God is good all the time;
And all the time, God is good
#ThursdayEveningThoughts
#Thankful
A Father’s Love
You are my Father, provider,
You’re my deliverer
Your mercies embrace me, surround me
Through Your everlasting love
Father I worship You
Father I worship You
Unconditional & unchanging, ever ready for us to leap into His arms, to lovingly guide us in the right path, to love us regardless of our strengths and weaknesses – that’s how God is like.
Just listening to this old worship song tonight and feeling very loved to know that I’ve a Father whose acceptance never hinges on what I choose to believe in, chase after, or based on my work-in-progress character. And that’s His love for every single one of you out there too 🙂
One Life
Only one life… It will soon past.
Only what’s done for Christ will last
UR Camp 2015. Gonna remember this night for a long time.
Alternativist.
Be that generation
Every barrier is a potential opportunity.
Because God is a God who makes the:
Weak – Strong
Ordinary – Extraordinary
Impossible – Possible
(Yup and most of the CG has an intense fear of balloons but for some reason, no matter who our game masters for the week are, we always end up playing games that revolve around bursting balloons LOL.)
We’re just an ordinary bunch, but we’re going to do some extraordinary things for God.
A jar of dreams, a jar of vision. We will be that generation that has revival on our hearts.
Love my connect groups 🙂
Is it all you want?
Just happened to read this article at desiringgod.org and it really hit home:
To someone who says the sermon is all I need, my question back would be this: Is it all you want? Why isn’t the meal on Sunday whetting your taste for more on Monday? Why not? It seems to me like we have two issues here. (1) How much of the Bible do we need? (2) How much of the Bible do we want?
Let’s take the second question. Why would you only want one passage a week from the Bible, from someone else? To me that’s like saying: I am in love, my sweetheart writes me every day, and I would like to just read her letters once a week, and I think I would like somebody else to read them for me and give me a digest of what she said. Are you kidding me? To only want to read one love letter a week when she is writing them every day is a sign that something is wrong.
The Bible is an unparalleled love letter to the people of God. The Psalmist says: “How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!” (Psalm 119:103). It just wouldn’t make any sense for the psalmist to say: “I get a spoonful of honey on Sunday and that is plenty. I don’t want any on Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday or Thursday or Friday or Saturday.” Instead he said: “Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day” (Psalm 119:97). “More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold” (Psalm 19:10). “If you seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden treasures, then you will understand the fear of the LORD and find the knowledge of God” (Proverbs 2:4–5).
So why would you want only one glimpse a week of this beauty? Only one taste a week of this honey? Only one deposit a week of this silver in your bank? Only one letter from your lover?
So very often we complain that we don’t feel close to God, or that God doesn’t speak to us. But yet, we don’t even spend 10-15 minutes a day reading His Word, meditating on it, digging for the gold that’s abundant between those very lines. We survive on just the weekend sermons and that’s the end of it. But God isn’t just God on Saturday/Sunday. He isn’t just the church’s God, or the preacher’s God, but He is our God, our Heavenly Father, every single day.
Going to church is great. But to box God in on one day is sad. It’s like saying to your girlfriend/boyfriend that we can only go out on this specific time, specific day of the week and apart from that don’t text me, don’t call me, don’t ask me out… ):
Timely reminder for myself to always go back to my First Love. To never allow the heart to grow cold, never let the ears grow dull, and never ever let familiarity make me cease being amazed, awed and excited about the wonders of the Word.
So is that all I want?
No. Cause there’ll never come a point where I know You enough.
I want more of You each and every day of my life…
CM
#CM
Taking A Leap Of Faith
How do we make our decisions in life? Do we make them out of fear or out of faith?
When we were young children, most of us dared to do anything in the world. We could dream to be doctors, to be astronauts, to be scientists, to change the world! But as we grew up, we’ll always come face to face with the realities of life. We’d say that no it is too risky to be an entrepreneur, I might lose all my money. Why not I just settle for an office job that I might not love the most but at least I get a stable income. Or maybe we’d think, no, let me not chase after my dreams that my friends do not agree with. I’m going to lose all that friendship. Let me just live with the status quo to preserve all these relationships I’ve spent time building over the years… Sounds familiar?
Over the weekends, Pastor How preached about making faith-based decisions. He said that fear renders us powerless while faith brings us forward to conquer grounds. As I sat there in service, I could not help but begin to reflect on the decisions I made and the dreams I have over the past few years.
One of the things that tugged at my heart was when Pastor How said that very often, when we are young, or when we have nothing much to lose, we dare to make faith-based decisions. We dream big, we dare to try the ‘impossible’, we take risks, we go forth and fight out way through. But when we have much to lose (and this often happens as we grow older), we become fearful and end up guarding what we have instead of launching forth to gain what you have yet to have.
At that moment, I began to think about all the visions and dreams I had growing up. I remember being a crazily faith filled 16 year old who thought that everything also “can”. I remember being unafraid of big dreams and big visions. Every time God spoke and gave a bigger vision, I said “Yes! I’ll dream for it!”
But right there in service yesterday, I realised that I’ve let my dreams grow smaller each year as I grew up and had more to lose. Instead of “Yes, let’s go for greater ground”, it became “let’s just keep it stable at where it is now I’ll be happy enough” and “if nothing bad happens, can already”. But no!!! That is such a fear-based mentality!
Like what SP said, fear renders us powerless, fearless, loveless and takes away our sound mind. It takes away our power to act, to make decisions and to advance.
But you know what, we were not called to hold back, to play defence all the time and to preserve what we have.
I really love what pastor how said after that:
Don’t exchange opportunity for security.
Yes, there are risks, there are costs to count, but we should never shrink back into a preservation mode all our lives. It’s only when we are able to open up our hands, loosen our grip on what we’ve been holding on to, that greater things can be placed in our hands again…
Never going to trade faith for fear any longer. Time to dream big again, time to let faith arise, time to launch forth and conquer.
No longer going to play defensive. Time to play offensive. Play like it’s 0-0.
(Yup and this was the exact line in my last tumblr post from 2 years ago. Different season, different revelation, but same heart, same spirit, same God)
Always thankful to have pastors who give their best and speak such truth every single weekend… Blessed 🙂
P.S. On a more light hearted note, faith in action this morning hahaha: O’ dear lil green bus was no coping and it was gna be impossible to get up the next few buses (A LOT of people couldn’t get up and were left behind). So well, wait for a few more green bus: late. Take big bus to MRT: late. So, why not try to take the route I always wanted to try but was afraid that it’ll take eons if there’s a jam on the highway: spends half the time needed from my original route, super early for work. Hehe, yay new route to work (and more time to sleep). #choosefaith
IGNITE
Ignite Camp 2015.
Can’t begin to say how special church camps are. They’re more than just camps for bonding/fun/training. It’s in these camps where eternity gets placed into hearts, a camp that isn’t just a milestone in life… But an ignited moment that changes the course of your life, forever.
In HOGC, camps are a lot of fun – trust me, we know fun. But more than that, the best part’s always the revival nights where we all dwell long and deep in the presence of God… That air of expectancy you feel the moment you enter into the auditorium; the long talks with our connect groups after revival nights, sharing our hearts, our dreams, our revelations together. Precious moments indeed. A new generation arising to be a generation God has faith in, to be a generation that takes responsibility, and a generation that can open our hands – give God what we have in our lives and watch Him make make the ordinary extraordinary.
Very cool fact: The whole camp was ran by youths, for youths! The planning team ICs were only 14-15 year olds and they planned a whole camp for almost 300 people. Young people can do great things. Love how we are in a church that believes in the next generation.
Here’s some photos from the last night of camp! What’s camp without a campfire right (except that ours start at 1am hahaha B-) ) and at 6am you’ll still see people alive telling you that the night is still young.
Our very cool campfire lighting ceremonyÂ
3am and just about to get the fun going
#L1GHTOTW
“It’s not the milestones in life that will go into eternity; it’s the ignited moments.”
Going to remember this camp for a long long time.
P.S. “RGB RGB RGB RGB RGB” could not stop ringing in my head while I was at work on Thursday morning hahahaha.
A generation that God has faith in
So youth camp 2015 started today!!! Youth camps are always special. They signify a new generation arising, they are what builds deep benches, they are the place where new revivals spring forth and lives are changed forever… 
Love every single one of these people… It’s the first youth camp for most of them! But though they are new, but they will be a generation that knows God deeply. While they are young, but they are going to change their worlds for Christ. A generation that loves God wholeheartedly, that serves God passionately. 
At the same time, just want to shout out to these two very powerful girls today. They really broke through so many boundaries today and they really worked as a team. They led worship, they prayed, they shared and did what they felt led to. #powerofateam Just one/two years ago they were in the camp themselves but today they are leaders changing their world. Proud. 
And here’s the girls skyping me in the middle of the night while eating cup noodles and talking about revivals… Heart’s full and the future is amazing! Can’t wait for tomorrow 🙂
1 Timothy 4:12 Let no one despise your youth, but be an example to the believers in word, in conduct, in love, in spirit, in faith, in purity.
Watch out for these world changers.
The Case For Thoughts
Thoughts.
It’s estimated that 70,000 of them run through our minds each and every day of our lives.
A few hundred before we let it turn into words that come forth from our mouths.
Perhaps a few thousand before we go ahead and act something out.
And tens of thousands probably went through my mind the past week just contemplating about what I should write for my first post (heh).
I don’t know about you, but I think it’s pretty incredible how complex our minds are built to be. To have the capacity for 70,000 thoughts a day (some even estimate that it’s up to 600,000!!! Like wow – I know, right), to have the potential to imagine, to dream, to analyse, to well – think.
But one thing to think about though, is:Â how many of that 70,000 thoughts do we take hold of every day?
Do a thousand fly by carelessly, being shaped by what happens around us?
Do another few thousand come forth out of angst to the people and circumstance in our lives?
Or do we intentionally fill our minds with good thoughts – thoughts about the goodness of life, of big dreams and visions for the future, loving thoughts about the people around us etc…?
I remember the days when I just let my thoughts run carelessly. Boy did they run. It was like an untrained dog without a leash upon seeing a big fat peace of meat wiggling in front of it – it went crazy. One moment I’d be thinking “I love my life!” and just one second later I’ll be wondering whether I’m good enough, what am I on earth for, why are things like this and that etc… There were just so many conflicting thoughts, it was so draining!
But then Megan shared with me the importance of filling my mind with the right thoughts. Thoughts of faith, hope and love. Thoughts about God’s promises for our lives. Thoughts that looked to the future and not dwelling in the past. I never thought that we could take hold of thoughts, but from then on, I realised how great an impact it has!
Proverbs 23:7a (KJV)
For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he…
As we think in our hearts, so we become. Our thoughts aren’t just things that disappear into nothingness. They speak of our character, they shape us and set the direction of our lives. Dream big and you walk into bigness. Think small and the more you’ll find yourself getting stuck on the small things of life.
I thank God that no matter what circumstances and season of life I go through, there’s always good thoughts to think about because the promises of God are aplenty and they never lie (:
Haha and with that, here’s my kickoff post to a new season of blogging!
The case for thoughts:Â a collection of thoughts taken hold of, that are (hopefully) good food for thought to the world ~
Case For Thoughts 