leadership thoughts from kung-fu panda

Shifu: You must defeat Tai Lung, you are the dragon warrior!
Poh: I’m not the dragon warrior, you’ve never believed I was the dragon warrior!

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Tai Lung: you are weak!
Shifu: Obeying your master isn’t a weakness

p.s. MASTER OOGWAY ROCKS!

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This one goes out to VOLTAGE

High School Musical 2 – Fabulous… sung by some guys… or is it?

haha read the video description to figure out why its funny!

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take me to neverland plz!

Oh man, for some reason I have been thinking about the future… and not just what tomorrows future holds for me, but i have been thinking about the next 30, 40, even 50 years of my life!  And if you know me… this is a rare, rare, rare … almost unheard of…. even mythical situation!

But I think in light of the recent marriage in Ablaze (CONGRATZ LEON AND KASE!), and seeking God for some direction, and coming towards the final months of my science degree (THANK YOU JESUS!) and moving into my professtional education year next year, attempting to do my tax return and failing miserably, and my recent bill spaz out… i am honestly really scared of the future…

I don’t want to grow up… i don’t want to be responsible for my finances, and buying a house, and paying rates and taxes.  Although I want to live on my own and be able to invite my mates over anytime and just chill in my nice apartment in the city… how i will afford it… ummm yea let’s not think about that hehe
But yes i know that is a stupid attitude to have.

But thinking in decades rather than years or even weeks is something that boggles my mind and makes me want to hide under my desk.

but my number one fear at the moment is… what if at the end of 50 years of serving God as a full-time minister… I look back and realise about 5 years in i switched on the auto-pilot.  Crap… God… no never please I don’t even want to think about that…

i have come to a conclusion.  I think i may have commitment issues in relation to taking things to the next level…

God grant me Your Spirit of excellence and cast out this spirit of mediocreity.  No one achieves anything sitting back in their chair, teach me to lean forward into your presence.

p.s. God… please give me a wife that will keep things interesting =D… eh ok i typed that and it sounds really sus… BUT WASH YOUR DIRTY MINDS IF YOU THOUGHT OTHERWISE!

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a review of: Le JusChan

So tonight I visited the resturant named Le JusChan.

It was fairly nice, and homely.  Pretty quiet atmosphere.  The chef didn’t seem very experienced but created something quite interesting and tasty.

I ordered the Grilled Pork Chop with caramelised onions, stir-fried cauliflour on a bed of fresh green lettuce.

The Pork chop was a little over cooked and a wee bit dry in the centre, but the lettuce added a fresh, crisp snap to that cut through the heaviness of the meat and stir-fried vegies.  The carmelised onions added a nice twist to the apple sauce which is usually associated with pork.

Overall the meal was nice with some interesting flavours.  I rate it 3.5 out of 5.

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the long overdue P.A.C.R!

that stands for Post Ablaze Conference Reflections!

Well, well, well… Naughty Justin.  I haven’t even done my P.O.C.R. (Post Oceania Convention Reflections!).  But this is a little bit more fresh in my brain so I’m opting to do this first.

Anyway Ablaze Conference was about a month ago and it was seriously a life-changing event personally and coporately as a youth ministry.

There’s always a big buzz around huge weekend long events and this year was no exception.  With last year’s marketing and design setting the bar high, there was already a huge expectation for this year’s conference to out-do what we conjured up last year.  But I want to share breifly my experiences from doing ministry perspective and a personal perspective.

ministry:

Ablaze camp (what it was previously known as) has and will always hold that special place in my heart, why?  Because it was where my life was flipped upside down and I finally saw things from God’s perspective. So when I was given the opportunity to be apart of the core organising committee I jumped faster than I jump up for the fried chicken at Lai Lai’s.

Few months in and Nick had to step out from his overseeing role due to sickness which required me and the whole team to step up while under the guideance of the all-seeing (in a good way) Torch!  Many sleepless nights, thousands of e-mails later… then another thousand e-mail’s later, after printing, folding and stapling 130 conference journals, tweaking and re-tweaking programs conference came… and then conference went.

I learnt heaps through this process of being apart of ministry.

1. Humans have a natural cap. There is so only so much credit we have in our lives for doing ministry and once we reach the end of our cap and our attitudes, quality, motivation start to go down here.  This is when I (unfortuneatly) remember that 5 years ago I signed up for a supernatural cap… one that has no limit… the only condition – that I use Jesus on a day to day basis!
2. Apology Given before Acceptance. When we work in a business grudges are easy to deal with… because you have no real reason to deal with them because your simply working for your day’s wages.  But in ministry I learnt that the job comes third… behind God and behind others.  Organizing such a huge event naturally had our team at different perspectives and ideas and stepping on each other toes but ministry is here to help us become more like Jesus not less.  Saying sorry is hard… but being humble is a rewarded with becoming more Christ-like
3. Organising Events is really hard… hats off to Joy Sia our church Events Manager!
4. Jesus was, is, will always be and MUST be the centre of anything & everything I do.  Even if it’s folding 1000 pages of paper… Jesus must be the reason… otherwise you’ll be running on dry

personal:

So throughout the conference I found myself running around doing alot of stuff, troubleshooting & wanting to shoot the person that was causing the trouble… so I found that I didn’t get many opportunities to just spend time with God, my LG or my friends without having to talk about something ministry related.

But one night God shattered my already frail spirit and broke and beat me down like He was a mugger and I was a helpless man.

The call of being a pastor has lingered around my life since grade 7, confirmed somewhat in grade 12 and then through some personal encounters with God.  But a lot of the time I keep it to myself and try not to flaunt it, but at the same time I get jealous of people who are praised for their leadership potential, their pastoral calling or their quick genuine rise to leadership.

This night I had to bring it to the feet of Jesus, it was poisoning my character, my relationship with God and my relationship with others.

I said to God… “I don’t want this jealousy anymore… I hate how it makes me feel, I hate how it makes me act…”

God’s response, “What if I told you to let go and die to this call?”

I responded with, “WHAT!? No way God how could you say that to me?  This is what has kept me going these few years how can you tell me to die to it and let it go?”

God, “I want you to die to this call and dream…”

*Fuss fuss fuss… grumble grumble*

Me: “Ok God…”

I was left speechless, broken and purposeless… what am I supposed to do with my life now?  I pondered after conference and spoke to my shep who gave me a new perspective… maybe I don’t need to die to the call, but die to the position… in that moment the light came back on and I felt the Holy Spirit instill the call back into my life while giving me a whole new outlook on humility.  The dreams and desires for the position died at conference not the call, the pride that I felt would come with the position were crucified the night I decided to let go.

But here are 3 other major hit home points!

1. The past is a memorial of what God has done and a signpost for what is to come in the future!
2. Like less than 10% of paperclips are being used for their purpose.. what about me?
3. “Kairos” – not just an ordinary moment in time… but a God-given, divine opportunity.

Thanks to everyone who took part in serving, without this conference wouldn’t have happened.  And thanks to everyone who joined us for 3 days and 3 nights of Food, Fun, Fellowship and most importantly for the upstream swim up the river of Living Waters!

That’s it for my P.A.C.R.

Ablaze Confernece 2010 is already in the stirring pot!

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God saved my @$$

Man study is the thorn in my side in this season fo my life.  But with Semester 1 of this year being a crucial semester in terms of my enrolement in UQ as well as my graduating year, I had to step up my game and pass all my subjects.

Towards the end of the semester there was a moment where I had left one of my assignments to the night before.  It was worth about 40% of my total grade for the semester and I thought it was going to be easy… but how wrong was I.

I started the assignment and as I started to read about global warming and rising sea levels I felt my brain begin to drain and then some.  Until i reached a moment where I stopped and had a mental breakdown.

I sat in front of my computer feeling no hope of passing the assignment, let alone finish it and as I began to rationalise that dropping the subject was the only way out of this dilemma I prayed.  I was at the point where I was on the UQ website ready to click ‘drop subject’  when the Holy Spirit reminded me of a command Jesus gave me.

“You must finish your university degree, that is my command to you.”

In the past I had considered dropping out of uni and was quite convinced it was God’s leading for me, but God spoke to me this command and so i stayed on.  I wondered how I would feel if I did end up doing what God had called me to but didn’t obey His command of graduating from university… and the only feeling that ran through my mind was… regret.

So I went to bed and slept off the emotions and went to twork the next day, came home and finished the assignement, printed it out and handed it in a day late.  As I placed the assignment through the slot I asked God to please allow His grace to be over my life not because I deserve but because I obeyed his command.

Uni continued and I got the e-mail to pick up my assignment … and my jaw dropped… I couldn’t stop thanking God…

See for yourself why.

OH man serioulsy a miracle!  God truly saved my @$$ big time and that is really the only way to describe what he did for me.

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Self-reliance

Tonight for the first time I managed to share the gospel to a guy that so obviously doesn’t believe in God… or so I thought.  Much like what Torch shared on Friday about sharing our faith stories and that sharing our faith whether it ends in victory or supposed ‘defeat’, it all contributes to one thing

to build our faith stronger

I gotta say that for the longest time I have wanted to share the Gospel to this guy but fearing the hard questions, and the abrasive comments I would just make half-bummed comments in response to some of his outburst.

But tonight was different, I believe the Holy Spirit was with us as I discovered a deeper yearning for truth and the desire to want to believe in a ‘higher power.’

Long story short nothing happened, we chatted I shared my view, he shared his… I asked him to come to our Freedom Service this Saturday and he said… no… but through it all and some strange events at uni my faith is being strengthed and I am finding that with Christ there is no rejection only confidence.

But a thought that keeps stabbing the “i can’t figure this out” cortex is

How do I make Christ relevant, in a society that finds Christ irrelevant?

I think talking about how great my life is as a Christian and getting people to agree that it is a “good thing” is pretty easy… but how do I get to them to want it for themselves…when self-reliance is glorified… there is no need for Christ… or so people think.

*sigh*  God i need that Holy Spirit annoiting that draws strength from you and not from me.  Save my friends please.  Why… because they need you… wah God I hate that i love this Love you’ve put in my heart because it reminds me everyday that i… can’t… do it… on my own.

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FAIL MAC… HAHA

I found this really funny…

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If happiness was just 6 things.

Tagged by Becca

So hard to knuckle it down to 6 things.  There is so many more things that make me happy.

#6 Food – in particular Steak

nothing soothes the soul better than a perfectly cooked-flame grilled, medium rare steak

#5 Throwing Yourself out there

Sometimes you just gotta throw yourself out there because failure is the prelude to success (cept in this guys case… cause failure is the prelude to death… LOL)

#4 A Lifetime of Randomness & Short Attention Spans

Figure 1: With to much chaos there an organisation cannot function efficiently. With to much order an organisation cannot maintain the attention of it’s demographic. But as Chaos Meets order there is what is known as “The Point of Complete Randomness.”

#3 Laughing Non Stop

Where would I be without my Laugh Box

#2 Friends

Don’t know where I’d be without having great friends around me.

#1 Getting thing’s off my chest

Some of my happiest moments have been getting things off my chest, whether it be to God, my shepherd or covenant buddy… Don’t harbour sin.

Ok so I’m going to Tag

1.  Zach Young

2. Steph Soh

3. Marcus Jones

4.  Victoria Pan

5. Xiang Yu

6. Jien-Mae Tan

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Modern entertainment

drawn, colored and posted on a Wacom tablet PC in a UQ lecture Theatre. RIBBet

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