wow

hey guys... (since it's only the guys who have posted thus far :P)

i'm really encouraged to read your postings, especially josh's. thanks for sharing so much. i'm actually supposed to be working on my essay now but ah, decided to take a break and write a bit about how my walk has been as well :)

hmm. one reason why i'm so on about having this blog is that we all have something to look back to, a description of the times when things are good or bad in whatever sense of the word and we see how God has brought us through. basically, this blog is sorta an enforced kind of journal entry thing? haha. enforced coz everyone (in the ymm comm) is supposed to blog at least once in 2 weeks as a sorta mutual accountability thing.

ok. personally, i'm so excited and encouraged about what God is doing in the ym. i don't think i've ever prayed so faithfully and fervently about the ym before! haha, yes, confession :P but it's so cool to be seeing people who have in the past, looked completely nonchalant, getting to their feet in excitement and praising God. of course, i don't know how personal spiritual walks are but yeah, personally, i find it hard to worship God in vibrancy and truth when my contentment is not found in Him. so yeah, let's keep praying and seeking for more of God's fire and passion in our ministry. i remember joel sharing during prayer meeting that apathy, like passion spreads fast too and well, let's distinguish all apathy with the passion God has poured and is pouring into our lives ya? :)

and let's remember to pray for those who haven't been coming too. there're probably some people whom God has put upon your heart coz of your relationship with the person or coz the person used to be so passionate about God but has somehow slipped away. let's pray for those lost sheep as well, even as we pray for the current sheep in the pen and those that have yet to know the Shepherd.

i'm reading Isaiah now and i'm loving it. both on the literary appreciation level and the spiritual level. haha. i just wanna share something that was so cool for me yesterday:

it's a sort of warning i guess... but eh, Isaiah is full of judgments and stuff actually although it is interspersed by passages of hope, repentance, forgiveness, God's favour and all that. but yes...

Isaiah 5

The Song of the Vineyard

1 I will sing for the one I love
a song about his vineyard:
My loved one had a vineyard
on a fertile hillside.

2 He dug it up and cleared it of stones
and planted it with the choicest vines.
He built a watchtower in it
and cut out a winepress as well.
Then he looked for a crop of good grapes,
but it yielded only bad fruit.

3 "Now you dwellers in Jerusalem and men of Judah,
judge between me and my vineyard.

4 What more could have been done for my vineyard
than I have done for it?
When I looked for good grapes,
why did it yield only bad?

5 Now I will tell you
what I am going to do to my vineyard:
I will take away its hedge,
and it will be destroyed;
I will break down its wall,
and it will be trampled.

6 I will make it a wasteland,
neither pruned nor cultivated,
and briers and thorns will grow there.
I will command the clouds
not to rain on it."

basically, what struck me was that it's natural to expect a good harvest from good seeds. that should be how it is what. and ok, i cheated a bit here by searching the concordance but whilst reading, i was reminded about how WE are God's seeds:

1 Peter 1: 23
'For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.'

and yeah, it's the whole idea of how we are His children and we're called to bear good fruit and the judgment that follows if we keep deliberately disobeying him is that the barriers that surrounds us for protection will be removed (v5) and that there will be nothing to distinguish us from the rest of the world if we keep insisting on following its ways (v6). i know this might sound scary and harsh but well, the disconcerting passage in Revelations says the same thing:

Revelation 3:15-17

'I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth. You say, 'I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.' But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.'

if u read on in Isaiah 5, there's mention about the acquisition of wealth for hoarding's sake and stuff so the passage above isn't out of context or what but hmm. in a more positive light, the passage from Isaiah reminds us that we are born of God through the blood of Christ, that we are

1 Peter 2:9
'... a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.'

ok la. i need to get back to my essay :P but yeah, on a more encouraging and inspiring note,

the Lord 'will be a shelter and shade from the heat of the day, and a refuge and hiding place from the storm and rain.' (Isaiah 4:6)

i wonder who bothered to read through till the end :P haha.