CHRISTMAS isn't Christmas til it happens in your heart..
sorry i havent been updating in a while.. intended to update at least once a week! forgot to wish u guys merry Christmas! hope everyone had a blessed Christmas, and you were able to bless at least one friend with the good news of Jesus Christ this December. how is ur progress with the GoFish card?
i've got a confession to make. i can't remember where i put my GoFish card! arghss.. i'm just soo absent-minded. but i do remember the 3 names i have written down. and they are constantly in my prayers. i'm very happy to have the privilege of seeing God working in one of my friend's life. shall call him X. i first started talking to X about God maybe one year ago, at that time he had a lot of questions about God, questions sometimes even i myself found hard to answer. X grew up in a Catholic school and his father was catholic, so he kinda knew a bit here and there about the Christian faith and about God, but he just never really believed. he was very antagonistic and had a lot of problems with the idea of God and suffering etc... i started praying for this friend, that God will change his heart towards him and that he might come to see the truth one day. i tried to share what i knew about God to him, brought him to the ravi zacharias talk "Man cannot live without God", gave him books to read (Lee Strobel's the Case for Faith), daily bread, encouraged him to read the bible and seek the truth for himself... yet at the end of the day i knew that nothing i could do would save him; only God could. so i committed it to God and told God that i had already done all i possibly could... now i had to leave the impossible to Him. and now the impossible has happened. God has somehow changed X's heart. he is reading the bible regularly now and started going to church!! there was a point in time when i really thought that all this would be mission:IMPOSSIBLE because X is just simply antagonistic at everything that i tell him. he just wouldnt listen.. but i thank God for how He answered my prayer and how He's been showing me that truly with Him, NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE. all we need to do is be like Mary, have faith and believe in His promises.
have u been praying for ur frens on ur GoFish card? is there any thanksgiving u'd like to share? do drop an email to me ok? for those who have not seen any progression or opportunities to share, don't be discouraged. i believe that God is sovereign and he will honour and hear your prayers that were offered in faith. He really works in amazing ways. awesome.
this christmas, our year 1 med students blanche and eugene planned to have a carolling event to various hospitals to bring the christmas cheer to them. kudos to them for the efforts put into calling and coordinating the various hospitals (sgh, ttsh, renci and st lukes) so that we could go down. our initial plan was to use this as a platform to share the good news of Christmas to our non-Christian classmates who were interested in singing at the hospitals. but in the end a lot of them pulled out last minute. abt 8 of us met up to have practice and sang our hearts out on wed 21st dec from 9am to abt 8pm!! goodness.. that's like 11 hrs on our feet. ok la not exactly cos we had a break for lunch. it was really tiring but fun. just bringing the cheer of christmas to the patients, many of them who were suffering and alone this christmas. it was heartbreaking too, as i shook their hands and saw some weeping away. i just didn't know what to say, but just to pray in my hearts that God will be their comfort and their healer. thank you all those who came down and gave ur time and energy! it was great singing with you guys. :):)
Helping Our Friends See a Different Christmas!
this was the theme for our last LM of the year.. yeap. we played a little game involving bidding for presents which evan prepared.. point? was that we all place a value on each of the presents and decided how much we are willing to give up to bid for the presents. how much value do we place on the gift of our Lord Jesus Christ this Christmas? how much value do our friends place on Him? How do we help our friends to see a different Christmas from the "pagan" celebrations?
3 things
Curiosity - ask them questions that will pique their curiosity, e.g. why would God let His Son be born in a manger? What do u like abt Christmas? What does Christmas mean to u?
Authencity - let us be authentic friends, not a Christmas friend (i.e. we only call our friends once a year to ask them to come for some church outreach programme during Christmas) yes, Christmas is a wonderful opportunity to reach out to friends, but first we gotta be the friend who is willing to spend time wif them, not with the objective of "converting" them, but rather to just BE their friend.
Tell - many ppl advocate "lifestyle" evangelism, let our lights shine, let our lives be a testimony to the living God. yes indeed we shud, but if we do not tell them abt Jesus, who will? Romans 10:14 says "How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?" so brothers and sisters, let us not just be content with living a just another "good" life, let us also share the reason behind that good life. but then again, conversely, if ur lifestyle is not really showing wat u preach, then dun! God knows how many ppl have renounced the faith simply bcos they have seen much more hypocrites in the Christian church than elsewhere.. ;p
well... Merry Christmas in advance! will u use this opportunity to share the good news wif the ppl on ur GoFish card? start praying and looking out for a divine opportunity now! :)
LM is here!!! thurs 8th dec 2005 5.30pm @ M10
itz been a while since we last met! hasnt it? ever since FLUNCH (ok that was not too long ago, but that was when all the lower Ms were busy with their CAs!!) so how has everyone been? hope that u have not forgotten to or stopped prayin for the friends whom you've written on your GoFish card (ps: if u still havent got yours yet, what the!!!!!! pls repent.. haha. kiddin la huh.)
i guess i'm guilty for not updating this blog as often as i would have liked.. i will try at least once a week ok? itz cos nobody seems to have any testimony, thanksgiving, things to share. and sometimes i wonder if anyone even comes here to read anymore. but still i will persevere... even for the one person who comes to read this blog, i will continue. thanx for dropping by! :)
november was supposed to be HarvestMonth.. remember i sent out the email? yeah i said "supposed" to be cos it was erm... half successful. a lot of the lower Ms were too stressed out over their CAs that we werent able to go thru wif the training, let alone going out to blitz. we did however manage to go out wif a couple of dgls as well as the M3 gals.
it was a good time of revisiting the 4SLs, and God really placed in my heart the importance of bringing the gospel to the lost. there are many out there who are searching, who are just that close to coming to Christ but just never really heard how. then there are those who need to hear the gospel presented more than just a few times before they are actually convicted to faith. my point is, if we dun tell them, who will? blessed are the feet of those who bring good news.. we always say we want to share Christ with our friends thru our life, our actions... but how many of us actually actively share with them the full gospel, how they can receive Christ etc? if u do, good for u! but i must admit there are many times tt i just avoid it if i can.. i also learnt the importance of sharing in love. being discerning when to share the 4SLs and when it is enuff to just provoke thoughts of God in the person's mind.
anyway i ramble too much.. COME for this thursday's LM! the dentals will be sharing on their trip to yunnan which they just came back from this week, and we will be talking more abt how we can help our friends to see a different Christmas! a different Christmas? isnt Christmas just Christmas? i guess the point is that often times we are so desensitised to the story of baby Jesus in a manger cos of commercialisation and all that we kinda forgot the true meaning behind it... the importance n the implications behind the birth of our Lord AND SAVIOUR! yes. can we help our friends to see that he is our SAVIOUR? he came not just for the Jews, but for the whole world! yup so do come along for this last LM of the year n dun miss out! :):)
