Life's Purpose

From Rick Warren  
This is my sermon for the day! Let it minister to you in person, and when it has; endeavor to share with others!

You will enjoy the new insights that Rick Warren has, with his wife now having cancer and him having 'wealth' from the book sales. This is an absolutely incredible short interview with Rick Warren, 'Purpose Driven Life ' author and pastor of Saddle-back Church in California. In the interview by Paul Bradshaw with Rick Warren, Rick said:
People ask me, What is the purpose of life?
And I respond: In a nutshell, life is preparation for eternity. We were not made to last forever, and God wants us to be with Him in Heaven. One day my heart is going to stop, and that will be the end of my body--but not the end of me. I may live 60 to 100 years on earth, but I am going to spend trillions of years in eternity. This is the warm-up act - the dress rehearsal. God wants us to practice on earth what we will do forever in eternity... We were made by God and for God, and until you figure that out, life isn't going to make sense. Life is a series of problems: Either you are in one now, you're just coming out of one, or you're getting ready to go into another one. The reason for this is that God is more interested in your character than your comfort; God is more interested in making your life holy than He is in making your life happy. We can be reasonably happy here on earth, but that's not the goal of life. The goal is to grow in character, in Christ likeness.
This past year has been the greatest year of my life but also the toughest, with my wife, Kay, getting cancer. I used to think that life was hills and valleys - you go through a dark time, then you go to the mountaintop, back and forth. I don't believe that anymore. Rather than life being hills and valleys, I believe that it's kind of like two rails on a railroad track, and at all times you have something good and something bad in your life. No matter how good things are in your life, there is always something bad that needs to be worked on. And no matter how bad things are in your life, there is always something good you can thank God for.. You can focus on your purposes, or you can focus on your problems:
If you focus on your problems, you're going into self-centeredness, which is my problem, my issues, my pain.' But one of the easiest ways to get rid of pain is to get your focus off your-self and onto God and others. We discovered quickly that in spite of the prayers of hundreds of thousands of people, God was not going to heal Kay or make it easy for her- It has been very difficult for her, and yet God has strengthened her character, given her a ministry of helping other people, given her a testimony, drawn her closer to Him and to people. You have to learn to deal with both the good and the bad of life.
Actually, sometimes learning to deal with the good is harder. For instance, this past year, all of a sudden, when the book sold 15 million copies, it made me instantly very wealthy.
It also brought a lot of notoriety that I had never had to deal with before. I don't think God gives you money or notoriety for your own ego or for you to live a life of ease. So I began to ask God what He wanted me to do with this money, notoriety and influence. He gave me two different passages that helped me decide what to do, II Corinthians 9and Psalm 72. First, in spite of all the money coming in, we would not change our lifestyle one bit... We made no major purchases.
Second, about midway through last year, I stopped taking a salary from the church. Third, we set up foundations to fund an initiative we call The Peace Plan to plant churches, equip leaders, assist the poor, care for the sick, and educate the next generation. Fourth, I added up all that the church had paid me in the 24 years since I started the church, and I gave it all back. It was liberating to be able to serve God for free. We need to ask ourselves: Am I going to live for possessions? Popularity? Am I going to be driven by pressures? Guilt? Bitterness? Materialism? Or am I going to be driven by God's purposes (for my life)? hen I get up in the morning, I sit on the side of my bed and say, God, if I don't get anything else done today, I want to know You more and love You better. God didn't put me on earth just to fulfill a to-do list. He's more interested in what I am than what I do.
That's why we're called human beings, not human doings.

Happy moments, PRAISE GOD.
Difficult moments, SEEK GOD.
Quiet moments, WORSHIP GOD.
Painful moments, TRUST GOD.
Every moment, THANK GOD...

The Holy Spirit

Heylo everybody!:D
It has been awhile since we met each other. hmm, wondering how was your christmas and holidays.
time flies! and now is definitely a time for us to prepare ourselves for a new semester ahead with lotsa great things awaiting ;)
As i was packing my things, I happened to flip through this newsletter with an article talking about The Holy Spirit.
To my surprise, this article related very well to our surroundings and is not at all boring. I realized that i had so much more to learn about Holy Spirit, it is definitely something more than what I Feel and what I think it is.
well, i really encourage you guys to read through the below article. interesting one!enjoy~ ;)
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The Holy Spirit unites rather than divides. Much of the activities of a church which carries out in the name of the Holy Spirit can become divisive or arrogant.

The Holy Spirit works in many ways, in different circumstances and in many places. the moment we narrow down the activity of the Holy Spirit, we become sectarian in our outlook. We may claim that we possess the Holy Spirit or our Church is the Spirit-filled Church.

The list that describes the Holy Spirit's activities or the symbols used are numerous. The church's main weakness is that she tends to over emphasize one or two dominant aspects of the Holy Spirit's activities. For example. "the Holy Spirit is like the rush of a mighty wind" (Acts 2;2). This is often the emotional side of the experience of the Holy Spirit. Tremendous power of the Holy Spirit is released in the lives of the believers. Healing, courage and strength to do the impossible happen in our experiences. The joy that comes from speaking in tongues. All are valid experiences of a spirit-filled life. But it should not stop there. or else the spirit-filled life can be shallow and naive.

The rational aspect of our life must also be touched by the Spirit, because "the Holy Spirit will guide us into all the truth" (John 16:130). The mind is to be transformed by the Spirit of truth. The Spirit of God enlightens or makes us aware of the truth that we either fail to see or is too dull and lazy to discern. Often, the spirit-filled Christians who rely more on emotion and experience may distrust the use of their minds. They can become narrow in thinking and dogmatic in attitude; that is, maintaining they are always on the right others are in the wrong. On the reverse, we can be so rational that we are cold to any emotional feelings at all. The Holy Spirit works at both the rational and emotional levels of our life. To experience one without the other makes our spiritual life incomplete.

To go further, I use another image. The Holy Spirit is like "tongues of fire". (Acts 2:3) Fire speaks of warmth and zeal. Life in the spirit without love and zeal can be cold and unattractive. We can be very sound in our understanding of God's word and display a number of spiritual gifts in our life, but lack the love in our relationship with other people. Our spiritual life is not bearing the fruits of the Holy Spirit. The lack of concern and the care for other people and the lack of commitment to the task that we undertake for God are signs of the shallowness in our spiritual growth, the zeal in our service for God, without love for him and those whom we minister to, is not a sustained one. It can be just an outburst, rather that a gradual and dedication to the task that we do, A spirit-filled life gives us the wholeness. It has breath, depth and height in our relationship with God and with other people and in the work we do.

The RT.Rev.Datuk Dr. Lim Cheng Ean
Former Bishop of West Malaysia
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well, after reading this. even before start judging and thinking that who has what to learn, let's take the time to look through our own lives.
emotional, rational, and warmth&zeal,
these 3 aspects of the Holy Spirit, which do we lack in? is there any aspect which we can work more on?
"A Spirit filled life gives us the wholeness. It has breath, depth and height in our relationship with God and with other people and in the work we do."

Let's use these 2 more days before 2009 ends, to reflect on what we have learnt this whole year. and in what areas can we improve ourselves to be a better person next year?

Regards to you :)
Shalom.
Jia Lerd

Worry.

It's currently one hour to the middle of the weekend.

While some people are enjoying the air cond, sitting on a bed, reading a book, playing games, out to yum cha, or simply plain bored somewhere in Malaysia, we have 3 people roaming Inti grounds.

Why?

As you all may have heard or seen around, Islam Awareness Week (IAW) is this coming week. 1st June to 4th June. Now this is NOT a prmotion for them.
If you've been paying attention, you'd know, Beau Bristow concert is on 4th June. Which is the last day of IAW.

They've started putting up flyers. And tonight 3 souls, roaming Inti grounds are spamming it (with the approval of SAO of course) with Beau Bristow posters... you may have already seen some of them on the bridge. But we are currently going all out to make the event known!

Pray.

This is a Muslim country after all that we're living in. And although we do have permission to put up all these posters, I'm afraid we may have some trouble. May. I don't know what kind of trouble, but I know that we're going head on with IAW.

Also, it IS an open doors event, to anyone and everyone who would like to come. It's completely free so we don't know how many people may come, and we don't know what kind of people are coming.

So I urge you, whether you're a member of ICF, participant, or maybe you didn't even come to the booth or plan to go for ICF, I still ask that you, as long as you're a christian, pray for us. We don't want any trouble with them.

I hope you'll keep this event in your prayers.
-Fine weather
-Bristow, the man himself
-everything involving technolgy
(as you know they tend to mess up at the most crucial times)
-ICF band
-the people who will attend
-concert publicity to be noticed
-no trouble from IAW
and whatever else that may come to your mind.

PRE opening ceremony

Hey all! Well, currently I'm sitting in SC-1-1a waiting for cf to start... and this is why it's called ICF LIVE... Chairs are being arranged, guys are jamming, people are mingling (I'm typing...) and we're all pretty excited for the first official meeting for ICF this semester... and ibans are surrounding me...

There'll be games, songs, fun, and even a video that may just embarrass most of the committee....I hope you made it to cf already by the time you read this (which would mean you should be on your way this very second I'm typing this...) and I hope you had a great time =D

So till after ICF opening ceremony, =D and a dinner cum supper session... will blog again soon!


Oh... if you ARE sitting in your rooms now...
Do come here at sc-1-1a. It starts now! (6.30 actually)
TODAY! 20 MAY 2009!

CHEERSSS!!!!