love turned a page--preparation
Sunday, January 24, 2010
hiya people how has the preparation been so far? i mean, of course i know how has the progress been since i was there like almost everytime. so what i was trying to say was, how do you feel about concert prepartion so far? and i don't mean the actual process but what ARE your feelings. tired? weary? bored? sick? let us review what pr annie tan told us this afternoon. i personally thought her message made a deep impact on me, especially regarding the preparation for the concert.
1Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. 2Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. Romans 12:1-2
i admit it is very tiring to having go back church twice a week, staying till past 9 to do repetitive mundane chores. it feels worse than school right? but these verses reminded me that as 'living sacrifices' to God, these is a 'spiritual act of worship'. 'do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world' by complaining because this is our responsibility as a christian. it is not our responsibility to make this drama, or concert as a whole, a perfect flawless one. it is our responsibility to offer our best to God and everything else will be placed unto God's hands.
during the whole course, we may think that this is not good enough, or that should not work that way. i always thought that some things are missing from the skit, its not as what i think it should appear to be. but then again, does all these matter? sometimes we are too obsess with what the audience would think. would they think we suck? would they think we did something wrong here or there? but in actual, who IS our audience? by now, i think you would have known. God, the almighty one.
sure, this concert is a mean of attracting our friends who have not heard of the gospel before. however, no matter how this concert is carried out, it is still a worship. God is our only congregation. we are performing for him. worship is not that 15mins of singspiration every sunday; worship is not that 30 mins of message the speaker conveys every sunday and worship definitely is not that 3 hours we spend in church every sunday. we worship God everyday of our lives whether you are sitting in the bus, showering in your bathroom or even sleeping during lectures.
worship is how you 为神做见证 in front of others. this whole concert is in fact an act of worship. so what kind of attitude should we have during a worship? one that complains? or one that obeys?
ask yourself again, what IS the purpose of this concert? i hope i need not answer this question for you.
"Don't always think that we must be constantly on our guard doing a lot of stuffs and get ourselves so weary and tired out. sometimes we may need to stop DOING and allow God to mould our BEING to be conformed into HIS LIKENESS." Richard Blackerby
by the way, before i forget, how many of you have already started inviting? don't be too engrossed in the whole concert and forget the whole invitation process.
Experienced God @
9:02 PM
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转角遇到神 • 爱 Love Turned A Page
Friday, January 15, 2010
大家好！ Hi all!!
我还是不多说了，让短片告诉你 I shall let the video speak for itself.. 那拭目以久的项目 The long awaiting event to come... 转角遇到神 • 爱 Love Turned A Page
[可以到这里下载以上短片] [You may download the above video here]
布道音乐会详情如下： Gospel Concert Details as follows:
如需查询， For enquiries, 请电邮至： Please email to: events.bbc@gmail.com
http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/index.php/opinion/breaking-views/48629-allah-cant-be-substituted-with-tuhan-in-bible-translation--dr-ng-kam-wengJAN 6 — Muslims in other parts of the world (Arabs, Persians, North Africans, Pakistanis and Indonesians) have no objection and are not worried about getting confused when Christians using the word “Allah”. In contrast, some Malaysian Muslims claim to be confused; a strange phenomenon indeed. This observation lends credence to the suggestion that the Allah issue is an artificial Malay issue and not a genuine Muslim issue. The truth is that the current orchestrated protests against the recent High Court decision to allow the Catholic Herald (and Christians) to use the word Allah must be seen to be as cynical manipulations by Malay politicians to gain votes from their community. I am more interested in going beyond these political manoeuvres. Politicians (and that includes government bureaucrats) are happy just to stay at the level of vague suggestions since they have no competence nor care to address real issues of translation. In contrast, Christians must ensure their arguments for the right to use the word Allah are based on concrete evidence supported by a coherent linguistic philosophy of translation of Scripture. One major demand from the Malay protestors is that Christians stop using the word Allah on grounds that Christians can find a simple alternative, that is, simply substitute the word Allah with the word Tuhan. Unfortunately, this demand only betrays the ignorance of the protestors. I would have thought that any Malay would know that the meaning of the words Allah (God) and Tuhan (Lord, Rabb) are not the same. How can they suggest that Christians simply use the word Tuhan to substitute the word Allah? To express the issue linguistically, Allah and Tuhan have different senses even though they have the same reference. Both the terms Allah and Tuhan are used in the Malay Bible. Following the precedent set by Arab Christians, Allah is used to translate el/elohim and Tuhan (or TUHAN in caps) is used to translate Yahweh (YHWH). The two words are sometimes paired together as Yahweh-Elohim in 372 places in the Old Testament (14 times in Genesis 2-3; 4 times in Exodus; 8 times in Joshua; 7 times in 2 Samuel; 22 times in Chronicles; 12 times in Psalms; 32 times in Isaiah; 16 times in Jeremiah and 210 times in Ezekiel, etc.). More importantly, the word Tuhan is also applied to Jesus Christ in the New Testament. Thus we read of the LORD Jesus as Tuhan Yesus (The word LORD was used to translate the word kurios 8,400 times in the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Old Testament. It refers to human beings in only 400 times and refers to God 8,000 times. Of these 8,000 times, 6,700 are substitute for the word YHWH). The transference of the title kurios LORD/YHWH to Jesus Christ is testimony to the belief in the deity of Christ right at the beginning of Christianity. This simple statistical survey shows clearly that the demand by Muslim demonstrators that Christians simply substitute the word Allah with Tuhan is unreasonable since it renders many Biblical references to God and Jesus Christ incoherent. First, the substitution is incorrect since the meaning of Allah and Tuhan are different. Second, it creates an absurd situation when Christians try to translate the paired words Tuhan Allah (LORD God). Are Christians now required to call the LORD God, Tuhan Tuhan? This sounds like committing linguistic redundancy. Worse still, the repeated words Tuhan Tuhan come across to Malay readers as suggesting that Christians believe in a plurality of Lords/Gods (since the plural form in Malay is expressed by repeating the noun and setting them in apposition). Finally, Christians are unable to express the Lordship of Jesus Christ as one who is distinct from the Father and yet shares with the God of the Old Testament, the name that is above every other name — kurios/Tuhan (Philippians 2:9, cf. Isaiah 45:23). In other words, Christians are rendered unable to affirm the deity of Jesus Christ and teach the doctrine of Trinity without the foundational words that maintain the semantic relationship between the words Allah and Tuhan as they are applied distinctively in the Malay Bible. Christians in Malaysia would do their utmost to maintain religious harmony in Malaysia. Indeed, the Christianity community has made many concessions to accommodate the concerns of the Malay community. However, it cannot accept the demand that it abandons the use of the word Allah and adopts the word Tuhan as the substitute simply because some ill-informed Malays take offence at their practice — an offence which would not have arisen if only these people set aside emotions and prejudices and examine the historical and linguistic evidence in a calm and rational manner. At the very least, Malays (or rather Muslims) should understand that believers are not at liberty to change the meaning of their Scriptures, the word of God, to satisfy the unfounded scruples of man. Postscript I refer readers to the accompanying post, “Translating the Names of God” published in the learned journal ( The Bible Translator ) that gives more concrete examples of how the names of God are translated in the Malay Bible. The article also discusses the controversy among some scholars on how words Allah and Tuhan should be used in the revision of Shellabear’s version of the Malay Bible. In any case, all the scholars in the controversy agree that Christians need to use both the words Allah and Tuhan in the Malay Bible. Please note that the article is reproduced (partially) with permission from the author Dr D Soesilo. — mysinchew.com
When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an alter there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the alter, on top of the wood. - Genesis 22: 9
This event is a picture of the mistake we make in thinking that the ultimate God wants of us is the sacrifice of death. What God wants is the sacrifice through death which enables us to do what Jesus did, that is, sacrifice our lives. Not - "Lord, I am ready to go with You... to death" (Luke 22: 33). But - "I am willing to be identified with Your death so that I may sacrifice my life to God."
We seem to think that God wants us to give up things! God purified Abraham form this error, and the same process is at work in our lives. God never tells us to give up things just for the sake of giving them up, but he tells us to give them up for the sake if the only thing worth having, namely, life with Himself. It is a matter of loosening the bands that hold back our lives. Those bands are loosened immediately by identification with the death of Jesus. Then we enter into a relationship with God whereby we may sacrifice our lives to Him.
It is of no value to God to give Him your life for death. He wants you to be a "living sacrifice" - to let Him have all your strengths that have been saved and sanctified through Jesus (Romans 12: 1). This is what is acceptable to God.
God never need anything from us. He makes us give up things because He wants us to lose what is not right, to have space for what He intends to give us. As we give up ourselves, no longer chasing what we want, no longer depending on our own strengths, we begin to have more of God, relying on Him to do His will in our lives. There is nothing better than having God in our lives. The right sacrifice is not just giving up things, it is us giving up things to gain what is even better. Is your sacrifice right?
Experienced God @
10:24 AM
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Worship
Thursday, January 7, 2010
From there he went on toward the hills east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. There he built an alter to the Lord and called on the name of the Lord. - Genesis 12: 8
Worship is giving God the best that He has given you. Be careful what you do with the best you have. Whenever you get a blessing from God, give it back to Him as a love-gift. Take time to meditate before God and offer the blessing back to Him in a deliberate act of worship. If you hoard it for yourself, it will turn into spiritual dry rot, as the manna did when it was hoarded (see Exodus 16: 20). God will never allow you to keep a spiritual blessing completely for yourself. It must be given back to Him so that He can make it a blessing to others.
Bethel is the symbol of fellowship with god; Ai is the symbol of the world. Abram "pitched his tent" between the two. The lasting value of our public service for God is measured by the depth of the intimacy of our private times of fellowship and oneness with Him. Rushing in and out of worship is wrong every time - there is always plenty of time to worship God. Days set apart for quiet can be a trap, detracting from the need to have daily quiet time with God. That is why we must "pitch our tents" where we will always have quiet times with Him, however noisy our times with the world may be. There are not three levels of spiritual life - worship, waiting, and work. Yet some of us seem to jump like spiritual frogs from worship to waiting, and from waiting to work. God's idea is that the three should go together as one. They were always together in the life of our Lord and in perfect harmony. It is a discipline that must be developed; it will not happen overnight.
The theme of this month is "Live to worship". Worship is not confined to Sunday, quiet times, or when we are free. We should live a life that is in worship with God all the time. As we come close to Him in every moments, doing each thing in His name, obey His direction in every decisions, we receive added strength, joy and spiritual insights in our lives. We experience that God indeed is real and present, and there is nothing better than that.
Experienced God @
5:12 AM
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影子背後的月光
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
It's my turn! Porter! Hohohohohoho! This is my little sharing~用中文打>< 要看完它喔!
