Staying or Leaving?

6 more weeks my visa will expire. I am putting an application to extend my stay in UK for another 6 months. If God's willing, I will stay. OM wants me to stay as they are short of hands . I will let Him decide if I am staying. I am not just sit and wait for things to happen, at least I've made my visa application. Sure enough, there are work to be done in OM. The task seems very big and may not be able to get it done for another 6 more months.

I was very encouraged by Mark, an OMer from the ships office who spoke to me one morning. He affirmed some of the my gifting of recruiting and encouraging people in the office as added value. He also encouraged me to stay on longer whether in OM or any other ministries. I don't think he's trying to "sell" me the ship's ministry.

What are my thoughts about visa extension and another 6 months in OM if the application to extend fails, this could be any where else in OM. I would say I leave this to Him.

Relationship

I've been in church long enough to learn lot of jargon. Christianity is not a religion but a relationship. There's nothing wrong with that statement. But how many people who said that really understand what it means? We the evangelicals know how to "defend" our faith with that statement. My question is that how many people really understand that? How many Christian has the life style to back it up? I believe people who experience that relationship will have that passion to back it up. One doesn't have to "squeeze" out that light of Jesus because one can't hide that light that shine from him/her.

So what do we mean by having a relationship?

Oh well you talk, get to know each other, you share your joy and sorrow, you basically open yourself to each other. You give and you recieve.

So how doest that work with Jesus?

Oh well ... you give your life to Him, you take Him into your heart.
You open youself to Him, He reveals Himself to you.

Political Correctness

The whole world has gone mad. Everybody is so sensitive about political correctness. You were not allowed to say anything that may potentially offending another person. People are now afraid to speak about truth because of that. You want to be a nice and pleasant person. On the other hand, all the TV programs that are being put on air are getting worse and worse. Swear words are not being censored, sexual explicit contents material are being broadcast and so on. Aren't these materials offensive? The supposedly "open minded" people would say, 'if you don't like that switch the channel.', and at the same time, these "open minded" people are the people who get offended when certain truth is spoken about them. Sad, sad, sad.

New year resolutions for 2007

Don't tell me you never make new year resolutions because you never achieve them. I have achieved some of them, not every one of them was achieved, 2 and a half out of four. I consider that not a bad effort. I can't take any credit of the achievements, it was God. The other one and a half that fail was my own effort to try hard.

It is mid January, I am still in the middle of sorting what I want to be/do this year. Few things came to my mind.

1. Live life to the MAX.

The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly. (John 10:10)

I want to live the life that what Jesus promised, live the aboundant life He promised. I am not talking about physical thing. I want to live the cutting edge life that will impact people around me whenever I go.

2. Consist ant Prayer Life.

I want to pray more, I don't pray enough. To help me start, I will attend the mid day prayer meeting everyday in the OM office when ever I can. NOTHING works if there is no prayer. I want to see the power of prayer. I want to get closer to GOD through my prayer life.

3. Celtic Tin Whistle

I bought a Tin Whistle end of last year. I want to learn to play the Tin Whistle, what I really mean is that I want to learn how to play the Celtic mood with the instrument. The sweet tone of this simple instrument has such power to sooth the hearts of people. I want to use it to worship God, to lead people to His throne. Off course it is the Holy Spirit who leads people to worship Him.

I can only come up with 3 up to this point. I may add more if I come up with more.

Prayer

I have been wanting to write this for a very long time, but did not get around to it. I have been in church long enough to notice when people pray, they tend to end each of the sentence with the word "Lord". The word gets used so much, it almost becomes like a comma or a fullstop. I was just looking at the book of Psalms, phrases like "O Lord", "O God" appear many times but never the frequency of someone who pray like what I mentioned before. Sometimes, I wonder if we are praying to a PERSON or to thin air? So, don't go into curise control with 'babbling words' when you pray.

7 “When you pray, don’t babble on and on as people of other religions do. They think their prayers are answered merely by repeating their words again and again. 8 Don’t be like them, for your Father knows exactly what you need even before you ask him! (Matthew 6:7-8)

Joy in the City Birmingham 2006

What a way to finish the year 2006. I participated in OM LUKE (Love United Kingdom Evangelism) outreach in Birmingham right after Christmas. The team consists of 40+ people from 14 different countries, 4 of them including me are from down under. It's good to hear from Aussie accent English once again. The outreach is very short, 27 Dec - 3 Jan, yet we were so encouraged by the testimonies we heard.

During this short week, we did many things together. Street evangelism where we gave out tracts and talked to the people on the street. I've learnt that it is not as hard as I thought it was. Birmingham is a melting pot of many cultures. There are a lot of Muslims who live here and most of them are very open to talk about their faith.

Open air performances were done in the public area, face painting to attract the kids, sketch board message & etc. One Muslim man I've spoken to believes in Jesus Christ is a prophet. I asked him does he believe everything that Jesus said? He said Yes. Then I asked him, Jesus said, ' I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. ' He was caught off guard, then he told me he believes every best part of humanity. I gave him a gospel tract and asked him to read it. On other occasion, I got to pray for the people I talked to.

Not all conversations went positive, one man who picked up that react from me. Stopped, after reading it, shouted at me quoting scriptures. The conversation went wrong when he started telling me some obscure theology about we are cells of God. His face was getting really close to mine and I could smell his alcohol breath. One team member came to the rescue and he left. Later, I've found out that other team members had similar experience from the same guy.

OM LUKE is partnering Birmingham Christian Centre for the outreach. BCC is part of the Elim Pentecostal churches in UK. Majority of the congregation members were from African and Jamaican backgrounds although there are many other nationalities represented in the church. The style of worship was very different to what I used to. I have never heard the song, 'You have made me glad' sung in a gospel style, very different. It was like Whitney leading worship.

What encouraged me during that week was that some non-English speaking background members working with LUKE. One of them told me that her English is not as good but believes that God brought her here for training and equipping her for the ministry back home.