[created] for something greater

studying anatomy has just solidified my belief of creation over evolution.
The human body is a genius piece of organised tissue that works in perfect unison and harmony with itself.  there is no way that something as random as evolution could eventually become what the human body is today!

not even equipment created by man is as complex as the human body, infact, alot of the things created today are a result of studying the human body!  Aren’t we smart little things, drawing inspiration from the original blueprints that God gave to us… and to think the blueprints to technology have been with us all our lives coz we are the blueprints!

but things like how there are muscles in ya neck that remain taunt just so that your head doesn’t topple to the side and snap your spinal cord.  ligaments that keep your arms and legs from breaking themselves because you decided you wanted to bend them furthur than they should.  fossas, foramen, notches, canals (fancy names for holes) that are placed in such percise positions to allow nerve fibres, tendons and blood veesels to run through them so that they can reach all parts of your body, and i mean ALL PARTS!  from the tip of your toes to the top of your head, blood and nerves are present!  Muscles that act against each other to balance out your movements, like when you flex ya bulging biceps your triceps do an opposite action so you can bend your elbow.

And did you know that your body creates its own electricity!  and it maintains its own heat… and that your body heats up air as it enters your body so that you don’t get pneumonia everyday!

from the support of our skeleton to the movement muscles create to the joints that allow you to walk, talk, eat, breathe, jump, run, sit, stand to the organs that keep your body clean, healthy and able to taste, smell, see, feel.  i could just go on and on… it is so amazing this genius piece of work we are.  can you imagine thinking up the human body?  i mean the body supplies blood filled with oxygen to EVERY SINGLE LIVING CELL IN THE BODY.  we humans cant even provide every human being on the earth with drinkings water!  We can’t even supply everyone with a computer or internet!

What an effort God put into us!  makes me want to be a great steward of this get honour to have such an amazing body!  i wanna go to heaven buff haha (yes i know i cant take my body) but alteast i can tell God that i worked his genius piece of living machinary to its highest potential!

today is ANZAC day and with ANZAC day comes the remembrance of those who fought for peace. But something I’ll always remember about the ANZACs is their spirit, what the ANZAC spirit means and how it has defined Australian culture.

I remember doing an essay on it in history in year 10 a

nd getting an A (my first ever A for a full on essay), probably because it really interested me.

but a big part of the ANZAC spirit is mateship.

Australians are known for their valour when it comes to a friend in need no matter the circumstances. whether getting shot at by some fella with a gun or getting an earbashing from the misses. ya mate is always there to pick you back up and carry you to safety. (usually a pub haha not that i go to pubs)

So this ANZAC day grab ya mates and give em three cheers because ya mates deserve to be blessed.

so to all me mates out there reading this. thanks. thanks for being an encouragement, an inspiration, a challenge and most of all a friend that puts up with my nonsense, my ADDness, my randomness, my susness, my corniness, my insecurities, my weaknesses, my bad habits, my procrastination, my laziness, and my inability to comprehend organisation. i know i don’t appreciate you all enough so i’m gonna work on it. this is for you

hip-pip hooray

hip-pip horray

hip-pip horray

love ya like a fat kid loves STEAK MATE! (none of this cake nonsense haha)

and to the ANZACs i salute you for your bravery and courage. in the face of danger you chose to stand between life and death as you marched into guns blazing and bullets flying just so that we could live in freedom.

thanks

The artwork for the new Hillsong Live album is out on their website with a couple of song samples.

here is the cd cover, looks like something that united would do.

but i like it. looks awesome

and here are the four sample tracks they have loaded up.  Very interesting i must say.  Can’t wait for it to come out in July!

Stronger - Hillsong Live

Run - Hillsong Live

Desert Song - Hillsong Live (Brooke Fraser)

This is Our God - Hillsong Live

is the sound made when i headbutted mum lol.  with her permission of course.  we had a good laugh.

lol at the random A.D.D.ness of me and mum.  oh it was A.D.D. because she was asking me to pray for her and i just felt like headbutting her and yea.

joy

Last Wednesday was one of those days you had a reason to be excited about going to uni. Why? No it wasn’t because of market day or anything free for that matter, it was because we had a very interesting Human Physiology Lab Practical that tested something home made.

We tested our own pee, yeap pee, pee as in a number 1, a number 1 as in urine, urine as in the yellow stuff that your body produces. I can’t be bothered going into the science of it (mostly because i don’t know exactly what we were testing for)

the day started off with eating a normal breakfast plus 500ml of water. At 11am we had to drink another 300ml of water then pee between the times of 12-12:30 and note the time. We then had to void, aka pee, at 1pm and drink back 200ml of water and hold in our pee for the next hour until we reached the lab.

The lab started at 2pm and we did the intro with everyone in my group BUSTING for the toilet. Our instructions were to grab a container, 2 measuring cylinders and a tiny sample tube. We had to pee into the container then measure the volume in the measuring cylinders, pour some into the sample tube and then flush the rest down the toilet. Funnily enough i think everybody spilled their first urine sample because the tubes fill up ALOT quicker then you’d expect. I had a whopping 470ml of pee at 2pm. After that we were split up into 2 test groups:

test group 1 had three people

1. drink a can of red bull (for caffine)
2. drink 3.3ml/kg of saline
3. drink 10ml/kg of water

test group 2 had three people as well

1. drink 10ml/kg of water
2. drink 10ml/kg of water + do 8 minutes of exercise after 60 minutes
3. drink 10ml/kg of water + eat 5 sachets of salt after 60 minutes

I drank the saline which is what they give you in hospitals in the drip.  Ended up drinking 429ml of it, it was NASTY.  After we drank our dose of whatever we had to pee every 20 minutes noting the amount of pee and keeping a sample. Group 1 only drank once at the beginning and that was it, group two though had to re-drink (in water) whatever amount they peed out.

I was really happy with my prac group. every second word that came out of our mouths was PEE this PEE that, you PEE I PEE We PEE… haha… and surprisingly enough we were so comfortable with each other that reminding each other to pee was like reminding each other to do our chores haha. Even asking each other how much we peed out was like asking each other how we were going haha, and we were all happy to proudly say our amounts and even encourage the ones that did massive amounts haha.

Anyways it was a pretty awesome prac because we had an awesome group. Downside is that know i have to write a report on it oh wells.

oh yea we established ourselves as the RENAL CLUB! we plan to have a renal camp and meet every other week for renal fun haha jokes jokes.

yeap thats a picture of our pee in tubes! haha. There are some strange ways of meeting people at uni.

Well i thought i would post up some videos from my phone.  They are pretty random videos.

1.  Playing a game of… well i don’t know what it’s called.  Basically you just sit apart from each other and with your legs open and you attempt to hit each other in the nads.  The following is a slow motion capture of Aaron getting it from Dom.

2.  Lunch with the IGVO champs and leaders.  We went to Sizzlers in Toowong and there was this random, freakishly loud, space age hand dryer (brand Dyson so you can only imagine its power!)  The instructions were place hands in and slowly pull them out.  Sorry the vid is sideways, i couldnt rotate it on my computer.

3.  The random heavy rain & hail.  After Voltage left my place it started to hail and rain like crazy!  But weirdly there was still sunshine?  I took some slow motion videos of the hail and my drain pipe overflowing, as well as a video of the relaxing sound with Aaron chopping up stuff in the background… sounds so homely like there isnt a care in the world besides R&R.

Anways, this was a completely random post. haha. enjoy if you actually bothered to watch.

Ok ok,

i just have to admit that on Friday at service i had a moment where i freaked out and instantly i looked for my best service operations friend Chris who is faithfully at ABS every friday at 430pm.  But i soon realized that Chris wasn’t around to help me solve the hiccups and i almost went into mini-panic mode as i realized the responsibility of the running of the service was upon me.

But with that I felt the need to rise up to the position i am supposed to be filling.  With this new found motivation i picked up my game and began to take things as they came, seeking God for wisdom as well as those around me.  I have to say that i learnt alot in being solid with my directions and being … although i don’t like the word… authoritative in my actions in regards to time management.

As well as that God corrected my thinking in that I do not serve because my leaders are there because what if they all got called out to missions and i was left in charge?  Would my motivation be gone because my leaders are gone?  NO! *God said*  your motivation should never be gone because I am still here, i am your motivation!

woot… so Chris I’m learning, your leaving has not been in vain =D  Can’t wait to hear everything you have stored up for our meeting on saturday!!

What a great weekend. It was packed full of adventures, food, God, life, worship, praise, fellowship, balloons, cakes, permanent marker, games and so much more!

The weekend began on Friday morning when VS met up at Ikea to have $2 breakfast. It has actually been a long time since VS had the opportunity to just chill out. I have been really amazed by the work God has done in these young guys and girls and I am so encouraged whenever I see them come to church and LG despite the mounting exams and assignments. They definitely deserved this end of term break! And even better is hearing the amazing testimonies of extension after extension for assignments after the easter long weekend was taken up by OC. God truly rewards those that put Him first!

After breakfast i had to go into uni to hand in my assignment so Winnie, Menisha and Liz tagged along because winnie and Menisha wanted to check out their future university (in Jesus name!) UQ: The University of Queensland. It was definitely one of Queensland’s famous sunshine days! That’s way we are called the Sunshine State!

After that we rocked up to Lucy’s place with V10 for her 23rd surprise party cleverly concocted by some of VS while V10 got her in my opinion, one of the most awesome presents a LG has ever given to their LG leader! A pair of hot pink bonds all signed by V10 and this awesome photo collage of some of their photos! And the cake… MAN THAT CAKE!! IT WAS SOO GOOD!!! Passionfruit cheescake made by our new *but feels like forever* friend Rachel Wang! The party was heaps of fun, from decorating the house to decorating some of our faces the Voltage community can only be described as the Acts 2 church in action with young people! Who says High Schoolers can’t lead the way in the house of God!

After the party we all headed out to our Ablaze Service. It was truly a God annoited night. I was program managing and started to freak out at problem after problem after problem arose. From having no back up guitar to the disaster of a broken G string with no replacement strings AND no replacement guitar, to a moment of panic because the visualiser couldn’t find the projector jack. God reminded me that everything will be fine and as I began to put my trust in God everything turned out great! With a great practical message by Torch on how to put Love in Action!

We had V10 on saturday which is always a blessing to be apart of. We spoke about… dating… eek… haha… and I was really amazed and moved by the maturity of our grade 10ers as we shared what the ideal courtship (not dating) age is for them personally. It ranged from 21- 32, we broke into boy and girl discussion groups and I was really proud to see Wes taking hold of his role and being a great example to the boys.

Saturday night I went out for dinner with Nick, Wes and Adam. Fellowship was great and after dinner we kept running into people from Hope Church that we ended up staying back for another hour!

Sunday we had the VS LG and I have to say that God is IN THE HOUSE! Man, the spirit of God during VS is so powerful it is undeniable. I am always amazed by the community built in VS and as Lucy used to put it “a circle of unlikely friends.” We had heaps of fun today at life group. It started out with a game of ‘Animal Snap’ another one of VS’ randomly fun and LOOOONG… and i mean LOOONG games! Last week we played a game for about 40 minutes straight and i think this game went for about 30 minutes. Praise and Worship was exciting and passionate as it always is, it is always such a refreshing time and I thank God that despite my obviously big mistakes during praise… i couldnt play a chord progression quick enough in the bridge of my redeemer lives that i stopped playing and said out loud “OOPS!”. I couldnt stop laughing after but I thank God that His spirit saw the humor in it and decided to stay =D

The Word was powerful as Nick spoke of bringing our brokenness as a sacrifice unto Him. To remove anything that has become an idle in our lives and bringing to him our brokenness. By now it was about 445pm and LG is meant to end at 530pm so we moved on to each one of us sharing a testimony or a struggle we have had during the past weeks and right then and there my heart just melted. Testimonies of personal victories, struggles and life lessons poured out from every individual. I was really proud of everyone and only know that there are going to be more life changing stories coming out from this group. We finished right on the dot at 5:30 but we ended up leaving at 6:30 because we became obsessed with capturing the life of this life group on digital film! From Ninjas, to complete randomness…

Over all this weekend has blessed me greatly. I have been so refreshed by the fellowship, teaching and chilling. Love everything about God, His church, His people and His promises. I love everything about Voltage and know there are only GREATER things to come from this group!

HERE IS A PLETHORA OF [SELECTED] PHOTOS FROM THE WEEKEND! and i mean selected, there are 100s more but that would be way to much.

Be influenced by me

and become an influencer to them

- God, to me.

Making facial expression with eyes drawn on your eyelids and with your eyes closed is pretty hard.

But can you guess the emotion?

And the master of facial control. Looks like everything is curling into the centre of his face!

creepy ain’t it.