I've been reading the KJV Bible a bit and its really beautiful. There has been joy in abundance these past few days, all because of God's great faithfulness! He has heard my prayer based on Psalms 51.

{Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice.
Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquity.

Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me.
Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.}

You know the feeling you get when someone talks to you about another person, and tells you things about the person that you never knew? And that someone points out the bad things about the person and then you start realising all the things you never knew about the person. And then your perception of the person changes, and you can't look at the person the same way you looked at him/her before - your perception changes for the worse.

It happened to me, and I wish I never listened in on the conversation. Just as how you can't take back the words you speak, you can't forget the words that you hear either. I heard bad things about another person, and I started realising all the bad points about her. I wish I could blame it on the Devil (Oh, the Devil made me listen! It was the Devil that opened up my heart to receive the bad seeds! It wasn't my fault, it was all his fault! - I mean, he's the one thats making me judge her...), but no, sometimes we gotta take responsibility for our actions in this life, whether good or bad, and no blaming it on the Devil all the time.

Me: God, I wish I never listened to them talking about her. Now I know all her bad points and characteristics, I can't look at her the same anymore! She isn't the person I used to think she was. How do I love her the same way again?
God: How do I love you?

Ouch.

Right where it counts, right where it hurts. The thing about God, is He doesn't beat around the bush. He doesn't talk around in circles, winding round and round the Himalayan mountains, walking for distances across hills and valleys, and then finally gets to the point. He tells you as it is, at the right time, always knowing the right things to say. He knows what your heart needs, and He gives it.

God is right - How does He love me? Goodness, if I were God (Just saying if !), I would ask myself the same question! Most of the time, we are far worse off than the people we judge; only seeing the bad in others but hardly searching for our own defects and cracks.

If Jesus can love me, He can definitely love her. And if He can love her - Then, well, I can love her too.

The bad mindset of being unable to love people disappears when you realize that Love is who you are. The bad habit of responding in anger crumbles when you realize that your nature is to be patient (Gal 5:22). Now, love and patience are natural outflows rather than forced behaviors.

You were living in fear but then you realize it’s your nature to be bold (Prov 28:1). You don’t feel like you’re capable of transforming the world around you and then you realize that it’s your nature to be leaven. You were stuck in anxiety and worry and then you realize that it’s your nature to have peace (Isaiah 26:3, Rom 14:17, Isaiah 9:6). You were stuck in depression and then you realize it’s a lie because that “old man” died and the new man’s nature is joy (Rom 14:17, John 15:11).

I don’t need to try to be holy, I need to understand it’s already in my nature to be holy (2 Cor. 5:21). I don’t need to try to be bold, it’s who I am. I don’t have to try to be patient, it’s who I am. I don’t need to try to get out of depression, it is my nature to be joy. I don’t need to try to be less pessimistic, I live and breathe hope.

It’s not that I’m ignorant of the fact that I used to try and fail, it’s discovering that in Christ, I have a new predisposition to be everything I used to try to become.

What does it mean by "Identity in Christ"?

Managing emotions as a Christian?

I thought these were really great articles.. that you should take some time to read through :) It will give you a whole new perception on things. Especially in the Christian life.

…it’s not about going out and TRYING to love people, but rather about going out and just being who you already are. In fact, the entire Christian life is not about TRYING to be something or become something, it’s about being who you are. That’s why it’s important to see yourself as God sees you.

That’s great news to me, because the last time I checked, God sees Jesus when He looks at me.

Getting to know God better as each week goes by, I'm starting to realise what 'worship' really means when you go into the House of God and praise and exalt Him. Often times, we depend on the lead singer or the musicians or the atmosphere to build up what we perceive to be 'Gods presence', and only when the music is 'just right' or 'touching enough', then we 'feel' like we can finally move into 'Gods presence'. When the truth is, God's presence is there when we call on Him in spirit and in truth and invite Him to work amidst us. We don't need skilled leaders or musicians or even a 'quiet, touching atmosphere' to stir up God's presence and God certainly doesn't need those things to bring His glory.

Just simply, I've realised that it doesn't even matter how bad the leading is, how awkward the atmosphere, or how halting the worship leader is. It doesn't matter. When you turn your focus towards Jesus, when you reach out towards Him to worship Him - regardless of what the music sounds like or the atmosphere - He is always there. The intimacy in worshiping Him will be there. As you focus on the One that is to be worshiped, everything else fades away.

When you give Him your all, He responds.

I will wait for you because I will know you.
When you speak I will be reminded of Solomon’s wisdom.
Your ability to lead will remind me of Moses.
Your faith will remind me of Abraham.
Your confidence in God’s word will remind me of Daniel.
Your inspiration will remind me of Paul.
Your heart for God will remind me of David.
Your attention to detail will remind me of Noah.
Your integrity will remind me of Joseph.
Your ability to abandon your own will will remind me of the disciples.
But your ability to love unselfishly and unconditionally will remind me of Christ.

And you will know me.
You will find me where the boldness of Esther meets the warm closeness of Ruth.
Where the hospitality of Lydia is aligned with the submission of Mary
Which is engulfed in the tears of a praying Hannah.
I will be the one drenched in Proverbs 31.
Waiting for you.

I caught a glimpse of Christ today when he gave up all his lunch money to donate to my ex-teacher's husband that had passed away last Saturday. He didn't know her, he didn't know him, and he didn't have to donate all his lunch money, but he chose to anyway. Even if it meant not having any food for lunch.

It makes my heart soar to see people helping those in need, especially when they think that no one is looking.. Jesus, sitting at the right hand of God, is looking down with absolute joy.

Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

[Matthew 25:31-40]

Take me to the place where You satisfy, take me to the river
I’ll do anything, God; there is no price, take me to the river

They may say, “Come on, get over it, everything is okay”
They may say, “Why the hunger?
Why the thirsting? Why the mourning?”
But my soul cries, my soul cries

All my tears You hold in a bottle; You will pour them out like rain
Weeping endures for the night, for the night
But joy comes in the morning, joy comes in the morning

Misty Edwards - Soul Cry

Turning the soil and pulling the weeds, helps garden flowers to grow, And if we’re to see growth in our lives, trials and testings we must know

Sometimes I don't know why I even try when you hardly seem to care. Too preoccupied maybe.. I don't know. Its frustrating.

But encourage one another daily, as long as the day is called Today. [Hebrews 3:13]

The Word clearly says to encourage one another day by day. Its hard to encourage you when it seems like you don't even want it. Or appreciate it. What can I say?

Those who bless God in their trials will be blessed by God through their trials.

Love is Not a Feeling

When God promised Abraham that he will become the father of all nations, that from his impotence and from Sarah’s barreness will emerge the sons and daughters as countless as the stars in the heaven, he never backed out on his word. There came Isaac. And the joy of the couple would have been immeasurable. Surely, it was the beginning of a promise that is yet to unfold.

When God asked Abraham to give up his son, to slaughter him and sacrifice him like a lamb, what on earth was God thinking? He gave a blessing, and out of nowhere he was taking it back. Abraham would have been distraught, confused and upset about the whole situation. But surprisingly, he was not. Willingly, he took his son up the land of Moriah, up the altar, ready for the sacrifice. Was he out of his mind?

I’d rather say not. Because more than the blessing is the relationship. More than the blessing was that door in his heart where his relationship with God dwelled. The relationship was more important than the blessing.

The story of Abraham teaches us about the greatest fruit that the Shepherd is asking from his flock: sacrificial love. This is not just plain and basic giving. We define sacrifice beyond that and there is a is a big difference that spells out giving from the word sacrificing. We give what’s left; we sacrifice until there’s nothing left.

Sacrificial love is the highest expression of love and John 3:16 spells it out for us. That God, Himself has manifested and is continuously manifesting the highest form of sacrifice. The cross has never lost its shine.

Love is not always a feeling. It never is. Feelings change. Feelings stop. Sometimes, feelings are forever stuck to being feelings. But unlike feelings, love is constant, stable, fixed. For love to become rock-solid, it has to become a decision.

In the Garden of Gethsemane, the night before Jesus was about to be put on trial, he was praying. He was in agony. His fate was playing right in front of his eyes, his life fluttering like a moth about to be burned by the flames. And if what Jesus felt was no more than a feeling, he would have turned his back and say, “I don’t feel like being crucified tomorrow, Dad. Let someone else do it. I don’t feel like dying for these sinners.”

Imagine if Jesus actually said that. What would we become?

Again, it’s not just about the feeling; but about the decision. From the very beginning, it was Jesus’ decision to love us. Before God became human, he already decided to love us.

And as we receive the new meaning of love, we are obliged to manifest it to other people. Otherwise, God’s love disappears and we make it disappear (1 John 3:16). Learning to sacrifice is easier said than done but with the right motives and with the right heart, we are able to endure and to stand firm as we walk in love.

////

We pray for wisdom, Your voice to hear.
We cry in anger when we cannot feel You near..
We doubt your goodness, we doubt your love -
As if every promise from Your Word is not enough?
All the while, You hear each desperate plea,
and long that we'd have faith to believe.

‘Cause what if your blessings come through raindrops?
What if Your healing comes through tears?
What if a thousand sleepless nights are what it takes to know You're near..
What if trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise?

Now that it is a Friday afternoon, with all my homework dating back from January being completed, I feel like my purpose in life (Which, mainly, is to finish all my homework before the due date. As it is a very nearly impossible purpose and goal, it keeps me busy and makes me feel, at least, minutely important because I have a goal.. teehee) has crumbled around me. No matter, just wait till the school reopens and I will be back to my usual swamp-of-unfinished-homework again.

But until then.

Here are some amazingly terrible webcam pictures from the laptop of somebody who is bored.

Hi! My name is Hannah! I am defying all the things that my parents have ever warned me about by putting my picture on the interwebs. Now I am susceptible to being kidnapped on every corner of the street because everyone in the world now knows my face. I was blessed with a set of straight bunny teeth and a pair of dimples.


This is me getting my dork on.


Contemplating the meaning of life.


"PINEAPPLES, YOU SAY? ELEMENTARY, MY DEAR WATSON, ELEMENTARY."

**The book I was reading is Kafka On The Shore by Haruki Murakami, which is, I must say, I pretty good book. Not much intelligence was harmed in the making of this blogpost.

Refiner of Silver.

There was a group of women in a Bible study on the book of Malachi. As they were studying chapter three, they came across verse three, which says: “He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver.” This verse puzzled the women and they wondered what this statement meant about the character and nature of God. One of the women offered to find out about the process of refining silver and get back to the group at their next Bible study.

That week this woman called up a silversmith and made an appointment to watch him at work. She didn’t mention anything about the reason for her interest in silver beyond her curiosity about the process of refining silver. As she watched the silversmith; he held a piece of silver over the fire and let it heat up. He explained that in refining silver, one needed to hold the silver in the middle of the fire where the flames were hottest as to burn away all the impurities.

The woman thought about God holding us in such a hot spot - then she thought again about the verse, that he sits as a refiner and purifier of silver She asked the silversmith if it was true that he had to sit there in front of the fire the whole time the silver was being refined.

The man answered “yes”, he not only had to sit there holding the silver, but he had to keep his eyes on the silver the entire time it was in the fire. If the silver was left even a moment too long in the flames, it would be destroyed.

The woman was silent for a moment. Then she asked the silversmith, “How do you know when the silver is fully refined?”

He smiled at her and answered, “Oh, that’s easy. When I see my image in it.”

If today you are feeling the heat of this world’s fire, just remember that God has His eyes on you.

“He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver.” (Malachi 3:3)

Ever since the animals had first appeared, Uncle Andrew had been shrinking further and further back into the thicket. He watched them very hard of course; but he wasn't really interested in seeing what they were doing, only in seeing whether they were going to make a rush at him. Like the Witch, he was dreadfully practical. He simply didn't notice that Aslan was choosing one pair out of every kind of beasts. All he saw, or thought he saw, was a lot of dangerous wild animals walking vaguely about. And he kept on wondering why the other animals didn't run away from the big Lion.

When the great moment came and the Beasts spoke, he missed the whole point; for a rather interesting reason. When the Lion had first begun singing, long ago when it was still quite dark, he had realized that the noise was a song. And he had disliked the song very much. It made him think and feel things he did not want to think and feel. Then, when the sun rose and he saw that the singer was a lion ("only a lion," as he said to himself) he tried his hardest to make believe that it wasn't singing and never had been singing - only roaring as any lion might in a zoo in our own world. "Of course it can't really have been singing," he thought, "I must have imagined it. I've been letting my nerves get out of order. Who ever heard of a lion singing?"

And the longer and more beautiful the Lion sang, the harder Uncle Andrew tried to make himself believe that he could hear nothing but roaring. Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed. Uncle Andrew did. He soon did hear nothing but roaring in Aslan's song. Soon he couldn't have heard anything else even if he had wanted to. And when at last the Lion spoke and said, "Narnia awake," he didn't hear any words: he heard only a snarl. And when the Beasts spoke in answer, he heard only barkings, growlings, bayings, and howlings.

i've been re-reading the Narnia series. after finding out C.S. Lewis was a christian author,

i can see many christian themes peeking out from under the covers of the stories. its quite beautiful in its own way.. See if you can see the Christian correlation in the above excerpt of

The Magician's Nephew :) I really like this one and it spoke to me.

"Every time an airplane goes down, you’ll find somebody on Larry King talking about “Where was God?” They’ll mention 9/11 over and over, “Where was God on 9/11? Where was He?” But here’s where the blasphemy occurs.

Do you know that up until that point, there had been nearly 100 years of air travel where no terrorist hijacked a plane and crashed it into a building, and no one ever went on the Larry King Show. No one ever went on the Larry King Show and said this, “How awesome is God that for the last 100 years nobody hijacked a plane and crashed it into a building.? How awesome is He? How gracious is He? How beautiful is He that He’s protected us in such ways?” So He gets absolutely no credit for the beautiful day and every ounce of blame for the horrific one. Blasphemy. Yeah, it’s who we are. And we’re unapologetic about it.”

— Matt Chandler

“I’ve felt the pain of compromise so deep inside.
I’ve known the tension of a heart that’s divided,
I’ve tasted and I’ve seen your good,
and now I’m ruined for less than all you have for me.
——-

Everything that gets in the way of receiving your love,
I’m giving it back to you.

Everything that gets in the way of receiving love from you.
I’m giving it back to you.

Take it away. O Take it away.”

Jon Thurlow.

Jesus answered: “Watch out that no one deceives you. For many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am the Messiah,’ and will deceive many. You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of birth pains.

“Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me. At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people.

Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come."
(Matthew 24:4-14)

1) Many deceivers will appear, claiming to be the Messiah, or the 2nd coming of Christ Jesus.
2) Wars and rumours of wars will appear, but we should not be alarmed because the end is not yet to come.
3) The disasters happening in the world are just the beginning of what is to come!
4) Believers will be persecuted for their faith all over the world, many will turn from their faith.
5) False prophets will appear and deceive many people.
6) Love will grow cold in this world.

But those one who stands firm in Him, in the faith, will be saved in the end. And the gospel of Jesus Christ will be preached to all the nations throughout the world..

.. And then the end will come.

I have been going through Proverbs this month of March.. I'm still just somewhere in the beginning, but it has been a whole new experience, different from the first time I read it. God has really spoken to me through Proverbs on what His child should be like, and insight into what a Christian, a wise man, a beautiful heart is really like.. I love You, Jesus.

Just a few verses I hold close to heart.. There might be more if God reveals His rhema word to me in the near future :) And I believe He will...

They won't listen, and take it as a joke. It hurts me, of course, taking their day-to-day insults is no small feat. It might seem like nothing to them, but personally it just reveals to me all the more what qualities I look to in a man, and builds an image in my mind of the kind of man that I respect and admire - A man that is hardly like them.

Of course I still love them.. I don't know how I do it, my old self would have been entirely consumed with hatred from them, but I realise that it is Jesus' love through me loving them. I do not love, but I love out of God who lives in my heart. I thank Jesus for the love he constantly puts in my heart for those who persecute me, because Jesus Himself never chose to love those who didn't love Him - He loved them all the more.

Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me.

But He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.

2 Corinthians 12:7