Crimson, the beauty under heaven

"And God said, 'Let there be an expanse between the waters to seperate water from water.' So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above it. And it was so. God called the expanse 'sky.' And there was evening, and there was morning - the second day." (Genesis 1:6-9)

On the second day, God crafted the crimson sky, the magnificent scenery radiating the splendor of heaven. It was so marvelous. The beauty of His creation is just far beyond description. It feels like it was something worth dying for. It was so ricky coloured. It was so resplendent.

Nicky Cruz

Tonight(as Friday) we didnt have our ordinary CG. Instead, we went to see a former NY gang leader. It was awesome. Would like to attend this kind of events more. Plus its free! Why not? hehe.

This week is also Fresher's Week. We signed quite a number of students up for CCM this week. Also we talked to quite a few interesting people especially today. There was an european family from HK who could speak just perfect cantonese. I was impressed! Next week is the start of O'Week. We hopefully will recruit more quality members. Amen?

Abundance

"For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have devine power to demolish strongholds." (2 Corithians 10:3-4)

Clearly, as it says in the Bible, we do not fight with flesh and blood, but we battle in spiritual warfare. And our enemy is Satan. Even back to the time when Adam and Even lived in the Garden of Eden, the serpent had already become "more crafty". So when he sees the spirit of God is moving in our midst, Satan is certainly attempting to strike harder also.

We face a lot of questions and doubts in our everyday life, sometimes when God called upon us we may not seem to understand why. We could choose to respond in obedience and trust or we could go on our own way. But either way, it takes time. It takes time to realize our mistakes of not trusting him and it takes time to realize the goodness of putting our trust on him. If God gave us a lesson, we'd better learn it. Otherwise, we need to resit the "test" again, just like what we do in school and university. Yes, God is that kind.

"I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe." (Ephesians 1:17-19)

This is Paul's prayer to God the Father. It is also my favourite passage in the book of Ephesians because of the coolest words, the coolest sentences and the coolest meanings. I hope that we will all not be blinded by Satan's deceptive scheme, but instead, we will receive wisdom and revelation so that we may soon understand God's each devine purpose for our lives. I believe God will do this in His way. Through the toughest problem God can release our greatest power and potential. And we will all be rewarded by this abundant blessings.

Dust of life

As today(15 Feb 2007) I was doing some cleaning job with the vacuum cleaner, I drew a small principle that applies to our christian life.

It was about half way finishing my vacuuming, I realized the vacuum cleaner wasn't functioning so well, and it seemed to need power boosting in order to suck in the larger and heavier dust -- a sign of requiring internal cleaning. Thus I opened the dust case (It perhaps was my 3rd time opening the dust case of the vacuum cleaner). The dust almost filled the bag to full, as I anticipated. So I took out a plastic bag and transfered all the dust into it. After finished, I continued vacuuming. The vacuum cleaner worked powerfully again. I never thought the stuffing of dust could make the machine underperform that much!

What's so big deal about that? There is, whether you are a christian or not. We "suck in dust" everyday and day after day the dust accumulates inside us. If we don't undergo some kind of "cleaning process" regularly we would just become like the vacuum cleaner -- we underperform, in which case bad habits are formed and sins are rooted. We lose our efficiencies. But God wants to uproot our bad habits and clense our sins by allowing us to confess before Him. He fostered our relationship with Him by placing the Holy Spirit into us, so that the cleaning process will take place. What a brilliant idea God has! Hallelujah! Haha.

Tonight I was very fortunite to meet Figo at the coffee shop. He has been working there for a week. I was offered a free cup of coffee! Then I bought caramel slice just to make it a meal. WOW...so then I stayed there reading magazines until half past 3 in the morning! What a life!

Valentine's Day

Wine, Steak & Candle dinner
After a few months going out, our first western Valentine's Day eventually arrived. After so much plannings and preparations, I finally got to sit down and enjoy the wonderful time with Kathy. But it was worth it! I don't know when I would have the energy and time to make something like this again. So please bear with me. Haha...^@^... Note that Jeff disappeared for a few hours just to avoid being a light bulb. Thank you for being so understanding! Hehe.

Learner's Licence
Today I finally received my learner's licence, something which I should have got perhaps four years ago. If you want to compete with me on procrastination, you will lose!

Prayer Meeting
A good one tonight. I was able to focus absolutely on Him. Distraction level: zero! It was a good time of worshiping, praying, seeking, responding and fully immersing in God's presence.

O' Week
CCM's core team meetings have been really long lately. Because the university orientation is fast approaching us, there are a lot of plannings to go through and a lot of things are yet to be finalized. Towards meeting our goal of 80 new members sign up we are still some distance away. We truely desire God's annointing and winsdom, to help us reach our faithful goal.

Amazing Grace

"Amazing grace, how sweet a sound", I really like this song a lot. I don't remember when was the first time I heard the song. It could be at church, or it was once when I was trying to search the internet just wanted to find some christian songs for making the water baptisum video clip. And at the end I chose this song. "I once was lost, but now I am found. Was blind, but now I see." I was already fully captivated by this song. It touched me because it remined me about God's unconditional love and his amazing grace, and I was filled with joy seeing so many bros and sis in Christ being baptized in water.

Today I sang this song once again, but at a very sad occasion - the funeral of Frank and Issabella's baby. I was surrounded by the emotions of sorrow and sadness. But the song, had ministered to me. Strongly, I sense the love of God. This love had deepened by understanding towards the song; And the song, had helped me better experience the love of God.

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven. (Ecclesiastes 3:1)

Metropolitan

Metropolitan_001 copy
Originally uploaded by eyeport.

uploading more recent photos
this photo has won a lot of favor from others = )

Some recent photos

Four things

Fire fall down
Fires of heaven is used to describe stars in the sky. But last Sunday, the presence of God was so strong that it made me see fires coming down from heaven. It was spectacular. As the gate of heaven opened, slowly, I saw fires falling down like the rolling clouds. Slowly, I saw fires and clouds started pressing down on me. I was amazed, touched and filled with the fire.

From broken to lost
Two Saturdays ago we play basketball at RI, the chain fell down on the ground and broke my cross. And this sunday after church we went to Cornwall Park to play soccer and Current, I lost the remaining cross! I was so happy to found such a nice cross when I spent my last Christmas holiday in China, but now the entire cross has gone.

Job hunting
There are over a hundred property job ads on SEEK but only few are related to valuation. Today I saw a graduate opportunity but its as far as in Hamilton. At least two hours drive from AKL! I think I will still apply for it and see how it goes. Also it is very encouraging to read my mentor's job hunting advice this afternoon. I will therefore keep searching until I find a suitable job.

Drivers licence
Steph eventually got her Learner's today. Congratulations! Raymond also remined me to get my licence ASAP...haha...I wonder if they planned this. LOL

Random conversations with Jeff

I had a very interesting conversation with my flatmate Jeff after I came back home from the CCM core team meeting tonight. In my opinion, Jeff is a guy that always has strong interests in anything. So tonight our topics covered origin of life, concept of evolution vs creation, concept of time in relation to light, religion and prophecies about the end time of the earth etc etc.

So these are the topics we have been talking about all the time, sometimes in a more intensive discussing or debating environment. Even though our topics are somtimes repetitive, they are rather inspiring everytime. Although I cannot say the topics are too profound, they stimulate my brain or activate my memories and knowledge about certain subjects when I have to explain or answer some of Jeff's questions. One of the interesting facts we talked about tonight was that the stars that we physically see with eyes tonight may not even exist right now!

New church venue confirmed!

Leaders of the church announced our new church venue at yesterday's prayer meeting. It's still gonna be within the university boundary. We will be occupying a few lecture theaters inside the Architecture Building from 18th of Feb 2007 (on the same day as Chinese New Year btw)! I think the new place is still quite convenient although I did expect to have a more "proper" church venue.

So far I don't see any major problems with this place except for the limited number of the nearest carparks. The church logistic team has become more mature over the last year, now the logistic crews are more familar with handling not only individual duties and responsibilities but also can work effectively as a team. The problem of attendence has also improved. A good logistic team would do the job, not matter how heavy the stuff or how far the distance is.

The first month of 2007 has just passed. How time flies! During this year I believe we will see more and more ministries to mature. The logistic team, worship team, intercessory team, ushering team...to multimedia team, they all will mature! Let's pray and work hard for every ministry in church to function effectively and cooperatively.

Also I have come up with some preliminary designs of our new CCM logo. It's the one below. Hope we can finalize this ASAP and move on to the next thing. : )