God's Word to My Mum

Today Pastor Patrick did a visitation to my house.

We had some conversation, mostly on the topic of our upcoming marriage. I introduced pastor to my mother who was also around at that time.

When the time is up and before pastor leaves, he offered to pray for us. Since my mum was here, I decided to ask her to come around for pastor to pray for her. My mum says that she wants pastor to pray over her regarding her sleeping problems, as she suffers from severe insomnia.

As pastor prayed in tongues to seek the Lord for guidance, God impressed upon pastor that the problem is due to my mum keeping a lot of hurt within her.

Pastor told my mum that she should let go of her past hurts, and he asked her to "bless" my dad. When he came to this part, my mum began to feel uneasy. She told pastor that, she had never blessed dad before and that she doesn't need to.

Pastor wisely did not press the matter further and asked her to consider forgiving my dad.

As I sent pastor out to his car, I thanked pastor for the timely and accurate word. My mum has been bound by these hurts for all these years. My family history has been complicated and not a happy one, to say the least.

She did not respond immediately, but given time, I believe that she will be able to truly let go of her past. It wasn't easy for her to release her decades of hurt and betrayal on one single prayer session. I pray that God will continue to minister to her and heal her wounds.

Thank God for a godly pastor who is able to speak God's healing words into her life.

Proverbs Bear Fruit

This morning I had a meeting with my colleagues. We were discussing some matters and our CEO asked us for our opinions.

When came to my turn, he said, "As a lawyer, you are the wisest person among us... I would like to hear what you think about this matter."

This was the first time I heard him say about someone being wise, as this word was seldom used by him.

So I just shared my thougths about it, nothing spectacular.. just my point of view.

And at the end of the meeting, when everyone else has left, he told me personally: "I'm really thankful to have a wise person like you to guide me along... really!"

I am so thankful to God about this. All along I did not know whether my views were appreciated by them, and today he actually gave his recognition.

I believe that, as I continue to "hide God's words in my heart", God's words continue to change the way I think, and unknowingly my speech were guided by God's wisdom.

This was the first time I was openly acknowledged as a wise person by someone else. All glory to God.

United Live Concert

I've been waiting for this night for a long time.

The last time United Live came to town, I think it was some 2 years ago, I was pretty excited over it and even got myself a ticket. But something happened last minute and I had to give it a miss.

Not this time around. I made sure I got the tickets early and booked my schedule way before. I've invited Alexander along, and Alisha of course followed.

We reached the place about 1 hours early, but the place was already packed with young people. We managed to squeeze our way through to as forward as possible, and only made it halfway. Not bad, we stood right in the middle with the band in front of us, although I would prefer if we can make it to the First Class position, which is right in front of the worship leader.

The concert was awesome! Most of the songs they sang were my favourites, and I followed them singing through the songs - since I've been listening to it and practising for a few weeks in advance.

I especially liked the part where the band played softly and only the crowds singing. It was truly an awesome atmosphere... The voice was fantastic, and almost heavenly. It was beautiful.

I sang my heart out, and by the end of it, I was practically exhausted from the singing. And, as usual for me in these situations, I have lost my voice already from the second song onwards.

It was truly amazing... I'm very thankful for the experience.

"Kingdom Keys" Graduation Nite

After 12 lessons of Bible Study, I have finally completed the first part of the Kingdom Series called "Kingdom Keys".

At the Graduation Nite I was given a certificate of attendance, and get to go on stage to take pictures with Pastor Joshua and his wife. Just a simple ceremony, but we were all smiles for the whole night. Maybe its because it reminds us of our school days (where we seldom get any awards..)

Alexander was not there that night, but I got the certificate for him and handed it to him the next day. He was so happy and proud of himself. I was proud of him too... indeed it wasn't easy to commit to attend the 12 classes.

Attending the classes was not a problem for myself, because my office is just some 10 minutes' drive from the church. But the thing was that (for the first few lessons) I had to drive through the traffic jam all the way to pick up Alisha, and then crawl my way to pick up Alexander. We were often late for that first few lessons.

I was reminded of a time when, after picking up Alisha from her home, we were caught in a very bad jam on our way to Alexander's house. Class has already started and we were still in the jam. I was so very tempted to leave Alexander at home and proceed to go there ourselves.

Then finally I decided to press on! We picked up Alexander and we managed to reach there not too late (about 1 hour late.. only). Thankfully they don't deduct points for coming late.

Glad that I did not grow tired of doing good, and did not give up when faced with obstacles.

Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a
harvest if we do not give up. (Galatians 6:9)

I'll leave it to God about my "harvest", but right now I do feel this 'high' for having helped a new believer to grow in the Lord.

Where Did Sufferings Come From?

One day I was having dinner with my colleagues when this question was asked: "Where did sufferings come from?"

Besides myself, there were 2 other Christians on the same table.

The first Christian said, "God gave us sufferings so that we can learn a something from it."

The second Christian said, "God can ultimately bring out something good out of the sufferings because He is in control." Good answer, if it were given to a different question.

I kept quiet at that time, which is quite uncommon when such questions were asked, but I did not want to allow non-believers to see us Christians argue among ourselves about doctrinal issues. I knew that if I gave a third opinion to the same question, it might cause confusion to the non-believers around.

So I waited for another opportunity when I was alone with this first Christian to ask her again the same question. She was so certain that God was the one who gave us humans sufferings and problems (although for our good). She said that all the while this was what being taught to her.

I asked her to go home and think about the question again. I said, "If God was the one who gave us sufferings, wouldn't it make Him a bad god? How can a good God give us bad things?"

A few weeks later... (which is today)

We met up, and I asked her if she had an answer to my previous question. This time round she gave me an even more interesting answer:

1. Sufferings came from God, to teach us something.
2. Sufferings did not come from the Devil - we shouldn't blame the devil for all the bad things that happens to us.

I was shocked! Firstly, sufferings come from God, then, sufferings did not come from the devil. Think about it - all of a sudden God became the bad guy, the devil became the good guy! Just by a slight twist in doctrine the roles were being reversed.

She immediately called up a friend who is supposed to be an authority in the knowledge about God. This friend explained over the phone the concepts in discussion and answered our questions. We later came to a conclusion of what should be the answer.

The Answer:

1. God does not give us sufferings, although He is able to make use of our sufferings to teach us lessons and to build up our character.
2. Most of the sufferings that we go through are self-inflicted, through our own sins, carelessness, neglect, wrong habit patterns, etc.
3. Some of the sufferings were brought about by the devil

This answer sounded fine with me. I'll stick to this for the time being, meanwhile I'm open to any better answers.

I ended our discussion with a humble advise: Don't simply accept what was being taught, although they claim to be teaching from the bible. Study the bible for yourselves and check through their teaching against the bible.

Making Use of Every Opportunity

Inviting A Family to Church

I was working in my office one day, when a group of insurance agents came over to sell their products. I was passing them by when one of them asked me if I can spare a few moments to listen to their insurance products.

My first natural response was that I was too busy to listen to these (which I really was), but suddenly a thought came to mind, "maybe there can be a chance for me to share the gospel with her." Fine, since I listened to her talk, she would be obliged to listen when its my turn to talk.

Okay, another reason is that I have just finished a session of doing some door-to-door selling of my clients' product (for the experience) and had some empathy for sales people.

So I told her that she had only 5 minutes to say whatever she wants to say, and I need to get back to work. She made her sales pitch, and we exchanged contacts, and she left.

Some time later she called for an appointment to meet up, asking for a time convenient for me. I said week days are out, so preferably on a weekend. We decided that we should meet up on a Sunday about 2pm, after church. The venue, at a restaurant nearby the church.

I brought along Alisha to the meeting, and she brought along her husband and her young daughter, a cute little girl aged 5. We had lunch and made some conversations.

When we were talking about religion and church, I talked about inviting them to come over to our church for a visit, and that the church is just nearby where we were.

Out of a sudden, an idea came to mind. I said that there is also a Sunday school specially for children. There their daughter can learn something and mix around get to know some new friends. And most importantly, she can get to learn to speak English, because the best way to learn a language is through interaction.

We went on with our other conversation, and she made her explanation on her insurance policy etc. We agreed to meet up at another date for her to prepare a proposal, probably in 2 weeks' time, since the following Sunday is Mothers' Day.

The week passed as usual, but on the second week, that is on the 13th May, while reading the newspaper I came across a news article that reads, "Bosses prefers English profiency as main criteria for employees". Then I thought, wow, this works really well to encourage the family to come over to church.

Then as I read on, there was another advertisement that reads, "the best time to learn language is before 12 years of age". Then I thought, WOW! this is double confirmation, two on the same day!. I got very excited about it.

Surely, a few days later she called me for an appointment to give me the proposal. I invited her to church, and told her about the newspaper article. After having a discussion with her husband, she called me to tell me that they will come this coming Sunday.

Today 3 of them came to visit my church. The young girl went over to the Sunday School, wearing in a pretty dress. The parents came with me to the church service. The church service went fantastically well, good worship, excellent preaching. Although they did not step forward to accept Jesus, I am sure they had been touched by the message.

On my way back I was so thankful to God, for giving me the right words to speak to them to invite them to church. I thank God also for the divine arrangement, for both the news article and the advertisement to appear on the same day, which was wonderful.

I wondered, they might not have heard about Jesus if I had followed my natural response and refused to give the lady 5 minutes of my time to listen to her. Praise God.


[My key verse for this year... "God's temple must be exceedingly magnificent." This year, my main purpose will be to build God's house. Since I'm not involved in any leadership capacity, I can only do what I am able to do, that is to invite people to church.]

God - a fun-spoiler?

I was asked this question: why did God put on us so many restrictions - that we can't have fun any more if we want to follow God.

He gave this scenario: He had a lady friend who is a Christian. She is dating somebody, but wouldn't have sex with her boyfriend. The reason why she won't do it is because God forbids people having sex outside marriage. So he concluded that God doesn't want us to have fun, because we humans want to have fun (ie. sex)

I did not answer immediately, but went home and pondered over this question. I came back to him today and gave him this answer.

Is God a fun-spoiler?

Let me illustrate with this scenario:

Imagine one day your daughter (this friend of mine is a father of 2 teenaged daughters) came and asked you for your permission to go for an overnight party. When you asked her what do they do there at the party, she answered, "We party, drink alcohol and have lots of sex. Anybody can have sex with everybody."

Firstly, would you allow her to go? - No. No way.

Why? What reason would you give your daughter? - She might get pregnant.

What else would you tell her? Because she might answer you that she will use contraceptives, and that problem is taken care of.

He told me, "I don't know... why don't you tell me the answer."

"Unwanted pregnancy is just one of the reasons, and there are many reasons why we won't allow our children to have sex freely, for example the danger of sexually transmitted diseases". I answered.

"The main reason is that we don't want our loved ones to get hurt."

Similarly, God our heavenly Father also loved us so much and does not want us to get hurt. When He gave us the rule that we must only have sex within marriage, He actually has our best interest in mind.

God who created us in the first place knew what is best for us. He knows that if we have pre-marital sexual relationships, it will damage us emotionally - and this applies to both male and female.

It affects our self-worth and self-image - we will be burdened with guilt and condemnation, and will result in low self-esteem. We will feel used and unappreciated. We begin to despise ourselves, and feel we are no longer "whole".

Surely, God is able to heal us from all these, but God loves us too much He doesn't want us to go through all these hurt in the first place.

It affects our future relationships - If we end up marrying someone else, we will have feelings of guilt towards our partner because we failed to give to our partner our best. We feel we can't give them the whole of us, because we have already give a part of us to someone else.

Even if we were marrying the person we had sex with, there is also a problem of appreciation and respect. Either way it is going to affect our marriage in the long run. (Again, God is able to heal this if we go back to Him)

The reason God put this restriction of no sex before marriage is to protect us from the hurt. He is not out to spoil our fun, because he knows that the "fun" we get from pre-marital sex will eventually lead to a lot of hurts and broken relationships. He wants us to have the REAL FUN, which can be found in a lasting relationship built from a mutual trust and appreciation.