an email that i send out...

Hi all,
i am truly blessed by God and His ppl last night at GDOP. Up until sat nite, i was still thinking if i should go or not... I had a lot of things bothering me : what if my new maid got lost getting home on her own? , i think i better stayed behind at the hospital, i think it would be better/ more assuring to take my maid home, so therefore i shd skip GDOP...anyway it is just another worship...you already had worship in the morning.. why go for ANOTHER worship? why travel so far? get home very late... i shd skip GDOP! etc etc... But i felt God really spoke to me about letting go and trust Him and just GO to this prayer session with God's ppl... i was talking to Andrew right after the service cos he sat beside me... he said his platoon sergeant allow him to book in on monday morning so that he can go to this GDOP thing.. he just ASK in faith... ( for those who dunno, quite rare army makes such allowance, esp since u r a trainee) sometimes it is all about the attitude: are you willing to trust God and GO! Ignore the obstacles in your heart ... if you trust God with all your heart, God will somehow make a way for you to go, and remove all these obstacles...

I arrive a bit earlier than expected at the stadium... saw a lot of my diff christian friends from other churches... it is really what Daniel describe in his sms on sat nite... what does heaven looks like? well, heaven is something like that: saying hi to God , and saying hi to all God's ppl...

thanks to ruby for the excellent article... it is something that God was speaking to me for the past week.... to learn to wait upon the Lord.

Lamentations 3: 22The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases;
his mercies never come to an end;
23they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
24"The LORD is my portion," says my soul,
"therefore I will hope in him."
25The LORD is good to those who wait for him,
to the soul who seeks him.
26It is good that one should wait quietly
for the salvation of the LORD.

i read Habakkuk , and the same key ideas come up:

Habakkuk 3: 16
....Yet I will quietly wait for the day of trouble
to come upon people who invade us.

and my fave portion to sum up all feelings:
Ps 40

1I waited patiently for the LORD;
he inclined to me and heard my cry.
2He drew me up from the pit of destruction,
out of the miry bog,
and set my feet upon a rock,
making my steps secure.
3He put a new song in my mouth,
a song of praise to our God.
Many will see and fear,
and put their trust in the LORD.

Hope= Waiting and Watching

i shared this with some over sms... and i retype it here again...
( this from Eugene Peterson's A Long Obedience in the Same Direction )

Hoping does not mean doing nothing. It is not fatalistic resignation.
It means going about our assigned tasks, confident that God will
provide the meaning and the conclusions. It is not compelled to work
away at keeping up appearances with a bogus spirituality. It is
the OPPOSITE of desperate ad panicky manipulations, of scurrying and worrying.

Hoping is not dreaming. It is not spinning an illusion or fantasy to protect us from
our boredom or our pain. It means a confident, alert expectation that God will do
what he said he will do. It is imagination put in the harness of faith. it is a willingness
to let God do it his way and in his time. It is the opposite of making plans that we demand
that God put into effect, telling him both how and when to do it. That is not hoping in God
but bullying God.

Ps 130: 5
I wait for the LORD, my soul waits,
and in his word I hope;
6my soul waits for the Lord
more than watchmen for the morning,
more than watchmen for the morning.

I am still waiting and watching for many answers in my life:
my mum, my school, my future career, my relationships with
other ppl... etc etc... ;-) and God is really teaching me to learn
to wait, to learn to bear the fruit of patience!

Let us all learn to wait and watch! Dont give up on hope!

Love,
Ryan