China

Will be in China from 28th Oct to 6th Nov. Seeking God in the mountains lol!

No, really! ^^

The More I Seek You

We sang an older song that's new to the congregation last Saturday. It's from Gateway Worship, from the Living For You album released in 1999, and it's titled "The More I Seek You". Within just a short span of time, it's found a place that's close to my heart, and even more so as I have just thought through it carefully while listening to it over and over again during my Quiet Time with God today. Just a really simple song, a peaceful song, an introspective kind of song, played with just 1st keys and 2nd keys, but it really is meaningful, and really, I tend to respond better personally with such worship songs - helps to still my heart and find peace, to get my perspectives right, to come back to God, to come back to knowing why I'm doing what I'm doing, and most of all, to know God's heart ever deeper. The lyrics are like so:

The More I Seek You

Verse

The more I seek You, the more I find You

The more I find You, the more I love You

Chorus

I want to sit at Your feet

Drink from the cup in Your hands

Lay back against You and breathe

Feel Your heartbeat

This love is so deep

It's more than I can stand

I'll melt in Your peace

Overwhelming

Yeah, so... Simple song isn't it? But it all leads from one thing to another so beautifully!

The more we seek God, look for Him, want to know Him deeply, the more we find Him, and He reveals Himself to us slowly.

And the more we find God, how His ways are, how He's blessed us, what His character's like, what He's done for us since we've come to know Him, the more we love Him. It's impossible once you've taken the first real step of faith in God, not to acknowledge the miraculous timing and divine blessings God has given us - He really does run the rest of the 9,999,999,999,999,999,999 steps (okay, more than that =P) to you once you've taken that first shaky step of faith towards Him! It's inevitable that we'll love Him and will want to love God back once we come to know and understand Him a little bit better. ^^

And because we know that God loves us so, we want to love Him back, and do all those things that the chorus implies. We want to sit at His feet, to listen with rapt attention to His words of wisdom, encouragement, calming peace, listen as He teaches us, rebukes us, corrects us, and trains us with His word. We want to grow in our spirituality and character and be more like Jesus, our idol!

We want to drink from the cup in His hand, the cup that could mean so many things - it could mean anointing, it could mean refreshing, it could mean communion... Personally, I tend to take it more as the cup of the Spirit, I want to drink till it overflows out of me, and manifests itself in the form of anointing in whatever I do, be it ministry, leading, discipling, testifying...

We want to lean back against Him and breathe. We want to take time out, and just be close and intimate with God, and relate to Him as a friend. We want to behold the miracle of a creator that is infintely more powerful than us, but can also relate to us on a personal level, relate to all our emotions - our joy, sadness, enthusiasm, fear, heartache. Ino one understands you, God will!

We want to feel His heartbeat! We want to know Your heart oh God! We want to know what Your heart beats for, want to know what every beat conveys, want to know what breaks Your heart (help us break our own hearts for the same things God!), want to know Your compassion for the billions of people that don't know and don't WANT to know You that squeezes your heart so. Our human hearts are so limited! We only have space in our hearts for a few loved ones, and when someone breaks our heart, we cry buckets of tears. But SO MANY people break God's heart ALL the time, and He feels for ALL of them as we do for that one person that breaks our heart! Don't know how He can stand it...

This love is so deep, it's more than I can stand. God is our creator. He loves us more deeply and profoundly than we can ever understand. He doesn't love us because of what we've done or what we are (pooh!), He loves us because that is who He is! How can we ever stand to be loved like that, and not love Him back with what He's given to us!? I think the only way to understand a little better how God loves us, is when we become parents and love out children, but even that's just a tiny fraction of God's unconditional love for us.

I'll melt in Your peace overwhelming. This is lovely. It is such a privilege to feel the peace that only God can give us. There is incredible joy in this! Whether it's coming before God to commune with Him, or busying ourselves with work and ministry, having an uncluttered and unfluttered heart that is secure and at peace with God is the only thing that no one can take away from us, and can truly fill us up and makes us content and keeps our perspectives in check. Doing all those things in the first part of the chorus helps keep us focused and maintain peace in our heart because it helps convict and remind us that we are doing what we are doing because we love God. ^^

There! I felt that this was something that I needed to do. I hope that whoever reads this will ruminate about the song too - some people may not tend to think as deeply into the lyrics of a song. This is the first time I've really done it, and it's really blessed me. I didn't even really have the intention of doing it. Just thought it was a nice song and kept playing it repeatedly on my computer... If anyone reads this and doesn't have the song, ask me on MSN alright? =) Got to go study for my exam on Friday now, catch you guys another time. ^^

A Birthday Meal

Just reached home after a steamboat eating session, the cause of which was Matthew's birthday. Attendees included, in seating order, the birthday boy, Derrick, Junyao, Peter, me, Shaun, Puay. I suppose I enjoyed the food, it was nice, but I couldn't really involve myself in most of the conversations. I'm bad at group settings in that way I guess? There were at least two concurrent conversations at any given time (or so I felt), and for the most part, I couldn't seem to involve myself very much.

People have told me before that my mere presence contributes enough to a group setting, but I often wish I could contribute more to the gaily banter, or at least be more involved in it, instead of just listening in and laughing (and to myself, sometimes).

Maybe I'm just not meant for it, or maybe it was post-exam nuah syndrome (I finished a mid-trimester exam just before making my way down to Bugis for the meet up), but I certainly felt that it required laborious effort to tune in to conversations that sometimes teetered on the edge of my understanding, and then offer up some contributing morsel of trivia.

I was seldom able to illicit any major spike or valley in terms of emotion. I suppose it's an area I could grow in then. 'Cause if my presence can indeed be felt, then I certainly do not want myself to have any dampening effect on the group atmosphere~

Readers (if any), do not take this post as a rant, or an emo scribble - it is not. I do not want anyone to misunderstand and think I am talking about them, or blaming them for anything. This post is a form of introspective journalling - it is about me, and my current remarkable unenthusiam for anything seems to have manifested itself evidently in this post. -.-"

Fear & Trembling

I'm not even prepared yet, and the challenge has come! How have things ended up like this!?!?

I

got

to be

Unstoppable.

I'm scared to death!

Unstoppable.

I'm really scared to death!!

Unstoppable.

I'm really really scared to death!!!

Unstoppable.

Unstoppable.

Unstoppable.

I'll be playing way out of my comfort zone tomorrow. If God isn't going to help me, no one else will. I intensely dislike playing e.guit... My fingers hurt. I haven't touched a skinny stringer for the longest of ages! =(

I do pray that things go alright during the services tomorrow. I'm sorry God, for all the mistakes that I'll make. I'm sorry, God's people, if I distract you when I'm playing. My only defence is that I'm n00b when it comes to e.guit. =/ How could anyone possibly go back to e.guit after discovering the simple yet powerful joys of bass?

This is a short post - I generally dislike penning these down, but I just had to have some form of release. My mood is one of apprehension. God, I need a divine exchange just as much as all those Hoppies with post-camp syndrome need it, if not more. I await your Spirit to fill me with the courage and anointing that I so need. Good night.

June - Unstoppable

I have just come back from Downtown East. More specifically, Unstoppable camp (12th Jun - 15th Jun '09). I can honestly say from the bottom of my heart that this has been my best camp since joining YWAM in what, February '08? March '08? Unstoppable was my third camp as a full-time musician. I could potentially say that The Ultimate Dare camp in '05 was one in which I was more moved, but there's no real comparison since I believe that the 2 camps impacted me in different ways.

Unstoppable camp. From the first day, I already knew things were going to be different. There were teachings that went deeper than I've ever come across, apart from Know What You Believe WFL class (Eschatology), and End Times Workshop in JB Leadership Conference last year. I never knew what the "living stone" concept was about until the teaching on the first night, for instance (the knowledge of that brings new meaning to certain songs, and new insights regarding God living in us! =D), and I definitely didn't really understand the parable that is described in Matthew 25:1-13 even though I'm certain I've read it more than once. I never realised that the oil in the passage refers to righteousness and we can't "borrow" righteousness from the lives of others as we make an account of our lives to God. I suppose numerous jokes about being awarded golden toilet bowls in Heaven when we do something for God (like bringing people to Christ or doing some other noble, self-sacrificial act of service) gave me a kinda hazy impression of that. What if we stand before God and say, "I brought 'insert-incredible-number-here' to know You oh God, and many of them have risen to be awe-inspiring leaders of the church!", or (as Yao further expounded and contextualised), "Many people were blessed by my prophetic playing during praise and worship, and were inspired to take up the mantle for you God!" and God goes something like, "Who're you? That's funny, I've never heard you talking to me prior to this. Have I met you somewhere before?" Wow, I've never quite heard "doing determining your being" being explained in such a thought provoking manner before. From that teaching onwards, I knew that this camp was going to be one that I would thoroughly enjoy.

I really enjoyed the morning teaching on the second day too! I think passages from Revelations are always difficult to teach and convey properly, and yet I think Gideon did a great job doing just that. Like many others, I was struck by the third point in this teaching - about having good intentions mixed with wanting approval from others. It reinforced being determining our doing as taught in the first teaching. I especially like the part where Gideon used the example of Peter and the rooster. God used the rooster to remind Peter of his repeated denial of Him. Does that make make the rooster spiritual? This led me to the question of whether I'm walking right with God, whether my intentions are solely for Him, even if He works through me when I minister on stage.

180, revealed on the second night of camp, was something refreshingly different from a number like "1000 youths for God"!!! It's always easy to say "They should've done something like that in the first place!" because I bet the leaders racked their brains and spammed their prayers ever so hard to come up with something like that so I won't say it. Oops, did I just say something? =P Anyway, worship that night was incredible. I haven't felt God speak to me like that since The Ultimate Dare. Man, the feeling of exhilaration as God wrought His changes was so surreal ( to borrow what seems to be a favourite new teaching word from Dennis. ^^). Anyway, it was a 6/8 song titled Here In Your Presence. Don't normally dig those, but who cares as long as God works. Hmm who cares... That reminds me of Jialing's testimony during the third teaching. She shared about apathy and that was a great reminder of how my personality and my attitude towards things may be like. I think that sometimes, when the going gets tough, shreds of apathy and perhaps cynicism worm their way into my patterns of thought - something that I must look to reign in as I continue on in my walk with God.

Somehow the next day swept by in a daze (curse the lack of sleep), and then suddenly, it was time for the Extended Prayer Meeting (EPM). I actually felt a tinge of nervousness as I was waiting for it to start! I guess it was because of the sheer number of songs - half of which were new songs at that! I enjoyed myself on stage though, and when we were asked to gather in our caregroups during worship, all the YWAM guys on stage came and clustered around Yao to pray! We had a great time of prayer, led by Shan, and Yao shared that the only thing he can think of now to make an impact on the world is songwriting. I suppose that it IS time that we took a tentative step in that direction. I do hope I can contribute something there. After that there was a time where we were to go to our shepherds and pray for them. Peter came over to me and said that he hadn't prayed for me yet during the camp. Well I shared some things to him - short & long term goals, about discipleship, and about ministering. Time to plan things out, I think! I prayed for him too, after that. Anyway, EPM was a blast - some Uni Group people came to visit during EPM and they mentioned their enjoyment. Hope they felt ministered as well! =)

Anyway, enough about camp - the new YWAM caregroup structure is out and though Gwen said the changes weren't that big, I sorta disagree from my point of view. Goodbye to wacky people and hello to different quirky people haha! I'll most definitely miss MinOps 2(G) very, very much. There's still the Serangoon gang, but it's not really the same as being in the same caregroup... Then again, for growth to occur, there must first be change, and I sure pray that we'll grow, and that we'll grow together inevitably, not always quickly, but powerfully, and most importantly, in the name of God. In other simpler terms - let YWAM grow unstoppably (if there's actually such a word...)!