Philippians 3:12-13

I don’t mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection. But I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me.

No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead.

I would love to go to Iceland in the winter to see the northern lights :D :D

I just realised that tomorrow I have piano class! Noooooooooooooooooo :( I haven't gone for piano for about 2 months. Those were the best 2 months ever sighhh. Darn, I really hate piano lessons. I didn't practise any of my piano pieces for 2 months at all - grade 8, you are so dead :( Anyway today is evan's birthday and it was jason's birthday on wednesday. Happy birthday. SIGHHHHGHGHHHH PIANO CLASS SIGHHHH

I was on deviantArt the other day and looking at all my favourite artists from way back when I was an active member of deviantArt. Most of them are still painting/drawing and getting even better than when I last remembered. Suddenly I wondered, how did I lose my passion for art? I seem to have lost my passion for a lot of things, and art is one of them. Seeing all their sketches and drawings brings back memories of when I actually really loved art. But now.......

Anyway... watercolours were my absolute favourite medium..

I also really loved sketches and drawings of buildings.. I loved the details put into it.

Credits
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“Now, our God, hear the prayer and petitions of your servant. For your sake, O Lord, look with favor on your desolate sanctuary. Give ear, O God, and hear; open your eyes and see the desolation of the city that bears your Name. We do not make requests of you because we are righteous, but because of your great mercy. O Lord, listen! O Lord, forgive! O Lord, hear and act! For your sake, O my God, do not delay, because your city and your people bear your Name.”

— Daniel 9:17-19

The simplest of all love songs I want to bring to You,
So I'll let my words be few -
Jesus I am so in love with You.

I started cleaning out my room at 11am, and I've just finished - the time now is 2:04pm. Thats like.. 3 hours and 4 minutes of cleaning my room :( Its sparkling clean now! But now my back hurts and I'm sweaty and tired. My room isn't even big and it takes so much effort to clean it... Anyway, here is an update from my week!

Steph, Evan and I went swimming on Thursday morning at the club. When I came home, I saw my sisters fishy on the floor, about 3 meters away from the aquarium. It was dead

I had to pick it up and throw it awayyyy how gross is that! And yes, it was somehow tangled up in a strand of my hair.

We went swimming again on Friday morning, but this time with Tania and her brother as well. I went over to Tania's house after swimming to spend the day and go to youth together at night. Haha we spent the day watching videos on youtube. Tania curled my hair with a curling iron and I looked funny! Curly hair made me look older by like 5 years. I forgot to take a picture cause my phone was downstairs. But Tania and I learnt to make fishtail braids!

This is Tania's hair :D I did fishtail braids for her.

Ask any smart person how to solve a problem and they will tell you in order to truly solve a problem, you can't cover it up or disguise it with pretty things, but you have to get to the root of the problem.... And so I had to get to the root of all that is evil (my closet) and throw everything out of the closet and re-fold and re-organize every single article of clothing :( SO NOT FUN. This was the worst part of the whole clean-up-my-room thing

This was my study schedule for the entire month before PMR :D I finally took it down! Hohoho *crumples it up and throws away*

Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.’

(John 8:58)

We lose our need for a savior, we say "God owes us love."
Hold up lets fold up our throne -
You didn't make a covenant with God just for show?
You won't be judged for your moral record,
but for your heart's motive and if God was your center.

I took a strawberry out from the fridge and bit into it. Surprise surprise, it was in the shape of a heart!

hello all! i'm not going back to school anymore. so with plenty of time to spare everyday, i've gotten out my extremely dusty and sad guitar. i can't remember the last time i touched the guitar... somewhere a year and a half ago, i think? :) haha the first song i played on this was open the eyes of my heart, Lord! and i want to learn Lord i give You my heart as well... mostly cause they have easy chords ahahaha.

You cleansed me in Your flow and now I'm washed white as snow, by my Savior's love I've been set free

I am Jacob, wrestling with God. I will not settle for second best, and like Jacob, I will not leave until I get my blessing. Like Jacob, I'm weeping and fighting at the same time, in desperation. Even if this fight leaves me crippled, I will be crippled in Christ. He withholds it from me, I will provoke Him with prayer and fasting until He has no choice but to release it unto me. I will fight this fight with God. This is a mountain I have to climb - with God holding me up and a deeper spiritual understanding on the other side.

I had a dream last night. An evil spirit in the shape of a woman was coming after me. And I was running in total unadulterated terror, running to find a place where I could hide from it. Everywhere I went, it was there, chasing after me, mocking me. I finally arrived at a place where I thought was the safest place in the pitch-dark building, which had multiple locks on it and I crawled up into a corner hiding in the darkness. But I knew it was coming, and it was going to break through the door any moment to get me. It was pure terror and the moment it got in, the very moment where I thought all hope was lost, I screamed out for Jesus to save me - and the moment I cried out, He came. Pure light flooded the pitch black darkness and He stood in between me and the evil spirit. And I knew I was finally safe.

Now isn't that a bit like our sinful lives? Sins and temptations are always coming after us, cornering us down and we try to run from it, trying to run into what we think is the safest place where it cannot get to us. But anything short of God is not safety, and we cannot find security in what our own hands have made or what our own minds have conjured up. We sit and try to find hope in what we call our security, but sin comes knocking to remind us of what we really are - filthy rags. And it drives us to that place where we are so terrified and broken and lost, that all we can do is cry out, "Jesus, save me!", and thats when beauty comes. Thats when Jesus hears your cry, and reaches down to stand in the gap between you and sin, to cleanse you with His blood and clothe you with His righteousness. And thats when sin is beaten, with the glory of God.

some of us might die, now some of us might fall but fear of failure will never stop us from giving our all.

God is all-powerful. Colossians 1:16 tells us that everything was created for God: "For by Him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by Him and for Him."

Don’t we live instead as though God is created for us, to do our bidding, to bless us, and to take care of our loved ones? Psalm 115:3 reveals, “Our God is in heaven; he does whatever pleases him.” Yet we keep on questioning Him: “Why did You make me with this body, instead of that one?” “Why are so many people dying of starvation?” “Why are there so many planets with nothing living on them?” “Why is my family so messed up?” “Why don’t You make Yourself more obvious to the people who need You?”

The answer to each of these questions is simply this: because He’s God. He has more of a right to ask us why so many people are starving. As much as we want God to explain himself to us, His creation, we are in no place to demand that He give an account to us.

All the peoples of the earth are regarded as nothing. He does as he pleases with the powers of heaven and the peoples of the earth. No one can hold back his hand or say to him: “What have you done?” —Daniel 4:35

Can you worship a God who isn’t obligated to explain His actions to you? Could it be your arrogance that makes you think God owes you an explanation?

/ Crazy Love by Francis Chan

i went out with tania and her friends today! avery, bibiana and naomi. my goodness all 4 of them are soooooooooooo cute and adorable. and they look good in everything! haha. we went to one jaya and gosh some of the stuff there are really expensive. but some are nice. like that liz lisa shop where we went into and we saw shoes on the ground which were really cool and we were like ARE THESE SHOES FOR SALE haha but they weren't cause it turns out i think those shoes were the shopkeepers shoes.... that was slightly embarrassing haha. tania and i were walking and talking about uncle mervyn when we saw a shop selling chocolate and we went all, "doesn't uncle mervyn love dark chocolate?!" so we bought him 2 sugar free dark chocolates and 2 normal dark chocolates in the shape of a heart! hehe we are so thoughtful. and we also bought 1 pink headband and 1 silver headband for jaomi cause we felt bad that she wasn't out with us. :)

He’s the only one who hasn’t failed me yet and continues to not fail me.. And never will.

When I think of love, I think of Calvary. Because the greatest act of love was performed at Calvary - when God came as flesh, and died for a world that had continued to sin against Him.

I've been going through the book of Ezekiel the past few weeks, and i have to say that it is probably the most difficult book in the Bible to read - at least it is for me, so far. its full of symbolism, prophecies, visions and deeper meanings about the tribes and sin and the Law and all that, which i just really cannot catch. its difficult to comprehend what it means altogether and even more difficult to understand why God was doing the things He was doing. Throughout the book of Ezekiel, He's just unleashing His anger and wrath for all the unlawful things that the people were doing. He even caused Ezekiel's wife to die as a symbol for the things that were to come to the sinful people in jerusalem. And throughout all this, I'm just thinking, God where are you? why are you doing this? I thought you were a loving merciful God?

And last night i was just reading it through, not really getting anything, when I arrived at Ezekiel chapter 34:15-16.

"I myself will tend my sheep and have them lie down," declares the Sovereign LORD. "I will search for the lost and bring back the strays. I will bind up the injured and strengthen the weak, but the sleek and the strong I will destroy. I will shepherd the flock with justice."

And thats just it really. That entire chapter just encaptures God's pursuit for us - His pursuit for us is as vast, as wide and as endless as the heavens. What other God would have said, "I myself will search for my sheep and look after them."? (Ezekiel 34:11) I mean, He's a huge God! He created the entire universe and everything in it. He probably has a few hundred million things to do each millisecond, and He could have just easily commanded a few of His angels to search for the lost and bring back the strays. He wouldn't even have needed to lift a finger.

Its humbling to think that the God of the universe would actually know your name, would actually search after you to bring you back, would actually pursue you with His love. Thats like... I'm not even worthy for Him to die on the cross for. Not worthy of His love. And to keep rejecting His love - isn't that pride? Isn't that like saying to God, You're not worthy of MY love? You dying on the cross for me was nothing. I didn't need it. But throughout all our rejections and falling away, He kept pursuing us. Calling out to us. Now that's humbling.

I realise its not very faithful of me to keep questioning Him and the things He does in the Bible. Didn't He just state it right there? "I will shepherd My flock with justice"? - He's righteous and just in every aspect. Now it comes down to the faith that He will do whats right.

When we don’t have the guts to step out in faith, then God is robbed of the glory that rightfully belongs to Him. Too often our prayers revolve around asking God to reduce the odds in our lives. We want everything in our favor. But maybe God wants to stack the odds against us so we can experience a miracle of divine proportions. Maybe faith is trusting God no matter how impossible the odds are. Maybe our impossible situations are opportunities to experience a new dimension of God’s glory.

/ In A Pit With a Lion on a Snowy Day by Mark Batterson

Why did God create us if He knew we were going to sin and cause all this suffering? Wouldn’t it have been better if He never created us in the first place?

First, God did foresee our sin and the suffering we would cause. However, this same foresight allowed Him to see that in order to redeem us (even though we do not deserve it), He would have to become man and be cruelly put to death. So at the same time he saw our suffering, He also saw His own greater suffering and chose to create anyway – even though He enjoyed perfect happiness without us. He loves us that much.

how adorable are these! God makes the most adorable animals ever :') i'm preeeetty sure God has a sweet spot for cute animals. aww

can i just tell the world of my love for hamsters

AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW