[created] for something greater

For those who don’t know what pingback is - it is basically when someone links your blog or blog post on their website that isn’t included in the blog roll.

For some reason my earth hour post has been receiving alot of hits… 14 yesterday 17 or something today. But i noticed i got a pingback for this post so i clicked on the link and this is what came up.

click here to see post

I have to say it is one of the funniest things I’ve encountered. The title cracks me up so much… and its funny because I don’t know who this person is. The writing in the post is actually a copy and paste of my blog entry. Lol.

Today we had our quarterly members muster and during the games, organised by the game legends themselves JP and J Lau, where we had to run up and down this hill in teams according to certain rules like only 8 feet can touch the ground at once or only the girls can touch the ground with their feet, we got about 30 seconds to strategise and then excecute our plans and interestingly enough the team with the youngest less mature members won.

Why I thought? And I remembered back to one of those forwards with a riddle:

What does a rich man need
A poor man have
And if you eat it you’ll die?

The answer you ask… ‘nothing’. Apparently primary schoolers will answer this much quicker than adults because as we grow up we often answer a simple problem with a complex answer. Same with the game? Did the more mature members over complicate a simple method?

Is this the same with our faith? Jesus often described that we should receive Him with the simple faith of a child. i think being in Voltage has helped me understand this more especially in prayer. I realised my prayers are so full of jargon that i forget the purpose of prayer - to talk to my creator. But in other areas like service - service attendance is up but service atmosphere is down… what do we do? Naturally up our programs… make them bigger, louder and flashier - when simply all we would have to do is get on our knees and pray till can’t physically pray no more!

Ok, so I’m not saying that maturity is a bad thing - if we all had the ADD of V10 and the ACF of VS then the world would be … pretty much dead… but I am guilty of over-complicating my faith time and time again. But God is slowly teaching me to simply come to Him like a child that simply comes to their parents when they are in need.

No that does not stand for Pigs, Oranges, Carrots and Raddishes. It stands for Post Oceania Convention Reflections - Dah what were you thinking?

Haha… yea that is why practically all the people at my birthday party described with this one particular word

Random

BUT back on track to what this post is all about. Today VS had a lil bbq together at Broadwater Park and we all had the opportunity to share about our OC experience to everyone else, and I gotta say that I was totally blown away by what was shared by our group. After the OC God has really opened my heart and my eyes to see what God see’s in people. Often I will subconsciously limit others around me with my own standards but God has challenged me to break that mould. But what God spoke to me is a whole new post!

I am constantly reminded that the spirit of the Acts 2 church is still up and alive within VS. From just cooking our sausages and chicken together in what turned from a bbq into a deep-fryer to the serving of food to others, I sat in amazement of God’s work in this group.

We started sharing our OC experiences after lunch and from the very first person all pride was stripped away as we all shared about our answered prayers and faith goals to our constant struggles. I felt a real humility under that tiny little secluded picnic table (till we had to move due to some hazardousness smokers). It wasn’t just a time of saying ‘I learnt this, this, this and this… oh yea and I grew closer to God’… but people began to lay out their lives before each other - the hurts prior to convention, the doubts of God’s call into missions, the new convictions layed down in their hearts, the joy of knowing an answered faith goal, the renewal or impartation of Hope’s vision, the new direction needed for 2008 - our hearts are on our sleeves. And I really believe God imparted something into our seniors today. I really thank God that Lucy and Nick were able to not just encourage and share their hearts but impart vision and challenges. Two truly great leaders in God’s house who I am constantly humbled by as they live their lives out amongst a people that will never truly grow older though they will.

I love Voltage and was even blessed enough to sit in (and eat massive amounts of KFC) V10’s P.O.C.R. and was equally blown away at the softness before God of our younger members.

So those who are in Voltage reading this (& those in IG|PH|LH) - God can use you & God will use you. Remember Ps PN shared that:

You can only go as far as you can see

So I want to challenge you to seek God and make your vision bigger. If your vision is to see your friends saved - let your vision changed to seeing your whole grade saved. If your vision is to see your grade saved then believe for your school to be saved. If your vision is to see your school saved then believe that your suburb will be saved. The only thing that limit’s God in our lives is our willingness to be used by Him.

Here are some snapshots from today =D

Earth Hour happened tonight with people all over the world banding together to fight climate change by switching off their lights and abstaining from major electrical appliances for a whole 60 minutes from 8-9pm.

My earth hour experience began alone. My mum and brother went out for dinner and so I happily walked around in the darkness with the steady flickering of 2 candles and the steady glow of my laptop [unplugged from the wall] to guide me. About 20 minutes into Earth Hour mum and Aaron return home and then my Earth Hour experience transformed into somewhat of a interesting 40 minutes.

It started with the constant questioning of ‘why aren’t the lights on?’ to the constant suggesting of ‘i need the lights on’ ending with the sudden sound of ’smashed glass’. And as you can imagine glass + broken + the floor + the darkness = shredded toes! So you can probably guess that about 35 minutes into Earth Hour we had to break the darkness by switching on the lights. But after it was all cleaned up the lights went back off and the questions and suggestions came flooding back.

But suddenly it dawned on me how much we rely on electricity. Without it, it was as if my families life had been turned upside down, inside out, stirred, shaken… anything you can name it felt like it happened. And simply because… we turned off the lights for 60 minutes. Now I’m not going to spiritualise this because honestly all I was thinking was ‘how come we can live without the lights on for 60 minutes without complaining?’

ok so you can probably say that this is a useless blog post. [sorry Aunty Angela whom i just discovered has sneaked her way onto my blog hehe =D] but all in all the moral of the story is: i got a nice picture =D

Hello all. Ok so as some may or may not know. i set out on a mission during the OC to get as many pictures with people as possible so i could compile them all in a collage photo thing on photoshop. Although i didn’t get enough pictures with people to fill up my desktop screen i did manage to play around with photoshop enough to actually make the collage.

it is now my wallpaper =D. ok so i do have better things to do with my time but the OC withdrawal symptoms are to much!

feel free to use it as a wallpaper as well, although you will have alot of pictures of me in the background =D

Ok ok, so i know that logically the next few blog entries i do should be based on what i’ve learnt from the Oceania Convention. But in this case i had to post this video up.

The follow up video to Monty Oum’s Dead Fantasy has FINALLY COME OUT!!!! it is SOO GOOD… if this was an action movie at the cinemas i would pay to see it! its so exciting and action packed and the action isnt the same over and over!  Can’t wait for Dead Fantasy III

here is the video for Dead Fantasy I

This year’s OC has to be one of the most challenging/inspiring and humbling coventions i’ve been to.  And as some of us from Brissie knew before OC or found out during OC that some of our favourite kiwi sisters and there little bro couldn’t make it .  So I just felt the prompting from God to bless our Hope youth down in Auckland so i made a little g’day vid to bring the OC to them.

so this is for you steph, rachael and jared! (although you’ve already seen it haha)

From 5:30pm Wednesday night till about 12:30am Friday morning.  I pretty much spent those 30 hours away from home *unexpectedly* with my fellow sheep, my own sheep, my shepherd and with our singaporean guest.

it has been a real fun 30 hours with activites ranging from ribbits to the gold coast to chilling with guitars.

but why give an account of the happenings when it has already been done by our good friend Zachary Young from Hope Singapore.

what in the world are they?  how can it cost $50 to put through a signed piece of paper.

well on the bright side its better than being a full fee paying student who has to pay… get this… $200 for admin fees!

Friday 14th March 2008,

This time about 1 year or 12 months or 365 day or 8760 hours or 525600 minutes or 31,536,000 seconds ago a vision was turned into reality with the opening of the Ablaze Service. On Friday we celebrated our 1st anniversary entitled “Glorious” featuring our awesome dynamic duo ‘Nainby’ (be sure to check out their myspace)

Another area I struggled with was and still is organisation. Service Ops requires a lot of planning ahead, thinking on your feet and keeping lines of communication clear between departments. Being a natural born procrastinator I excelled at doing the opposite of what Service Ops required of me. But as I continued to serve the realisation of the importance of organisation not just in Service Ops but my own life began to dawn on me. Ok so my organisation isn’t totally reigning over my procrastination but I’m getting there, and my attitude towards organisation isn’t as bad as it used to be