Thankfulness

I have been posting my notes from chapel, church services, events, and seminars that are God-centered for a certain amount of time.
With the help of Google, people have stumbled upon my blog from life-experiences, to problems, and love.
My proposition is that if you are a visitor and the posts on my blog has helped you in some way or another please just give a simple "thanks" on the comments. Moreover, I've decided that "if" I ever earn money through the ads on this blog, it will go to those who need it most, or to an organization you recommend.
Above-all of this, its just notes I take throughout the week, but if it gives God the glory, then why not?

Monday, June 28, 2010

Rambling

Today was a bit normal, was extra tired cause... cause... I slept late and din take any nap after church. my fault. Went to school abit off my usually time, and wanted to just rest abit on my quiet desk. But as life is never fair, I got the opposite so went straight to preparing for assembly uhhh..... so i stayed up late to finish my late post which was satisfying.

Nothin out of the norm from school.
did my 20mins cardio exercise of jogging and ate did some hw and slept.
I hate blogging about what I did its kinda like not my point of blogging.

Okay so I found a new manga!!! Wooott!!! Called Haruyuki Bus.
It has 16 chapters each with its own short story about love~~~
Shoujos are good, in a girly way. But I still love to read them.

I started noticing that I swear alot, so now im really conscious when I'm about to swear then I stop and i dont. so No swearing.

This week I wont touch a single rubik's cube cus over did it last week and i just dont wanna. a resolution i suppose. finished my hw. and ouchhh the girl in the manga just got told off "Sorry I'm just not interested in you" T_T even i could feel that.

went and made popcorn though its 11:40 cant sleep cus just took a nap, awwww perfect ending for the manga^^~!

Today's Devotion

Today I had my devotion at school. The devotion was really good and inspiring that actually let God teach me something. What the something is, is grace.

I forgot the title.. The title was really good also, when I remember I'll edit it here.

The devotion was from Titus Chapter 2

1You must teach what is in accord with sound doctrine. 2Teach the older men to be temperate, worthy of respect, self-controlled, and sound in faith, in love and in endurance.

3Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good. 4Then they can train the younger women to love their husbands and children, 5to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God.

6Similarly, encourage the young men to be self-controlled. 7In everything set them an example by doing what is good. In your teaching show integrity, seriousness 8and soundness of speech that cannot be condemned, so that those who oppose you may be ashamed because they have nothing bad to say about us.

9Teach slaves to be subject to their masters in everything, to try to please them, not to talk back to them, 10and not to steal from them, but to show that they can be fully trusted, so that in every way they will make the teaching about God our Savior attractive.

11For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. 12It teaches us to say "No" to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, 13while we wait for the blessed hope—the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, 14who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good.

15These, then, are the things you should teach. Encourage and rebuke with all authority. Do not let anyone despise you.

Titus chapter 2 talks about how a person should act and show himself in a correct way according to God's will. But the author of the devotion book stressed on grace instead.

The most cool part about it, is that he spoke on the definition of grace. Out of the three he gave(I forgot the other two...) the one he liked the most that defines grace is that. Grace is "Love in action". He explained that grace is love and without love, grace could not be. For grace is God's love on us even though were not worthy to receive it.

What a good short devotion! That's what I got today!

Sunday, June 27, 2010

Rambling

Man.... Just saw my profile for blogspot...
Im ashamed of myself...
Though I have no shame but Im shaming for myself.
My profile was like some really really really kiddish way of giving an intro for myself.
This kinda shows why people see my blog, view my profile and make a dash for the tree line.
Owh talking about making a dash for the tree line.
I just understood what the metaphor or quote or sentence meant, cause of bio. wow...
Din actually kno that tree line meant the line where the trees are not there anymore.

Im really rambling..
okay so when im rambling its informal, unconditional spelling and grammar.
but when its my other post then formal english.
seriously dis whole thiing is dam random.
Note to self, stop using the word damm.
Eternal Damnation is not a good thing.

I just noticed another thing. Blogspot is an error spelling weird..

oh yeah my profile so i gotta edit it and make it abit more sensible.
YAY my kakak just helped closed my room door cus got a big insect.
my kakak saves me ^^V *owh i just learnt that, that emoticon is ^^ and a peace V.*

Insects, I have a phobia for them. Yep I cant stand the idea of butterflies being "beautiful"
Their insects wif wings that are really weird... and their body is like insect like and they have their insect legs and stuff.
Thinking of it just makes me feel uneasy.
Which reminds me, the episode of Spongebob where-by Sandy leaves her house in the care of Spongebob as she goes off to some place la.
then she has all the animals that needs to be taken care of.
And the least important is wormie.
So Spongebob and Patrick got all super friendly-in-love(i dono how to explain it, how do u explain when some one likes somthine very much as in a frenly way 0.o dat boggles me)
Then wen wormie became a cocoon and then a butterfly
they tot that the butterfly ate wormie and then they let it lose in bikini-bottom*XD bikini-bottom XD* by traping it in a bubble then it flies out.
So bikini bottom gets destroyed.

That was a freaky episode, cus when spongebob stared into the jar. The producers used a real life clip of a butterfly to show butterfly-wormie. dude... that made me get seriously scared.

Insects are not my friends

okay i ran out of ramblings. yea yea i gotta get today's message done. doin it, not really moving much but it wil be done

Sunday, Pastor Mark

This morning, the Paradise Band led(yes my last post says lead, ouch grammar problems =/) the service and Pastor Mark preached. Though it was hard for me to go through the service, cause I slept late, woke up early, so my fault or I should say shame on me.

I must say, today's preaching wasn't the best. I don't really want to post about it, cause, one I really didn't pay attention so its bad of me, and two its cause I don't want to make posting about the things I post a must but more like out of the heart of giving and wanting to learn more about God.
But firstly, I have to make this a habit and then only choose want to and not to post.
Moving on..

Pastor Mark shared on worship. Not about musicians and songs but more about worship of the Lord. *Ughh side tracking, its night dy and my stomach is growlin but im not really looking forward to whats for dinner cause jelak u kno, and sticking my face to a manga =/ One thing about writing these things is that I write abit then i stop to think and then go again, testing my memory power lawls, but it takes a long process to just finish one, owh and i tot that maybe id just create another post where i ramble rather than mixing it into here which is not so nice if some one were to read this and getting into the mood then me rambling here, potong steam dohhh*
First thing first before I start on the message,stressing the point that for this service I really wasn't paying attention.
And if its different from the original then I'm sorry, but its doesn't really matter whether its as "same" as the original cause this is more of what I learnt and what I can give as an output.

Back to this seriously. Pastor Mark shared on worship, worship for the Lord. He preached from John 4:1-26

John 4:1-26

Jesus Talks With a Samaritan Woman
1The Pharisees heard that Jesus was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John, 2although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. 3When the Lord learned of this, he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee.

4Now he had to go through Samaria. 5So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour.

7When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, "Will you give me a drink?" 8(His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)

9The Samaritan woman said to him, "You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?" (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans."

10Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water."

11"Sir," the woman said, "you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? 12Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?"

13Jesus answered, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."

15The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water so that I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water."

16He told her, "Go, call your husband and come back."

17"I have no husband," she replied.

Jesus said to her, "You are right when you say you have no husband. 18The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true."

19"Sir," the woman said, "I can see that you are a prophet. 20Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem."

21Jesus declared, "Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews.23Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth."

25The woman said, "I know that Messiah" (called Christ) "is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us."

26Then Jesus declared, "I who speak to you am he."

Pastor Mark used the Samaritan woman as an example for, if I'm not wrong, preaching the Gospel.
He was preaching about worship but also about the lost and Jesus.(Everything is about Jesus ==!!!)
I'm not really sure about the details of worship as a Christian but in summary, we as Christians need to worship God. It's not about the music, or the band, or who is singing, but it is about the heart and that the heart is wanting to worship God.

Bits & Pieces. (Points that I don't know how to connect them)
Jesus actually reached out to the Samaritan woman in a special way. Jesus could have, rather than asking for water, created water to drink. But he chose to reach to the woman. And Pastor Mark added that in John 4:31-38 after the disciples came back from getting food for Jesus, Jesus said he was already full.

When Jesus saved the Samaritan woman (she really needs a name.. =( I feel very bad calling her the Samaritan woman, as if I'm sexist or something =/ ), it is said that not only she was saved, not only her family and relatives, but the whole village. For she went back to her village and told the people about what Jesus had told her. The village also invited Jesus to speak to them, and when they heard what He said, they believed in Him even more. This can be found in John 4:39-41.

What point is Pastor Mark making when he said this? Truthfully I am not sure, for I did not listen. But hopefully each person has their own way of interpreting it, because God speaks to us all.
To me its like, when one is saved, a whole group can also be saved. Maybe Pastor Mark means that through worship a person can touch others, or when there is a worship service people can be touched in so many ways.

What is important is that, when worshiping God, our hearts have to be at the right place. Meaning, set our heart's focus on Jesus and only Him, because that is what true worship is about.

And Pastor Mark quoted Psalms 84:10 again, which is for those who do not know :
10 Better is one day in your courts
than a thousand elsewhere;
I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God
than dwell in the tents of the wicked.
I have to agree with Pastor Mark that, that verse is very powerful, meaningful, and such love for God. Pastor Mark then ended his message and went on to worship, and he was really made to lead in worship with his team.

So this is the end of this week. Tomorrow is Monday and a start of a new week, I pray that God will speak to me even more. And that I will ramble more or just post something.

Paradise Band Concert, Pastor Mark.

Ytd, Paradise Band held their concert at church at night.
Wonderful concert, the worship was incredible.
Most importantly, the message was shared and people were saved.

Pastor Mark's message was simple and easy to grasp, which is good.
He used 2 examples, one that of a Bible story and another one of his life.
I simply review these things, not word for word, neither do I have all the points.
Which means, I need to take notes.

On to the message,
Pastor Mark preached from,
Luke 19:1-10 He entered Jericho and was passing through it. A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was rich. He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way. When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, "Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today." So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him. All who saw it began to grumble and said, "He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner." Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, "Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much." Then Jesus said to him, "Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost."
He started off giving the story of his child hood life. How at a young age his father(I'm not sure, I think passed away, but could have been the father left. Not so sure.). So he grew up without the love
of a father. When he was in high school, he started thinking why was his life in such a mess.
He tried to follow his peers but could not find the love that his father did not give.

Pastor Mark, then explained that Zacchaeus was a a tax collector and that tax collector's during Jesus' time were corrupted and thieves. When they collected tax for the Roman Empire, they took an extra more of the tax and kept the extras for themselves. So(So again sigh) Zacchaeus was called a sinner by the crowd and they hated the fact that Jesus went to his house to eat.

Pastor Mark then combined his examples, he said that we are sinners and we are lacking the love that we are trying so hard to search for. We try to follow the crowd that hated Zacchaeus, and that we end up lost like Pastor Mark during his high school life. For we didn't find the love that we were searching for.

In his conclusion, Pastor Mark said that the love that we are looking for is in God. Adding to that, he quoted Jeremiah 29:11
11 For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.
and

13 You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.
The verses are very straight forward and he didn't go into detail but just that we are special and that if we seek God, we will find him. He then shared about God's love and asked for anyone who wanted it.

Good message, but its really lengthy and draggy. Quite hard to follow if you don't focus. I have to admit I also daydreamed at some point. I don't want to be critical, so moving on after altar call, they got everyone to go to the front and scream and shout and sing and jump while the did songs like,
Love Showed The Way,Take It All, One Way. Anyways I don't want to talk about the concert cause thats not what this is about, other people can do that.

Okay I found out the reason why I had that stomach ache on Friday late night. On Friday, for lunch at school, I had fried rice and there was cut chilli padi and soy sauce. So being the man I was, I took a nice big heap for chilli padi and laid it on my rice. Well the fried rice was awesome, but the stomach ache wasn't.

One more thing is today's message. Paradise Band lead the worship and Pastor Mark preached.
Next post.

Saturday, June 26, 2010

26th June, Workshop by Paradise Band, Pastor Mark Anderson

Okay, so now atleast my blog has some purpose for me la.
Doesn't matter dy that no one reads it, it helps me so its good enough for me.
My stomach ache really la.... Went to the toilet oso still not enough.
I'll pray, it always works.

So today was the first night of workshop at church.
Paradise Band held the worship, they're having their concert tml night.
(I have a habit for using the word so, which is not good in writing)
Pastor Mark preached after the worship and before the workshop started.
He preached on 3 things.
  1. Having Compassion for God
  2. Having Compassion for the Church
  3. Having Compassion for the Gifts of God
Hopefully I got it right.
He quoted from Matthew 22:37-39 "Jesus replied: "'37Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.'38This is the first and greatest commandment.39And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'"

He gave an example using boy meets girl. About how he, himself, as a high school kid, when he liked a girl, he would try to be around the girl as much as possible. He would think about her all the time and that he would do anything to get her attention.
Pastor Mark, was comparing it to our love for God, His Church, and Gifts of God.
Our love needs to in this 3 things. Why can't we love God like how we would like a person.
Or why we can say "I worked late tonight and I have a bit of cough, so I think I'll skip church tomorrow." but when it comes to meeting the person we love, it doesn't matter what time is it, where is it, or how we are, we just wanna spend time with them.

Pastor Mark says, we should be wanting God like that. Even if it was serving at the front gate of His courts, welcoming people, we would be full of joy to be in the presence of the Lord.
He quoted Psalm 84:10
"10 Better is one day in your courts
than a thousand elsewhere;
I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God
than dwell in the tents of the wicked."

Really, what a super correct verse quoted. Gosh, I forgot the third point...
This is why I should start taking notes. When I remember I'll come back here and post it.

Anyways he closed his message after saying "finally or my final point" a few times =P.
I went to the drum & bass workshop.
They didn't teach anything about like music, but more to worship.
How the drum and bass, and over all worship team should be like.
Its like the worship team should 90% accompaniment and 10% of our own selves.
Man, I want a worship team like that. Not like the showing of ones.
To be servants for the congregation not performing for them.

Ok thats all I can remember, so I'll end it here.
Sleep I guess.

God's in my life yo. Pastor David Doery

Why am I blogging bout all this? Its not for you, no offence, but more for me. I feel that each time I go to service or hear a preaching, I need to review what God has said to me. So that I'll learn from it, and apply it to my life.

Oh just rmbed, the title of his message is Dead Dogs seatings on the dining table if im not wrong lols.
Last week, Pastor David Doery from Bridge Church in Richmond Australia, preached as a guest speaker. Wonderful, impact full message. He wasn't boring, as in, his voice was not mono, and the jokes were good.

The message, most importantly. So Pastor Doery preached about living a Christian life that was boring, even though it was filled with prayer, Bible reading, and going to church. Reason why it was boring was because that person didn't serve. Another way to say it more understandably, is that we're not engaging in the church. I loved how he used the word engaged. btw, 2 words that was imprinted into my head that he used was engaged and rescuers.

He goes deeper into what he means, and explains how a Christian should serve and when they gave their time to God, their workplace and life will follow after. Like, we think that we don't have time, but if we gave time our other stuff will fall in place. Thats awesome for those who don't serve.

Then he goes into the subject of serving and not for ourselves but for God. Being rescuers.
He uses the example of the Titanic. And how when the titanic was sinking, there were only 20 lifeboats. Only, if I'm not mistaken, 200 people were saved from the 1000+(my numbers are utterly wrong for sure.) Anyways the fact is that only a few were saved, and the reason was that not because the lifeboats did not have space but because then people that were in the lifeboats were already "satisfied" with saving themselves, they were afraid that their lifeboats would sink or get sucked in by the sinking of the Titanic. *Okay, he really made it important that we got this. That they were only satisfied with saving themselves and the little they had* Only 2 boats out of the 20(10%) went back to try to save more people.

His point was, we must not be satisfied with what they had like the 90% of lifeboats but be rescuers like the 10% who went back. And gosh, I was like "I WANNA BE A RESCUER!!!!!" It was so impact full to me. Because my life was so boring, and monday (is it monday? its some word that sounds like that) and I was wondering, why? why is it so boring?. I just studied, eat sleep, routine. day after day, and at one point I was like, I'm so lazy to go to church its just not speaking to me.
Anyways God spoke really clearly to me, I guess at the brink of everything falling apart, God comes and saves me. After all this years of filling myself with all the worldly things it finally just became boring and nothing to me. Life changing, Life changing. I wanted to get out of the boringness and make it fun and enjoyable. After I heard Pastor Doery, I found out why my life was so boring was because I didn't have God. Man, I was like on fire burning like oil. Wanting to go home and just pray my heart out. Owh just remembered, Pastor Doery also said that when we pray it shouldn't be all about me me me, but when we pray always try to pray for others more.

So after that service, I felt good. I prayed that night like one of the longest prayer I had by myself, praying for God to help me in every area of my life, for His help, but most importantly for Him to be working in every aspect of me. I didn't wanna lose out in my studies, life, etc, so I prayed that He'd helped me in everything I could think of, everything lol. And it has been 5 days I have prayed consistently each night, which is awesome. Its hard to pray, but I have this thought that if I don't pray I might not be able to get through the next day alone. God makes my hardships easier.
Walau testimony. Anyways okies this is reviewed nicely.

Then one more on todays workshop, Pastor Mark. Really need to review that for sure.
Guess I'll do it now. Then tml got the workshop again, man I pray that I hope I get to be 1 on 1 with Paradise band's bassist, I mean that would be sad if I was him conducting the workshop, but hey for me thats really awesome then I get to learn all I want. yes better pray i get 1 on1 =P, selfish =P.
Hmmm if I review like this each week that would be good. Then I should take notes! =D then its like posting the whole message here lols. well in a way thats good, then other people could read it and be blessed. HMMM!!!!!!!! okies this is done, damm stomach ache =/, ill post the next one now.

Saturday, June 12, 2010

My China Ramblings

No matter what, I guess, I hate blogging. I think I made myself believe I liked it, but in actually fact, I don't really like it. I hate it. tao! yuan!
Ok so, I hate blogging. Thats settled.
Now, the 2 weeks holiday started already, spent 8 days and 6 nights in China.
Beijing, and places around it, like Da Tong and some other places, its in mandarin, I'm a banana, so I don't expect myself to remember them very well. Anyways supposedly we traveled super far in just one week.

26th June.
Drafted and continue-ing.
I just thought of it. I am rambling. Cos, I don't ramble to anyone much, it all comes here.
China. The girls.
All the girls in China are nice, in face wise not that pretty but not that ugly.
But they have superb legs. They could do leg-modelling.
Food, rice everyday. 10+ types of dishes ranging from veges to meats(pork, chicken, beef, duck) fruits, soups, deserts. And beer and coke and chinese tea all the time.
Fact, beer in China is cheaper than coke.
Walking on the first day, made my legs ache in the evening.
But got used to the walking amount throughout the holiday.
Went to famous places, Great Wall, Forbidden City.
Can't tell much about the places cause its all in Mandarin, and I don't speak it yo.
Great Wall is like really high, the steps are steep, a lot of wind.
Scary if your afraid of heights cause the higher you go, the lower the railing goes.
The railing was as low as my legs, and only the right side had railings.
The 3rd level, people peed there, like the pee-d on the floor the smell was strong.
Cus no toilet up there mah, so ppl pee everywhere lorrr.
Plus the 1st level, saw a girl(like 20s) picking her nose. waouw.
Had fun rooming wif my 13th year old cuz. His awesome. But im awesomer.
The flight had no personal tv. only sharing ones so that sucked.
On the way to china, one of the air stewards came and complement my hair, asking how I did it oso.
Bargaining is fun in China, especially when your like me.
Having the korean look, plus I'm speaking english. They all think I'm like from the U.S. or somthing.
So my cuz and me made up fake bios, just for laughs.
Ramble ramble ramble. I'll continue this part some other time.