Come and make my heart Your home

Come and be everything I am and all I know
Search me through and through
Until my heart becomes a home for You

A home for You oh
Home for You oh

Let everything I do open up a door
For You to come through
Then my heart would be a place
Where You wanna be

'Til my heart becomes a home for You

i just watched the movie hangover, thinking it was going to be a funny movie cos i heard someone in the lift in ttsh say she was laughing non stop during the movie. it was NOT a good movie. i hated myself after watching it cos it's like a sin movie man. argh. i asked God to forgive me really for not stopping myself halfway into the movie. feel so grossed out now. then i realised some lessons i drew from this:

1) we are all sinners. i've actually stopped repenting of sins for awhile, thinking i'm OK in the area of sin. but i realised today, we must realise that God's standard of holiness is so high, and we are called to repent of our sins and ask for forgiveness. Brokenness is so impt in our walk. the moment we think we are ok before God, that we don't need his grace and mercy, that's the moment we start becoming like the pharisees and becoming lukewarm and drifting away from God.

2) The world is really fallen. i felt so gross after watching the movie and i guess i grasp abit of why God would want to destroy the whole human race during noah's time. when there's all sorts of sexual debauchery and sin and crazy stuff. the human race just messed up big time. We must be in the world but not of the world. there are clear values and principles that we must live by as christians and be SET APART. john 17:1-18

as christians we cannot afford to start compromising and drift into worldliness in our language, our values, our thought life. we must resolve not to sin against God. but we will fail, and we must realise that it's all because of God's grace and mercy that we can come to Him. We must have that posture of brokenness and humility. we cannot be sinless, but we can sin less. that's growing in maturity and growing deeper in God.

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

And 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?
And what if a thousand sleepless nights
Are what it takes to know You're near?

And what if trials of this life
Are Your mercies in disguise?

My son, if you receive my words
and treasure up my commandments with you,
making your ear attentive to wisdom
and inclining your heart to understanding;
yes, if you call out for insight
and raise your voice for understanding,
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.

Prov 2: 1-5

"The quest for wisdom requires a concerted effort, patient application and dogged perseverance shown by miners as they tunnel under the earth to extract silver ore and other precious metals (see Job 28:1-11). Neither silver ore nor wisdom is got in a day, or got without industry; but for miner and student alike, the prize is worth the toil. Fools have no discipline or patience to learn wisdom. He thinks he can shop around for wisdom, and expects to pick it up pre-packaged and neatly wrapped – a bit like thinking that listening to the Sunday sermon is all it takes. Unfortunately, very much of today’s Christian spirituality is “MacDonald spirituality”, “instant spirituality”, “three-in-one spirituality”, and a spirituality that can be cooked in the spiritual microwave oven in just a few minutes. Many Christians today are looking for this kind of spirituality.
Obtaining spiritual wisdom isn't a once-a-week hobby; it is the daily discipline of a lifetime. But in this age of microwave ovens, fast foods, digests, and numerous “made easy” books, many people are out of the habit of daily investing time and energy in digging deep into Scripture and learning wisdom from the Lord." - CEFC's proverbs devotional.

How can we have a fresh fear of the Lord? It is to dig deep into His word, not a superficial glancing, but a deep meditation and study on what God is saying in His Word.. It is so easy to say but so hard to apply! i think that Prayer and the Word is the fundamental starting point we all need to go back to. To deliberately and intentionally make time for prayer and a dogged study of His Word.. We need to go back to basics over and over again, that is the key to revival i think..

"I wrote this book because much of our talk doesn't match our lives. We say things like, 'i can do all things through Christ who strengthens me,' and 'trust in the Lord with all your heart.' Then we live and plan like we don't believe God even exists. We try to set our lives up so everything will be fine even if God doesn't come through. But true faith means holding nothing back. It means putting every hope in God's fidelity to His promises." - Francis Chan

"The end of life is not to be happy nor to achieve pleasure and avoid pain, but to do the will of God, come what may." - MLKjr

"Better to love God and die unknown than to love the world and be a hero; better to be content with poverty than to die a slave to wealth; better to have taken some risks and lost than to have done nothing and succeeded at it; better to have lost some battles than to have retreated from the war; better to have failed when serving God than to have succeeded when serving the devil. What a tragedy to climb the ladder of success , only to discover that the ladder was leaning against the wrong wall!" - Erwin Lutzer

I wonder in my current moment of fatigue, stress, busyness, how do i live this out. How on earth do i live this? I dunno how... Should i study less and relax, so called knowing God is in control? should i study less and read the bible more? should i study less and spend more time with God? Should i study more and study very hard and compromise my time with God because passing this exam is God's will for me? Or perhaps it's study hard, and set aside time with God? What is the godly way to go about dealing with an exam so intense and massive as this? Or am i asking the wrong question....

actually maybe i'm asking the wrong question... this is life, it's all of it. Annie Dillard wrote that the way we live out our days is the way we live our lives, MBBS or not. so perhaps, even though this is a busy season, a specific or even special season of my life where it's so intense, i need to live it still as a day lived unto the Lord. I need to trust in His provision, trust in His hand over me, that He is good, that He is in control and He has a purpose for my life. That should translate to a joy inside me, even when stress abounds. It should also translate to a peace in me that surpasses all understanding, anchored in the God of the universe. It should also translate to a meaningful work and effort, to do the best for my exam as this is what God has laid before me at this moment in my life. It is, believe it or not. This is God's will for my life at this pt in time. So do my best unto God. And at the end of the day, life is a journey, we are but pilgrims passing through. What is God saying through all this? What is God teaching me. What is God revealing about Himself to me. I need to reflect on that and be more sensitive to what God is saying and revealing. Perhaps a quiet musing of the spirit's movement as what i read in my bible study material.

But at the end of the day, not just a form of personal therapy, but so that these experiences in my life transform me into christ-likeness for the great commission of making disciples fired by the great commandment to love God with all of what i am...

The disciple of Christ must determine to have higher principles and deeper resolves which focus on God's eternal mission rather than on fleeting successes based on superficial goals and marginal objectives.... ahhh i want that for my life.. so easy to say but so not easy to live..

I was reading the Straits Times, and read an article about this old man, 81 years old, who married this lady, 70 years old, when they met at the AWWA shelter, something like an old folks shelter.. They hold hands when they cross the road, and they go grocery shopping together and even fool around like putting plastic bags over their heads. Just this year, they celebrated their one year wedding anniversary by going to KFC. They say they only go there on special occasions. i was like wow... They get so much joy from going to KFC.. for an anniversary dinner.. i reflected on it and i think when your life is simple, when you don't have much, you find joy from simple things. ok perhaps not everyone, but somehow, little things in life are joyful.. When you are rich, paradoxically, it seems to make things more complicated, and it becomes harder to find joy in the simple things in life. perhaps, the rich are really not that much happier than the poor, and perhaps the poor are even better off living a simple life and enjoying the simple things in life.

there's much else to say, but perhaps one of the most ignored lesson in the world is, why do the rich have so much problems and why are so many rich people so unhappy. Did they not all think in their strive towards wealth that money was gonna make them happy, yet so many people reach there and find an even bigger void in their lives. I hope that no matter whether i become rich or poor, i will be rich in the Kingdom of God. I will not get awestruck by $$, but learn stewardship, and recognise that i'm a pilgrim on a journey. I hope i serve God and not money. Maybe being rich isn't that great an idea cos it's so hard for the rich to enter the kingdom of God because it becomes harder to give up everything for God. So ok maybe if i become rich i hope i learn stewardship and learn to give it all away for God's kingdom.

On a side note, it's funny how a poor old couple abandoned by their family, living in an elderly shelter, can become the envy (I'm sure) of many people.. Life is really funny. I hope i will learn to enjoy the simple things in life too.

On a side note from the side note, this is a post from Covenant's Women Ministry. I believe it works for both guys and girls:

How can you discern if this guy/girl is God's will for you? This is the million dollar question that many singles are asking. May I humbly suggest 4 essential indicators:

1. Similar spiritual quest, focus and mission in life
2. Mutual attraction and chemistry
3. Possessing a lasting quality of true character and faithful loyalty towards each other
4. Mentally stimulating and challenging

So ladies, it's not just a guy who buys you a nice diamond ring(or a handcrafted ring) or brings you on a nice romantic date.. It's so much more than that..