His here! God is in the house! I have been floored by the work of God over the past few Ablaze Services. Absolutely floored. There is no doubt that God is doing something in our midst and I am so excited! This is what the local church is all about, this is what our lives are all about… impacting and serving others in our generation.
But most of exciting of all is something is stirring in our Highschool ministry. In the past 2 weeks we’ve seen 2 grade 11 (WOO) salvations and a couple of new year 12 contacts. I am 100% confident that we hit an all time high in service attendance last night and the this years camp is gonna be so awesome I am litterly jumping out of my seat every time i think about it!
I was so excited last night that I couldnt even sleep!!!! haha
And if you havent heard… WE RAN OUT OF COMMUNION CUPS ON FRIDAY NIGHT! ok we had 4 left… BUT WE PRACTICALLY RAN OUT!!! PRAISE THE LORD!!!!
sweet because… I HAVE NO MORE LECTURES FOR SEMESTER 1!!!!!!!
bitter because… i made some really awesome mates this semester.
so why is that bitter… because if i pass all my biology subjects i will only have to finish the geography units i have left meaning i won’t beable to do any biology subjects unless i want to do an unnecessary extra 4th subject for the sake of friendship hmmm.
but above all i reackon this group of people i met have definetly been God sent. In the past i struggled to make friends that stuck by beyond uni talk and because my weakness is also my strength (passion for people) it felt like i was walking into university alone. Like they say the loneliest place is in the middle of a crowd.
How i met the mates i have now are actually pretty random. My anatomy friends i met because my mate who works at subway with me went to the cricket instead of the practical so i walked in on my own found a table sat down and eventually found out that the table i was sitting at was the table my mate usually sits with. From there we never moved from that table… occasionally being frustrated by the randoms that seemed to just pop by and rather than help seem like a burden.
The renal prac crew haha… that one is completely random. I signed up for Human Physiology 1 month late and only knew one person (my mate from work as well) so he introed me to his prac group. During the first prac we kinda got bored and talked to teh group next to us. The next week we had a prac testing our urine (hence renal prac), 4 of us were there and the other 3 from the other group were there… we need to make a group of 6 so we opted for combining and made a group of 7 then the other fella came around and we had a total of 8 peeps. We joked about our pee, took pictures of our pee (inside the lil sample bottles) and even joked about becoming a crew, the renal prac crew with facebook group and all. And wouldn’t ya know it, that night the renal prac group was born.
We hardly sat together in lectures, hardly saw each other outside of the biom2007 but every time prac came around we had non-stop laughs. And although our 2 or 3 attempts to have dinner together were foiled by my work, annettes scouts or just being plain poor university students… we still gonna get together on the hols haha.
So God has done a strange and amazing work in my university life. Thank you Lord, you really know how to make a fella feel good.
Half of the Renal Prac Crew. More pictures coming soon!
I was thinking through some stuff for ablaze camp and i watched the Ablaze camp promo multimedia again and i sat back and thought to myself.
wow justin, how inconsiderate are you… you forgot to thank the most important person that makes half this multimedia as impacting as it is.
God.
so heres a shout out to you Jesus
Thank you Lord for not just birthing and inspiring this concept for the multimedia but for providing everything that was needed. It was truly by your hand that everything in this multimedia came together so smoothly. But most of all i want to thank you for providing a perfect sunrise for wes and myself to film. Even the little glitches here and there like kicking the tripod stand, i reakcon you planned for me to do! I mean if i didn’t kick the stand the sunrise would have been way off to the left side of the screen, but after the kick it was in prime position! Trust me to see the tragedy than the blessing in disguise! And even the clouds Lord! they add that extra touch of beauty! and once again, that morning i had a winge about the clouds blocking the sunrise yet when it came together it looked even more beautiful than i could have ever imagined! from the sunrise to the rolling clouds to the mist that covered the city that morning, Thank you Lord for making this one filiming session more than i could have asked for! You are always watching out for me and giving me so many blessings in disguise!
You provided awesome pictures and the snapshots of our love, hope, faith, hunger, pray, seek models were snapped quicker than you can say cheese!!! and you even blessed phil and I with random close ups in the pictures of Ablaze in the last 15 seconds! That was seriously something that i could not have come up with and made such a huge difference! You’re so creative Lord!
Thanks Lord your awesome. And your the king of the multimedia … but thanks for letting me borrow some of that gifting =D . This multimedia is for you Lord and all glory and praise belongs to You!
is breakfast and lunch for those who don’t know what it means.
On Thursday night nick and i stayed over at wes’s place over at Hope Island to ease the pain of an early morning wake up on friday to take nick to the coolangatta airport.
After wes and I dropped nick off we had a bit of a walk around balinga or something to see if there were any good breakfast places. Some of the menus looked enticing by the cost of 10 - 15 bucks each seemed a fair bit to expensive for our liking.
So we opted for an alternative. Go back to Hope Island, shotgun a lakeside barbie and make our own breakfast with 3x the amount food for 3/4 of the price. So that is exactly what we did. We headed back up the coast to Hope Island stopped over at bilo and picked up some food to cook… by now it was about 10:45am so we decided to combined breakfest and lunch and have Brunch!
check out the vid and have a gander and what two boys who havent eaten yet eat!
after some manly face stuffing! we headed back to the house washed up and had a good lie down… and ended up sleeping till about 4PM. Good day ay… was awesome to hang out with me cousin… can’t wait till we go camping WOOT! SPINIFEX TANAMI!
Not in the sense that i want to die but in the sense that i want to grow. To grow in my faith towards God and my servanthood towards His people.
Chris spoke a powerful message on Friday night (awesome job mate) about being “Committed to serve”. During prayer meeting Lisa asked us to share one thing that we want to get out from service that night and i told Rashaun that i don’t want to be inspired anymore, I want to be convicted & challenged. To not remain satisfied with where i am at.
God is amazing when He answers prayers ain’t He?!
“The church stewards the only message that can transform a human heart. Its future rests in our hands. We are tied to the destiny of our church”
Do I believe in this yet? Honestly not 100% quite yet… but I am almost there. I realised that as i get closer and closer to that 100% mark my outlook on life changes. I don’t look forward to flashy programs, i look forward to community. I don’t look forward to just hanging out, i look forward to fellowship. I don’t just sit around with unchurched mates, i think of every way possible to outreach to them. I don’t wait to be served, i go out and serve. I don’t just sit around at home feeling bad for myself, i look to christ for forgiveness and strength. I don’t see Friday night as another thing on my schedule, i see it as an opportunity to commune with my creator.
Life really changes when you know God is “THE ONLY WAY”
Today was actually a fun day of uni. For some reason from the moment i hoped on to the bus to uni to the bus ride home i was actually happy about the day of uni.
I think it is because my final assignment due on friday is basically done in my mind and all i need now is to type it up. Don’t worry guys its only 250 words =D which is a big big plus.
So despite beginning at 8 am and ending at 5pm i had fun, particularly in the Human Physiology prac we had today. i totally owned in the vitagraph thinge… my FEV for the average male that is 198cm tall at 20 years of age is 5.18L/min. Mine is 5.60L/min =D And i went off the scale for one of the machines… nice
Ablaze Service last Friday was pretty awesome especially for me personally.
I had many moments of just laughing at God’s lil quirks as he spoke to me and as well healed me!
In the day i had some lunch that didnt really sit well with my stomach, it tasted awesome but a dish that is rice, chicken, some onion and a whole lotta oil isn’t the best thing for ya and my stomach was proclaiming it! So I rocked up for set up for Ablaze Service and as time went by it got worse and worse. I was extremely tempted to just say to everyone hey i’m feeling real sick so can you please do this for me. But i remembered what Ps Mark Edwards shared with us last week “Come to the church with a spirit of giving not getting” and wanting the ABS team, for that night, to express that, I knew that i had to push through the pain and give of myself to serve.
I said a lil prayer to God asking him for strength and forgiveness for my selfishness as I carried equipment around and set up the drum kit. I didn’t think to ask for healing but just said “God i want to serve without complaining and just be a blessing to everyone around me” Set up continued and to my discomfort the pain got worse. But i just kept on chuggin’
Prayer meeting came around and soon after prayer finished i realised something. The pain in my stomach was completely gone! I thought maybe i had a sudden adrenaline rush and it would come back but then i asked God what happened and i just felt a peace as God reminded me of my faithfulness to serve the church despite the discomfort. I thought to myself “wow God! I didn’t even ask you for it. Thanks heaps!”
The other aspect was in regard to the Build Unidus Faith Pledge. Coming to the Friday i was dead set on what I knew God wanted me to give, in fact i already knew the friday before! I was not even close to fulfilling my pledge from last year and i knew God wanted me to give the same amount PLUS the amount i still had left. But i thought to myself, hey God why don’t i just round it out, i like rounded numbers. The time came to pledge and i was just about to write down the amount when I felt God just nudge me so I stopped and just simply said “God what is the exact amount want me to give?” Instantly a number flashed in my mind - i looked at my e-mails for the total amount that i gave last year and low and behold the two numbers added together was exactly the number that God placed in my mind… well $1 extra which gave me a lil laugh.
So its gonna be a MEGA stretch. I pasted my personal copy of the pledge in my diary and underneath it i said “God this amount literally makes me go X_X “ But i know He will provide!
We officially launched Ablaze Camp ‘08 | DESPERATION at the Ablaze Service tonight.
I was so stoked when I saw the final print out of the flyers and registration forms. But the highlight of the night was definitely the Ablaze Camp Promo. I sat back in awe (and slightly anxious about the possibility of the sound or laptop stuffing up) at what was playing on the screen. But in the end I thank God for such a great response to the logo, multimedia and flyers!
Church get ready for something even bigger than last year as we get Desperate for God. And look after those flyers. They are very precious to the camp organisers =D.
high quality version is much clearer : click on the video and press watch in high qualityunder ‘Views’
Kudos to Nick Lim, Phillip Pham, Wesley Woo, Nancy Hsu, Jay Suede, Rebecca Lay, Aaron Chan, Lauranne Tham, Fung Supachok, Amy Law, Dominic Rozells, Mark Westall, Fatima Lay, Jien-mae, Marcus Jones, Mary Park & Paul Ng
9 Weeks till Camp. REGISTER NOW!
For more information please e-mail us at desperation2008@ablaze.org.au and for more information on Ablaze please visit us at www.ablaze.org.au
