This is our God

This week, I've had to wrap my head around this - How big is God?
I believe that God is big enough because of His nature- He's powerful, eternal, omnipotent, omnipresent, etc. But how big is big?

I often like to think that I'm significant on this planet and I don't trust that God is big enough and good enough for me to live a life in awe of Him.

Thank God for science, because now we can get a glimpse of how big God is.

In the bible, Isaiah speaks about how epicly big God is- "Who has measured the waters of the earth in the hollow of His hand, measured heaven with a span...?" (isaiah 40:12) Okay, i can't even hold 20 marshmallows in my mouth...And here is God, holding the universe in his hand- ONE hand) and His love for us as as high as the heavens too..WHAT? are you kidding me? HOW? WHAT? WHY??..

So much for thinking I'm important. I'm pretty much an invisible spec in His hand.

Last weekend, I wanted to runaway, Hide away..leave. Why? Because I thought I knew better. Because I thought I knew my plans were greater than His. I just want to slap myself silly. He could crush me by just placing his eyelash on me..not even that. it's unimaginable how insignificant we are, yet He asked His son to die for me.WHAT?! why?! Because we were made to appreciate and experience the vastness and the goodness of Him. Sadly, we didn't want it. lame.

The last couple of days, I decided to trust that God was good enough and big enough..our school saw $2500+ come in an hour for my school friend's course fees. God was testing me on whether I actually meant what I said which was "I'll give everything to You, because everything I have is Yours"..So, conclusion is that don't tell God you'll do something if you don't mean it, cos He takes your word for it. I felt God said to give up 2 things i dearly loved without even knowing that the ppl i gave those thing to were asking God for it. And there's more..God wanted me to give $200 to someone, and so I did (was very reluctant) but then 2hours later, i get a phone call from someone saying that he wanted to give me $200. that happened all in one day. I won't go on about all the other days where God poured out His goodness on me and my friends around me. It'll blow your mind. I don't expect God to pour out His goodness on me, but He does and He can cos He's HUGE. if He called the universe to be, I'm certain He has big and amazing plans for me as I can already see it being written right here, right now..and I can already see it coming into place..very slowly.

If only my mind could grasp how good He is and how big he is all the time. I can only handle so much for a day. I know that I'm going to forget all this next week or something, but thank goodness that God is patient and He loves reminding us How awesome He is.

"Why, the nations are but a drop in a bucket, a mere smudge on a window. Watch him sweep up the islands like so much dust off the floor! There aren't enough trees in Lebanon nor enough animals in those vast forests to furnish adequate fuel and offerings for his worship. All the nations add up to simply nothing before him-- less than nothing is more like it. A minus.
So who even comes close to being like God? To whom or what can you compare him?
Don't you know anything? Haven't you been listening? GOD doesn't come and go. God lasts. He's Creator of all you can see or imagine. He doesn't get tired out, doesn't pause to catch his breath. And he knows everything, inside and out." (Isaiah 40)

God's love is meteoric, his loyalty astronomic,
His purpose titanic, his verdicts oceanic. Yet in his largeness nothing gets lost; Not a man, not a mouse, slips through the cracks. (Psalm 36:5-6)

"This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life.
God didn't go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again." (John 3:16-17)


So, next time you want to know how huge God is and how much He loves us despite how small and insignificant we really are, look at yourself, your friends, your family..there is light in you. We're all made to love and receive love. It was part of God's plan in the beginning.

His plans are huge for everyone single person on this planet. It's up to you to believe it.

check this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1w8hKTJ2Co&feature=related



We've almost finished learning an itsty bitsy bit about God and His heart for everyone single person on this planet, and so we're going out to Perth City and Mexico City In January 2010 to proclaim just that- that God is big enough and good enough. Crazy? heck yeah! Most people probably think we're on crack, but that just pumps us up even more. We're just gonna love everyone silly.haha.

If God is for us, who can be againt us? Bring it.

The Lost Children

The Felt Child- Half of the world's population is CHILDREN
The Soldier- is representative of the 300,000 children actively fighting in wars
The Bandaid- represents the 35,000 children who die each day from preventable diseases
Party Popper- this past year, the lives of 510,000 children were extinguished by AIDS (ages 0-14)
The Spoon- is symbolic of the 200 million children under 15 years of age who suffer from chronic hunger
The Foam Letter- speak for the 121 million primary school aged children who are not attending school
The Coin- is the 674 million children that live in absolute poverty
The Heart- represent the 1.2million children being trafficked into the sex trade annually
The Bottle- each year, 3.3million babies are stillborn, 4 million die within 28 days of being born and a further 6.6million children die before their 5th birthday

The Cross- represents the hope and love of Jesus

Another Wonderful Week.

"Have I not told you? Be strong and courageous; do not be afraid or dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go." (Joshua 1)

Last week started with God leading me to read the book of Joshua. I read the verse above and thought, "yeah I know this, I've read this like a million times. Of course I know this." Little did I realise that this verse would be the theme of my week in which God was just adding a little bit more to the bigger picture of knowing more about who He is.

To put it in short, I need to be constantly reminded about who God is and how much He just wants to pour out His goodness and love to me everyday of my life. Since being here, I've been encouraged by friends here and other random people that God sees me as someone as strong and courageous- basically everything I don't see myself as. I'm scared of everything. Timid and inferior. One day, a friend came up to me and said, "God wanted me to tell you that you shouldn't limit yourself as that means you limit Him. Don't put Him in a box." It took me a while for that to sink in, and when it did, I just realised that God was again taking the first step to reach out to me. Just thinking about that and His death on the cross made me realise how much He risked to reach out to me.

I was gutted. I don't ever believe that I can be used in a mighty way and I lack much confidence. But here was God just telling me through people showing me His faithfulness and reminding me about His love. I was bursting with tears in class on thursday just thinking about the cross that I just couldn't contain as I felt God saying to me, "This is my love for You. Though you don't believe in me, I've put you on random people's minds to try and tell you that I love you." I walked back to my room after I had calmed down and I just stood there and a friend asked if I was okay. I looked up, paused and then replied still trying to figure things out in my mind, "God is just...awesome. I don't deserve it.." and all of a sudden I just fell to the floor and burst out in tears that I just couldnt control. I didn't really know what was happening but all I knew was that I was just experiencing God's love which was just cutting me to the heart in a way that was just so strong that I had to lie down.

I felt so stupid for saying that I want to know God and that I understand Him and what Jesus had done for me. But I think we all need to be constantly reminded that it's not just about what we know or what we say, but we need the revelations from God that keep us going. Every week I'm going through a cycle of trying not to be selfish and give God everything. It's so painful and it seems lame to even do something you don't normally do but I've come to find that just being bold and doing something God wants you to do, even though you would never do it, feels awesome once you've obeyed. But I'm beginning to realise that that's exactly what life with God is all about. Just relying on Him and not myself. I've done things that I never thought I could do or would never think twice about doing. For example, I had to give a talk about God's love this week and I had no idea what I was going to say till I was there at that moment talking. I was nervous, terrified and I'm not a public speaker at all. However, I was saying things I had never thought about and I could really just feel God speaking through me. It was amazing.

So yeah, learning lots about just trusting God even though in my little mind can't comprehend how things could work out. And it feels good cos I'm working through living up to a potential I thought I never could achieve but all things are possible through Him.

We're never meant to walk this life alone, to strive for something great for ourselves. It's humanly impossible to a live a life that God wants us to live. Which is why we're supposed to ask Him for help. He made the universe, I'm certain He will see me through.

One life to live. I'm not gonna live it in my little bubble. Life is too short to live for things that will pass away.




Oh and the week ended with a weekend full of free cotton candy making the beach and just awesome YWAM family bonding. I love how even though all my friends here are from everywhere, we still get along well and when there is tension, we talk it out, we try to love each other. Genuine relationships built on a strong foundation bonded by God's love for all of us - it will never be broken.

"Oh, you so holy"

Holiness is another word in the pool of Christian jargon.

Do we actually know what it means?

When we see people going to church, praying or just talking about God, we tend to say to them, "Ooo, you so holy" Or even as Christians, when we do lotsa "good stuff" and go to church and things that we like to think of ourselves as "being a good Christian" and therefore being holy in these acts. However, holiness to us often seems completely unachievable and way too out of our reach as we're human and bla bla bla.

Holiness is knowing God and His truths and living in what has already been revealed to you. If we truly know who God is- even if we know just a little about Him (cos we'll never know enough of who He is) and if that truly renews our mind, that is holiness. We're all holy if we choose to want to know Him. So you may say that being Holy is only for "strong/super christians" and not for me, I'm just fine where I am. You're wrong. Cos you are called to be holy. It's the very nature of who we are. We were created to know God. to be searching for something more, to love, to feel, etc. The ability to know Him is already given to us.

You're closer to God than you think. You're made in His image. You already have godly attributes.

You are His child.

God loves you this much

In the beginning, God. [Genesis 1:1]

Before the world was created, you. [Ephesians 1:4-6]

The world was created for you.

God intended for us to have a perfect relationship with Him, for you.

We have free will (No, we're not robots) and therefore have choice to love and know Him in return. A risk He wanted to take, for you.

He made you in His image. [Genesis 1:27] We all have God-given gifts that portray who He is. E.g. Relationship, Environmental responsibility, Marriage, Children, Education, Health, Home, Work, Creativity, Rest, etc. [1 Corinthians 12 + 14]

We chose to live for ourselves and rejected Him, but God still sent His only Son to die for us. [Romans 5:8]

God is love. He loves you. No matter what.


There is so much to God that I don't know. I've only really got a drop of the ocean of the fullness of God. But I've come to see that God is a good God. So often, I and a lot of people have a distorted view of God. We see Him as a God who just wants to punish and condemn us for the sin in our lives and therefore, He is a God of Law and rules. But if we see Him in this way, we've completely missed the idea of who He really is. God never wanted to see us go through pain, to suffer, to go through death. Before the world began, he chose you and me to be His children. To have a complete relationship full of goodness and love that you and I could not imagine. But we have the freedom to decide. To make our own choices. That is love. When you love someone, you risk being rejected.

We have a God who loves us. A love that cannot separate us from Him. You may not love Him back. But know that even though you don't, He sees you as precious.



I love God and I love people. But there will be countless times where I'll mess up and someone would point that out but that won't stop me from not loving Him or not reaching out to people. We make mistakes, but we learn from them. I'm sorry for the way I distorted your view of God in the past. I'm sorry for not portraying God's nature and character. I want to make a change. I will make a change.

What is the best way of communication? Love. God is love.

1 Corinthians 13

"1 If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don't love, I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. 2If I speak God's Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, "Jump," and it jumps, but I don't love, I'm nothing. 3-7If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don't love, I've gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I'm bankrupt without love.

Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn't want what it doesn't have.
Love doesn't strut,
Doesn't have a swelled head,
Doesn't force itself on others,
Isn't always "me first,"
Doesn't fly off the handle,
Doesn't keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn't revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.

8-10Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit. We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled.

11When I was an infant at my mother's breast, I gurgled and cooed like any infant. When I grew up, I left those infant ways for good.

12We don't yet see things clearly. We're squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won't be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We'll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!

13But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love."

Before I sleep...I thought I'd rhyme.

I haven't posted anything in a while so I thought I update y'all on what's going on here on base down under...

Full house in the dorm,
2 more nations represent,
We're all still tight,
Getting louder by the night.

It's been busy, it's been trying,
Sometimes I feel like dying,
Not really, that was a little OTT
But everyday's a challenge in breaking me.

In my sorrow, I rejoice
Instead of sulking- that's my choice.
God is love, that's all I need.
No really, That is really all I need.

It's weird how you know things,
Just in your head,
But when something cool/bad happens,
You acknowledge how real God really is and that's just the coolest feeling in the world!

Okay that last verse didn't rhyme,
But my vocab sucks especially at this time,
It's late and it's gonna be busy this week
So I'm nearing the end of my geek streak.

Thus to sum up the past few days,
Well there is so much to say,
But what I really learned was
How to battle each moment by taking a pause,
In between your decisions that you're going to make,
Cos when you choose to make
A choice that goes opposite what you usually do,
It actually works best for me and those around too.



Okay, I just wanna also shout out all the amazing things happened in the past week, thanks to God:
1. I unexpectedly got back the exact amount of cash that I donated 2 weeks ago from a wonderful someone. I thought it was pretty awesome cos I was a little unsure as to whether I was supposed to donate that much. But now, I have as much as I had before! So Yay for a bit of money for mexico!

2. Told my testimony and apologized for a lotta things I did back in the day to a loved one and it went so well, I can't believe how well it went! Firstly, I knew what to say and I usually don't. Secondly, that person reacted in a way totally opposite to what I thought. So thanks to God for the confidence and words to say (Proverbs3) and the people who prayed for me.

3. Felt pretty much on the down low a couple of times but whenever I felt a certain way, God would send random people to tell me what I really needed to hear at the right times and therefore, I made better choices and ended up on a high rather than a lower low.


1 month down...5 to go!

Beyond the grit

"The city had no need of the sun or of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God illuminated it. He is its light. And the nations of those who are saved shall walk in its light, and the kings of the earth bring their glory and honor into it. Its gates shall not be shut at all by day (there shall be no night there). And they shall bring the glory and the honour of the nations into it." (Revelations 21:23-25)

The Awesome Shampoo!

Okay, so imagine I've invented a new and improved shampoo product called Free. Why is it called free? Because that is exactly what it is. Free. I created it because I had a dream that everyone would look good with awesomely healthy hair from using this product.

So I knock on your door, and ask if you would like to use this shampoo. I try to convince you that it's a new shampoo that will do wonders to you hair - it would give you the best shine, the best smell, the strongest roots, it works on every type of hair and best of all, it's free! Just judging from what I have told you with a big smile and a sample of Free in my hand, would you accept it for all that it is?

The fact that it is free, you might be attracted just a little, but you would want me to tell you more about it to decide for yourself if it was a scam or whatever. But most of all, you would probably ask for a demonstration cos it seems pretty sketchy that you're being offered free shampoo without seeing how it works.

You're probably a bit confused at why I'm writing this but basically, that free shampoo I'm offering is like Faith in God. You could just nod your heads and accept everything I'm trying to say about God because you respect me maybe, or maybe you're just trying to be polite. But until I live a life that goes in line with what I say, all that I talk about, would just be nothing but hypocritical.

So you might believe that God is real, but if it's just a thought and not an action then it's not really believing at all. We do what we believe. I believe that food is awesome therefore I eat. I believe that my Pantene shampoo makes my hair silky smooth which is why I use it.

Faith without doing is dead. But doing "good" things without faith is dead too.

Phewf!

What an awesome week, what an awesome day, what an awesome God!

I just want to write a quick note to say that today was a day where after learning so much about God and repentance, I was challenged to give everything to Him in asking for forgiveness for everything from things I had done, things I struggle(d) with and just having a wrong view of God and myself.

I've been so selfish, so driven by what's good for me and what I feel even when it comes to saying sorry to God. God has been awesome in showing me that it grieves Him so much when we don't listen to Him. Before Jesus died on the cross, he said "Father, forgive them for they do not know what they do." Jesus already took the first step to forgive us before we did. Just understanding what Jesus had to go through so that he would die for everyone just makes me want to cry and just thank God for all He has done.

So to summarize things, I'm glad that all these burdens have been lifted from me and that I have Jesus in my heart who has just taken all my pain and shame on the cross. I have a lot to do now by asking certain people to forgive me which is not an easy task but I'm ready to be open because no longer do I want to feel guilty, no longer do I want to be who I was before, but I want to find my identity in Christ.

No longer do I think that I'm a failure, that I could never love God but I am just so completely amazed by Him and His faithfulness to me throughout my life, that all I want to do is just give my life to Him so that He can use it to make Himself known.

No longer do I want my life to be a lie. I want people to know who I was and who I am now. I want to start afresh. Make a change. I'm not going to waste my life pursuing my own selfish desires as it leads to heartache and emptiness.

No longer will I be persuaded by people, or tossed to and fro trying to be a people pleaser. That is not who I want to be, and that won't be who I am. I am not gonna spend my life trying to fix myself and trying to get everything right cos then I'd just fall over. I'm just going to focus on knowing God, making Him known and being completely amazed by Him and His works.

It's going to take a whole lot of work to relearn a lot of things I thought I knew or took for granted. I'm probably going to stumble here and there and face lots of challenges. It won't be easy and I know it'll be a pretty lonely road at times, but as long as God is with me, I have nothing to worry about.


I'm a fool for Christ! :)

Meta-Noia

What is true repentance? Is it just one of those words in the christian pool of jargon that is commonly attached to 'salvation' or 'forgiveness'? When we accept Jesus as our God and Saviour, and we're told to repent, do we actually know what that means? I didn't.

The hebrew word for repentance is "metanoia". More literally, metanoia means "to change/alter thought or to have another mind. This was really new to me because I assumed that repentance was just an act of saying sorry for our wrong doings. So when Romans 12:2 talks about "renewing our mind" this is the straight up deal.

Okay, let's rewind just a little bit. Before I dive into what repentance means - and i'll try my best to explain it and what this means for us (I've really only learnt all of this since Monday!), let's take it back to why we're led to repentance...

So, I accepted Jesus into my heart as Lord and Saviour because I acknowledged that He was the Son of God and I wanted to have a relationship with Him. This was because since the beginning of time, when God created us and everything, he made everything good (Genesis 1) and He made man so that we could enjoy our Creator (God) and the creation around us. Since day one, we were made to love God, to have a relationship with him - i.e. to be holy. I remember someone saying in class that "holiness should be normal, and anything else is abnormal." This is what we were created for.

Everyone was made in God's image therefore, we don't realise this but we reflect a lot of God's nature. For example, we love, we get angry, we feel, we think, we imagine, we create, we remember, etc. This is how we can relate to God. God is not remote. He did not just place us on this earth and leave us be. He wants to be a part of our lives, He wants us to realise that there is more to life than just living for ourselves.

What comes to your mind when you think of God? I grew up in a family knowing that God defines love and He is our Father. However, though I knew these things, I did not take it to heart as whenever I felt bitter, selfish, alone, or just plain ashamed I sometimes would imagine that God just wanted to punish me, and could not stand to see me in a state of mess. This is completely wrong. I did not realise how much I distorted my view of God.

God is love. It says in 1John4:7-8, "Beloved, let us love one another. For love is of God and anyone who loves God is born of God and knows God. He that does not love, does not know God for God is love." (1John4:7-8 Do we actually know in our hearts that He is as He says He is? If we really believed it and knew who God was - His nature and His character, we should be compelled to not feel ashamed to just come to Him just as we are.

In the letter written to the Romans, Paul says that it is God's lovingkindness that leads us to repentance (Romans 2:4). Nothing else but the understanding of God's love and what He did for us on the cross should compel us to repent- to change our mindset. It is not an inward focused action for having a selfish attitude towards asking for forgiveness and wanting to change is not repentance at all. In fact, sin is self.

Going back to who God is...because God is love, He does things out of love and for love, not anger. It is not God's intention for us to think that He has set us up to fail, to be embarassed, or to feel ashamed. We are His children. He wants to see us do well. It breaks His heart when we make the wrong choices, but He loves us the same even though we may not love Him. Life is like a love story: God created us to have a relationship with us - a two-way love bond. God could have programmed us to love Him but He gave us freewill to make our own choices because He loves us. Think of it this way, you would not want the person you loved to be like a robot who is made to love you because that just is not true love. That love has no emotion, no personality, no commitment, no depth. So God loves us but He took a risk- giving us the choice to love Him back. Think about how much rejection God gets everyday...

A lot of people understand that if God is God. He is powerful but they don't understand that He is about Love and Relationship. We often think that God controls and governs the universe with sheer power. If this was the case, if God's justice was brought on this earth, we'll be wiped out in a second. "All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." (Romans 3:23) So thank God that we are saved by sheer grace through love! God uses His power to bring love and relationship, not complete domination - after all, we do have free will.

But with free will comes responsibility (haha, that sounded like something that came from Spiderman). When Paul talked about the "renewing of our mind", he was talking about the basis of repentance. Whatever we choose to be starts from our thoughts. Whatever good or bad thoughts we have will manifest into a specific attitude if we don't stop these thoughts. However, if this attitude develops, we act on it and if we do it often, it becomes a habit. It then evolves as part of our character over time and instances, it then leads to our destiny.

to be continued...

Does God know what we're going to choose?

This week has been full of great revelation and headaches after being overwhelmed by everything that I've been learning. Learning about repentance hasn't been much of a breeze as I thought it would be. I realised I know nothing about this and my mind has just been completely reversed and meddled with but in a good way, because now I'm beginning to understand God, His love, freewill and choice. (See notes on "metanoia" for more information on this)

Hokay, so...the question is at it says above.
Here are the facts to set the scene:
- God is all loving, all knowing, all powerful.
- God sees everyone as good and loves everyone just the same, and therefore has not created any of us to fail/reject Him.
- God has given us free-will to choose.
- Because God loves us, He is risking the fact that there are some that will not choose to love Him back (e.g. Think about a person you really love - you would try to pursue him/her with the risk that he/she may not love you back, but you take that risk)

What do you think?