A Frozen Snapshot in Time
♣ Have A Little Faith
Tuesday, January 28, 2014 // 0 comments
Everybody falls sometimes
Gotta find the strength to rise
From the ashes and make a new beginning
Anyone can feel the ache
You think it's more than you can take
But you are stronger, stronger than you know

Don't you give up now
The sun will soon be shining
You gotta face the clouds
To find the silver lining

It doesn't matter what you've heard
Impossible is not a word
It's just a reason for someone not to try
Everybody's scared to death
When they decide to take that step
Out on the water
It'll be alright

Life is so much more
Than what your eyes are seeing
You will find your way
If you keep believing

I've seen dreams that move the mountains
Hope that doesn't ever end
Even when the sky is falling
And I've seen miracles just happen
Silent prayers get answered
Broken hearts become brand new
That's what faith can do

Overcome the odds
You don't have a chance
(That's what faith can do)
When the world says you can't
It'll tell you that you can! 

I've seen dreams that move the mountains
Hope that doesn't ever end
Even when the sky is falling
And I've seen miracles just happen
Silent prayers get answered
Broken hearts become brand new
That's what faith can do
That's what faith can do! 
Even if you fall sometimes
You will have the strength to rise

: : That's What Faith Can Do : : Kutless : : 


And I've seen miracles just happen...Silent prayers get answered...That's what faith can do...

Have a little faith...

“...faith isn't about having everything figured out ahead of time; faith is about following the quiet voice of God without having everything figured out ahead of time.”          
                                    ― Rachel Held EvansA Year of Biblical Womanhood

♣ Out of My Hands
Monday, January 27, 2014 // 0 comments
Out of Your hands 
Into my heart 
You give it all for me 
A love that is real 
My emptiness filled 
That's when I first believe 

Out of Your hands 
Into my heart 
You put Your songs in me 
Rivers will flow 
Healing me whole 
That's when my soul will sing 

My heart can never comprehend 
Love crucified the Man 
Whose open hands were nailed for me 
And now I live each moment serving only You 
Jesus my Lord 

Out of my hand 
Back to Your heart 
I give my all to Thee 
Words aren't enough 
For me to start 
To say what You mean to me 

I surrender to Your love 
I surrender to Your love 

從祢雙手流進我心 
賞賜所有福分 
因祢真愛不再空虛 
當我初次相信 

主祢雙手流進我心 
天上優美音韻 
泉水湧流醫治破口 
心中歡喜唱吟 

人心永遠無法領悟 
何等慈愛憐憫 
願上十架手留釘痕 
如今我存活原因只為服事祢 
耶穌我主 

主我雙手回報祢心 
獻上一切為祭 
言語不足替我表明 
祢貴重超越金銀 

降服由祢愛牽引 
降服由祢愛牽引 

:: Out of My Hand ::

Reminded of this song as I was listening to it on the way to CGM on Friday.
Definitely one of my favourite songs (on top of a list of some other major ones), was just thinking about the meaning of the song and I chance upon this definition on the online dictionary:

*out of someone's hands 
1. Lit. no longer in someone's grasp. (*Typically: get ~; pull something ~; take something ~.)
2. Fig. no longer in someone's control. (*Typically: get ~; pull something ~; take something ~.)

If you put this back into the context of the song, it actually makes a lot of sense too, especially in the 3rd stanza: 

Out of my hand 
Back to Your heart 
I give my all to Thee 
Words aren't enough 
For me to start 
To say what You mean to me 

No matter what it is, dear God we take it out of our hands, we take it from our control into Your control. We take out heart from the matter which we are so focused on and out it back to where it belong, we are running back to your heart. Words can never be enough to say what You mean to us as we placed our lives into Your hands again.

May this week go by smoothly! Not in our hands but in Yours! 



♣ Calm Beneath the Raging Storm
Tuesday, January 14, 2014 // 0 comments
Here we are at the start of a brand new year, and we are at the 14th day, meaning to say that 2 weeks had already passed and maybe some of us are all ready to go while some of us are still thinking about what do we want to do for this year.

I think for most of us, we are just glad that God has instituted this "system" that once every 365 days (or 366 days once every 4 years) we can "restart" and start everything all over again, or how we like to think that its a "fresh" start. Not a bad idea actually, to get everything going again, its like a new chapter, of our personal book of life.

On a personal note, 2013 would be categorised as THE worse year yet for me. Thou shalt not go into the details on that though. Really just glad that the ordeal is "over" as we crossover into a new year, as we turn the page into a new chapter.

However, just as we sang Auld Lang Syne and how am I glad that I can start everything anew, I received bad news in the family and spent the first week of the year, handling the funeral of an elder in the family, so much for starting the year well and gearing up for a brand new year! >.<


They always say, it never rain, it pours. You really wonder who is that sadist person who said that, but anyways, doesn't really matter does it? While you can't stop the rain, you can embrace it and dance in the rain. There are many things that we can't do or change, we wish that there are more that we could have done but I guess we did what we could with what we have, at the capacity we were functioning and operating at (or we allow ourselves to operate at!).

The thing about rain is this, we often look at it at the surface.

If you are in the water, i.e. to say that you are already in deep SOUP, you will be thinking that "GOD! Is it not bad enough that I have to be treading water ALL the time to keep afloat and NOW you got to send the rain!?!"

Looking at it on the surface will look something like that:


So, that looked really kind of scary, like the raindrops beating on the surface on the already bad situation. HELLO GOD! Where are YOU?!? Anybody home?

The truth is this, God is more often than not found not on the surface, but He is found IN the waters. Meaning to say that you got to go DOWN (What!?! You must be kidding right?)

...NOPE...Go down...

Why?

Because when you go deep down, you need to learn how to swim, you are learning to take control of the situation instead of letting the situation take control of you. You will realise that there is a calm that can only be found beneath the surface, in the deep. When you are in the deep, you are NOT affected by what is happening in the surface, you enter a realm where it is between you and the water. And in the Bible, water is a symbol of the Holy Spirit, that we will be engulf by the Holy Spirit, when we go deeper.

I tried to search for a photo of the water beating down on a pool of water but that was a little challenging to find. So, if this picture is of any good gauge at all, you will notice that in the foreground, there might be some bubbles and "turbulence" but the rest of the water is calm. This kind of illustrate what I am trying to say.


Inspired by the swim I had on the 2nd day of the new year before all the hoo-haas of the year started for my very interesting life. Where the rain started beating down on the pool where I was swimming at and I was thinking should I just go and wash-up or continue swimming? I realised that there is much calm and it was not cold down under. True enough, the rain ceased after awhile and the sun came out and lit up the land again.

We will realise that if we continue swimming long enough in the rain, staying in the pool, the sun will shine once again. There is always sunshine after the rain. Do not be consumed by the rain but learn to swim in the rain and embrace the comfort that the water bring. Have you listened to the rhythm of the falling rain lately...?? (:



♣ Read from RELEVANT Magazine: Waiting on God is Hard, and That’s OK
Thursday, January 09, 2014 // 0 comments

Been a really long time since I ever come back to this blog. Logged on to this as I wanted to look through and find a post from 2 years back regarding the taking in of CCH members and the starting of a Youth CG.

Indeed time has flew by and here we are 1 years and 3 months into what first started out as a small seed, believing that there is so much more in store and look at where it has led us to. 

Stumbled upon a read on RELEVANT Magazine and thought it is quite good a read and here's the share...

***
Waiting on God is Hard, and That’s OK
BY 
JANUARY 7, 2014
Via RELEVANT Magazine
When my wife and I set out on the journey of adoption, we thought we had a year-long process ahead of us.
But more than three years later, we were still eagerly anticipating being able to bring our first daughter, Ryah, home from Ethiopia. We had prayed for her, met her, held her, loved her and every day we longed for the phone call to be cleared to bring her home.
We had no idea the aching we would go through as we watched each holiday pass by without sharing it with our child. We waited every day when it hurt to look at her picture. As we prepared for God to bring this journey to an end and unite our daughter with our family once and for all, we waited. Waiting had become the everyday for us.
The older I get, the more I realize the fabric of life involves waiting. We wait for career moves. We wait for marriage. Wait for children. Wait for healing. Wait for answers to prayers you’ve prayed for years but see no resolution in sight.
And the longer we wait the more the wait itself can become a type of suffering that can hammer away at our sanity without the right perspective. Waiting, the anticipation of good gift from God, can seem arbitrary and unnecessary.
Yet God wisely—even poetically as He is writing our story within His—teaches His children that within our wait there is purpose, intentionality and an opportunity for our faith to grow in ways we could have never imagined.
God had a purpose in our wait. He has a purpose in yours. If you’re experience a painful wait, here are four things you can cling to:

Sovereignty in Suffering

It’s tempting in the midst of suffering to doubt one of two things: God’s goodness or God’s sovereignty. If God were good, why would He allow this? If God were sovereign, we could have avoided this!
This thinking is unbiblical and void of any weighty theology. A believer needs to feed his soul during these times. The very bigness of our God must consume the suffering we experience.

The psalmist in Psalm 66 calls his readers to “Come and see what God has done: He is awesome in His deeds toward the children of man ... For you, O God, have tested us; you have tried us as silver is tried ... you laid a crushing burden on our backs ... we went through fire and through water; yet you have brought us out to a place of abundance.”
Notice what the psalmist points out, that God does awesome deeds toward His children, and those deeds involve being tried as silver, having crushing burdens laid on our backs and going through fire, that God’s good deeds toward His children involve trials. Yet, God not only brings His people to trials, He brings them through them. 2 Peter 2:9 says, “the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials.” This should strengthen our confidence both in His power and His goodness.
Waiting is expected in the Christian life
The Bible is full of stories of waiting. Abraham and Sarah waited for a child. Joseph waited unjustly in jail. The Hebrews waited for freedom in Egypt. David waited for the throne. The Israelites waited in exile. Paul waited for a thorn to be removed.
Was God not in control here? Is He in control now? God’s plan is perfected in the wait, and we, His people are reminded throughout the course of redemptive history 
A professor once said, “The whole of Christian life is becoming what God has already declared you to be.” The wait you and I experience is not abnormal to the Christian life, but is part of the very essence of the Christian experience.
Our wait is painful, but it will pale in comparison to the glory we will one day see in eternity. Remember this in suffering. When you think about it in light of 100,000 years, it’s like a blip on a radar.

God breaks us to bless us

Our dreams may be God-given, Scripture-driven and Gospel-centered but they are not all encompassing. We set out to adopt a child from Ethiopia, God set out to work out our own adoption by sanctifying us in this process.
To us, the best solution to a painful wait is to resolve it. Bring me my spouse. Give me children. Fix our family drama. Yet, God uses these periods in our life to break us. Like Moses in the desert, Paul with his thorn, Jacob as he wrestled with God.

He breaks us to bless us. He breaks us so we can see Him. Through times of suffering, God is crushing our self-dependence and awakening our soul to the persistent reality of our need and how only He has ability to give us true joy. Yes, children are good. Marriage is good. Sex is good. Promotions are good. Friendships are good. But God is better.

Christ is better

One question God has hammered into my soul this year is this: Is Christ enough? Specifically, if God doesn’t do _________, can I still be satisfied in Christ? Honestly, the answer doesn’t come easily, and it reaches to the very core of what we believe.
I’ve realized through waiting and suffering that God, like an all-wise, all-loving Father, will often withhold things, even good things, when they become God-things. When the focus of our worship shifts from the Giver to the gifts, from the Healer to the healing, God will realign our focus to save our souls and preserve His glory.
This question must be asked in the midst of suffering, not after the fact: Today, when you don’t have the very thing you’ve prayed, longed, yearned for isn’t here, can you find joy in Christ? Is the Gospel sufficient? The answer to this question reveals the object of your worship.
Paul challenges the Church with an eternal perspective that bleeds from the very core of the Gospel: “So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal” (2 Corinthians 2:16-18).

♣ Letting go...
Friday, May 03, 2013 // 0 comments
Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength
while loving someone deeply gives you courage
- Lao Tzu

Strength and courage, both things I really need but am really lacking now. Never thought that letting go can be so hard.

The positivity, the thoughts that you build up in the day just come crumbling down at night and your whole world just collapse all over again and again and again. The things that you have already convinced and walked through with yourself just come knocking again and you just have to revisit them all over again.

I wonder how long all these are going to last...
Will they ever go away...

OLDER