Saturday, June 21, 2008
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a follow-up to my 3rd last issue...
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O Lord our God,
How excellent Your name is,
How excellent Your name in all the earth,
Your glory fills the heavens,
Beyond the farthest star,
How excellent Your name in all the earth.
When I think about the heavens,
The moon and all the stars,
I wonder what You ever saw in me,
But You took me and you loved me,
And You've given me a crown,
And now I'll praise Your name eternally
for those who are interested, just a blog link that i found while searching this song:
http://crucibleoflife.blogspot.com/2005/06/gods-relentless-pursuit.html
aaron chua thanked jesus at4:25 PM
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just some things i want to share...(part 2)
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before that i just wanted to say that the movie chronicles of narnia is great! i feel the 2nd one is better though. in the first movie there is a lot of parallel meaning and scenes to the Bible. the second one has a little bit, somewhat here and there. just watched the first movie again just now! shiok! remind me after os to do a study on this movie, or read a book that does a study on this movie. haha.
ok i read this story from my tuition centre and i thought it would be quite interesting to hear what you guys think about it. tag.
[Translated in English] In this train station, there was 2 railways - one old and abondoned and the other at that time in use. Lets say you and your friends were playing in the 'live' railway while one lonely shy boy decided to play by himself at the abondoned railway track. Then you went to the toliet and when you came out, a train was fast approaching the group of friends and there were no possible way that you could alert them in time to avoid, assuming they were still happily playing and then they didnt know that their lives could be taken away very soon. In front of you there's this handle, dont know what you call it, but it can change the course of the train, so you can decide instead of travelling in the 'live' railway and bang your group of friends you could change it to travel in the abondoned railway and bang that lonely guy. So WHAT WOULD YOU DO?
It's kind of scary when you imagine yourself in situations like this. Both decisions seem wrong, but YOU HAVE TO MAKE A CHOICE, although the most irresponsible one is to walk away and pretend that you werent there.
I was thinking thinking thinking then one of my tuition friend said that he would change the train's course and knock down the lonely friend and save the group of friends cos this was what Jesus did. I was surprised at what he said so I curiously listened to what else he had to say. He said that Jesus, "killed" himself, (and rose up again thankfully), to save the lives of the sinners, who were in this case those who were playing the 'live' railway. I thought that was pretty true, but that guy has to be noble enough to sacrifice his life to save others and maybe enjoy the honour later. And plus Jesus VOLUNTARILY gave up His life, and thus cannot be applied in this story i find.
The other side also seem logical, since those who played in the 'live' railway were in the wrong and deserved to be punished. That guy, who clearly made the right choice, didnt deserve to die.
So what would I do? Good question. I dont know actually. Hopefully if that day ever comes I would make the right one. Haha.
NIGHTS:)
aaron chua thanked jesus at4:17 PM
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just some things i wanted to share...(part 1)
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just read and tag your thoughts.
from the book "addicted to God"
[The Church is not a place for you to come, sit and be entertained. You are a part of the Church. You have a job. The Church is like a lifesaving station. The following story helps me get a better perspective of what the Church of Jesus Christ is all about and what my role in the Church should be.
On a dangerous seacoast where shipwrecks often occur, there was once a crude little lifesaving station. The building was just a hut and there was only one boat; but the few devoted members kept a constant watch over the sea, and with no thought for themselves went out day and night tirelessly searching for the lost. Some of those who were saved, and various others in the surrounding area, wanted to become associated with the station and give of their time and money and effort for the support of its work. New boats were bought and new crews trained. The little lifesaving station grew.
Some of the members of the lifesaving station were unhappy that the building was so crude and poorly equipped. They felt that a more comfortable place should be provided as the first refuge for those saved from the sea, so they replaced the emergency cots with beds and put better furniture in the enlarged building. Now the lifesaving station became a popular gathering place for its members, and they decorated it beautifully and furnished it exquisitely, because they used it as a sort of club. Fewer members were now interested in going to sea on lifesaving missions, so they hired lifeboat crews to do this work. The lifesaving motif still prevailed in this club's decoration, and there was a liturgical lifeboat in the room where the club initiations were held.
About this time a large ship was wrecked off the coast, and the hired crews brought in boatloads of cold, wet and half-drowned people. They were dirty and sick, and some of them had black skin and some had yellow skin. The beautiful club is now in chaos. So the property committee immediately had a shower house built outside the club where victims of a shipwreck could be cleaned up before coming inside.
At the next meeting, there was a split in the club membership. Most of the members wanted to stop the club's lifesaving activities as being unpleasant and a hindrance to the normal social life of the club. Some members insisted upon lifesaving as their primary purpose and pointed out that they were still called a lifesaving station. But the latter group were finally voted down and told that if they wanted to save the lives of all the various kinds of people who were shipwrecked in those waters, they could begin their own lifesaving station down the coast. They did.
As the years went by, the new station experienced the same changes that had occured in the old. It evolved into a club, and yet another lifesaving station was founded. History continued to repeat itself, and if you visit that seacoast today, you will find a number of exclusive clubs along that shore. Shipwrecks are frequent in those waters, but most of the people drown.]
Questions to think about:
1) What was the lifesaving station primary purpose? What was the consequence when they didnt put that top priority?
2) What is YOUR life primary purpose? What would happen if you did not put it at top priority?
3) Is this story similar to your church (hopefully not), your life, those around you?
aaron chua thanked jesus at12:34 AM
Thursday, June 12, 2008
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the june issue
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due to popular demand, im back again. haha. kidding. just want to share with you guys some thoughts that i encountered this holiday and some passages in books and bible that hopefully would encourage both you and me to continue growing close to God.
but before that today my friend, desmond, asked me to watch this video. beware, it is a 40-min long sermon and when i first started i was like "how long is this going to take me?" but after a while i got interested about it and whoa it is a powerful message. It is how God, just by the phrase, "LET THERE BE LIGHT!!", got the SUN coming out of his mouth, lighting up the whole entire universe, which consists of galaxies after galaxies, things that we have discovered, and how big God must be to create all this. And a scientist calculated that if you take a second to count every star, you would take (if im not wrong) 256 years to count them all! and God knows them ALL by name! He continues that our God is no doubt a big GOD, but He is big enough to fit into each and everyone's hearts here, no matter how small we are in this gigantic universe. Everything that God has created was BY Him, and FOR Him, to show off His splendor and glory, screaming at their top of their lungs for us to witness and experience and join in the worship. "The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands." Psalm 19:1
http://268generation.com/videoplayer/player.php?videoid=Indescrwide1&quality=hi
then after that it was continued by this 8:49 minute video, which talks about the biological wonder about the whole human body. you see, in every cell, there is the nucleus. in every nucleus theres this thing called the laminin, which decides what this cell is and what function it does. it is a protein molecule which is the most fundamental of life. and when the picture of it is revealed, it is shaped like the cross. this just means one thing: that we are like the blueprints of Christ and Christ is living in us!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_e4zgJXPpI4&feature=related
"He is before all things, and in him all things hold together." Colassians 1:17. Literally. (Colassians 1:15-17)
ok now for the main segment.
"no matter how big you think your head is, your head cannot never reach the heavens.
no matter how small and insignificant you think you are, you cannot escape from God's love cos He's everywhere." - a great man
"Everyone baptised in the spirit has a special spiritual gift. Everyone who doesnt practises his spiritual gift is like a lamp under a basket." - a Bible School professor i believe.
This is from a book the same friend lend it to me - the power of a praying teen. It begins, "The most important thing you ever need to understand is that God CREATED you, He LOVES you, He is COMMITTED to you, and He has a GREAT PURPOSE for you life. But you have not only BELIEVE this in your head, you have to KNOW it in your heart. And it is only through a close relationship with God that you can truly know all this."
It continues, "When you walk close to God by reading His Word and spending time with Him every day in prayer, you will find out who you really are and who you were created to be. You will understand God's purpose for your life."
I like this passage cos it sums up very nicely why we should do Quiet Time. The idea is actually very logical, but maybe i just didnt think of it this way.
Another thing I learnt from the book today was (quote from the bk)"when we dont confess our sins, faults and errors, they separate us from God. And we dont get our prayers answered. The Bible says. "Your iniquities have separated you from your God; and your sins have hidden His face from you, so that He will not hear." (Isaiah 59:2)"
Imagine God putting His fingers in His ears and saying, "La la la la la la" over and over really loud when you pray. Haha. "
'When we don't confess our sins, we end up trying to hide ourselves from God, just like Adam and Eve. We feel like we cant face Him, so sometimes we stop doing QT, or going to church, or anything that would get God out of our heads. But the problem with attempting to hide from God is that it's impossible. The Bible says that God knows everything we do. Even the things we said and thought in secret. (Luke 12:2-3)'
In the end we all have to give an account for the things we did. So we must confess and repent of them. Confess is acknowledging them as sins and am sorry of doing them. But repent is the decision to try your best to stop doing them.
King David summed it up very nicely, "There is no soundness in my flesh because of Youe anger, nor any health in my bones because of my sin. For my iniquities have gone over my head; like a heavy burden they are too heavy for me." (Psalm 38:3-4)
another thing i was thinking about today. you know when there's darkness, people want to hide the darkness. So they discovered fire, which provided for them light for the night. But the people want the light but they dont want the smoke. So men discovered electricity, so that men can enjoy the light from their light bulbs but without the smoke. But they didn't see by that they did not discover a way to stop the smoke from forming, but they just transported it away. It's like you are burning a piece of wood here but the smoke is coming from 10 miles away from you to choke someone else, not you. This got me thinking for a while. I came up with a few things:
1) for something good to happen, a sacrifice has to be made.
2) people are selfish by nature, thinking of the comfort and luxury of themselves.
3) the world is unfair - person A does this but person B gets the repercussions
k thats all. nights:)
aaron chua thanked jesus at6:10 PM