Y Sunday, July 27, 2008Y
8:34 pm
“He will shield you with his wings. He will shelter you with his feathers.” (Psalm 91:4)
My college friends and I barely escaped a West Texas storm before it pummeled the park where we were spending a Saturday afternoon. As we were leaving, my buddy brought the car to a sudden stop and gestured to a tender sight on the ground. A mother bird sat exposed to the rain, her wing extended over her baby who had fallen out of the nest. The fierce storm prohibited her from returning to the tree, so she covered her child until the wind passed.
From how many winds is God protecting you? His wing, at this moment, shields you. A slanderous critic heading toward your desk is interrupted by a phone call. A burglar en route to your house has a flat tire. A drunk driver runs out of gas before your car passes his. God, your guardian, protects you from
“every trap” (Ps. 91:3);
“the fatal plague” (Ps. 91:3);
“the plague that stalks in darkness” (Ps. 91:6);
“the terrors of the night…the dangers of the day” (Ps. 91:5).
One translation boldly promises: “Nothing bad will happen to you” (Ps. 91:10 NCV).
“Then why does it?” someone erupts. “Explain my job transfer. Or the bum who called himself my dad. Or the death of our child.” If God is our guardian, why do bad things happen to us?
Have they? Have bad things really happened to you? You and God may have different definitions for the word bad.
God views your life the way you view a movie after you’ve read the book. When something bad happens, you feel the air sucked out of the theater. Everyone else gasps at the crisis on the screen. Not you. Why? You’ve read the book. You know how the good guy gets out of the tight spot. God views your life with the same confidence. He’s not only read your story…he wrote it. His perspective is different, and his purpose is clear.
God uses struggles to toughen our spiritual skin.
Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides. You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors. So don’t try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way. (James 1:2–4)
Trust him. “But when I am afraid, I put my trust in you” (Ps. 56:3). Join with Isaiah, who resolved, “I will trust in him and not be afraid” (Isa. 12:2).
God is directing your steps and delighting in every detail of your life (Ps. 37:23–24). In fact, that’s his car pulling over to the side of the road. That’s God opening the door. And that’s you climbing into the passenger seat.
There now, don’t you feel safer knowing he is in control?
From
Come Thirsty
© (Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2004) Max Lucado
Y Sunday, July 20, 2008Y
11:43 am
Our well-being and happiness are tied to the notion that our lives can improve. We hope for a better future for our company, our kids, and ourselves. We dream of a tomorrow that's better and brighter than today.Here are a few improvements many of us desire to see:
* We hope to lose weight and improve our fitness
* We hope to earn more money and improve our financial standing
* We hope to argue less with our spouse and improve our marriage
Over the next year, if we knew our health would deteriorate, our economic situation would worsen, and our closest relationships would unravel, then we'd be depressed. In fact, even if we knew our lives would stay the same, most of us would feel unsatisfied. We're always looking to improve the quality of our lives - it's human nature.
Unfortunately, many of us never go beyond hoping for improvements to actually making them. In this lesson, I'd like to share some insights to help you improvise your approach to improvement.
Develop Habits
The secret of your success is determined by your daily agenda. Leaders who make successful improvements share a common denominator: they form habits of daily action that those who fail to improve never develop. As my friend Andy Stanley says, "Your direction determines your destination." The steps you make each day, for good or ill, eventually chart the path of your life.
Consider the analogy of saving for retirement. Financial advisers counsel us to invest for retirement early in our careers and consistently throughout life. If we do, we can quit working at 65 with a sizeable nest egg. However, if we neglect funding our 401(k) each month, then we end up with nothing. We may still "hope" to win the lottery and secure our financial future, but we've lost the ability to control our fate.
Befriend Discipline
We live in the ultimate quick-fix culture. Everyone wants to be thin, but few people eat healthy and exercise. Everyone wants financial stability, but many refuse to be bothered by a budget. Rather than trouble ourselves with discipline, we opt for diet fads or speculate in the stock market. When we don't see long-term improvements, we discard one fad in favor of another.
In life, there are two kinds of pain: the pain of self-discipline and the pain of regret. The pain of self-discipline involves sacrifice, sweat, and delayed gratification. Thankfully, the reward of improvement softens the pain of self-discipline and makes it worthwhile. The pain of regret begins as a missed opportunity and ends up as squandered talent and an unfulfilled life. Once the pain of regret sets in, there's nothing you can do other than wonder, "What if?"
Admit Mistakes
When trying to improve, we not only risk failure, we guarantee it. The good news is that mistakes generally teach us far more than success. There's no sense pretending we're perfect. Even the best of the best have moments of weakness. That's why it's important to be honest when we fall short, learn from the mistake, and move forward with the knowledge gained.
Measure Progress
You cannot manage what you cannot measure. Identify the areas in which improvement is essential to your success and find a way to track your progress. Keeping score holds you accountable and gives you a clear indicator of whether or not you're actually improving.
Change Continually
Continual change is essential for improvement. One of the great paradoxes of success is that the skills and qualities that get you to the top are seldom the ones that keep you there. The quest to improve forces us to abandon assumptions, embrace innovation, and seek new relationships. If we're complacent for too long, we'll fall behind the learning curve. Once this happens, it's a steep, uphill climb to get back to the top.
The desire for improvement has a degree of discontent in it. Personal growth requires apparently contradictory mindsets: humility to realize you have room to grow but also confidence that improvement is possible.
SUMMARY
Tips for Attaining Improvement
1. Develop Habits
2. Befriend Discipline
3. Admit Mistakes
4. Measure Progress
5. Change Continually
Y Sunday, July 13, 2008Y
3:18 pm
The message yesterday really inspired me alot. The part that captured my attention was the part when unsaved landlord who was in coma recounted that two devils brought him from graveyard to graveyard and then to a deep dark unending hole, and the devils cried out, "this is your destiny!". Then when the pastor called out his name, there was a huge force pulling him out of the hole. Suddenly a thought came to my mind, i wonder whether if we want all our unsaved friends and family members to go through the same fate. Its really not their destiny to go through that dark hole!I believe that we can really do more to contribute to society. We should really live a cause, a purpose, that's much much bigger than myself. I try to tink of myself in the future like the bread of life, feeding a large portion of the community, serving societal needs in a big way, solving problems for others. I tink i would like to sign up for some volunteering stuffs after i ORD, cos i want to stir up faith in people's lives, wanting to give them a new vision and hope. It would really take the meaning of the phrase "loving God fervently and loving people wholeheartedly" to a whole new level!
Another part of the message was having self-dignity, that we can learn to speak with more class and less crude. We, being children of the Most High King, are prince and princesses. This really inspired me a lot, motivating me to change the way i speak and communicate.
11:08 am
我何等愛你阿爸天父你無條件為我付出
犧牲愛子叫我得贖
你愛充滿我
主你寶血為我而流
洗淨我罪給我自由
你的愛是何等偉大
喔主耶穌
一生要讚美
我美好救主
你的愛是我生命全部
一生要敬拜
我親愛天父
你無條件的愛讓我心得滿足
10:25 am
VerseF Bb
Mercies that rise with the new morn
Gm F
Set me apart as a new born
Dm7 C
Each moment I live, by faith I believe
Am Bb
With You I'm never alone
F Bb
Darkness may come, trials seem so long
Gm F
You are the light I depend on
Dm7 C
Through valleys and storms, Your word keeps me strong
Am Bb
My shelter, refuge and song
Dm7
I trust in You
Chorus
F
Everyday I live
Am
I know You are my God
Bb C
I lift my face and look to you my God
Am
Even when the mountains tremble
Bb
And a thousand fall
F
I will stand with You
C
My Jesus
F
Take my all
Y Friday, July 11, 2008Y
2:30 pm
A. Charles Finney was a lawyer in New York in the mid-1800’s. He set aside his law practice in response to an anointing of the Holy Spirit that came upon Him. He began to go into extended times of prayer and fasting.1. In 1857, Finney helped bring 500,000 people to the Lord in a period of eight weeks in the New York area. Later it was found that about 80% of the converts from that time were still walking with the Lord. This result was attributed to their prayer lives.
2. Two men, Daniel Nash and Abel Clary, would go ahead of Finney to the cities in which he was about to preach. They would labor and cry out for the breakthrough of God in those cities. It is notable that within three months of Nash’s death, Finney’s itinerant ministry stopped and he went into the pastorate. The revival power of God that was released during Finney’s travels was directly related to prayer.
B. John G. Lake lived in the late 1800’s. He was born and raised in the United States, but went to South Africa for about five years. While there, he took part in over 100,000 healings. He returned to the U.S. to live in Spokane, Washington. The healing ministry continued, and again over 100,000 healings were recorded.
1. He lived a life of fasting and prayer, asking for the Holy Spirit’s power to be released. He would set aside whole hours throughout the day for prayer and meditation. Almost every night he would preach on healing and then pray for the sick. He was determined to pray for the fullness of the Holy Spirit’s power.
2. He contended for even greater breakthroughs of the Spirit’s power even after he saw healings begin to take place. He has stated that at times he could actually feel the conscious flow of the Holy Spirit through his hands. Even then, every time God answered his prayers, God created even more intense longing for greater consciousness and intimacy with God.
1:07 pm
Where do you find water for the soul? Jesus gave an answer one October day in Jerusalem. People had packed the streets for the annual reenactment of the rock-giving-water miracle of Moses. Each morning a priest filled a golden pitcher with water from the Gihon spring and carried it down a people-lined path to the temple. He did this every day, once a day, for seven days. “On the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, ‘If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water’ ” (John 7:37–38).He “stood and shouted” (NLT). The traditional rabbinic teaching posture was sitting and speaking. But Jesus stood up and shouted out. Forget a kind clearing of the throat. God was pounding his gavel on heaven’s bench. Christ demanded attention.
He shouted because his time was short. The sand in the neck of his hourglass was down to measurable grains. In six months he’d be dragging a cross through these streets. And the people? The people thirsted. They needed water, not for their throats, but for their hearts. So Jesus invited: Are your insides starting to shrivel? Drink me.
Internalize him. Ingest him. Welcome him into the inner workings of your life. Let Christ be the water of your soul.
Toward this end, I give you this tool: a prayer for the thirsty heart. Carry it just as a cyclist carries a water bottle. The prayer outlines four essential fluids for soul hydration: God’s work, God’s energy, his lordship, and his love. You’ll find the prayer easy to remember. Just think of the word W-E-L-L.
Lord, I come thirsty. I come to drink, to receive. I receive your work on the cross and in your resurrection. My sins are pardoned, and my death is defeated. I receive your energy. Empowered by your Holy Spirit, I can do all things through Christ, who gives me strength. I receive your lordship. I belong to you. Nothing comes to me that hasn’t passed through you. And I receive your love. Nothing can separate me from your love.
Don’t you need regular sips from God’s reservoir? I do. I’ve offered this prayer in countless situations: stressful meetings, dull days, long drives, demanding trips, character-testing decisions. Many times a day I step to the underground spring of God and receive anew his work for my sin and death, the energy of his Spirit, his lordship, and his love.
Drink with me from his bottomless well. You don’t have to live with a dehydrated heart.
Receive Christ’s work on the cross,
the energy of his Spirit,
his lordship over your life,
his unending, unfailing love.
Drink deeply and often. And out of you will flow rivers of living water.
Y Thursday, July 10, 2008Y
8:25 pm
Legend has it that a man was lost in the desert, dying for water. He came upon a shack and saw a rusty old water pump. He stumbled over to it, grabbed the handle and began to pump up and down. But nothing came out. Then he noticed a nearby jug with these words, 'My friend, you have to prime the pump with the water in this jug. P.S. Be sure to fill the jug again before you leave.' As he popped the cork, suddenly he was faced with a decision. If he drank the water he could live. But if he poured it into the old rusty pump, maybe it would yield from down deep in the well all the water he wanted later. He studied his options. What should he do, pour it into the pump and take a chance on fresh, cool water, or drink what was in the jug and ignore its message? Reluctantly he poured all the water into the pump. Then he grabbed the handle and began to pump...squeak, squeak, squeak. Nothing came out! Squeak, squeak, squeak. A little bit began to dribble out, then a small stream, and finally it gushed! To his relief fresh, cool water poured out of the old rusty pump. Eagerly, he filled the jug and drank from it. He filled it another time and once again drank its refreshing contents. Then he filled the jug for the next traveller. He filled it to the top, popped the cork back on, and added this little note: 'Believe me, it really works.' Friend, don't ignore the message Jesus left: 'Give, and it shall be given unto you.'