Eyes wide open

Hello, you. I know how you feel. You're so comfortable with the world, comfortable with life. Nothing too great & exciting, but even so, nothing so desperately troubling that you feel the need to humbly pray to God and read the Bible. You're okay with going to church, especially when your friends are there, and you're also okay with saying a quick prayer and maybe reading a small bite of the Bible before you sleep. You enjoy youth camps, you enjoy the emotional highs you come out with, you enjoy the games played, the funny pictures taken, the special t-shirt you get. So yes of course, you'd say you enjoy being a Christian. But if you didn't have friends around you who also go to church, if you get too busy with the world to pray and read the Bible, if youth camps aren't fun and emotionally exciting enough, would you reconsider how much you enjoy Christianity? Is your Christian faith really about God? Is your Christ ian faith really about Christ? Is...

Hebrews 13:20-21 “Now the God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, m ake you perfect in every good work to do his will, working in you that which is wellpleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ; to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.” Over my 11-month break I have learnt a tremendous lot about the will of God. These are things which I picked up here and there from sermons, articles, books, etc. that I’ve read, and were consolidated through an actual living out and encountering of problem after problem, trouble after trouble, difficulty after difficulty, challenge after challenge, and dependence on God over all. I truly thank God for using these months to mould me; what seemed at first to be the start of a dull drawing on of idle months soon unfolded into a surprising journey of growth and shaping. In four points, here’s my practical understanding of walking in God’s wil...

There's much to learn about this Joshua 2 story of Rahab and the spies - much more than I'll write in this short-ish post - but as I read the account during my quiet time with God this morning, several important reminders were freshly imprinted on my mind & heart, a significant one being about the fear of the LORD . Rahab was a pagan prostitute in Jericho who welcomed the spies from Israel into her home and hid them on her rooftop, sending the Jericho authorities another way when they came searching for them. [Rahab said] "I know that the LORD has given this land to you and that a great fear of you has fallen on us, so that all who live in this country are melting in fear because of you. We have heard how the LORD dried up the water of the Red Sea for you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to Sihon and Og, the two kings of the Amorites east of the Jordan, whom you completely destroyed. When we heard of it, our hearts melted and everyone's courage...

Psalm 136:4-9 “to Him who alone does great wonders, His love endures forever. who by His understanding made the heavens, His love endures forever. who spread out the earth upon the waters, His love endures forever. who made the great lights - His love endures forever. the sun to govern the day, His love endures forever. the moon and stars to govern the night; His love endures forever. ”               We know that creation demonstrates the creativity of the Creator, as how the glory of an artist is in his paintings. So in the same way, we see God’s amazing mind when we see the fruit of it – the work produced – the watercolour evening sky, the year-round snow-capped mountains, the vast and mighty oceans, the gargantuan Redwood trees, the animals – tiny ladybugs and humpback whales, the humans – faces with such inexplicable beauty. We understand that pretty easily, and indeed that’s pretty captiv...

A disclaimer before you read what I share: I try to be cautious not to write judgmentally and not to appear unduly critical  - these are my observations so that all of us, myself included, can perhaps be more mindful of this.. trap, I would call it? - when we worship. "I feel it." I admire those who pay much attention to the Holy Spirit, being led through the Praise & Worship set list by Him, thanking God for making His presence known among us as we put our praise on the altar. But I also wonder if anyone else makes the mistake - as I have done before, of focusing too much on emotional highs/lows, the leap of your heart, the sudden assault of goosebumps, the sudden tear-jerker... and mistaking these temporal physical reactions to be the fullness of God's presence. Undermining Christ. In many praise & worship gatherings I have been in, I see Jesus Christ reduced to a box only opened on Sundays for a good temporal goosebump thrill. Has the amazing life-changing...

              Little details catch my eye. Tiny mistakes raise alarm. Where other people might view fine details in a project as trivial and unimportant, I pay painstaking attention to each and every detail and expend time and effort to make sure every one of them is in perfect order. To be clear, I don’t have obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) – and maybe the description of my attention to detail above might be slightly exaggerated... But I definitely must say that I'm a perfectionist, wanting to make every effort a flawless one whenever I can.               I have been given several roles in ministry where my perfectionist eye is put to much use. For example, in my writing I try to choose each word carefully with my nose in an open thesaurus, also rereading each line twice or thrice to make sure it has a nice ring to it. When designing graphics...

I'll sing to You, Lord, a hymn of love for Your faithfulness to me.  -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I'm carried in everlasting arms; You'll never let me go through it all. 4th Feb 2017 | MCKL Graduation | @Dream Centre Emily has graduated! ...but not from university just yet. I finished my A-level programme last year and we had graduation last Saturday. I had the privilege of doing Scripture reading during graduation, and the selected passage was Psalm 33. The psalm professed truths about God that I felt were so timely. "Don't count on your warhorse to give you victory..." We are often so materialistic, not in the sense of material wealth and possessions, but in the sense that we trust more in things we can see & discern physically (like a warhorse) than in the omnipotence and loving Sovereignty of God, who orchestrates all things carefully and gloriously out of the "vast reservoirs...