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We are all discoverers... travelling the world, learning its truths, its people and its meanings every single day. Grab your backpacks and let's embark on this journey of mine, one that holds a lot of meaning to me... Lilypie Kids birthday Ticker

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

 

I can do everything through him who gives me strength

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Wow, time flies and it is almost 3/4 of a year since i last blogged. Well, life's been busy at work and in relationship and yeah, lots of things happened. Day after day, I have been thinking of coming back in to blog, to remember all the things that have happened, but then just seemed to not be able to have enough hours in a day to do all the things I want to do...

Anyway, I had just came back from missions trip and had also proposed to KM. Thank God she agreed but with the proposal, we are ushered into a new chapter in our relationship as we now have to confront the realities of planning for the wedding... Once everyone knows that I proposed, the question that naturally follows will be "when?". Frankly, we don't know as yet and things can get a little nerve-wrecking when I think of the finances needed and also the customs that we need to observe. And I still could not speak Cantonese to communicate with KM's dad.

Anyway, we had recently finished our marriage preparation course at church and I must say that it has helped us to prepare ourselves for marriage, and know our relationship's strengths and weaknesses we have to work on.
  • Not One But Two-Becoming-One - I realised that with marriage, it is no longer about myself and I but about 2 persons becoming 1... and there's quite a fair bit of readjustments needed from the single life that I am so used to. It is no longer just thinking for myself but also for my partner now; something which I am still rather weak in.

  • The Marriage Vow - I have also learnt that the marriage vow is one not to be taken lightly because it is an oath taken before God. The mentor couples shared that they have agreed to take the "D" word out of their vocabulary despite how difficult it may get.

  • Taking Captive of My Thoughts - I guess, for me, something I need to work on is to learn to take captive of negative thoughts that come to my mind, especially during times when disagreements happen and I may be angry with KM. But most of the time, I realised that it is not a straight forward of who is right or wrong but a matter of perspective. One of the mentor couple joked during the course that we will always feel that we are the "wronged" one. How true!

    Recently, while reading the book "Sacred Marriage", I have come to understand that it is possible for us to "hate" our love ones because the fact that they are our love ones means that we can be hurt real deep by them. Come to think about it, it's true isn't it, because it is after all the coming together of two sinful and imperfect people.

    But whatever happens, God gives us the choice of who we choose to be our partner but then He gave us the 2 greatest commandments to love Him and our neighbours. Marriage, at the end of the day, is about romanticism and how happy I, me and myself am. So no matter what, we need to stick by what we chose.

    No wonder 2 Cor 10:5 asks us to take captive of every thought to make it obedient to Christ... So, yes, I need to take the vow seriously and take captive of every thought to make it obedient to Him once I have chosen. I realised that I have the choice to make what we want to be affected and what not. At a recent staff devotion, someone shared about loving the person and disliking the behaviour and yes, I realised sometimes we need to remember that.
I also thank God for speaking to me from Jeremiah 42, reassuring me for this relationship.

Family-wise, I thank God for the work and miracles He has done in my family. It's amazing sometimes seeing how circumstances (even though bad ones sometimes) come together for the good of His plans. Now, my whole family is back in church worshipping the Lord and I can see changes happening in the family.

Ministry-wise, I thank God for all the work He has done and now, I have a thriving cell of about 12 regulars who are walking closely with the Lord. Everytime I see my cell, I am reminded of the "lows" I went through and how God continued to reassure me. And I really thank God whenever I see His people growing and walking with Him. It's also wonderful to hear testimonies of the many changed lives of the people in my cell, to see relationships changed, people with hurts being healed, God being so real in their lives and it is all these that keeps me walking myself Thank you Lord. I would never have seen myself here but I made it with You walking besides me all these while.

Work-wise, it's amazing seeing how everything turns out. Before the missin trip, I was getting real stressed up with work with the upcoming annual fundraisers coming up and so many other projects. But throughout the year, I can still see God providing... providing people to help me, providing resources and providing ideas... it's amazing seeing how I was able to survive the H1N1 epidemic and closure of the volunteer programme, successfully drafted a paper on engaging volunteers during crisis, finished development of the 4 years of development of the central database with our IT department and launching it to the whole organisation, successfully obtaining and managing a funding for my volunteer programme and now, working with a group of professional volunteers to do up an advert for my volunteer programme. All these I can only give credit to God because it is so clear that I would not have been able to accomplish all these without God.

I just came back from another day of shoot with my volunteers and it's amazing to see how professional people work to put an advert together. Till this day, I am still amazed how everything came together from the time I met their Vice President to talk about volunteering their skills to help shoot videos for us and how we are working together now to shoot something which would cost like at least $60,000. I thank God for the wonderful working partnership and it is such a joy to work with them, many of them being first time stepping into a charity. I thank God for their skills. I thank God for unity and joy while working together. But I enjoyed interacting with the people I met these few days of shoot. As I interacted with the volunteers, I have come to realise how everyone has a story and how God used the story to bring them to bless others. There were people coming from broken homes, from troubled backgrounds, from depression, people with their own sets of problems but yet choose to quietly bless others in their own capacity. Throughout the few days, I met a volunteer who suffers from cancer but maintains a cheerful disposition as she blesses our beneficiaries; another volunteer who lost her husband and son and all she has within a year and suffered from depression but chose to come to bless others and in turn be blessed; a unassuming and quiet gentleman, who used to be a triad leader but kept coming in and out of prisons but after accepting Christ, was able to kick his drug addiction and now run a food business and giving ex-offenders a second chance and two couples who volunteer together coming in week in week out, year in year out without fail. It is the lives of these people who make me love my job and find meaning in what I do. And I thank God for using me as one of the threads to weave everyone's life stories together that a wonderful tapestry comes together...

I thank God for the moments He had used me to minister to people and even reach out to people. It's amazing that how as I was reading from 1 Pet 3:15 "Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have", God sent me someone today to ask me about church and the reason for my hope. And all I did is just share what God has done in my life, hoping it did sow a seed for her to think about God. I thank God for all the words He had given me to minister to people these few months.

Phil 4:13 "I can do everything through him who gives me strength. "



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