Colours of the North...

Played host to Tim for once. Now that he's shown me around at Lighthouse (of which I joined, but later left, both ways compelled by the Lord) I guess it's just for me to fufil his request to visit D.A.R.E..

After half a week's worth of grade-calculating, quixo-lending, course-atending, whiteboard-drawing, holiday-planning, whiteboard-erasing, re-paddling, subject-comparing, particulars-sorting and Exodus-assisting (Ooo, Exodus! I remembered Genisis to haave had been a failure last year, but Exodus was more or less a great improvement this time round! Good job, Marcus!!!), it was finally the weekends. And what better way to begin it than to continue my catching-up training with my new partner! A good spin with the New Tiger with backman Ting Wei, and I guess we've got ourselves a good paddling.

Then after training, I changed into something comfortable and made my journey to Suntec City, of which I did some window shopping to kill of the extra hour I had to wait for Tim and Samantha with. I was having fun viewing minature models of movie characters when Tim finally called and requested a good meeting point.

I told him to describe where he was ("Is there a map of the world on the floor?" "Yeah, it looks something like it... there's a red pillar in the centre of this place." "Erm, that pillar's gonna change colour, y'know." "Oh... Erm, yeah the place with the big coloury pillar."...), of which I promised to meet him there within 10 minutes (a promise I sheepishly broke when I passed by another replica shop filled with replicas of colonial swords and ball-bearing guns :P).

When I was within the area, I spotted the two of them at the 'red pillar'. I then grinned a little and sneaked quietly behind Tim before suddenly grabbing his shoulders and exclaiming, "Okay, so where do you guys want to eat?" I leaned on the railings of the pillar fountain like what they were doing, from the corner of my eyes noticing Tim staring at me. Then realising I was too soft at the 'so where do you guys want to eat' part, I stood up again and asked properly.

They replied with the casual 'I'm fine with anything' statement, of which I gave them a rough plan of what was available. Getting the same response, I decided to bring them to Subway, which was 6 floors directly under where D.A.R.E. was held.

We ate, and we chat, and we made many laughs. But soon after, we proceeded up to the 6th Floor Overflow room, of which along the way Samantha giggled noticing that Tim and I swivel and wieve our way through the crowds while she was simply walking straight through.

Once upstairs, we met up with my D.A.R.E. group (dg), CIA. I told them I brought some visitors, of which they said they could join them during the service. Shortly, Tim and Samantha noticed the loud music in the background, of which we all creeped towards the Overflow room. After much observation, I turned around and said, "Oh, don't worry; we're not late. It's just the rehersals." They both were slightly shocked but went along with it.

Later on, the crouds were starting to build up so they began a SMS competition while waiting for the service to start. We waited through the contest for another half an hour, of which Samantha met some friends from her school while Tim and I just lazed around at the counter.

Soon enough, the doors of the Overflow room swung open, and the trademark call of "DOORS OPEN!!!" surged through the area. I rallied the other two along and stayed within the current of youths until we were flushed at a good spot near the stage.

Samantha was looking through the instruments from where she was seated, and according to her there was apparently no synthesizer on the stage. Tim was also viewing the instruments, but with a different response. Being a very sensitive listener, he became concerned about the possible noise levels we'd be encountering during the praise and worship segment. So looking around, he asked where the speakers were.

There was one portable speaker a couple or more meters away from us, but that was facing towards the stage. What he needed to be more concerned about were the imbeded speakers on the ceiling. (Hey, these overflow rooms were built to ensure sermons reached every corner of the area: Can't blame them.)

But then again, these kind of ceiling speakers were definitely weaker than those you see in concert, and I doubt they'd be mad enough to raise the volumes up till nosebleed-sonic, so the matter was laughed off.

Within minutes, the service began and we started with singing of songs. Tim noticed that some of the songs weren't usual songs you'd find in worship sessions. I explained to him that the worship ministry in this Church had recently released their latest album, I See Grace, and so some of the songs would be from the album.

After lots of singing and jumping and 'saywhat, saywhat, saywhat-saywhat-saywhat!'s and 'who-OAH-oah's, Pastor Dan came to the stage and gave his little chat before he began his sermon. For today, he was telling us his stories of him at a Hillsong Australia conference which he accompanied Pastor Prince to recently and had just arrived back from.

After that, he was telling us of how he missed us all and that he loves to preach to his homeland. He stated here and there of how proud he was to be in such a Church and that he knew it was God's assigned blessings for us to be here. But soon after, we began on our sermon. The sermon was about the definitions of prase and worship, and also how it differs from definitions modern society creates.

A number of people believe that worship is just to surrender to the Lord any items that you may 'worship' more than you would to Him (time, money, addictions, etc.). But that's actually half of the story. God also gives us back something when we give Him our trust and praises, and these include blessings that are abundant beyond measure! But above all, He gave the very vessel that permit us these blessings: His one and only Son!

It was extremely funny, with the usual dosages of Greek and Hebrew words, hilarious explainations for certain definitions and even some participation from the audience!

After the sermon, there was a final song, followed by a final prayer, followe by the offerings, followed by the announcements, and then we were officially dismissed. The three of us went down to the main floor, where I broke off with them since we had our different routes.

On my way to the bus stop, I was thanking God that everyhting went smoothly and that things went rather well. The fact that I was respectively new to the youth service, although having joined the main service for three years or so, could only mean that it was truely by the grace of God I made it through to help guide Tim and Samantha along the way! Praise the Lord!!!

Well, I'd better rest today now. Just came back from main service, now I feel somewhat tired (Sunday's seems so beautiful for rest!).

Malachi 4:17!!! God bless y'all!!!

Who'd you think I am?...

Today's another non-Church Sunday, so I'll share about the Temptation of Jesus.

For those who don't know, this was an event around after the baptisim of Jesus. It's described in Matthew 4:1-11, where it says;

1Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. 2After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. 3The tempter came to him and said, "If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread."

4Jesus answered, "It is written: 'Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.'"

5Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. 6"If you are the Son of God," he said, "throw yourself down. For it is written: " 'He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.'"

7Jesus answered him, "It is also written: 'Do not put the Lord your God to the test.'"

8Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. 9"All this I will give you," he said, "if you will bow down and worship me."

10Jesus said to him, "Away from me, Satan! For it is written: 'Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.'"

11Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended him.

Now, many people have made comments on the moves Jesus made. They'd ask questions like, "Why didn't Jesus turn the stones into bread?" or, "Why didn't He just fall and let His angels catch Him?" Well, I'll try with the help of the Lord to answer those questions.

Read the passage again. Notice in the first and second temptations how the devil begins his statements.

"IF you are the Son of God,..."

'If' was satan's way of trying to give doubt to Jesus on His status as Son of God. "IF you're really the Son of God, you should be able to turn these stones to bread, or fall off the building and let the angels catch you!" You see, if Jesus did the miracles the devil advised Him to do, it'll be showing that Jesus had doubts that He was the Son of God (Don't forget, He was still human).

Imagine a laboratory that's owned by the government. Now would the professors that work there experiment on whether paper burns? No! And why? Because they already know that paper can burn, and furthermore that it turns into carbon ash. Now, would they test on what frequencies of sound waves can actually start a fire? Probably. And why? Because no one probably knows, so the only way to find out is to do experiments.

In the same way, if Jesus performed the experiment of turning stones into bread, or jumping off the temple, He'd be saying that He wasn't sure if He really was the Son of God and so needed to do these things to prove to Himself. He already knew He could bun up the rocks and command angels to catch Him, so He needn't need to perform the miracles to prove to anyone if He was the Son of God.

And also in the same way, we should trust in the Lord on our lives without needing to doubt that He'll bless you greatly. Some Christians say a prayer like, "Dear Lord, please bless me with a wealthy income, and I promise you I'll praise you for the rest of my life." without realising that this wouldn't work at all. The person's saying the prayer because he needs the wealthy income to prove to him that God does exist. In order for God to be able to work in your life, He first needs you to fully believe in Him.

Think about a credit card deal. Now, in order to be able to see how the credit card can help you financially, you hav to trust the bank behind the card and sign the contract. You can't just have a 1-month trial period to see how things are before deciding if you'd like to sign up for the card - "It's either you're in, or you're out." You've got no choice but to sign it up on the spot in order to use it. (Maybe think about it for a few weeks or so, but you can't use the card until you've signed the contract.) You just have to place the risks at stake on the line, along with a signature, but trust the bank with all your heart that they'd do a good job.

In the same way, you'd just have to trust that the Lord will do it all, and discard all the doubts in your mind. The moment you allow doubt to control your allowance for God to control your life, it's just as good as tearing the contract apart since you're not sure if the bank's gonna forfill their part of the deal. But there's a diference between this Bank and the many others: You CAN trust this bank, satisfaction garunteed! So just rely on God already! And stop telling yourself, "It's impossible!", because that statements the thing that's making it impossible in the first place.

For archiving, I went out with Mom and Choppy to Lot 1 and Bukit Panjang Plaza, and I must admit that my shopping skills aren't at par to theirs. :( Then in the evening after dinner, we went back to BPP for desserts at BristoDelefrance. (Chocolate made tempting...).