Thursday, December 31, 2009

NEW YEAR EVE






YOUTHS!!!!!Today is the last day of 2009.... and as usual, our church always take this opportunity to have a 3-language combined service to celebrate, not only New Year 2010, but also to reflect back on what God has done for us... YES!!! tonight is our THANKSGIVING NIGHT service.

However, this year is a bit different, as we celebrate New Year, we also bid farewell to our dear AD John and aunt Jillian.. it is sad to hear that they are leaving us in a couple of weeks time... but, this is for the sake of the call of serving the Lord..

May God bless them everywhere they go..

WE'LL MISS YOU SO MUCH AD JOHN & AUNT JILLIAN..

Thursday, December 17, 2009

Working Hard

Earlier this year, I went to the gym for a month and my favourite equipments there were the treadmill and the exercise bike. I liked how both of these equipments have different settings, for example when I was on the treadmill, I could programme it for an uphill walk, so you'd actually work your muscles more. The same goes for the bike. I also discovered an additional setting in the bike, which is a random course. You'd start cycling on a flat surface when suddenly you feel you're going uphill so you'd have to use more energy to pedal the bike. And you start to huff and puff as you struggle up the hill when you reach the top of the hill and you start to gain momentum going downhill. You get the picture now, of course. That's why it's called random, duh!

So anyway, what's my point? I'm getting there. I was doing my quiet time tonight and the scripture was from Romans 7:13-25, where Paul talked about doing the things he doesn't want to do and not doing the things he wants to do. Read it for yourself. As I was thinking over these verses, the exercise bike came to mind. Sometimes when we ride a bike, we like to coast, you know, let the momentum carry us along rather than cycling? But as the bike loses momentum we would then have to start pedaling again to get back the speed we were at before we started to coast. So it is in our spiritual lives, sometimes we like to be carried along by the momentum, to be on a spiritual high, maybe after a youth camp, or a HS weekend and we can risk losing momentum, of going downhill. Then we'd have to start pedaling all over again.

Our spiritual lives take work. After God saves us through Christ, we must "work out" our salvation - not to earn it but to bring our thoughts and actions into agreement with His purpose. Let us not coast in our spiritual lives, but realise that it takes hard work and perseverance to run this race that is set out before us.

Monday, December 14, 2009

Parting Message from AD JY

As I had posted Bishop's message earlier, you'd all know that AD JY would be leaving us in the new year and that AD Moses would be coming to replace him. We had invited AD JY for our closing meeting for this year and he entitled his sharing to us as "To Be Found"

He asked us all this question, "What kind of person do you want to be found to be?". If your 1st response was, "Huh? say what?" then you'd be like the rest of us who were there that night, "what AD? come again?" Haha. It took me a while to get it too. He asked us what tense that was in (of course by then I became totally lost cos I'm very bad with tenses. I know how to use them, but I can't name them, go figure!) If we want to simplify it a little, it'd be "what kind of person do you want to be known as?" and he went on to tell us that the person we want to be known as, it doesn't happen in the future, it happens now. The choices and decisions we make now will determine the kind of person we end up to be. Think about it.

AD JY gave us two verses as parting gifts; the first is from Acts 13:22 "After removing Saul, he made David their king. He testified concerning him: 'I have found David son of Jesse a man after my own heart; he will do everything I want him to do.'" David did everything God wanted him to do, whereas Saul in the later part of his rule only picked and choose what he wanted to do for God. That was the difference between these two kings. The other verse was from Numbers 14:24 "But because my servant Caleb has a different spirit and follows me wholeheartedly, I will bring him into the land he went to, and his descendants will inherit it."

AD JY asked us to desire these things, to be a man/woman after God's own heart, and to have a different spirit and follow God wholeheartedly. Would we make that choice, that decision now? So that in the future, or perhaps even now for some of us, God would say that of us?

Monday, December 7, 2009

Caroling

This year the youths will go caroling, which is something we've never done before as a group, at least. And we've joined forces with the young adults cell group as well so we should have a good mix of both youth and young adults. The reason that we combined forces is simply because we're all going out at the same day and some of us are involved in both groups so we decided it would be wise to go together.

So anyway, when we first started, we didn't have too many houses to go to, but as the days progress, we find ourselves having more and more houses to go to! At this point in time, we have 8 houses to visit, with another one to be confirmed. It's turning into a logistic problem, because we're going caroling on Sunday and Monday and many prefer Sunday!

It is a good problem to have, many houses, but a problem nonetheless. But, we should have things sorted out pretty quickly these few days.

Oh ya, DEYC has started, we have about 10 youths going so they should have a blast! Have fun everyone!