breadcrumbs

hello everyone!

i've decided to take pink! because that's my favourite colour (and NO, i'm not a bimbo). hahaha.

anyway, thanks to tianyi for coming up with this cool blog! i'm just curious.. why "valleybythesea"? any special significance?

okay tonight is my massive blogging day. hmm for what has been really bugging me this week, go check out my recent post on RAFT. it's really long, i'm sorry, but i'm a lit student :D

so now that you've all read that, let me share on how my spiritual life has been recently. i thank God that it has really picked up ever since the last worship set i led around a month ago, and even though sometimes i still get bogged down by work and worry (i'm human after all), God has given me the grace to stand under trials (1 Corinthians 10:13)

actually a few months' ago i was quite sad over my QT state, because for some reason i could never seem to spend more than 20min doing QT. and that's such a pathetic amount of time when you consider how those great men of faith like "Praying Hyde", J.O. Fraser can spend hours reading the Bible and praying. (go check out their stories! very inspiring). but anyway i left it at that because i thought that well, it's the quality and not the quantity that counts.

but the cool thing is that this week, as i started on my "Observations - Interpretations - Applications" thing, God has graciously helped me to spend even more time with Him! now i try to write down my prayer requests for each day, and it has really helped. i've become more focused in my prayers, and seeing how God answers (sometimes almost instantly) is really exciting. and for me, i just like the thrill of digging into His Word on my own and discovering things for myself. as i always believe, His Word was not written for the smart, but for lay people like us. so we can never say that we don't "understand", because we've the best Teacher at hand to give us insights :)

so, back to why this post is titled "breadcrumbs". i was thinking of the parable in Matthew 15:21-28 that Elder Edwin shared during his sermon on sunday. i think his message on prayer was very timely for me because i've been guilty of not praying enough. especially since there's the whole Christmas thing coming up, i really really need to pray and let God work! so the sermon was both a rebuke as well as a challenge to trust God with my plans.

i'm still very intrigued by the parable above because i feel like i'm just scratching the surface only, but anyway, the thing that stood out most for me is the level of FAITH AND HUMILITY that the woman had. she was willing to accept anything from God, because she knew that these "anything"s would become valuable simply because of the status of the Person who had thrown it down. how do i explain it? for me, the challenge lies in believing that whatever "crumbs" God might throw down into my life (i.e. supposedly bad things), they are actually GOOD FOR ME. and they are good not because they possess any inherent worth, but because the Person who threw it down (i.e. God) is wise, loving, kind, understanding etc.

i hope i managed to get that point across haha. so anyway, i guess this can be extrapolated to the youth ministry too. we are allowed to pray for good things, but we shouldn't start sulking when we get "lemons" instead. because God knows what's best, what's TIMELY, and we should really trust Him more in this aspect.

i've so much more to share! but must be focused haha. so that's all for this post, i'll pray and see if God prompts me to share more another day. for now, prayer request!

pray for the children's homes to reply me with POSITIVE answers by this friday. canossaville has already replied to say that they'll be closed and their Christmas schedule is already packed, so that's a closed door. i'm quite worried, naturally, but yes just trying to trust God with this :)

okay this blog is a fantastic idea because it indulges my propensity to be longwinded! hahaha. have a great week everyone :)