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Do You Love Me?

I felt Jesus asking me this morning "do you love me?" and as Isaiah's cry in chapter 64 resonates with my Spirit:

"We've sinned and kept at it so long!
Is there any hope for us? Can we be saved?
We're all sin-infected, sin-contaminated.
Our best efforts are grease-stained rags.
We dry up like autumn leaves—
sin-dried, we're blown off by the wind.
No one prays to you
or makes the effort to reach out to you
Because you've turned away from us,
left us to stew in our sins.
Still, God, you are our Father.
We're the clay and you're our potter:
All of us are what you made us.
Don't be too angry with us, O God.
Don't keep a permanent account of wrongdoing.
Keep in mind, please, we are your people—all of us."

In contrast to His love for me, my devotion pales in comparison. Be patient with me and make my heart burn for you with undivided passion.

Being Missional

Happened again! This time on the way home in a cab. The uncle was rather chatty and the HS prompted me to talk to him, just connect and maybe somehow share with him. Again I rationalised that the journey would be short and I didn't even know how to start and decided to just engage in banter.

When Jean and I got off the cab, the uncle handed us the change and a tract. Wow! Talk about being missional. The uncle really inspired me and reminded me that in any and every vocation I need to have my mission clear. And again, I really need to listen to and obey the HS's leading.

God is Mad

Today I exprienced a newfound appreciation of the depth of love God has for me. His love overwhelms me and makes me want to run to Him and trust Him with my whole life, I guess the term to use is worship.

I was meditating on the Law that God gave the world through Israel, to define for the world what righteousness looked like and to live by God's wisdom and understanding for an abundant life. Similarly, because of the Law, we now know what sin is and we see the justice of God in requiring a punishment for sin. This is only right and just.

Then I wondered hey shouldn't I be the one to pay the penalty for my mistakes? I couldn't didn't live up to the true measure of what is right and good. God could have judged me for who I was and He would be deemed a perfect and just judge.

Then it hit me that my God loves me. He LOVES me. He created me for His pleasure, not as a higher being creating toys for pleasure, but He created us to lavish His LOVE us, to allow us to enjoy Him and to find absolute abandonment and joy in loving Him. Wow! What a privilege I have.

I know this may seem a rehash of the stuff we Christians have drilled with from day 1 and have been told to tell our friends about, but that would be like eating Chilli Crab cup noodles compared to eating the very best chilli crab with deep fried mantou. Wheet! They're world's apart.

Being able to just experience this bit of the awesomeness of the love of God just causes my heart to pound a little faster, my spirit to leap for joy and my mind to just give up trying to make sense of why a God would want to have anything to do with me, more so to suffer for my own stupidity. I think we can all conclude he is mad. Madly in love with you and me.

Listening to the Holy Spirit

Its something I'd like to remember and share so this will help break the long silence on this blog and to figuratively blow the dust of the covers haha.

I was led to read more about the person of the Holy Spirit this morning and it was a good time of adding knowledge to all my experiences garnered from growing up in a Pentecostal Church. Was reminded that the Holy Spirit dwells within each believer at conversion and is our source of power and the gifts that we use to minister to one another. Less clear was whether there was one or two separate baptisms. I'm still on the fence, as my personal experience has been one of continual growth in how the Holy Spirit worked in my life and there wasn't a definitive baptism or moment. But what is clear is that the Holy Spirit is in us and we need to be sensitive to Him, to obey Him and to depend on His power for victory over each day's struggles.

So when I was at youth service and it was towards the end of the altar call, I felt His familiar voice directing me to pray for one of the youths whom I didn't know. Somehow I found myself trying to rationalise the prompting away, like "he looks fine, sure don't need to pray for him one la." along that line haha. And so the moment came and went and service was over like that and I missed that opportunity. Ironic that the last point of the service was on radical faith haha.

So it is with great regret that I mark today's experience and to ask the Holy Spirit for forgiveness and to renew my faith in Him and to obey His commands, no matter how I see the situation. I want to submit my will to His leading and to live life in the Supernatural, to ditch normal. May I never quench the Holy Spirit's leading again, help me God.

Day 4: Made to Last Forever

"To make the most of your life, you must keep the vision of eternity in your mind and the value of it in your heart."

Help me Lord to approach and view life in this manner.

May you examine and reorder my priorities so that I may be most effective in this brief life.

May relationships and character be my paramount pursuits and help me forsake the love of money, fame and illicit pleasure.

Help me make the most of my resources like time and money and to use them with eternal returns.

Grant me a sense of urgency to share your salvation to the people around me.

Lord eternity boggles my mind. What does it mean to live foreverrrrrrrrrr.......

Thank you for the hope I have in you and I am looking forward to the day we can chill.

Moved

We moved over from my parents place to my Dad's place at Queensway. Its a nice cozy studio apartment just behind Queensway Shopping Center. The last few months have been hectic, running around buying stuff, thinking of design ideas and corrdinating all the reno work. Last week was moving and rectifying defects and CLEANING. So much to do and settle and everything is mostly in its place. It was a most enjoyable though tiring experience, but there's great satisfaction at creating and seeing your vision come to fruition.

Renovating and doing up the house has been consuming. Guess its cause its a creative pursuit and it kinda sucks me in. I find myself distracted when I want to spend time with God and find my mind preoccupied with thigns to buy or stuff to do around the house. There is a need to detach and say enough's enough and just let go. Glad I was able to do it today and to just spend my morning with God, realigning my purpose and being refreshed in His presence.

Its a whole new phase with Jean, living on our own so will see how things go.

2011

This year feels different from the last. Theres a renewed closeness with God and a deepening of my walk. A sense of anticipation for the possibilities and opportunities that this year holds. Will I emerge from my time of trudging? Hopefully, but nonetheless I trust in the sovereignty and purposes of God.

This is my verse for 2011:

"Then Moses said to him, “If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here. How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and with your people unless you go with us? What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?”

That I will learn to rely less on my understanding but to wait upon the Lord's leading and direction and to make meeting and knowing Him my priority. That will require discipline, patience and dependence. I pray that God will meet me and show me His ways.

Stuff happening this year include getting know my next rotation tomorrow and the house renovation is wrapping up with the move this Saturday. Am volunteering at work to provide learning opportunities and a mentoring structure for the graduates as my way to connect with more young adults and introduce them to my Lord. Theres AHH cell to shepherd and I believe that God will move this year and Retreat to plan for.

So this year has much in store and we'll see where God leads at the culmination of 2011.