I went to Plaza Singapura yesterday for a personal retreat and prayer. Its so true that when you seek Him, you will find Him. I just need to dig deeper to find out His will and direction but results have been encouraging so far.

Fact:
"We shouldn't be troubled in the flesh. Was Jesus troubled in the flesh? Didn't He go forth with perfect victory? ......Even your eyes have to be sanctified by the power of God so that they strike fire everytime you look at a sinner, and the sinner will be changed."
| Smith Wigglesworth |

Imagine that... Being anointed with such power and carrying the aura of the Holy Spirit with you everywhere you go. Gives me something to aim for. Brokenness... It is such a Godly aspect but too often we're waiting to be broken before we are ready to be used by God. Why must we be forced into a place of wretchedness & hopelessness before we are willing to surrender ourselves wholeheartedly?

"A broken spirit and a contrite heart/ He will not despise"
That is all God wants. Not a broken heart or a broken body. Although He can use us despite these problems, it doesn't give God a chance to use us at our best. He needs this so that there's no pride or selfish ambition in the way. We all know what stumbling blocks those can be. So the key here is willing, selfless surrender.

"Because he has set his love upon Me, therefore I will deliver him; I will set him on high, because he has known My name.
He shall call upon Me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him and honor him.
With long life I will satisfy him, And show him My salvation."
| Psalm 91:14-16 |

This is what is promised when we abide in Christ. What Jesus did every morning was to spend time with God and wait till God poured out His Spirit on Him. (Mark 1:35-37)
Where the Holy Spirit is, revelation is promised, freedom is promised. (2 Corinthians 3:14-18) Only when we are filled with the Holy Spirit, will we reflect the Glory of God.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Conversations in secret
away from you
make them whisper
make them cry out your name
You make the moon shiver
drawing with your finger
a canvas of water
your inspiration a mystery

The coloured glow
the dirty dawn
dictates my moods
decides my paths
leads me on
lets me go
Finding flawed reasoning
Deceived, misled and sadly wrong

Selfish ambitions
shallow dreams
the resolutions of yesterday
made null and vacant
lusciousness in abundance
amaze me, my fantasy
here a struggle emerges
countless battles taking place

Here in your radiance
the ever dancing lights
always changing
the Rhythm cries
basking in false memories
never happened, emotions lie
fight on, fight on
promise me my victory
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Been spending quite a lot of time with Matt and the guys. Which is a good thing... But I don't like what I'm letting myself fall back into. Something is wrong and I intend to make it right. Was this one of the reasons why I distanced myself in the first place? To flee temptation?

Die, flesh, DIE!!!
How can someone get into the divine order when he is torn between these two things: God and the world? You will NEVER reach God's promises if you're hanging on to the things of the earth. Romans 8:7-8 says that the sinful nature cannot please God.

I want to please God

Baybeats 2006
It was fantastic to see the new bands, the new sounds, the new crowd. There's always a sense of nostralgia when you see all the people you used to know. I was thinking to myself, this used to be MY scene and MY crowd. But now not anymore. But thats ok. It was fun while it lasted.

A Vacant Affair
First of all, let me say that the sound coming from the stage was amazing. High energy, deep bass, crystal clear highs. I haven't heard a band sound this good in a long time. But AVA were something different today. Was it the intense soaring vocals? The showmanship of Aaron and Joshua? Or Maha(oops) Rudi with the killer effects? Heck... Even Shen sounded good for once on his gay pink bass. Many have not seen Matthew as passionate as this and were amazed as AVA did what they did best on stage. Rocking out the crowd and having fun at the same time. AVA proved once again that they represent one of Singapore's best in the post-hardcore genre. With the release of their 5-song EP, I think its safe to say that much much more can be expected from Wake Me Up's newest addition.

Excerpt from Our Daily Bread (13 February 2006)
I heard a story about a small church that was having a reunion. A former member who attended the celebration had become a millionaire. When he testified about how God had blessed him over the years, he related an incident from his childhood.

He said that when he earned his first dollar as a boy, he decided to keep it for the rest of his life. But then a guest missionary preached about the urgent need on the mission field. He struggled about giving his dollar. “The Lord won, however,” the man said. Then, with a sense of pride he added, “I put my treasured dollar in the offering basket. And I am convinced that the reason God has blessed me so much is that when I was a little boy I gave Him everything I possessed.” The congregation was awestruck by the testimony—until a little old lady in front piped up, “I dare you to do it again!”

Wow. It seems like yesterday's faith is not enough for today's miracles. What a way to remind you that the Christian walk is a daily affair. It is kind of inconsistent that we expect God to forget our sins and only remember the good deeds or victories in faith we had in the past. Faith must be continuous.

Just some light-hearted humour that I found on the internet. It does ring true in a way though.

---

Q: How many Methodists does it take to change a light bulb?

A: We choose not to make a statement of either in favour of or against the need for a light bulb however, if in your own journey you have found that a light bulb works for you, that is fine. You are invited to write a poem or compose a modern dance about your personal relationship to your light bulb and present it next month at our annual light bulb Sunday service, in which we will explore a number of light bulb traditions, including incandescent, fluorescent, three-way, long-lived, and tinted; all of which are equally valid paths to luminescence through Jesus Christ.

---

Jesus turns water into wine (John 2:1-12)
When I read about this miracle, the first of Jesus' ministry, I had always thought that the lesson was given by the host of the party. I always thought that it was about saving the best for last. But the host is hardly the best spiritual role model. So we take a look at Jesus.

It puzzles me that Jesus, in verse 4, would be so unwilling to help. the mother of Jesus, fits the universal mold of a mother. When there surfaces a problem during the wedding, she calls on her son to help. Why did she do so? Was it because she knew He could solve the problem by going to get more wine? Or that He could to try to appease the guests? I'd like to think that she knew her son better than anyone else. Enough to know that He was someone special enough to be able to do something miraculous.

My mom also used to have a knack of volunteering my help to others. Thats why I can really relate to Jesus' reaction.
"Why do you involve me?" (NIV)
"What has this got to do with me?" (NKJV)
"How does that concern us?" (NLT)
It sounds like He's really reluctant to help. Sounds like any indignant, rebellious son doesn't it? But we find out the cause of his annoyance. He wasn't ready to start demonstrating His power.
"My time has not come..."

But we see that mummy dearest instructs the servants to be ready for His instructions. She doesn't force Him into helping but instead waits for Him to agree. Jesus goes on to perform His first miracle transforming water to wine. So here we see that there is a need, a lack of wine. Don't we find that we face that very same problem quite often? That we are always lacking one thing or another? Where there is a need, we remember that we have a God who can handle it.

Isn't it wonderful how we have a God who can take the ordinary and transform it into something incredible? Into something of high quality! The pots containing the water-turned-to-wine were ordinary stone pots. Used for ceremonial washings. He didn't need fantastic, priceless China vases. All he needed were common stone pots. In the same way, God can take people like us to achieve His purpose. All we need is to be filled with the water, the Holy Spirit and something good will pour forth. Something wonderful, something different, something of high quality.

Jesus, sensing a need, a request and an opportunity to provide, displayed His miraculous power and glory. He went ahead with it despite His initial reservations about demonstrating His power so early. Because He knew that this miracle would cause the disciples' faith in Him to increase. So it is with all of His miracles, they always work to build our faith.
| written by daryl |

I think my body is tired. I didn't rest much before and after the soccer match on sunday and I think my body is complaining. Sunday's match was quite an exciting one. We started off quite jittery and conceded a goal quite quickly. I think it was because the team was half Charis and half MPCC. Usually the majority of people are from MPCC with Dennis or myself joining in. So we came to our senses and started to dominate after letting in that goal. I managed to put in the equaliser after a scramble in the box. Its funny how many I score for Charis despite not being a striker.

The 2nd half saw us begin to tire out. We were getting overrun by their midfield and we didn't have melvin or calvin to beef up the center. I felt that my position in the team should not have been central midfield because of my lack of aerial ability. Every ball that Gerald or Joel pumped up was being headed back by their number 21. But there was no choice. We did not have any subs after Ethan left. They started to run riot in our third of the field and one guy even managed to dribble past our 2 center-backs and score. We desperately tried to rally and get our game together after that. Jean Francois missed narrowly and I had another shot that tamely rolled past the outside of the goalpost. Despite our collective efforts to pull back, we ended the game after the my last shot, and arguably the best chance of the half, got deflected wide.

But more importantly, I've been thinking about what Lynette said on Sunday. This was mentioned in Mr Bound's book too. If people can work 8 hours a day in the world, why can't we work 8 hours for God? I've not been as disciplined as I should. Get up off your butt, daryl... Your work is to pray.

There's so much to talk about. So much that occurred within this weekend that I don't know where to begin. I thought that army life should become more relaxed as my ORD date approaches but it seems that isn't the case. Of course there are certain privilege of being one of the ORD personnel but its seems that because the other 3 'specs' (specialists) in my batch are clearing their off-days earlier, I end up having to do the work in the company line.

But enough complaining, let me summarise my weekend. I went back to camp on Friday night after a sumptuous meal with the cell at the 85 food center. I had COS duty on Saturday so I decided to book in the night before. Saturday turned out to be my unit's mobilisation day so it was busy busy / no time to rest. Felt a headache coming on in the afternoon but it got better after I popped a couple of aspirin. Planned to watch the 3rd place play-off between germany and portugal but I couldn't wake up. Was awoken by Papa's SMS from China informing me that Germany had won. Fell back asleep and was awoken at about 6:10am by a call from the COS from the other company. I had totally forgotten about Flag Raising which was supposed to be at 6am.

Left camp around 9am and headed to church where I joined Lynette for prayer. Well, it wasn't much prayer today rather than a discussion about what we're supposed to pray for. Well... My stand is, if there isn't anything specific given by God to pray for, then just pray whats in your heart. And if thats done already, then just speak to God in tongues. I remember Lynette saying to me before, "...many of God's things will come to pass (because of your effort to pray those 15 minutes)"
Worship was nice today. I really liked the music. I could hear people like Gerald and Sam really worshipping with their instruments. I'm sure the rest were doing so too but these 2 really stood out for me. And it covered everything else... there were mistakes but they didn't distract as much. Pastor's sermon was quite Youth centred. It was quite cute as he gave examples of people serving as young as 12 years old. Which was, to me, a way of saying, "Why are you, 16-25 year olds doing sitting around on your bums?!?"

Of course the new 3Gs were a refreshing change from the Go, Grow, Glow of XS...

Goal - Grounded - Groomed

The altar call was for those considering serving full time. And honestly, I feel that it didn't apply to me because I wouldn't consider doing such a thing. UNLESS God calls me... and for now, the call is to study at RBTC and not to go full time. To me, there is a difference. So I only went up because there was a general call for a blessing. I think there were 4 people who came up to pray for me.
There was Gabriel... with his call for me to sweep aside the distractions in my life. Stanley was praying for me behind me at this time.
Then came Leon. He said something about me being very clear about my purpose and direction. About me and my family having a collective purpose for God. Basically an encouragement to strive on and that I'm doing the right thing I guess.
Pastor came last and gave the similar prophecy about having the anointing to teach. About being able to speak in front of lots of people.
Generally it was an encouragement and nudge in the right direction by God.

Going back to camp seems so redundant now. I was the only specialist from my batch back in camp this week because I was trying to save up my off-days. But it turns out that I have enough already. Even before my PC recommended more off-days to help me clear in August. Thank God for the favour granted to me. I've been really enjoying civilian life. I went to Swee Lee on Saturday to buy drums equipment. There was a 50% sale and when I arrived at Bras Basah Complex at 8:10 am, almost one hour BEFORE opening, there was a long queue snaking round the entire level. At that time there were about 200 people in front of me I think. Queued for 4 hours before I got in. Spent another 4 hours picking out things like drum skins, drumsticks, a metronome, a keyboard some sound equipment and percussion instruments like the congas and cajones. Spent close to $2000 in those 8 hours. Money well spent I hope.

I'm hoping this would improve the quality of worship in church... There're so many aspects to make a worship experience a positive one that I sometimes lose the plot. Its important to remember that so much relies on one's personal time with God. Smith Wigglesworth said, "We have to get to the place where we know that unless we meet face to face with God & get all the crooked places out of our lives, there will be no room for the indwelling power of God."

So there you go...