he reigns

God is Faithful and Good!

2008-10-06T22:45:00.001+08:00

there are 12 months a year, 30 days a month, 7 days a week, 24 hours a day, 60 minutes an hour, but only one like you in a lifetime.

God is faithful, God is good. Indeed He is.

rejected

2008-05-27T21:55:00.003+08:00

i am officially rejected from all three local university today. first came the letter from SMU 2 weeks ago. then it was NTU last week. and finally NUS today. feeling a little disappointed but more importantly. very worried about the future. i know God has plans for each and everyone of us but right now i just pray that i am able to accept what he has in stored for me happily. there's this sense of inferiority slowly creeping in. most of my friends made it. i didn't. i know i'm not stupid. at least i think i'm not. how did i end up like this. too much fun and games? you reap what you sow. i guess that's where i went wrong. God please carry me through this.

Lord i know you will never put me in a situation i cannot handle. i pray for your guidance for me to make a decision on what to do next. i pray that you would reveal your plans you have for me. take away my anxieties and worries and replace them with serenity in knowing that you my loving God.

20th

2008-05-24T13:33:00.001+08:00

thank you my friends for the surprise birthday celebration. i'm really thankful God put you guys in my life. though i may not have expressed it, from the bottom of my heart, i truly appreciate what you all have done for me! thanks!

God you have been with me all these years. i pray that i would grow deeper in faith. i pray for wisdom and maturity as i age another year. i thank you for the many blessings you have showered upon me. thank you Lord for the thing's you've done for me. the times you've spent with me. and the future you have for me.

the sidestep vs the crash

2008-04-21T20:57:00.004+08:00

have you ever had the experience of knowing something you wish to avoid was going to happen and yet you did not know how step around it. this feeling of helplessness can be quite choking. i guess sometimes you just have to resolve it head on and not try to go around it. it may work out for the better eventually. afterall, do you think a loving God would place you in a situation you cannot handle?

i'm glad things turned out fine and everything worked out. i hope that our friendship would grow stronger and not fade away after this.

2008-04-14T23:38:00.001+08:00

Then he said to them all: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it. - Luke 9:23-24

i guess its about time for me to turn away from all the things that displeases God. i've been living two lives for way too long already. i need to change. i need to find the real me before i lose myself. i need to walk away.

what about now, what about today?
how apt.

be kind rewind

2008-04-12T09:56:00.008+08:00

no more shallow incoherent rants and ramblings. deleted almost all my previous entries except for the more meaningful ones. well. meaningful to me at least.

for your reading pleasures as well as insurance for my poor memory, here's what i have been up to since i left sajc in 2006.

i stepped onto tekong for the second time (first time in secondary school for some ncc competition thingy but that's another story) in my life on 12th Jan 2007 with lots of anticipation and lots of apprehension. enlisted into whiskey company along with herng liang, siva and wee keat from og15! great to have familiar faces in army. it makes the painful process much easier. 9 weeks of bmt flew past in a blink. new friends found, new bonds forged. only blemish of this enjoyable 9 weeks was the release of A level results midway through bmt. it was a little depressing to do badly but i guess God has plans for me. i shall try not to worry about it so much.

block leave was a rather torrid time for me. besides worrying about university admission, i had to worry about my ns posting too. ocs was like the ideal posting many people hoped for. the prestige aside, the pay was good too. alas the fateful posting day came and to my relief, ocs was where i was headed to. thank God for that.

i entered ocs with much fear. many things were said about this place. the depressing lifestyle. the tiring routines. the aching bodies. the mental torture. after the first few weeks i realised that, just like almost everything else in the army, this was overly exaggerated. it was definitely bearable even to a feather weight like me. days were long but the weeks were short. common leadership term was a blur. before i knew what was happening it was over. service term should have been better cherished. the friends i made there are probably those whom i feel the greatest bond with of all ns pals. long live sierra 2! you guys rock! along came pro term. all segregated into our various arms and vocation. a bitter farewell and a reluctant walk forward in our officership training. pro term was not a good time for me. rather unhappy and unmotivated. every single thing seemed to annoy me. it reached a point where i just could not be bothered anymore. not something i am proud of. fortunately i survived whatever they through at me and my ocs journey came to a close.

i got posted to a staff job after commissioning. i was disappointed. mainly because sometimes, just sometimes, i really enjoyed the thrills of 'fire movement', 'foxtrot romeo', 'breaching (gap gap gap)' and of course the real life counter-strike, 'urban ops'. it was something i felt that perhaps i was actually good at. time soon showed that this was a blessing in disguise. free of most regimentation of the army, able to bathe in hot water at home almost every night, and of course, having the luxury of time. time to spend with my family and friends. time to devote myself to God. time to serve in ministries and roles i never even thought of before. truly God works in ways you cannot see.

thank you God for giving me this chance, i pray that i will always remain faithful regardless of what trials i face and i am able to trust in you that you have plans for me. amen.

Footprints

2007-07-10T20:50:00.001+08:00

Footprints

One night a man had a dream. He dreamed he was walking along the beach with the Lord. Across the sky flashed scenes from his life. For each scene, he noticed two sets of footprints in the sand: one belonging to him, and the other to the Lord.

When the last scene of his life flashed before him, he looked back at the footprints in the sand. He noticed that many times along the path of his life there was only one set of footprints. He also noticed that it happened at the very lowest and saddest times in his life.

This really bothered him and he questioned the Lord about it. “Lord, You said that once I decided to follow You, You’d walk with me all the way. But I have noticed that during the most troublesome times in my life, there is only one set of footprints. I don’t understand why when I needed You most You would leave me.”

The Lord replied, “My son, My precious child, I love you and would never leave you. During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I carried you.”

Lord carry me now.

life

2007-07-10T14:29:00.001+08:00

life is short. life is unpredictable. cherish what you have today as you may not have it tomorrow.

You are my refuge and strength.

he experienced it all

2007-05-24T20:32:00.000+08:00

something that caught my eye

Adapted from "Making Jesus Lord" by Loren Cunningham;

At the end of time, billions of people were scattered on a great plain before God's throne. Some of the groups near the front talked heatedly, not cringing with shame but with belligerence

'How can God judge us? How can He know about suffering?' snapped a joking brunette. She jerked back a sleeve to reveal a tattooed number from a Nazi concentration camp. ' We endured terror, beatings, torture, death

'In another group, a black man lowered his coller. 'What about this?' he demanded, showing an ugle rope burn. 'Lynched for no crime but being black! We've suffocated in slave ships, been wrenched from loved onces, toiled till only death gave relief.'

Far out across the plain were hundreds of such groups. Each one had a complain against God for the evil and suffering being permitted in this world.

How lucky God was to live in heaven, where all was sweetness and light, where there was no weeping, no fear, no hunger, no hatred. Indeed what did God know about what man had been forced to endure in this world? 'Afterall, God leads a pretty sheltered life,' they said.

So each group sent out a leader, chosen because he has suffered the most. There was a Jew, a black, an untouchable from India, an illegitimate, a person from Hiroshima and one from a Siberian slave camp. In the center of the plain, they consulted with each other. At last, they were ready to present their case.

It was rather simple: Before God would be qualified to be their judge, He must endure what they had endured. Their decision was that God should be sentenced to live on earth as a man.

But because He was God, they set certain safeguards to be sure He could not use His divine powers to help Himself:

Let Him be born Jew

Let the legitimacy of His birth be doubted so that none will know who is really His father

Let Him champion a cause so just but so radical that it brought down upon Him the hate, condemnation and eliminating efforts of every major traditional and established religious authority

Let Him try to describe what no man has ever seen, heard, tasted or smelled. Let Him try to communicate God to man.

Let him be betrayed by His dearest friends
Let him be indicted on false charge and tried before a prejudiced jury and convicted by a cowardly judge.

Let Him see what it is to be terribly alone completely abandoned by every living thing. Let Him be tortured and let Him die the most humilitating death with common thieves.

As each leader announced his portion of the sentence, loud murmurs of approval went up from the great throng of people.

When the last had finished pronouncing sentence, there was a long silence.No one utted another word. No one moved.For suddenly, all knew - God had already served His sentence.

back to the future

2007-01-03T03:45:00.000+08:00

turn around and walk backwards into the future. this way you may look back and see what God has done for you through your life. the future may be uncertain but trust the Lord with all your heart and he will see you through as he has already done so all these years.