serve and nothing more. I have prayed that God take my worldly attachments and desires away from me, that I could live solely for Him. But, God has chosen not to do that, though I know not why. But nyeah.... Confusing... When one doesn't know what God wants of him...
Life isn't a walk in the park huh? With the storms and the calms... The highs and lows... Sometimes God feels so close, yet sometimes feels so distant... But hey... Enough of this..
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Spritiual Warfare : Online
No this is not the newest MMORPG out on the internet. Instead I am referring to forums online in which christians and non-believers wage spiritual wars upon each other. Youtube is a massive spiritual battlefield and over the last few days I've been posting replies on one song on youtube and have been defending the faith and have been using bible references to "fight" these "battles". But it has come to my attention at just how ill prepared I actually am for these things. Sure I am a staunch christian, and sure I now quite a bit of stuff about what the bible says about certain things. But everytime I was about to make a point, I always realised that I didn't actually know where in the bible it says something and anything. I've heard or read about a verse before about a topic, but I don't ever really remember where in the OT or NT it actually says that. If you go to Youtube and look up any christian song, you wouldn't need to scroll down past about 5 lines to find some heated arguements to and fro between non-christians and christians.
But yeah, I guess most importantly though is that there is probably nowhere in our society that has more open and intense spiritual warfare than there is online. Unless you in Pakistan or something or your getting martyred somewhere for your faith. But in a first world country, you won't find and place with more open spiritual warfare than online. Why is that? well I reckon it's because you have a false identity, noone knows who you are and noone is going to remember you for who you are. People have nothing to lose but perhaps have something to gain. They can safely hurl insults or perhaps share something that's of importance because noone knows who they are and they will never find out. It's probably the same principle as to why people wear ski masks and stuff to perform bank robberies and to mug people. To hide their identity.
But I guess to tackle these things, and doing apologetics related stuff, is to be prayful about it I guess and wear the Armour of God in the most MMORPG sense possible haha.
Read Ephesians 6:10-18 :
The Armor of God
10Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. 11Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. 12For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. 13Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. 14Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, 15and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. 16In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. 17Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. 18And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints.
But yeah, I guess most importantly though is that there is probably nowhere in our society that has more open and intense spiritual warfare than there is online. Unless you in Pakistan or something or your getting martyred somewhere for your faith. But in a first world country, you won't find and place with more open spiritual warfare than online. Why is that? well I reckon it's because you have a false identity, noone knows who you are and noone is going to remember you for who you are. People have nothing to lose but perhaps have something to gain. They can safely hurl insults or perhaps share something that's of importance because noone knows who they are and they will never find out. It's probably the same principle as to why people wear ski masks and stuff to perform bank robberies and to mug people. To hide their identity.
But I guess to tackle these things, and doing apologetics related stuff, is to be prayful about it I guess and wear the Armour of God in the most MMORPG sense possible haha.
Read Ephesians 6:10-18 :
The Armor of God
10Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. 11Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. 12For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. 13Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. 14Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, 15and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. 16In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. 17Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. 18And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Mother's Day Speech...
Yeah I did a mother's day speech at church today... it was kinda funny I think... but yeah... ugh... so tired... I can't be bothered writing any more... lol...
For those the people who wants to know what I said... I'll just copy paste it here
When I was very young, like when I was 5 – 6 years old, me and my brother would drive my mum up the tree with some extremely silly things. Like clogging toilets with rolls of toilet paper and throwing things at neighbour’s houses. One time we were playing some game in the backyard, like throwing rocks at the fence or batting rocks with wooden planks at fences, and one of my brother’s rocks, being thrown quite hard, would fly over the fence and go through the neighbour’s window. I remember the neighbour coming to our house at night and raging for like 5-10 minutes talking about how some rock flew through his living room like a bullet. So thanks mum for being so patient with us and our antics.
I was also probably too curious for my own good, and would always have really random accidents like being bashed by the handle on the tennis net because I wondered what would happen if I unlocked the net in like grade 1 or something, so my mum would have to take me to the doctors and get stitches on me head and stuff. And perhaps it was because of all those stupid accidents involving stiches on my head that made me so forgetful, and so my mum would come to school and look all over the school for me to remind me whenever I had competitions in school like those maths and science competitions and whenever I had music lessons. But since I had multiple music lessons a week for percussion and mum wouldn’t have been able to make them all, I’d forget to go 7 times out of 10.
My mum also gave me heaps of opportunities to basically learn everything that I wanted to learn yet still gave me a lot of free choice, and considering how quick children can change their minds, I can imagine it was probably very frustrating for my parents. I wanted to play the piano so my mum would buy a piano and take me to piano lessons every week, then after a few years I’d stop playing and then I’d say I want to enter those lego robotic competitions and my mum would get all the parts and take me to the competitions and stuff. Similarly with sports and co-curricular activities that I used to do and my mum would always get me to them, like getting up at like... 5:30-6ish to try to get me to cross country and athletics training and taking me to swimming squads after school and to badminton and tennis and all the competitions for tennis. I remember that during the tennis tournaments the temperatures would on some days be like 3-5C while we played. And the parents would all just be sitting outside freezing their butts off watching us and cos I was so skinny back then my mum would always prepare all these hot drinks and stuff in advance that we’d have during our breaks. I guess our parents really do a lot of work behind the scenes that we don’t always immediately appreciate so thanks mum for all the time and effort spent for these things.
I guess one more important thing to add before I finish was that mum did all this but at the same time was doing so much other stuff as well like doing additional studies like doing a master’s degree and graduate diploma and helping dad with his books and still had time to join us in whatever we did, like go for like 4-5km runs or something with me and while other mums would just sit and watch us train, my mum would always train with us or practise with us for whatever sport that may be. So I guess that’s why mum would be so fit as well haha. I guess one other thing that I never really worked out is that whatever I seemed to study, my mum always seemed to know more about it than I did, which I never understood how that could possibly work out. Even though my mum hadn’t touched chemistry and physics for like 20+ years of something she’d still be able to find all my mistakes that I’d make. So I guess she’s kind of a supermum to be able to do practically everything. And one time in like grade 4 or something when we were doing times tables, my mum put up these posters in the garage for the times tables and would make me memorise the times tables and recite them to her while she waited and the funny thing was that once I got passed the 6 times tables I would start getting them all wrong and all my answers would instead be prime numbers, which no doubt would send my mum, who used to be a maths teacher, insane. Stuff like 6*7=41 6*8=59 7*7=47 and stuff like that.
I should thank God for having a mum that is so patient and so self-sacrificing to enable us to do so many things and always being 100% behind our dreams and aspirations. Not to mention providing for all of our everyday needs as well. So Thanks God :P
Have a happy mother's day u people.
For those the people who wants to know what I said... I'll just copy paste it here
When I was very young, like when I was 5 – 6 years old, me and my brother would drive my mum up the tree with some extremely silly things. Like clogging toilets with rolls of toilet paper and throwing things at neighbour’s houses. One time we were playing some game in the backyard, like throwing rocks at the fence or batting rocks with wooden planks at fences, and one of my brother’s rocks, being thrown quite hard, would fly over the fence and go through the neighbour’s window. I remember the neighbour coming to our house at night and raging for like 5-10 minutes talking about how some rock flew through his living room like a bullet. So thanks mum for being so patient with us and our antics.
I was also probably too curious for my own good, and would always have really random accidents like being bashed by the handle on the tennis net because I wondered what would happen if I unlocked the net in like grade 1 or something, so my mum would have to take me to the doctors and get stitches on me head and stuff. And perhaps it was because of all those stupid accidents involving stiches on my head that made me so forgetful, and so my mum would come to school and look all over the school for me to remind me whenever I had competitions in school like those maths and science competitions and whenever I had music lessons. But since I had multiple music lessons a week for percussion and mum wouldn’t have been able to make them all, I’d forget to go 7 times out of 10.
My mum also gave me heaps of opportunities to basically learn everything that I wanted to learn yet still gave me a lot of free choice, and considering how quick children can change their minds, I can imagine it was probably very frustrating for my parents. I wanted to play the piano so my mum would buy a piano and take me to piano lessons every week, then after a few years I’d stop playing and then I’d say I want to enter those lego robotic competitions and my mum would get all the parts and take me to the competitions and stuff. Similarly with sports and co-curricular activities that I used to do and my mum would always get me to them, like getting up at like... 5:30-6ish to try to get me to cross country and athletics training and taking me to swimming squads after school and to badminton and tennis and all the competitions for tennis. I remember that during the tennis tournaments the temperatures would on some days be like 3-5C while we played. And the parents would all just be sitting outside freezing their butts off watching us and cos I was so skinny back then my mum would always prepare all these hot drinks and stuff in advance that we’d have during our breaks. I guess our parents really do a lot of work behind the scenes that we don’t always immediately appreciate so thanks mum for all the time and effort spent for these things.
I guess one more important thing to add before I finish was that mum did all this but at the same time was doing so much other stuff as well like doing additional studies like doing a master’s degree and graduate diploma and helping dad with his books and still had time to join us in whatever we did, like go for like 4-5km runs or something with me and while other mums would just sit and watch us train, my mum would always train with us or practise with us for whatever sport that may be. So I guess that’s why mum would be so fit as well haha. I guess one other thing that I never really worked out is that whatever I seemed to study, my mum always seemed to know more about it than I did, which I never understood how that could possibly work out. Even though my mum hadn’t touched chemistry and physics for like 20+ years of something she’d still be able to find all my mistakes that I’d make. So I guess she’s kind of a supermum to be able to do practically everything. And one time in like grade 4 or something when we were doing times tables, my mum put up these posters in the garage for the times tables and would make me memorise the times tables and recite them to her while she waited and the funny thing was that once I got passed the 6 times tables I would start getting them all wrong and all my answers would instead be prime numbers, which no doubt would send my mum, who used to be a maths teacher, insane. Stuff like 6*7=41 6*8=59 7*7=47 and stuff like that.
I should thank God for having a mum that is so patient and so self-sacrificing to enable us to do so many things and always being 100% behind our dreams and aspirations. Not to mention providing for all of our everyday needs as well. So Thanks God :P
Have a happy mother's day u people.
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Mum's Birthday
Today is my mum's birthday... and so we went to dinner at the sofitel... and as always my brother eats so much that he practically needed to be rolled out the door... and it was a seafood buffet and it was a HUGE seafood buffet... recession actually leaves more goodies to be sold on the local market... normally the best seafood are all exported but whenever there is a recession the locals get the good stuff. Neways my brother at like 12 whole crabs by himself and a whole heap of other junk and I had 1.5 crabs and 3 dozen oysters and some hot food... I wasn't practicularly hungry because I had a big lunch only 4 hours earlier so my appetite wasn't horrific... or else I couldv'e matched my bro probably... neways... I have some photos from my phone... The first photo is of the buffet section that I missed walking through the front counter... lol... and the two others is a display case that should go on failblog.org... because the description just sounds reallly bad... if you can read it, it says "Designed to add energy and excitement to the Vodka drinking experience, the Belvedere Jagger Daggers have been crafted, each boasting 12 carats of inlaid white topaz, 42 pieces of aquamarine and a solid silver hilt............."... lol... a dagger???? adding to the "energy & excitement" of drinking vodka??? either you drink vodka and turn emo or you drink vodka and turn homocidal... lol... such a badly written description...
neways thats my stuff for today...
Friday, May 1, 2009
God answers prayers...
I do a little bit of serving at my church, only little jobs here and there really... but one of the things I do is to organise some weekly prayer gatherings. But sometimes uni rears its ugly butt in the way of my organisation and also certain aspects of my own personal life that inhibits my ability to serve. I haven't been doing this role for very long... only like a few months really... during this meeting we talk about the general state of our church and upcoming events and how the different fellowships are going and what kinda of things are being planned and then we pray for the various needs of our church and the fellowships as well as more worldly affairs that affect people in other places of the world etc. \
One thing I noted was that really, people arn't motivated to come together and pray unless it is extremely convenient for them to do so... ie. they already are gonna go to UF so they might just rock up half an hour earlier to come to the prayer meeting... During the holidays, there is no UF and therefore prayer meetings are placed on another day... which means that almost nobody shows up... like... 1 other guy does... and that's it. This made me think about the reasons why that's the case... and I realised that our church and more particularly the younger congregation which we are part of was in desperate need for revival. I remember talking both to a close brother in christ and a pastor about it and it occurred to me that the passion for Christ in our church seems to only fall to a handful of people and that passion seems to have trouble spreading throughout the group. And while we are all mostly christians there, it became apparent that every person had something inhibiting their growth, something that they struggle with yet stand alone and try to fight it off alone and can't win. I find myself standing in that category most of the time as well, but I realised that to keep fighting and winning, you need brothers and sisters to help you fight. God designed His church so that we could have brothers and sisters to help us and for us to help them.
I knew that God had placed this passion into my heart, and so I prayed about it and asked what God wanted me to do about it. I felt that God wanted me to try and talk to my bros' and sis' and to help them share whatever burdens they may have. I dunno what occurred to me but I thought that I should perhaps stop the prayer meetings to try and focus on doing what God wants me to do... And one of my brothers even offered to take over the organisations of the meetings as well.
I was almost about to send a massive spam email to everyone on the prayer meetings mailing list to inform them of the change. I had typed the whole thing up and was about to hit send when I felt as if a voice was telling to not send it. I prayed again to ask for clarification... and withheld from doing anything and to keep running it for just one more week at least before deciding whether to stop it or not. We had the meeting today, and I felt God respond to my prayer and I knew that God wanted me to continue running the prayer meetings. At the same time our old CAG group is gonna try and start up again and hopefully the fellowship will take away some of my more personal anxieties and allow me to serve God better and continue to grow as a christian and maybe even find some answers that I've been praying for.
One thing I noted was that really, people arn't motivated to come together and pray unless it is extremely convenient for them to do so... ie. they already are gonna go to UF so they might just rock up half an hour earlier to come to the prayer meeting... During the holidays, there is no UF and therefore prayer meetings are placed on another day... which means that almost nobody shows up... like... 1 other guy does... and that's it. This made me think about the reasons why that's the case... and I realised that our church and more particularly the younger congregation which we are part of was in desperate need for revival. I remember talking both to a close brother in christ and a pastor about it and it occurred to me that the passion for Christ in our church seems to only fall to a handful of people and that passion seems to have trouble spreading throughout the group. And while we are all mostly christians there, it became apparent that every person had something inhibiting their growth, something that they struggle with yet stand alone and try to fight it off alone and can't win. I find myself standing in that category most of the time as well, but I realised that to keep fighting and winning, you need brothers and sisters to help you fight. God designed His church so that we could have brothers and sisters to help us and for us to help them.
I knew that God had placed this passion into my heart, and so I prayed about it and asked what God wanted me to do about it. I felt that God wanted me to try and talk to my bros' and sis' and to help them share whatever burdens they may have. I dunno what occurred to me but I thought that I should perhaps stop the prayer meetings to try and focus on doing what God wants me to do... And one of my brothers even offered to take over the organisations of the meetings as well.
I was almost about to send a massive spam email to everyone on the prayer meetings mailing list to inform them of the change. I had typed the whole thing up and was about to hit send when I felt as if a voice was telling to not send it. I prayed again to ask for clarification... and withheld from doing anything and to keep running it for just one more week at least before deciding whether to stop it or not. We had the meeting today, and I felt God respond to my prayer and I knew that God wanted me to continue running the prayer meetings. At the same time our old CAG group is gonna try and start up again and hopefully the fellowship will take away some of my more personal anxieties and allow me to serve God better and continue to grow as a christian and maybe even find some answers that I've been praying for.
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