On Bended Knees Cell Group Blog

Dealing with our Past

2006-02-04T10:04:00.000+08:00

Thank you Lord for the cell group last night. 26 people! wow.

Last week, cell was cancelled because quite a number of us had reunion dinner on Friday. Those of you who are addicted to your weekly dosages of cell, I hope you did not suffer any withdrawal symptoms.

Angela spoils market for our cell games. She said she was too free and made Christian 'heart attack' cards for the game. The prize of the game: Japanese biscuits and chocolate. She sure knew how to pamper us. I think she can make money from the cards she invented.

Lion King led his last worship for the cell before he goes to Adelaide for studies. Thanks LK! You'll be missed.

After that, I shared about dealing with our past, using Paul's example from our bible study. Before Paul was converted, he was a self-righteous pharisee who went around fiercely persecuting the church. Like Paul, we all have our past. Our past could be broken relationships, shameful acts, emotional baggages, wrongful acts, moments of weaknesses, disappointing moments etc. Some of us can remember them, some of us can't. But we all know it's stuck somewhere in the back of our conciousness.

So how shall we deal with our past? Lets look at how Paul dealt with it.
"Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus."
-Phi 3:13-14

Paul professed that he forgot what is behind and strained towards the goal Jesus called him to. What does 'forgetting what is behind' mean? Does it mean we literally block out this past of our memory? Do we totally ignore it? Perhaps we can look at 1 Cor 15:9-10 for an answer.
"For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them-- yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me."

From this verse we can tell that Paul did not forget about his past as he said he did not deserve to be called an apostle. Yet, he gave credit to God's grace, that by God's grace he was who he was.

Likewise, we need to reflect upon God's grace, that despite our past and iniquities, we are who are we are. Lion King asked me what I meant by that. Then I got my friend Philip to share his testimony.

Philip is our church caretaker. He has agreed to share his life story with us, of how he came to know the Lord in prison, how he backslided, and how God saved him again and again. I can't write more details because he has asked us to keep his testimony confidential.

Anyway, the point to his message was: despite his past, constant struggles with sins, God could forgive a man like him. There's no such thing as unpardonable sin.

I think we are like Philip. Even though we've never been to jail or taken drugs or participated in gang fights, I don't see ourselves any different from him. Because in God's eyes, there's no such thing as a big sin or small sin. All are sins alike. That is how unworthy we are of God's grace.

That is Philip's story. I believe each of us have our own story to tell. A story of God's love and forgiveness. Let us constantly remember it lest we take for granted God's grace again.

Jezebel!

2006-01-24T09:18:00.000+08:00

Yes, I know I missed last week’s entry! My bad! Argh. I will try really hard to keep this updated so that we got something to look back end of this year.

Games was led by Joni. We played a similar version of The Pyramid Game—you know, the Big Pyramid one where we are supposed to guess the category. Sumei was so good at the game. Who would have guessed golf course and timble as a category of ‘things with holes in them’? And can somebody revise primary school science with Gary again? He got the category of mammals, but all he could give was “Humans! Birds!” And birds are not mammals!

Alicia led worship. She started by asking two people to share testimonies of God. Gary shared about how his youth group has grown a lot. Grace shared about how when she was under spiritual attack, Jerry was waken up by the Holy Spirit to pray for her at the same time! I guess this is an example of how our small group should be like, watching out for each other and supporting one another.

After worship, we stood up, held hands and prayed together. Note to self: don’t leave open prayer open for too long when people have arms over each other’s shoulders.

I led BS about Jezebel. Jezebel, although it sounds quite nice, is definitely one name you should never name your kid. She was a manipulative queen who henpecked her husband, Ahab, and threatened to kill Elijah.

Due to our sinful and selfish nature, there will sometimes be this subtle power struggle in our relationships—between friends, bf/gfs, colleagues, schoolmates, family etc. It is natural for us to want control, and more so for people who are given authority.

We can exert control over people by:
-‘killing off’ people who correct us
-persuasion, commands, insults and other forms of manipulation through our tongue
-abuse of authority that doesn’t belong to us (‘God tells you to do this’ but in actual fact, did He?)
-threats, emotional blackmail
-bribery, being nice to people for ulterior motives

Opposite of manipulation is servanthood. Instead of serving ourselves first, Jesus demonstrated to serve and honor others first. We show true love when we put others before ourselves just like what Jesus did for us.

I believe many of us would not go to the extent of holding a knife to our friend’s neck for control. But we can certainly achieve control through more subtle means. Maybe it's time we humble ourselves and allow God to convict us if we have been manipulative to the people around us.

Supper was dim sum at geylang, between lorong 15 and 17 (but it's not lorong 16!). Yummy!!! Yan was eating yam... haha

Cell Vision of 2006: Christian Love

2006-01-09T10:09:00.000+08:00

Happy New Year everybody!! Ok, technically, we are already in the second week of 2006, not very new anymore. But still, I wanna wish everyone a blessed year ahead with God.

Cell this Friday was not our usual bible study session. After worship, we took time out to discuss what we hope to achieve from the cell. Some things you would soon to expect more of:
-outside Fridays fellowship time
-more time dedicated for sharing
-guest speakers
-worship course (conducted by sumei)
-girls get together outside Fridays (one coming up on 21st Jan at Yang Lin’s house)
-leadership course (conducted by Shaocai)
-ministry time during cell

As shared by Shawn, the cell vision for this year is Christian Love. We hope that by the end of this year, authentic relationships are formed, and God will mould us and show us to love each other deeply. Some people had reservations with this vision because they feel that it is quite abstract and difficult to translate to tangible actions. Some also thought that loving God should come first, then loving others will come naturally.

I guess having the vision doesn’t mean that we focus on one thing of our Christian walk and everything else is obsolete. Essentially, there is only one objective to being Christian—to become more like Jesus. Rather, a vision is picture that the leader paints to the entire cell group so that we may catch it and head towards that direction together. Having the same vision fosters unity, but the purpose of it fails if we disagree with it.

Also, having a vision does not mean that we have the answers and the detailed plan to attaining it. However, since Shawn has already prayed about it, let us all step out in faith and ask God to show us how to achieve it so that we will not depend on our strength, but on God alone.

Lets be open to how God can work in our cell and avail ourselves to His plans. My guess is that, to head towards this direction, we need to take the step of wanting to love others first. Love is an act of will. Next, we need to be prepared to be vulnerable to one another. As we grow closer, more ugly things of ourselves will begin to show. Are we willing to embrace them and still love each other? We ourselves also need to be open to rebuke as we air our bad habits out. I can see that God will move us out of our comfort zones of surface fellowship to a deeper relationship with one another, and we need to be prepared for that.

Post Christmas BBQ

2005-12-29T09:01:00.000+08:00

Jerry is currently working on his masterpiece for all our cell group outings. Here's a preview of his epic novel...

***

The laughter, the fun and the people. The perfect formula for a successful gathering. On the night of 27th Dec, 30 people met up in my house for a huge BBQ and potluck dinner. I can well say that it is one of the largest turnout we ever had in the past 1 1/2 years in the cell. The night was truly fantastic as we ate and chatted and admired at the culinary skills of those who cooked. The seafood and chicken sizzled strongly on the BBQ pit, prompting a strong aroma into the cool night air. The great array of homemade food was coupled with joyous feeling of fellowship. Even the rain did not deter us from enjoying our every bite. It is also the first time I had to squeeze 13 cars (plus 3 of mine) and 1 bike into my home. The enormous weight of the task of car slot allocation seemed omnipresent as each car rolled in after 8 pm.

Now as I closed my eyes to rest for the night, the calender rolled back to several days back, starting from where the idea all began....

End of part 1

Cell Retreat Day 3

2005-12-20T16:09:00.000+08:00

More from Mr Meh Meh....

***

I woke up a bit late and realised that we had to rush to meet the 10 am timing we set for ourselves. Actually i was pretty reluctant to get off the floor since i got a sleeping bag and 3 layers of comforters to cushion me. I heard that eileen and marcus fought over a piece of blanket with shawn snoring away. So I quickly stowed away the blankets i stole from them last night and acted blur.

after rampaging through the mess we left behind in the past 2 days, we found some unclaimed items. here is our "Lost and sometimes Found" Section.

1) White Fila Cap
2) A plastic bag of clothes *claimed by Youwen*
3) Insect Repellents
4) Thai titbits *claimed by my stomach*
5) Eileen *claimed by Kevin*

There were other stuff which I couldn't figure out what it was and threw them away. I was still a bit groggy at that point of time. actually, I am always groggy on sunday mornings.

we unceremoniously took watever we could carry back on our hands and bags and headed back to singapore.

shawn marcus and i had a late breakfast from the wanton mee stall while the rest have to rush off to church.

i was a bit tired when i reached home, can't remember much else.

Cell Retreat Day 2

2005-12-20T08:53:00.000+08:00

This is the second part of Jerry's report. I think we need more pictures!

***

in the morning i was awaken by the complaints from marcus that he felt that just slept in the Artic. Oops. looks like not everyone has the same amount of blabber like me.

jason also related with us how zhiwei snored. it was totally hilarious. kevin was still sleeping away when everyone has woken up. most prob catching his sleep since he was in the epicentre of the snore-room for the entire night.

angela was the first to wake up among the girls. thus she had the honour of making us breakfast. tasted great. just that the bread wasn't toasted as what we would like to be.

with the morning blues still lingering around, we watched some lousy programmes on TV.

some of us want to go up to the quarry again to grab the scenic view on camera. the small party consist of me , marcus , jason, bernice and yasmine. the girls heeded our warning of swarming mosquitoes and layered themselves with coats of insect repellent. bernice sprayed enough to
1) kill all the mosquitos and other insects in a 3-block radius.
2) fermented the room with a lemon grass smell and
3) achieved the status of IR Girl.

after readied ourselves, we set off on bicycles towards the quarry. halfway up the knoll, our IR Girl lost her superpower and started to attract all kinds of mosquitoes. this time round, we took a digicam with us to take photos off the top of the knoll. we also have a lot of fun trying out our own echos. I tried shouting quack... no echo. looks like a duck's quack doesn't echo.

When we reached back to the resort, marc, jon, chuu and gen had joined us. chuuling was nice enough to mop and clean the room. with me full of mud and dirt, i really dun dare to walk freely in the room. she could send me flying off to Tuas with her scissors kick.

we were off to a light bible study session and worship led by shawn and lionking respectively. after being left to do some quiet time alone, I fell asleep. we ordered lunch plus special delivery. and once again, galilean ordered a $6 hor fun.

we had the lunch delivered to the pavilion in the resort together with the coconuts. was never disappointed with the food, though the coconuts are left to open heat and turned sour. had an great array of choices since the girls can't finish theirs. lionking never failed to amuse me with his food tactics. He finished eating his $6 hor fun even before i could open my food. I wonder how big is his mouth. at this time, lynn charles lawrence and colin joined us.

after lunch, we started the amazing grace. but my brain failed the logic test as i grouped all the girls into 1 group and all the guys into another. up to now, i still can't figure out what went wrong. luckily, bernice and angela was there to save the day as they re-organised them into proper teams.

the amazing race started off with crossword puzzles. it was a set of crosswords to be done together with a word search. all the answers in the crossword can be found in the word search. I politely reminded the teams that any team who spelled Jesus with a G will be disqualified. Both teams did pretty well.

next the teams were engaged in a photo hunt around the the resort. angela was tagging one team and i was tagging another. it was a pretty tiring search, but we certainly had fun. Kudos to angela for the tough last clue. it stumbled all of us.

we all played the poet's hunt. They had to find objects as stated in the poem and convinced me and angela that it fitted the requirement. the last game we played was Swamp Thing. For a short moment, both team were horrified at the name. But actually, it was just another intellectual game.

After the games ended, i dropped the bombshell about the point scoring system. God's Amazing gRace... i think someone wanted to shaft my head into the 707 water pipe after i annouced my system.

we had worship led by yasmine (which i incidentally fell asleep again) and we did a 2005 review for each of us. I took the chance to keep myself awake by jotting down what each person said unto my laptop. Yasmine was particularly encouraged by the growth of the cell that she was lost for words. fortunately, lionking finished her speech for her. as a matter of fact, he helped a lot of people finished their speeches. The only problem i've got was to translate what he said into english.

after that, we set off in 2 taxis for dinner at the jetty restaurant. really good stuff. The fried mantou, chilli crab and steamed prawns tasted heavenly. the minced meat tofu and the fish were just simply fantabulous. It has been a long time since I enjoyed seafood beneath a cool december sky. The leaves on the trees danced to the breeze of the sea, seasoning the quiet ambience with another stratograph of relaxation. (ok i am just bullshitting here, it was a bit warm. but i really love the food)

with my table consist of me, zhiwei and lionking... 'nuff said. Even grace had 3 bowls of rice. she should eat more, her thighs were like one-third the size of mine.

half of the group headed back to singapore to rest while the other half headed back to chalet. things did not turn out as well as we planned and only 6 were allowed to stay. me shawn marcus zhiwei joni and eileen had stayed back. I missed my bed a lot but had no choice but to stay.

we played some 3 person polar bear. it was a real cheap thrill. We also tried tormenting eileen with black magic until she figured it out after some time.

6 of us cramped unto the 2nd level. Shawn was busy with the accounts side of the budget while i was trying to retype the 2005 review. the rest was bouncing around in the bed. it broke at least 3 times. thankfully, the entire bed did not collapse unto the first floor.

there were not much activities for that night hence i turned in early at 12 30. i had the privilege of the entire living room by myself so i tuned the air con to 16 degrees full blast. loved it. the rest of the guys took the 1st level bedroom.

I thought that with the room so cold, no one would really wan to come into the icy wasteland to disturb me from my sleep. boy, was i wrong. 2am, i can hear some footsteps around the room. 3 am, i was asked if i got beer. 4 am, i got a torchlight shone at my face. 5 am, i still can hear eileen babbling.

Finally I followed what gary did the night before and used the straw mat to built a little red indian hut over myself to filter out the noise and the cold. Alas... it only covered till my knees.

Nevertheless, I was glad that I could have a proper rest after a real fun day out.

Cell Retreat Day 1

2005-12-20T08:46:00.000+08:00

Jerry's report for the cell retreat... very detailed. It encapsulates all the funny unforgettable moments we had during the retreat. Day 2 and 3 coming up...

***

zhiwei shawn and angela took a cab and met me at my home. we loaded the stuff and headed for changi to meet up with marcus and lionking. we were the first batch to head for ubin. had a quick lunch at changi village. headed for the jetty.

while boarding the bumboat to ubin, i realised that the boat we were taking was pretty low.. quite a big height gap between the deck and the jetty. kinda worried for gary and yasmine.

during the 10 minutes boat ride, we were a bit uncomfortable with the boat sinking so close to the water. but who can blame the boat... it had me zhiwei and lionking on it.

met up with gary at the ubin ferry after having 7 + 1 free coconuts. took a van into the resort and checked in ourselves.

the resort was in a pretty bad shape and requires tons of cleaning and rearrangement. we requested for cleaning equipment and started cleaning the entire place.

things were pretty slow going and we started off with prayers and thanksgiving for the retreat. then we rented some bicycles and decided to check out the ubin quarry.

it wasn't a very far ride to the quarry, though we realised that our bikes cannot go any further. looked like we have to continue our journey on foot. i was glad that marcus was the front man in the trek upwards, i dont like to get all the spider webs in my face.

there were 4 viewing places in the quarry. as we go higher and higher, the view kept getting better and better. halfway up, we spotted a dark evil cloud coming our way over the horizon. I looked at marcus, and he looked at me. Rain. Big Rain. this led us to make a inevitable conclusion: let's keep going up.

the view on top was magnificent (though i cant see Batam). its certainly not an everyday view that we can enjoy in the city of Singapore. abeit those HDB blocks scarring the otherwise beautiful horizon... must always be those silly people staying in western singapore.

feather light rain started to fall upon us, urging us that we should head downwards. soon, it became a shower. it volleyed us with heavy pelts of water and we moved quickly down hill to find our bikes. we managed to seek shelter in the hut below. by the time we hit the foot of the hill, we were all drenched. our stuff were wet and the some of the guys took the chance to rip off their shirts and started taking photos in the rain. pity angela.

with the rain, we had to change our plans. either we head back to the resort, or continue our venture northwards to the prawn farm and beach. marcus did a spectacular job by using the Air Force Weather Radar Tech 3001 to track storm clouds heading towards our location. there's none. Okay so we continued out journey via bikes up north. the air was much fresher and the weather was much cooler after the rain.

we met a killer slope along the way to the prawn farm. lionking was really struggling with gary shouting words of encouragement. the slope downwards was another danger too. considering the wet ground and poor brakes of the bike, one can easily skid off the ground if the brakes were applied too hard. unsurprisingly, zhiwei was the fastest to go down the slope with no paddling effort.

our 2nd stop was the prawn farm. the first pond that greeted us are full of maggots. i wonder if our prawns on saturday would have maggots. apparently someone made a comment that the place smells like Hae Bee Hiam. The uncle at the farm told us that he is selling fresh white prawns for $16 per kg. Hmm... we told him that we will come again tomorrow.

next we headed north to visit some beach. i wonder what kinda beach exist in ubin... Wasn't very pretty beach, although we can see malaysia from there. but at least lionking pulled himself all the way to the beach. tough guy.

we headed back to the resort. halfway there, i realised that something was ringing in my pocket. its zhiwei's handphone. i picked up and answered in the most coarse voice i could muster. but joni just refused to believe me that the person talking to her was zhiwei with a bad sore throat.

joni, bernice and kevin joined us. yay! we got 10 people now. plus they brought something really really critical that me and shawn forgot. Toilet paper.

after appreciating the toilet paper, we headed for dinner. 10 people, 7 bicycles. 3 brave guys (gary shawn and zhiwei) volunteered to walk to the jetty. wow, this is so great! this means the rest could watch a movie on TV before setting off on bicycles.

To my surprise, the 3 guys reached the restaurant before we do. only after sometime they admitted that they hitched a ride from a pickup driven by the prawn farm owner. he remembered us because we told him we were going to his farm again on saturday.

yasmine and grace joined us at the jetty. had really good food. lionking had a lot of food.

he had $6 fried rice. it was BIG i tell you. Think of biggest lump of rice on the biggest plate you have ever seen.

now double that size

you are not even close.

we had a good round of beer before decided to leave as it started to rain.

the girls + lionking took a cab back. the rest cycled back in the night with random lightning flashed across the sky, illuminating the entire backdrop of ubin in short burst of white lights. as per military style, marcus was the point man and gary was the vanguard. the rest filled up the ranks with me in front of gary and shawn ahead of me.

While we were cycling past the snake shrine, a great streak of lightning enveloped the entire place with a spooky white glow. at that moment, shawn saw a white lady with long hair. i saw her long tongue. gary saw her bbqing her long tongue. gary concluded that she was just selling Sio Bak.

we reached back and we took turns to clean up. dinner was great. had really good worship and prayers lead by bernice.

we also had a contest on the scariest girl in the cell (SGIC). bernice and grace tied up for the first spot. personally, grace spooked me out with her looks.

played several games like black magic and MRT game. kevin showed real enthusiasm in black magic. unfortunately, no one believe him when we played polar bear. he was a real enthu guru i tell you.

Jason, against all odds, reached the resort after midnight. we tried to spook him out with bernice. but it didn't work. perhaps jason didn't see the other woman behind bernice.

we continued with polar bear and zhiwei was the polar bear for 3 rounds in a row. And I was evil enough to convince bernice to kill off jason to clinch victory for the polar bear club in the last round.

as we turn in for the night, i switched on my laptop to log the activities for the day. the girls took the 2nd level. the snorers took the bedroom and the rest fill up the living room. i was enjoying a nice whiskey from my container and turned the air con to 17 degrees with full blast fan. felt great. like a real polar bear. i looked around and realised everyone was asleep. suddenly, there was a movement in the staircase. i grabbed my torch and saw joni's and yasmine's face... was very thankful it wasnt grace.

before i turned in to slumber, i directed the aircon vent towards marcus and youwen since i was a bit chilled. i smiled at my evil intervention, took a few more swings of whiskey and went to sleep at 3.

Knowing Our Place

2005-11-14T12:12:00.000+08:00

Lynn led worship today. She shared about how helpless she felt as a medical student on attachment, and how God provided for her when she was feeling rather down.

Today’s cell group size shrunk considerably. Probably because of the exams. We decided to skip games cos we were short of time.

BS was the last chapter of the series that we have been doing. Notes to the bs are below:

TITLE OF BIBLE STUDY: KNOWING OUR PLACE

SUMMARY OF THE 10 COMMANDMANTS: THE HIGHLIGHTS

1. YOU SHALT HAVE NO OTHER GODS BEFORE ME
The greatest god that we worship is ourselves.
Do we worship other gods?

2. YOU SHALT NOT MAKE FOR YOURSELF AN IDOL
First commandmant consist of the motivation, the second one is the manifest of the motivation into actions.
God detests idolatry and it’s an insult to Him.
We can worship other people as idolatry.
Do we take an extra step of worshipping the gods in our hearts?

3. YOU SHALT NOT MISUSE GOD’S NAME
Praise God’s name and not to misuse it for the wrong intentions.

4. KEEPING SABBATH REST
Finding rest in God. Do we spend enough time with God?

5. HONOUR YOUR FATHER AND MOTHER
is obeying the same as honoring? It is a subset. Honoring consists of showing love, kindness and respect for them. Do we honor our parents?

6. YOU SHALT NOT MURDER
if anyone is angry, we are subjected to the same judgement as murder. Matt 5:21-26
We shared about all the difficult people that we faced in our school and working lives. Irritating people rub the edges off us and teach us to be more patient. Our negative reactions to them show our inadequacies. Jesus called us to love people who are difficult to love.

7. YOU SHALL NOT COMMIT ADULTERY.
Jesus says that if we lust after another, we are already commiting adultery in our hearts.
Keeping the marriage bed pure
Temptations start from our evil desires and we need to confess them to God

8. YOU SHALL NOT STEAL
Mal 3:10 Stealing of tithes from God
Taking things that do not belong to us rightfully

9. YOU SHALL NOT LIE
Lies have no legs. They need to lean on one another. Lying is a process and it tarnishes the reputation of God since we are all walking of testimonies. There are many reasons to lie, but we need to choose right!

10. YOU SHALL NOT COVET
stems from discontent. Comparative strain in covetousness. we begin to covet when we believe in the lie that obtaining a particular thing will make us happy eg. That bod, that money, that looks, that jewelry etc. we need to be content with what we have. Are we still able to praise God when something is taken away from us?

HOW MANY OF US HAVE NOT BROKEN ANY OF THE ABOVE BEFORE? HOW ABOUT ONE?
WE ARE ALL SINNERS!
READ ROMANS 3:9-20

TODAY’S lesson is an in-depth study of the third reason of the law.
The law points us to our place.
Romans 3:20
Therefore no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become concious of sin.
It is clear from this verse that we DO NOT become righteous by observing the law.

Q: Do you think Christians become too caught up with observing the law and external practices like the jews and forget their dependence on God for forgiveness? How and why?

From observation, the past ten lessons have often end up in debates whether a particular act is RIGHT or WRONG. Eg.

As much as it is good for us to know what’s right and wrong, and challenge oursleves intellectually, we are missing the point.

The law is not for us to try to rationalise our actions or know the line and try to get as close as possible to the line and still considered RIGHT. That is not the point.
Rather, the law reveals our PLACE of spiritual bankruptcy and unrighteousness, our PLACE of inadequacies.
Once we notice we are at this PLACE, we realise we need a saviour! We need GRACE! The law doesn’t point to ourselves and our self-righteousness; the law in fact points us to CHRIST.

2 people in the bible who knew their plac e
1. RUTH THE MOABITESS
Ruth 2:1-18
Background:
The story of Ruth paints a prophetic picture of God’s redemption plan for us. Ruth, the moabitess, was going back to Bethlehem (in Judah), with her mother-in-law. In that place, she was considered the 2nd class citizen, the minority.
Boaz took notice of her and gave her a place in the field and protection from the men.
Ruth’s reply (v.10): “Why have I found such favour in your eyes that you notice me—a foreigner?”
(v.13) “You have given me comfort and spoken kindly to your servant—though I do not have the standing of one of your servant girls.”

She didn’t say “you must be up to something” or “you’re so kind to me cos I’m pretty right?” or “I’ve been so noble to yr relative, of course I deserve some kindness here”
Instead she clearly knew her place as a second class citizen. She didn’t do anything tt warrants Boaz’s kindness—the favor was purely out of his grace!

Some of us clearly take grace for granted. We act as if God owe us something. Or we talk to God as if we deserve more than the grace that he has already given us.
We walk around with a lot of pride, thinking that all that we have is because we are very smart or capable. In actual fact we are not.

[Then Boaz also invited her to feast together with the harvestors. And even gave orders for his workers to intentionally leave behind some stalks so that she will pick it up. Again, another act of grace from Boaz! He didn’t want Ruth to feel embarrassed or tt it was an act of sympathy. He respected her diginity and drops things behind for her to pick up.]

Likewise, God sometimes drop things in our path for us to pick up. You cant explain it, but suddenly blessings just come naturally without our efforts. But some of us, after being blessed, we become proud, thinking it was all from ourselves. We take grace for granted! It is by God’s grace that we are given such opportunities that lead us to where we are.

2. THE CANAANITE WOMAN
Matt 15:21-28
The canaanite woman, knowing her place, didn’t exert her rights when Jesus rejected her 3 times. She knew her place and persisted for Jesus to heal her daughter. Demonstrated great faith!

question to ask ourselves:
have we taken grace for granted? How have we done that?
After studying the 10 commandmants, do we know our place? Are we more aware of ourselves? If not, we really need to reflect oursleves.

Now that we have realised the place that we are in, the place of spiritual bankruptcy, the place of desperation because we can never fulfill the commandmants by own action.
There are 3 possible wrong responses:
1. RATIONALISING
we try to play on the loopholes of the law. Maybe I can do this, maybe that etc. This can be right because blah blah. The ends doesn’t justify the means. At the end, it is God who justifies.
2. DWELL IN GUILT AND SHAME
don’t you have enough faith that God can forgive you?
3. IGNORANCE
totally ignore the law since it is hard to reach or the struggles are too strong. We give up. God didn’t meant the law for us to attain it ourselves. He knows we cant.

Read Romans 8:1-17
3 RIGHT COUNTER RESPONSES:
1. accept God’s righteousness by faith, and not our own
2. confess our total dependance on God
3. put to death our sinful nature and live by Spirit

To Covet or Not to Covet

2005-11-07T10:55:00.000+08:00

Cell group continued in church this week again. We have another new member! Welcome Angela! Now 33 people! Amazing! Thank God!

Games this week was led by eileen, and we played I Have Never. The biggest winner is Jin (or rather the biggest loser cos the last one standing is usually the most ulu one.. ha!). But I would like to nominate gary as the weirdest one. He has never eaten a banana in his entire life! Somebody buy him a banana split please! Youwen also could have won us hands down with his “I have never zao class before in my life”.

Worship was led by Sumei. I am very thankful to say that God’s presence was with us and I felt very ministered by the songs. Thanks alot Sumei!

Then bible study. Today was the last commandment (finally!): Thou shalt not covet your neighbour’s house etc etc. Shawn led this time. He began by asking us the definition of covetousness.

Shawn’s take was that there must be some comparative element. The words “your neighbour” show that it’s about this competitive nature of ours that is dying to better than everyone else around us. Some of us raise the questions of materialism. Must covetousness only include material wants? How about someone else’s happy family? A clue to answering this is to note that in the KJV version, covetousness and greediness are used interchangeably. Charles felt that it has largely to do with discontentment with what we already have. For example, grades. If you are not content with your own grades, then it is wrong.

Someone said covetousness could also mean getting something that you cant get from your own means. For example, it MUST be THAT neighbour’s house, car etc.

Discontentment leads to envy. Related to this topic, it is also important to note that it is wrong to be envious, but nothing wrong to be jealous. As pointed out by Gary, envious is when the object does not belong to you; while jealousy is felt when something rightly belongs to you is taken away.

The comes the question why is covetousness one of the 10 commandments? Eileen suggested that it is a sin that leads to subsequent actions that break the other commandments. For example, when you covet someone’s car, the next action that might develop is stealing. Shawn also added that covetousness is sometimes termed as the ‘gateway sin’ by some authors. Gerald reasoned that all we have is already given by God. Covetousness is an indirect accusation of God not giving you enough.

Shawn gave us a lot of verses that point to the consequences of covetousness. Refer to Col 3:5 and Eph 5:5.

How do you define godliness with contentment in 1 Tim 6:6? Youwen defined as remaining with God and keeping His commandments (1 Cor 7:17-24). Shawn added that it included surrendering to God everything.

This then brings to the next question, how is godliness with contentment great gain? Here, the gain refers to being emotionally freed, rest and security in God and free from meaningless pursuit.

One question we should ask ourselves is: do we possess our possessions or allow our possessions to possess us? One test is, if you don’t get what you want, will you continue to PRAISE God? Another test will be are you willing to give it all away?

Some verses to refer for this topic are: Heb 13:5, Pro 30:8-9, Psa 37:16, Job 1:20-22 and 1 John 1:16-17.

So, what kind of desires are considered godly and not covetous? Is it wrong to desire for something and ask God for it?

One thing to note, because of our carnal nature, it is very easy for us to rationalize to God every desire that we have. I feel that the sin of covetousness is when we believe in the lie that possessing that particular thing will give us the happiness and satisfaction that we need. Covetousness is the most subtle sin because it begins in the mind and no one can really tell. And it is also very easy to slip into the lie amid all the advertising and the media has been teaching us—we need those things to be happy. I guess, instead of reasoning with ourselves whether the desire is right or wrong, the thing we need to watch ourselves is this seemingly harmless lie.

We also concluded that it is difficult to define covetousness in concrete terms. Different people have different thresholds. Only we know ourselves well enough to identify where our stumbling blocks are. Abraham, Issac and his desecendants were all wealthy men and God has chosen to bless them. Thus, it is not wrong to desire blessings, if not we will end up as a defeatist Christian. Rather, we need to clearly know where our weaknesses lie in this area and avoid it.

Lie Lies Lice

2005-11-02T11:26:00.000+08:00

This week we were back in church for cell group! We had to migrate cos we were getting too big and the air con in the function room wasn’t strong enough for the crowd.

Alicia aka Mrs Legolas (as she claimed herself) led games! The game was a combination of pictionary and charades which she nicely named it as “Uniquely Singapore”. I’m sure Lin, now working at STB, will find affinity to this game. Basically, we had to act and draw out words that are associated with Singapore. I really take my hat off to Gary, who managed to draw out the word “kancheong” and act out the word “kiasu”. He’s indeed the true blue Singaporean.

Eileen led worship with a 3-man band—Bernice on piano, Kevin on violin and Galilean on guitar. Short of an offering bag and bulletin, we really look like a church already. Shawn enthusiastically volunteered to play his flute the next time. Haha.

I thought worship was great. All of stood up to sing praises to God. And as we lifted our voices, I felt God's pleasure upon our group. It was so cool.

Gary led bs on the ninth commandment—Thou shalt not give false testimony of your neighbour. Statistics and studies have shown that lying is part of life. If you can’t lie, it shows that you are socially incompatible. This is the worldview, but what does the bible say?

The text that we studied was Gen 34, the story of Dinah, the daughter of Jacob, and the killing of the Hivites. The story started when Dinah was raped by Shechem, who then wanted to take her as his bride. Jacob’s sons lied to him, saying that they would allow him to marry her if he and all his people circumcise themselves. And so they did. And when they were still healing, Jacob’s sons attacked the city, killed everyone of them and looted their belongings.

Three points:
1) actions that lead to deceit
Lying is a process, not a one off action. There are many circumstances that seemed justified to say a little lie. Reasons could be fear of punishment, fear of shame, to get what we want, fear of consequences or even fear of hurting others. At the end of the day, we have to choose right!

2) the act of deceit
a lie has no legs (quite cute hor). It needs another lie to support it. In other words, you need to keep lying to cover another lie. The person who lies need to have the best memory in the world to remember all the lies told.

3) the after effects of deceit
after what Jacob’s sons had done, they had to flee again. We think what we do will only affect us. But in actual fact, it will tarnish our Christian family name, and even God’s name.

ok. That night the conversation kinda got off tangent to how to reject people you are not interested. Shall not record the details here.

We celebrated Zhiwei’s birthday! He is one happy boy. Got photo to proof it. (akan dating) we didn’t have share group session cos we kinda ended too late. 10pm we had to pack up and leave already.

Thou Shalt Not Steel

2005-10-24T09:14:00.000+08:00

Aircon was faulty so cell group was al fresco style again at the benches upstairs. Although it was very hot, I guess the bible study and the company made us forget the heat and humidity after awhile.

Worship led by the none other ex-rock star lion king. Then, we played this game called Alibi (or Alabee as Eileen likes to term it). Galilean and Marcus were the usual suspects. They were accused of committing a crime. So the rest of us were the prosecutors, have to question them separately to see if their testimony matches.

Zhiwei led BS. Thou shalt not steal. Taking from the passage Acts 4:32 to 5:11. First point was about sharing our possessions, which led to tithing. Gary directed us to Malachi 3:6-12. God was accusing his people of robbing him of ‘tithes and offerings’. During service, the line before offering bag was passed was ‘his tithes and our offerings’. In this sense, it means that tithes belong to God. In Mal 3:10 God also says “Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this.. and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it”. In essence, tithing is an act of faith, trusting that God will provide. I hope after this discussion we will remember to tithe.

Zhiwei posited the definition of stealing as taking something that is not ours. Many of us might not be guilty of stealing, but we might have taken something that was not rightfully ours before. One example is the stealing of the heart. His point was that we need to be careful not to steal with respect to his definition.

It was charles’ birthday! Surprise! I hope he was. We are not really creative nowadays with birthday surprises nowadays. Haha.

Thank God for touching our hearts that night. I think most of us felt quite convicted about tithing. Tithing is a discipline that we should abide in order to return to God what He has blessed us with. And we should learn to tithe even when we had little.

Thank You God

2005-10-22T08:59:00.000+08:00

"... And the Lord added to their number daily..." -Acts 2:47

This morning I woke up with an sms from one of our cell group members, saying how much she missed the company of the cell and that she'll be more committed to cell.

And that verse came to my mind. God is indeed adding to our number weekly. Now we are a full size of 32. Praise God! It is by His grace that we are enjoying His favor.

The context of that verse was taken from a group of siao on believers in Acts, who met everyday and shared whatever posession they had. To me, it speaks of love and kindness, fellowship and bonding. It was such a beautiful picture of unity and friendship. Most of all, they were praising God together. Such joyfulness!

Yesterday we talked about sharing of possessions. God has once again blessed us with some money for our retreat. I think God is telling us it's more than just sharing money. It's about showing acts of kindness and generosity to one another. It's about edifying and building people up. It's about pulling someone up and if you see he/she has fallen. It's about ministering to those in need. I think this is what the cell group is about-- love.

I want to thank God once again for His grace. Beginning of this year, I never expected the group to ballooned to this size. And even so, I thought the size will be detrimental to our spiritual growth. But God has given us this miracle and His Holy Spirit works in us every time we meet. Praise be to God. I really feel so blessed. Do you?

Super Mumps and Dengue Boy

2005-10-17T10:56:00.000+08:00

God has added another member to our cell! Welcome Jeremy! That makes our cell now a grand total of 32! I think we are making plans to take over the Wesley Hall for our cell group sessions soon.

This week the oldie Ee Guan is here to visit. This brings the attendance of our cell to a total of 22. Shawn finally recovered from dengue! But his best friend Zhiwei just got mumps (and hence the title of this blog).

Games was really violent that day. I shall name it Jerry’s Musical Chairs. With one extra chair in the circle, the person in the middle of the circle is supposed to try to get the seat, while the rest of us prevent him/her from getting the seat by moving our butts clockwise or anti-clockwise to fill up the seat. No. of casualties: two.

Thanks Sumei for leading a rather meditative worship. It was simple and good. Thank God for gracing us with His presence.

I led bs. I don’t think I wanna type out everything I said that day. Anyway, based on the lesson “Thou shalt not commit adultery”, we looked at the famous adultery passage—David and Bathsheba.

The first wrong thing that David did was to disregard his duties as the king. While his army was fighting in the battlefield, he was resting at home, sleeping til late. We need to be wary of the comfort zones that we set ourselves in when we forget to fulfill the duties that God called us to.

Ee Guan raised the important question of sexual purity. What is so important about marriage that we need to keep the marriage bed pure? And what does it mean by that? Some interesting insights. Ee Guan talked about Genesis 2:20 that marriage is when a man and a woman becomes one flesh. This is what God intend the union to be. It is a special bond that involves more than a physical tie, but an emotional and spiritual one. Gary said that sex before marriage is having an incomplete spiritual bond because God is not involved to make the bond complete. Sumei talked about marriage as a picture of the ultimate perfect relationship that we are going to have with Jesus in heaven, and hence we have to honour it and keep it pure.

When do temptations start? You Wen said it starts from our desires. Shawn said it starts from entertaining the thought or desire. The question comes in when what makes a thought lustful? Yang Lin asked, “If I see a guy and go ‘nice ass!’, but making a comment purely out of appreciating nature’s beauty, is that wrong?” Gary voiced the injustice of that comment because when men say that, they are viewed as perverts, but when women say it, it is perfectly ok.

Temptations start from our own evil desires. It is very explicitly stated in Jas 1: 14, 15, where after an evil desire is conceived, it gives birth to sin, and when sin is full grown, gives birth to death.

I ended the discussion with a passage from Eph 5:8-14. God’s standard of sexual purity is very high because we are to have ‘not even a hint of sexual immorality’. God is searching our hearts. Jesus, in Matthew 5, said that adultery is more than just an outward action, it lies in our hearts as well.

We need to allow God to shine his light in our hearts so that we can see the darkness that lies within. Just as Nathan exposed David’s secret sins, we need Jesus to expose our secret sins. We need to confess our sins to each other, so that we won’t be under the stronghold of shame and deceit. Just as David needs to confess that he has sinned against God, we need to confess our sins also.

We then had share group after that. Boy was it a very long time of sharing… and we ended after 11pm! Some of them went for Thomson prata for supper.

We Need to Love Irritating People

2005-10-11T09:35:00.000+08:00

Jerry, our unofficial game master, got us to play a game that required us to rearrange words to form verses. Thanks Jerry for taking the effort to print out and cut up the words!

Worship was led by Bernice, and Jason played the guitar for her.

Bible study was based on the verse “You shalt not murder”. Of course, I am sure none of us killed anybody before. How are we going to find this verse relevant?

From Gen 4:1-12, we read about the story of Cain who murdered his brother Abel. When did sin begin? It didn’t begin when Cain killed Abel, but when Cain did not offer the best to God. All trouble starts with us doing something. However, instead of blaming on ourselves, we take our anger on other people. In verse 6 and 7, God intervenes and told him to master his sin. However, there was no response from Cain to change. Instead, he took his brother out to the field to kill him.

Still, in line with the theme verse, we looked at Matt 5:21-26 where Jesus said if anyone is angry with his brother will be subjected to the same judgment as murder.

So, we discussed about anger, and how to show kindness and reconcile with our brothers. Gary talked about the breastplate of righteousness in Eph 6:15 that guards our hearts. We are called to be Christians, peace-makers to the people around us. When we see someone that we don’t really like, it’s good to remember that he/she is a child of God too (1 Thess 5:8).

Lynn brought up the question if we should tell people that we are angry. Bern said it depends. If to resolve the conflict, then yes. But we shouldn’t do it out of spite. Gary said we should always look at ourselves first, instead of being quick to accuse others. If we are wronged, show love. But we know it is not that easy. Which is why we need to love with the love that God has shown us.

How about irritation? We shared about all the difficult people that we faced in our school and working lives. Irritating people rub the edges off us and teach us to be more patient. Our negative reactions to them show our inadequacies. Jesus called us to love people who are difficult to love.

After bs, we celebrated Jerry’s birthday. Then we split into share groups to pray.

Honour Your Father and Mother

2005-10-03T11:07:00.000+08:00

You know your cell group is really huge when even though 8 people told you they were not coming, 13 people still turned up.

Our cell group really enjoys charades a lot. Our cell group sure has funny ways of interpreting bible words and characters. For example, Youwen drew a triangle with his hands for the word “Moses”. Scratch head? Triangle-> pyramids->Egypt-> Moses. Nobody beats Zhiwei’s acting. He was trying to act out ‘Salem’ to get us to guessing ‘Jerusalem’. Who could have related cigarettes and smoking to the Jewish city?

Eileen led bs about honouring our parents. Based on the first chapter of Ruth, we discussed about our relationships with our parents and how to honour them. It was a good time of sharing for each one of us. Alicia shared about how owning her own cat made her took on another perspective of honouring our parents. Youwen shared about how he made the decision to join the army without telling his parents. Gary talked about his enstranged relationship with his parents. Eileen talked about how we should love and take care of our parents even when they don’t meet our expectations. Jerry shared about how his dad is worried about his children getting more and more educated, and distant from him. There was an interesting point that Gary brought up too. There is a common saying that how we treat our parents is how we will treat our spouses in future. We were wondering how true is that. Marc said that we can choose our partners, but we cannot choose our parents. However, that mentality is the problem itself because many people bearing that mindset end up two-timing and having affairs.

So what I gathered from that night: obeying is only a subset of honouring our parents. It includes showing love, kindness and respect to them. Honouring our parents should be our perogrative, regardless of any situation, whether they truly have our interests at heart because we are honouring God by obeying His command.

At the end of cell, we made a commitment in prayer to be more patient with our parents and be better testimonies of Christ at home.

Bye Charry!

2005-09-20T11:08:00.000+08:00

Yeah. It’s cell group Friday again. Zhiwei Shawn Lionking Marcus and I met for dinner at Carl’s Jr. LK is crazy. He ate 2 of the biggest burgers there at one go.

Anyway, today’s cell format we’ve decided to change to games first, followed by worship then bs. According to sumei, she felt that games sandwiched between worship and bs disrupts the spiritual ambience. I guess she is right. Quite weird to be spiritually attuned during worship, then suddenly “YEEEEAH GAMES!” and break out of the mood. Also, this structure allow the latecomers to be able to join us for worship (i.e. better to miss games than to miss worship rite folks?)

Thanks Gary for leading worship. It felt like we are in Gary’s church or something cos we were seated in 2 rows, reading the lyrics off the laptop. Well, with such a big number (20 of us!), I think the passerbys outside might think we are some cult or something. Thanks Charmaine for being the clicker!

Gary is really Da Man. He led bs on Friday too. Don’t you all think he did a really good job? The study was on the 4th commandment, obeying the law of Sabbath rest (Exo 20:8-11). He also referenced from Heb 4:1-11.

There are 3 aspects of God’s rest.
1. salvation rest
This rest refers to the justification we receive once we accept Jesus as our Lord and savior. Read Heb 4:1-3. All of us are entitled that rest.
2. Sabbath rest
This refers to the rest from work to remain physical and emotionally healthy. (Heb 4:4)
3. Surrender rest
This is the rest that we can attain when we surrender to God the areas in our life. This rest cannot be given to us unless we allow God to. Heb 4:11 says “Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will fall by following their example of disobedience.” It requires obedience.

I guess we came to a conclusion that Sabbath rest refers to spending time with God and finding rest in Him. Do we spend enough time with God? Do we allow God to speak to us for half an hour or one hour a day? Gary shared 4 things we can do during rest.
1. Adore our God. Spend time loving God and praising Him for who He is.
2. Assess our life. To reflect on what we’ve been doing.
3. Affirm our faith. We need to know where the foundations of our life lie. What are you building your life upon? One day, we will be tested by God to see what we have been doing in our lives? Are we prepared for the test?
4. Appreciate our work. Like God who said “it is very good”, we need to take a step back and appreciate the work we’ve done. It encourages us, as well as edify and affirm others.
We need to get our inner life right so that our outer life is right. But a right outer life might not mean your inner life is right too.

After bs, we surprised char with a bouquet of gerberas! It’s her last cell group last week. So sad. God is guiding her and moving her out of her comfort zone to serve in a new cell group. We laid hands on her and prayed for her, asking God to grant her the strength to be bold and courageous. CHAR, WE WISH YOU ALL THE BEST! Anyway we’ll still see her in church. Thanks char for the farewell speech. Heh. You’ve been a wonderful blessing to us, but now God is moving you to bless others!

This week we've started on a mini groups system. Now that the group is growing really big, it has been difficult for both shawn and I to serve to each one individually. So thank God that we have 6 people stepping up to help: Yan LK Lynn Charles Eileen and Sumei. Hope that this is the first step of forging closer bonds within the group. Thank God for all the lovely ppl in this cell! Yup, these sixtet will be the shepherds to a smaller group of 3 to 4 ppl. This is not juz another prayer and accountability group. The sexy sixtet will be in charge of taking care and ministering to the needs of this group. And Shawn and I will be in turn overseeing them. In this way, we all are covered! Pray that it will work!

Zhiwei's Update

2005-09-16T16:43:00.000+08:00

I played table soccer b4 we started and when I teamed up with jonathan, we won. Then I played against him and he won. The common determinator in both victories was jonathan. Therefore, I conclude he was the victor overall.

For worship, Charmaine led. Was a fresh worship as we sang the newer songs instead of our usual 1990s style. It was also kindas sad cos this was char’s ‘last time’ with us. But I am sure God has plans in store for her and we definitely wish her all the best! We will miss you charmander!!!!!

Games. We had Joni plan this one. We were split into 2 and each group had to send out 1 rep each round. The persons would play table tennis against each other and all the usual rules were thrown out of the window. I mean, come on man, we are all amateurs man! However, there was a catch. For each time we hit the ball, we had to say something pertaining to the category that we chose before hand. Each round had a separate category. Some I could remember were ‘hawker food’, ‘food with tau gay’, ‘jobs requiring uniforms’, ‘animals that lay egg’ etc. well there was this category called ‘names you call your other half’, and for this round, we had Gary VS Shawn. Leader VS EX leader. Names like sun. moon, stars came out. But for some strange reason, shawn shouted ‘Meepok!’. Haha. I wonder whether it was bak chor mee or what. Then as for Eileen, when she was faced with the category ‘Romantic places’, she blurted out ‘My Room!’. OK. NOW WE KNOW.

Bible Study. Shawn led this session on ‘Respect for the Name’. this was the third commandment: ‘you shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.’

We went into quite in depth discussion about what was wrong and whether we could say stuff like ‘OMG’ and all that. But I think ultimately its between you and God, and you should know your intent behind saying what you say, and whether God will be happy with you for using his name in certain ways or not. We are called to worship, honour, and glorify HIS name. So wouldn’t it be contrary to this rule when we actually utter God’s name when we are in disgust or shock? God deserves all the praise in the world, and I think many of us need to re-examine the things we say or the jokes we make in the course of daily life. Sometimes, we might think it’s ‘ok’, but we also need to consider how non-Christians look at us. Are we being stumbling blocks when we misuse God’s name?

However, let’s be careful to not condemn others and concentrate on how we can best glorify our Creator’s name. lets love each other and respond in a God pleasing and God honouring way, even when others are misusing God’s name.

After the Bible Study, we broke up into our various prayer groups for sharing and prayer!

Did Noah keep goldfish?

2005-09-06T11:20:00.000+08:00

Woohoo! We have 21 people for cell group last week! Wow! Welcome Grace and You Wen to the cell group! I hope they find their place here where they can be ministered to and fed spiritually.

I led worship. Jerry, our great game master, engaged us in another talking cock game. This time, three people compete to outlast each other in talking about a given bible character. I declare Jin as the MVP. No wonder she is a lawyer to be. And Charles’ Noah’s Ark story has goldfish and piranhas in it. According to him, the salt-water flood demands Noah to save the freshwater fish as well. And as usual, Gary could almost recite the entire book of Genesis when talking about Noah.

Yan led bible study on the 2nd commandment about idolatry. We have agreed that the first commandment is about our motivation; the second one is a manifestation of that motivation i.e. taking tangible actions to worship another god. The cross-reference text used is from Exodus 32, when the people made a golden calf to worship after giving up a long wait for their leader Moses to come back.

It is easy to dismiss the Israelites as faithless and weak for relenting to idol worship so easily after the many miracles God has shown them. However, on a closer look, their fears and struggles must have been harder than it looks, and probably is similar to what we as modern Christians are facing.

The Israelites are used to miracles, tangible experiences of God—they were led by fire and cloud in the desert. Moreover, they were wandering nomads. The lack of strong walls and resources in the desert has given rise to a lot of insecurities and fear. Now that their leader is no longer physically with them, and not hearing any news about God or Moses for 40 days, they were scared to death. This was obviously a test that God has placed to test their hearts. Likewise, we can make the same mistake too when God place us in a prolong period of uncertainty. Will we waver and turn to other false securities?

God detests idolatry. It is a sin that affects future generations because idols set up are visible and external, and can be witnessed by many future generations. God hates it because by putting Him into a man-made representation is a great insult for Him.

We also discussed about the difference between idolatry and symbols. Some people turn to the cross when singing the doxology, is that a question of idolatry? The answer is obviously a no. The crux of the issue is distinguishing between a symbol and substitute. Something will be worrying if we need a cross in the middle of the room everytime we have small group worship.

We shared about some forms of idolatry. The most common one is ourselves. Eileen shared about her past boyfriend whom she was thoroughly impressed with, and warn us that some people would idolize their bf or gfs as well.

After bible study, we stayed back for half an hour to pray. Beginning with renouncing the idols in our lives, followed by praying for all the urgent prayer requests. Thank God for this prayer time. To me, it was God directing us to another level of spiritual growth. I believe that our small group sessions are becoming more and more spiritual, rather than just any other gathering.

Some of the prayer requests that day:
Gary- his friend who just had abortion. Pray for the friends around him who are hurting and need God.

Lynn- her aunty has breast cancer. Pray for their family to cope with this

Gerald- his 2 aunties have cancer too. Pls pray for family support as well

Lionking- thank God that he completed his anger management course. Pray that he will continue to walk closer with God and able to control his anger better

Shawn- pray for his bro who’s having his O levels. Not studying very hard and shawn is worried that he is not good enough to get into ITE, or bad enough to repeat his studies. So lets pray that his brother will wisen up and know the Lord!

Sumei- pray for her new job. A lot of stess and issues to settle

Char- she’s moving to a new cell group. Pray that God will remove any form of discouragement and rejection tt is hindering her from moving. Pray for strength to move out of her comfort zone

Pray for the victims of Katrina. A lot of them are homeless and grieving for their loss. Pray that God will rebuild this land and bring comfort to those who love Him.

Charmaine’s leaving our cell group in 2 weeks because she felt God putting the burden in her heart to leave her comfort zone and be used by Him in another cell group. Thank God that she is truly taking this step of faith. I guess we are quite sad to part from her, especially she’s been with this group for so long.

Honey Bunnies

2005-09-01T12:01:00.000+08:00

Sorry for this really overdue entry. Time for a recount for what happened last Friday!

Thanks Gary for leading a session of deep worship! Thanks Charmaine for the really hilariously funny game! It’s called Honey Bunny. Basically, the person is supposed to say “Honey, I love you. Will you smile for me today?” Then, the other person, is supposed to reply “Bunny, I love you too. But I can’t smile for you,” WITHOUT SMILING! You can almost imagine how difficult it is! Haha!! So, if the person smiles, he will have to be ‘bunny’. If not, the same person will have to continue saying that line til the next person smiles. Hahahaha. Trust me, it WAS HILARIOUS! Eileen caught some footage of it on video. Anyone know I can upload video on the blog? Kevin is so funny! He started laughing even before Joni said her line. And his high pitch delivery is sooo funny! Poor Zhiwei tried making shawn, me, lionking and gary smile. Despite all his silly antics, jumping around and screaming, his attempts were to no avail. Haha. But seriously, it was no joke trying hard to squeeze my muscles and control my laughing nerves in front of him.

Ok enough of the funnies. Then it was a serious time of bible study led by eileen. Thanks eileen for the comprehensive background info of 1 Kings 18. We now know who are the Top 10 gods of today thanks to this url which she gotten at www.godcheckers.com.

The commandment that we studied was “you shall have no other gods before me”. Some definitions of god: supreme being, object of worship, deity, idol etc.

Eileen also pointed the contrast between Elijah the prophet and the followers of Baal (God’s people). One was confident, powerful and in control. The others were wavering, confused and don’t know what they were doing.

In 1 Kings 18:21, Elijah accused the people of wavering. This could suggest that they know what’s right or wrong, and were conscious of sin and God, but were afraid to make a decision. This could be because prophets of Baal looked more prosperous than the prophets of God (they were all killed or hidden in a cave). They were sitting on the fence, facing a dilemma. Also, it could mean they were believing in both at the same time.

Eileen said that neutrality is an act of treason against God. The state of ambivalence caused the people to lose strong ground, giving rise to feelings of weakness and falling. They were lost, distracted and lost focus of God. Take this fact and apply it to today’s Christians, this is a very common problem amongst us. Most Christians feel powerless because they are in a state of neutrality and cannot feel the presence of God. Gary gave a very good quote: if you don’t make up your mind, your unmade mind will unmake you.

So in essence, we need to stand on firm ground like Elijah. We need to actively pursue the right decisions and take the right stand. We need to give God the honour He deserves, allow Him to be the only God of our lives.

We shared what kind of gods are prevalent today. I shared about my struggle with luxuries and comfort. I also shared about a friend, who turned her back from God to pursue her own desires, ending up in depression, despair and suicide. Sometimes, the people we love so much can become our gods too if we are not careful. Zhiwei feels that the greatest god that people worship nowadays is ourselves. Everything we do is for ourselves. Even in worship, we choose to worship to satisfy our needs. We build a name for ourselves in church, and not out of service for God.

We need to empty ourselves of our other gods—money, school, grades, relationships, career, self—and allow God to fill us. We need to enthrone God in all compartments of our lives, be it at work, school or home. Most of all, we want God to be enthroned in this cell group!

After cell, some people stayed out after supper so as to send Eugene off at the airport at 430am. He's going for exchange at McGill for the next 4 months. Lets keep in prayer too! Zhiwei Joni Eileen Kevin went for midnight shopping at mustafa, while gary shawn and jerry were hanging out at the airport watching Lost on gary's laptop. It was good being there to pray for him before his long flight there.

We Have a Superstar Over Here!

2005-08-21T01:46:00.000+08:00

Just went to support lionking's gig at the Esplanade. Me zhiwei jerry soomei gary and gary's beloved youth.

The performance was great and the audience loved it. One ang moh was so crazy over their band that he wanted to pay double for the cd even tho it was sold out. After his gig, we were abandoned outside the barricade, waiting patiently alongside his crowd of fans for him to come out. haha.

I thought it was sweet to have fellow cell group mates supporting in events such as this. haha.. not boasting but i think LK looks quite gan dong. You are, aren't you? heehee

Laying Down the Law

2005-08-21T00:54:00.000+08:00

Yesterday we had 2 new people popping by-- Olivia, Eugene's girlfriend (Yayy!! so happy she's joining us!) and Alicia.

Eugene led worship. He's sooo blur! Actually left the songsheets on the photocopying machine at home!! In the end, gary was our official line-reader. Nevertheless, I enjoyed worship very much. The songs Because He Lives and I Don't Know About Tomorrow have such great reassuring lyrics. Eugene also taught us a new chinese song-- zhu ai you duo(not dou!!) shen. Translate: How deep is our God's love? Although most of us were quite struggling with singng in chinese, I thought the lyrics were very beautiful. "How much is God's love? How deep is God's love? Every time I think of it, my heart moves... as long as eternity is, as far as infinity is, that is the depth of our God's grace!" ok. dunno if my translation right or not.. haha.. but thanks Eugene for leading such a beautiful time of worship.

Zhiwei was games ic. i shall call the game, "Zhiwei's charades". Basically it was just charades. zhiwei thought of the words when he was studying in the library.. words like newton circus, or luak, duck noodles, restuarant, lin's house etc.. no points for guessing what zhiwei thinks about all the time.

We finally got started on our bs yesterday. Thank God for enabling me to lead even though I fumbled quite a bit. Anyway, the bs was an introduction chapter and setting the background to the study of the 10 commandments.

Background and context: Moses just led the Israelites out of Egypt to worship the LORD in the desert. They reached Desert Sinai and camped near the mountain. Moses had been a mediator between God and his people, often climbing up and down, relating messages to both sides (poor dude!). God called for obedience from His people. His ppl responded and said 'yes we wanna obey!'. And so, God told the people to consecrete themselves, cos he's gonna appear on the mountain and speak to them. and so, for 3 days, the ppl prepared themselves. on the 3rd day, moses led the ppl to foot of the mountain. God appeared in a cloud, smoke and thunder. The whole mountain trembled. the ppl were afraid and so told moses to go up instead, and relate the message back to them. And so, this was how the Israelites got their 10 commandments.

We had a discussion about why God gave his ppl the law? What was God's purpose for laying down the law?

Most of us agreed that the law serves as a road map, a guide to life. It acts as a fence to protect us, a set of rules revealed to us to set us free. It points to God's identity of holiness, defines sin, maps out the path to heaven, helps us to draw closer to God in Christlikeness.

To sum it up, there are 3 main reasons for the law.
1. To protect us
Deut 5:29, 30, 6:2-3. God clearly said that the law is meant to protect us and our children, so that we might live long and prosper and prolong our days. So that we might enjoy long life, and increase greatly.

2. To helps us to be concious of sin
Rom 3:20, 7:7. Paul clearly states that the law helps us know what sin is, what is morally wrong. But it doesn't mean that sin exists when the law was given. Sin existed long before the law was laid.

3. We experience grace when we know that we fall short of this standard, and we are only made righteous through faith in Christ.
Rom 5:20 The law was added so that trespass increase, where sin increase, grace increase all the more.

Anyway, I guess the theme that emerged from our bs discussion was God's love and graciousness. Before we study the 10 commandments more closely for the next few months, we need to get the bigger picture. We need to bear in mind what is God's purpose in telling us this, and see how great our God is, how amazing His grace is for us. That He, being an Almighty holy God, who detests sins, all the sins in us; is willing to give us the gift of Jesus so that we can draw near to Him. That is how much our God loves us. As Christians, we need to be mindful of how God's grace fit into what we are studying, and how having the head knowledge translates into our lives.

On a more serious note, just to share with you guys, as I was preparing for the bs, I thought I heard God saying that He would restore His majesty in this cell group. I believe God is waiting for our hearts to turn to Him so that we might have a breakthrough in this group. I am really excited about sharing this because I have the hope that our group can be on fire for God, walking testimonies for Him anywhere He places us. He's going to break stongholds, heal hurts and brokenness, and restore us. One thing we need to do it to pray more.

God is very real. And He's indeed faithfully working amongst us in this cell. The last 2 cell we had, I know God was with us. I'm sharing this because I hope we can press on and together experience the goodness of God that He has installed for us. That our cell is not just a weekly gathering, but a group transformed for God!

Thank God for blessing this cell with such great people! I love you guys and I hope we can continue to grow closer to each other as we draw closer to God!

Zoo Outing on National Day

2005-08-21T00:47:00.001+08:00

Here are some photos from my camera from our cell group zoo outing! There, evidence that we did conquered the zoo, stroked iguanas, teased monkeys and wrestled with snakes!

alligators!!!!!

2005-08-21T00:47:00.000+08:00

Shawn and the little pony

2005-08-21T00:46:00.000+08:00

Shawn wants to kiss the iguana

2005-08-21T00:45:00.000+08:00

Cheesiest book in the world found in kevin's car.

2005-08-21T00:44:00.000+08:00

Jerry and Ben-huh?

2005-08-21T00:43:00.000+08:00

Lin mooning the baboons!

BBQ Gala

2005-08-15T11:03:00.000+08:00

Thanks to Lin's generosity and domestic skills, we had a wonderful spread for bbq last friday. Lin is like our cell group mommy. She was so busy feeding us with her cheese dip, fried bei tai mak, steak, prawns, sotongs, chicken, salad, beef sausages, sting ray and the finale caramel pears. I think it's no surprise some of the guys can hit 100kg soon.

After a sumptuous dinner, we gathered in the living room for worship. We were very fortunate and honoured to have a celebrity guitarist playing for us-- none other than our Lion King! His band was featured in Life! and tagged by the reporter as the "Ugliest Band in Singapore". Go flip Friday's paper to see his big smirk on his face.

I thought worship was great. Maybe it was the power and unity of the cell group on that day. Almost everyone turned up-- shawn, me, zhiwei, lion king, gary, marc, lin, lynn, charles, jon, chuuling, kevin, eileen, joni, bernice, gerald, jerry, charmaine, matt, soomei, shaocai and jason. One big happy family! Jason, welcome to the cell! Thank God for blessing this group! Shawn's theme for worship was holiness. He shared about the importance of consecrating ourselves for God. It was a wonderful time of meeting with God in the midst of the bbq. God is definitely working through us. And in His perfect timing and when our hearts are ready, God will bring us to another level with Him.

After that, some of them stayed behind for a game of mahjong. I heard that Yan zha hu... haha.. as usual.

Yan and Jerry ice-cream @ the Zoo Zhiwei

2005-08-10T09:48:00.000+08:00

Happy National Day everyone!!!

Today we had a cell group excursion at the zoo. It was so FUN even though the turnout wasn’t as big as our usual cell group number (Zhiwei, Shawn, Eileen, Yan, Jerry, Lin, Joni and me). Too bad Kevin had to go back to army.

Saw many animals (duh) there. Eileen found her long-lost cousin the giraffe and ZHU zhiwei, the pot-bellied pig. We were absolutely amused by the red-assed baboons. Lin even mooned at them (photos coming soon). We got to stroke iguanas, a boa constrictor and a pony! We saw the pygmy hippos, white tigers and this giant 1.8m fish being fed. We heard the lions roar! So fun! The zoo was a beautiful place to walk around. I think we walked so much that my leg muscles are aching now. Shawn is such an old man. He was looking for benches to sit at every enclosure we visited. But he’s not as uncle as Yan, who likes to make old man jokes. Haha.

Dinner was at this zi char place near kembagan MRT. Gary, Marc, Gen and Shaocai joined us. Then it was dessert at Siglap’s Gelare.

I had a great time of fellowship! Thanks guys for making the day so perfect!

Pastor Yan

2005-08-05T23:27:00.000+08:00

We have another 2 new people joining our cell! Weiping and Joni! Welcome!!! It's also Jason's first time at cell too!

Yan led bible study today. Hmm.. actually it was more like a sermon. He expounded on the verse "Honour your father and mother". Don't you all think Yan is a potential down-to-earth pastor? heehee.. he even prepared a powerpoint leh! So cute rite? We all could identify with his honest sharing of his relationship with his dad. The hurts we've gotten from our parents growing up under the one roof makes it hard for us to fulfill this commandment. Nevertheless, Yan learnt to let go and accept his dad for who he is-- a fallible human being. Thanks Yan for such a heartwarming testimony. He's determined to show his parents his transformed life so that they might know Jesus (Yan doing housework!! wow!!). Some of us also shared about our relationships with our parents and how we could choose to honour them. Like gary's dad who likes to emerge from behind him at 3am in the morning (now we know where gary gets his oddities.. haha.. kidding!). One way is to learn to tame our tongue. I also shared that besides the hurts that we might received from our parents, we need to consider if our words or actions could have hurt our parents in one way or the other. Before we are quick to accuse our parents of being naggy or unreasonable or even odd, perhaps it's time we reflect upon our own actions and learn to show more love to our parents.

Today's game was something new. Eileen's "Talk About God Fest". Like game master like game. Basically, the game is to face off with someone and talk about God non-stop for 20secs. Whoever stops first loses. It was so funny watching Eileen and Charmaine compete against each other! haha.. Charmaine won despite Eileen having prior practise at home!

Supper at the roti prata place at dhoby gauht. Dinosaur there is absurdly expensive, more expensive than prata. Jerry's roti john looked delicious.

Seagull Burgers and Charismatic Worship

2005-07-27T12:15:00.000+08:00

Sorry guys. I haven't been updating the cell group blog regularly. Been so busy with work and church.

Last Friday's cell was al fresco style cos the air-con in the function room was under repair. We moved from the benches to the bicycle stand for worship, then back to the benches again cos it was too hot and stuffy there.

We recycled our hei chi ma games but gaved up very quickly because zhiwei can't wait to eat the chocolates. Then Kevin made us play this detective game with a very morbid story.

We then discussed about our bs material. Zhiwei whipped out his ten commandments bs material for us to browse. Some reflected that the previous bs wasn't very helpful cos of the weird questions. So, in order to be more careful before jumping into another material, we decided to try it out next Friday first before committing to it.

For those of you who don't know yet, the vision for our cell group this year is growing in the Word. I want to urge our group to be united in adhering to this vision. Let's encourage each other on to be more consistent with our bs homework. Effort and commitment is definitely needed if we want to go deeper in the word. No short cuts. But of cos, we need each other's support in this. I believe if we can spur each other, create a positive environment and have the right heart and desire for God's word, we can bring our cell group to a greater level!

During sharing, Jon shared his concerns regarding the upcoming SonicFest event. Charismatic worship: are we exposing our youths with too much sensuality that they are distracted from God Himself? After throwing in some views and realising how old we really are in face of the rising charismatic movement, we can conclude that we cannot condemn charismatic worship in totality. Music is cultural. Form is not that important. What matters is the heart. It is interesting to know that Methodist hymns was actually a move made by John Wesley to make Christian songs more contemporary for the people. He put Christian lyrics into the popular music of his time. What resulted was a massive evangelistic movement, although it was much frowned upon then.

This week we broke into smaller groups for sharing cos we haven't done that for a long time!

Vatican City Report

2005-07-11T10:36:00.000+08:00

This week's cell is slightly different. We visited the Vatican City exhibition at the Asian Civilisation Museam (beside Singapore River one, not Substation! Yan is so blur!!). By the way, Friday is the best day to the museam because it's half priced!

Interesting exhibition. Lots of paintings and vatican city relics. Learnt that in Paul is always portrayed with the sword cos he was decapitated and Peter is always with keys cos Jesus said he was the rock which the church is built upon, thereby becoming the first pope. Many interesting artefacts that depicted the early centuries artists' impression of Christianity. There was this painting by a Vietnamese artist of his impression of the end times (I think). Shawn pointed out all the cheena looking angels in the painting.

Anyway, thanks guys for the little birthday surprise. I totally forgotten about it. Thanks eileen for buying the cake.. it was yummy! Thanks Zhiwei for thanking me that it was my birthday so that he can have cake to eat.

Lion King wanted to jump into the River for 50 bucks. But changed his mind minutes later when we agreed to our end of the bargain *grin*.

After a romantic time beside the river, we head down to lao pat sat for supper. Lin loves cai buay and claims that the cai buay there was the best she had so far.

We decided to have our own cell group awards. Nominations will be open soon. So far, we have Most Heavyweight (Gerald, with Zhiwei and Jerry close behind him), Most Willing to Share (Lion King), Loudest Laugh (Jin), Most Aunty (Lin), Most Patient (Kevin, cos his gf is eileen)...

Lets Congratulate E & K!

2005-07-04T09:34:00.000+08:00

This week's cell group was huge! 18 people! And this time, more girls than guys! I think God is answering the guys' prayers.. haha. Charmaine brought 2 newcomers, Andrea, who just came back from Australia to enter law school in NUS, and Sharon, on holiday from UCL (erm.. did I remember the wrong uni?) for the next few months. And Genevieve will be joining our cell group regularly! For those of you who haven't seen her before in Wesley, that's cos she's from Christ Methodist Church. Nevertheless, it's good to have her around! Yay! Thank God blessing our group with new additions!

We recycled our games again. Well, we kinda improvised the liang-mao-jian (20cent) game by adding the Polar-bear element to our version. "I think Eileen has the coin lar!" "No, I think it's Jin!" It was just super amusing that we can always so much fun from a simple game like this.

Oh by the way, our cell group is really targeted by the cupid. We have a new couple in da house! heehee... no prizes for guessing since we announced it during cell this week. All I can say is that turkeys like to do the numa-numa sometimes.

Bible study was really good too. We finished the last chapter this week! I think the issues brought up spoke alot to most of us. One of the questions brought up were about forgiveness. Do we need to apologise even if the person doesn't know we are angry with him/her? How do we know we have lived the good life that God calls us to live? (*will add more stuff here later. haven't got my bs book with me now*)

Half of 2005 has passed. I thank God for sustaining us in growing in His word. Our vision for this year is to know God's word better, and in turn bear fruits in our lives.

"Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good." -1 Peter 2:2,3

P.S: Sorry for my subtlely irrelevant title. Can't come with better ones... hee

Donkey and Colt

2005-06-27T15:09:00.000+08:00

Today’s cell was rather simple and short. Due to some miscommunication, no one prepared worship, so we had Zhiwei lead us with two songs, acapella style.

During cell, Zhiwei suddenly remembered that it was Shawn’s birthday the next day and none of us bought a cake! So Gerald got to rush out to get one. I thought we look so suspicious trying to act normal after Gerald disappeared from cell.. haha.

Zhiwei said the cake look like flattened pang sai.

Bible study was quite short too. We discussed about comfort zones and er.. tried to figure out how Jesus rode on a donkey and colt at the same time (thanks to Charles' meticulous observation of pronouns). Incidentally, Char drives a colt.

I think Charmaine brought up a very important and interesting point as well. One of the questions asked how did God not meet our expectations (just as the Pharisees were expecting the Messiah to come in awesome power and glory, Jesus rode into Jeruselem on a colt!). Char said sometimes after we have experienced God's miracles in our lives, we expect God to continue in the way we want Him to be. Sometimes, when he doesn't, we get disappointed and bitter, and forget about the big picture. I thought it was a good reminder for us not to impose our human, worldly expectations on our Almighty God.

Welcome back Lin! Lin's back from Australia (did I spell your name correctly?)! And she's getting married to an ang moh farm boy! This lucky girl can get fresh steak whenever she wants! And quote, "No, it's not shotgun. I'm just fat". Haha... Lin it's nice meeting you! You're really funny!

k. That's all I can remember. Don't ask me for missing posts cos I wasn't at cell! Shawn is supposed to do the update! Looking forward to our next cell again!

A Piece of Cake!

2005-06-13T09:05:00.000+08:00

Hellooo guys I'm back! After missing cell for 3 weeks, I miss cell!! Sigh, I'm gonna miss it again this friday cos I'll be away on a mission trip. Gary too! Please pray for us!

Zhiwei, Eileen and I realised that the group is becoming attached. What I mean is that the group which started out to be mostly singles, is now mostly attached! Charmaine, Marc (your gf is very cute!!!!), me (*blush*)... and the most recent our dear cell group leader Shawnie! Anyone reading this can go interrogate him on Friday.. heh heh

This Friday's cell we had a lot of food. Eileen brought cakes (yummy!) and I brought some snacks from Thailand. As usual, you can see Zhiwei prancing around the cakes, scratching himself excitedly.

The passage that we discussed for bs was taken from Luke 19:1-10, the story of the very short Zaccheus who climbed the tree to see Jesus (I think it was Eugene who added that Zach must had really wanted to see Jesus very much cos it must be really difficult for a short guy to climb the tree). After Jesus had visited his house, Z repented and gave half his money to the poor and repaid those whom he has cheated 4 times (he must be filthy rich to do that!!). Because of this, Jesus said salvation has come to this house for he is also a son of Abraham.

Forgive me that I don't have much of the details of what we discussed cos I was sooo tired. From my memory, we touched on the topic of salvation. Shawn threw in the question of true repentance. Do you need works to show that you have truly repent to be saved? When do we know we are saved? Well, it was back to the salavation equation. faith + grace = salvation + works.

Cell Report I by Shawn

2005-06-05T21:58:00.000+08:00

hey guys.. sorry for my MIA. So shawn has been tasked to write the journal for the last 2 weeks. Enjoy!

********************

Cell Report
Date: 27th May 2005
Venue: Lynn’s place

Sorry this entry came so late … I was pretty busy and distracted over the past weeks and my memory has kinda been wiped out, so this is my best effort at recalling the happenings of that week. Please fill in!!

It was quite a huge turnout again and we welcomed back Eileen and Wujin and Weiping from their holiday and of course the goodies that came with it (Thanks Jin!!).

Games were prepared by Kevin and the prizes, including candy and soya beans (from an army food fair!!), was rather unique. The game was a complicated one, titled “Big Pig, Small Pig” completed with uncorresponding hand gestures. The surprise was Yan lasting more than one round Hahahaha. Ok sorry … must control tongue (James 3) haha …
The game ended in chaos and no one won or lost, and we all had the soya beans (which tasted very very strange … slightly distasteful yet addictive!!!). Jerry then carried on with a riddle/puzzle thing and it was extremely amusing to see how weiping slighted Jin haha..

BS was great, practical, insightful and engaging. Although we took a whole session to do one lesson, it was worth it. The topic was roughly about money, and our discussion veered towards the act of tithing and charity. We canvassed a variety of opinions and practical approaches to the topic. For one, Lynn (I think, correct me if I am wrong) suggested that we can set aside tithes at the beginning of the financial month, which makes it easier to give, than do the “see-how-much-i-have-in-my-wallet-and-think-how-much-i-need-for-lunch-before-i-give” and the ensuing dilemma. Personally, I don’t view an act of discipline does not take away the “heart” factor in giving but is, on the contrary, a higher order of willingness. And since it is a more practical way of preparing of tithes, let’s do it!!

Also, we discussed about the necessity of tithing. General conclusions are as follows. First, it is not so much that the church needs the money, because our omnipotent God can provide anyway, but tithing is “instructed” more for our benefit. The act of tithing is an expression of acknowledgement and gratitude of God’s blessings. Coupled with the very practical purpose of funding the church and its ministries, tithing has become a very tradition I suppose. I said tradition because, as mentioned by Marcus and confirmed by checks done by Chuling and myself, tithing is not a command found in the New Testament.

Second, we give as cheerful givers (2 Corinthians 9:7). I some how have formulated this semi-sadistic notion that giving has to hurt a little to be meaningful and this revelation has served me some good haha. “The value of the gift is not based on the amount , but by the spirit in which it as given. A gift given grudgingly loses its value. When you give, remember – gifts of any size are pleasing to God when they are given out of gratitude and a spirit of generousity.” (Life Application Study Bible, Tyndale 1983. See Mark 12: 41-44)

Third, better behave during BS or Auntie Chuling will scream at us!!! Haha … ok la we were a little naughty la haha.

Anyhow, supper was at Glutton’s Bay. I knew that it would be over priced, but whoa .. the standard of food was … really not so nice la (except the or-luack which we can get at least a dollar cheaper at the original stall in Newton Circus).

All in all, another great cell session and Thank God once again. Amen.

Look Ma... No Specs!

2005-05-16T16:10:00.000+08:00

Yes it's now time for my overdue report on the last cell that we had. Time really flies! It's already our 5th cell group in church (if I haven't counted wrongly). Lynn, Charles.. ni men zai na li??? Due to the venue constraints, we now end our cell punctually at 10pm. Nothing like the cell we used to have at lynn's place, which normally lasts til 11pm, or if not, 12am! Nevertheless, regardless where we hold it, cell is always great! (Can anyone say Amen to that?)

Thank you eileen for the great worship! Using the verse from Malachi 1, she reminded us to bring our first fruits to worship, and not the leftovers.

We had 2 new people this week: Genevieve (who is Gary's friend, Eugene's gf's close friend, Zhiwei's JC classmate and my friend's best friend.. haha.. talk about friendster man) and Shaocai (as Yan puts it cheekily, my "special someone"). Hope they will join us too!

Played this coin game where we had to sing a silly chinese song. Haha.. Jerry always has very fun games!

I loved the bs that we had. This week we have Yan and Gary facilitating. Thank God for leading the session. I thought the lesson revealed to us how little faith we have and the kind of powerless prayers we pray. Marcus came up with a brilliant illustration. Something about sun and covering. If I'm not wrong, the sun represents God's power and blessings for us and we are all entitled the same blessings. The extent to which we cover ourselves, or allow God's blessings to rain upon us depends the extent which we shelter ourselves. The more fearful and insecure we are, the more we want to cover. Hahaha.. I know I'm not very good at reliterating the analogy. I tried!

Eugene shared about Aunty Sally who started an "anti-spectacles" club. She put her faith that God can heal her eyesight. "Look! I'm not wearing any specs now! You want to join the club?" She sounded so excited over what God can do. Really puts us to shame. I hope our cell can continue to put our faith in God and stop praying powerless prayers to mask our lack of faith.

Small Group is So Small Today

2005-05-07T01:04:00.000+08:00

Marc made me feel really guilty for not updating everyone about last week on the cell group blog. Ya I admit I was a little lazy last week. And by the time I got down to doing it, I can't really remember what to write.. I only remembered the hei zhi ma bai zhi ma (black sesame white sesame) game which we competed furiously to win chocolates from Jerry.

Today cell was quite small. Only Gary, Eileen, Kevin (our latest addition!! yay! everyone say hi to kevin!), Jerry, Lion King, Marcus, Chuuling (yay chuu is back too after a long time!) and me. Hmm... actually 8 people shouldn't be considered small when compared to a normal cell group size. In case you are wondering, Shawn and Zhiwei are in Genting casino right now. The both of them are so sweet! They called back to say hi to the cell group when we were having supper!

I enjoyed myself during bible study today as well. We started on a new book called "The Life and Ministry of Jesus Christ-- Answering the Call". Today's lesson entitled "A Radical Approach" recalled 3 passages: the parable of the shrewd manager, Jesus raising Lazurus from the dead and Jesus healing ten lepers. I learnt alot from the lesson while trying to facilitate the sessions. The main lesson for the night to take home was about placing our faith in God, even in nitty gritty of our lives. We love to hear miracle stories. However, when it comes to our own lives, are we able to trust God to provide for every single detail? As Gary mentioned, we live in a world where we are trained to be cynical, trained to think we do not need God. Do we have enough faith to put our trust in God, and not our own strength?

Other insights I've gotten: we discussed how remembering God's faithfulness in the past can help us to put our faith in God. Eileen pointed out that we can demonstrate faith not just by remembering God's faithfulness in the midst of circumstances, but also believing that God can work more than what He did in the past.

Lion King posed a question: his friend asked if it is true that Christians have less friends as they grow closer to God? Gary said that it is true from a spiritual perspective. In the story of the transfiguration, there are the masses at the bottom of the hill, but only 3 disciples followed Jesus to the higher mountains. In a sense, the higher you climb, not many people will be able to follow you spiritually. I am reminded how important spiritual compatibility is when finding a life partner. Otherwise, your partner won't be able to follow you the higher you climb up the mountain. Imagine being on the mountaintop all alone with God while your partner is still at the miles away from you.

We Were This Close to Winning the Cell Group Competition

2005-04-26T01:00:00.000+08:00

This week's cell was like the most hilarious one I ever been to this year. Eugene laughed til he drooled on the worship sheets! Everyone was just laughing nonstop and having alot of fun. We were so noisy that the ym comm people next door could hear us.

Anyway, Ee Guan, our zone leader, came to evaluate our group for the best cell group competition. Naturally, we were on our best behaviour. Eugene suggested to screen our corporate video. Everyone was fighting over to register for the LTA seminars, raising hands enthusiastically when questions were asked. It was just great!! Our cell group was nearly perfect except the fact that Marc was late. Well, we cannot be too perfect, u know? Cos there's no such thing as a perfect cell group.

Ok. Enough. Just to clarify and dampen some of your hopes, cell group competition was a fluke. The $200 prize was made up. Nevertheless, it was fun while it lasted.

Activity was sooo funny too. We were split into 2 groups and each group was supposed to come up with song titles, movies, actors and singers A-Z. Yan almost had us with his innocent looking face when he was trying to convince us Oliver something was an English stage actor. Oh ya, Clara Flora and Grace Willis (Bruce Willis' cousin) too. Haha. Nice try.

After that, we did a mini personality test about our conflict response and fears. We shared about some of the recent conflicts that we had, the fears and emotions that came along with it, and identifying our responses. It was really interesting to find out that each of us respond in different manners. Not only was it a good time of sharing and understanding each other better, it also forces us to reflect about ourselves and how we could have shown love to others when facing conflicts.

After sharing, we realised that the common fears that we had were fear of being inadequate, unaccepted and like a failure. The most common response were withdrawal.

I thought it was a very nice time of sharing. Made me realise that we aren't that alone when we face conflicts cos each of us will have own fair share of problems. Ee Guan added that it was a good way of helping us to see from another person's point of view. I guess being in someone else's shoes will help us to understand other people better. All in all, the point to it was that the opposite of love is fear, not hate. When we cannot love, it is usually driven by the fears that we have. For example, we become retort with sarcasm because we are intimidated by others. As Christians, it is important to love others with the love from God cos perfect love drives out all fears. The question is, when faced with unpleasant arguments or difficult people, can we still love like Christians should?

This week is a nice break before we move on to another series of bible study. Gonna start on the gospel of John. Shawn proposed that we do something more challenging, like real spiritual food. yummy. I am definitely looking forward to learning the word together!

p.s. hello lyn n charles! we miss you!!

Wo Yao Zuo Xin Ye Zi

2005-04-16T11:00:00.000+08:00

Woopeee. Today we wrap up the final chapter of our first bible study material used for the year! "Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."- Matt 5:10

Today's game is called HaHa. The game goes like this:
1st person: Ha.
2nd person: Haha.
3rd person: Hahaha.
And so on... if anyone laughs or fumbles will be forfeited! As usual, who is the lousiest at such games? *finger points at Yan*

This is a photo of our dear little Yan punished for being so lousy at games. He looks like he's really enjoying it. Maybe we should make him do forefeits more often.

Talking about persecution, we discussed about how being Christians make us feel really loserly sometimes. When someone is obviously making use of us, are we suppose to retaliate? Or continue to feel like a fool?

Gary said we can't rely on our strength to do good things. That would be the wrong motivation. It is our love for God that compels us to do good for others. Yan thinks about what Jesus did for him, and this will allow him to make decisions easier. Lion King chooses to focus on the long term, eternal things and not temporal. Some ways of guiding ourselves when we face unjust persecutions.

So how do we draw the line? For example, if just as you park into the last lot in the carpark, someone overtakes you and snatches up your lot. Are we to quietly let people bully us?

Zhiwei pointed out that Jesus was the ultimate loser! He even healed the guy's ear when Peter cut it off. We can nicely point out to anyone who offends us. The important thing is we are blessed if persercuted for righteousness sake, not for punishment.

Marc also shared that it's difficult being a good Christian at his workplace because of the fixed perceptions that his colleagues already have of him. If he were to perform any good deads, he worries that people might see Christians as hypocrites.

So anyway, just to draw out the main conclusions from our bible study: when faced with perscution, hang on to our relationship with God. We need to be motivated for the right reasons whenever we do anything-- that is our relationship with Him

On gambling, whether is it right or wrong, depends much on yr motivations. But be careful of rationalisation to make our actions seem right. Ultimately, it is between us and God. So we need to ask ourselves what is the true reason if we wanna gamble. I suppose playing with peanuts and water is ok. But playing to catch up with friends, to me depends on situation and can be questionable. Are we doing it because we want to fit in? We need to give up all areas to God, and not do anything that will stumble others.

We also practised our responses during cell group cos Ee Guan coming next Friday. Yup, we will wow him with our amazing enthusiasm and reflexes in hand-raising during discussion sessions.

Supper time! Here's a photo of eileen tramautising yan during supper.

Cell in Church

2005-04-09T09:11:00.000+08:00

9 guys and a girl today. We should really start recruiting new female cell group members. Lynn, we miss you!

Today's cell group was about the verse "Blesses are the peacemakers, for they will be called Sons of God." There are different levels to being peacemakers: making peace with God, others and self. When being a peacemaker to others, there two folds to this meaning. Firstly, we can bring peace to others by sharing the gospel. Everyone needs Jesus, and He is the Prince of peace. Secondly, being a peacemaker encompasses actions that best testifies ourselves as Christians.

Lion King felt that this verse spoke to him as he shared about how he shared Christ with one of his "groupies". He is starting a prayer group in army i.e. pray in the morning together before starting work. He's hoping to share the gospel with his other colleagues during the last 3 months before he ord. Zhiwei shared about not getting peace from his two law friends, Mimi and Lulu* (*pseudonyms to protect their identity). He was really disgusted with their "godless" chatter and often wondered how did they became friends in the first place. Gary brought up the story of Jonah. Maybe God has placed him there for a special reason. Sometimes running away might not be the best solution.

Sitting there, I was trying hard to think of people whom I am really disgusted with. But sometimes, I think God wants us to love people who are difficult to love. I think this will better define us as Christians. "If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even 'sinners' love those who love them... But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High..." (Luke 6:32,35)

I learnt a new gender sexual stereotype today. Women like surprises. Men, in general, don't like them, but ironically like to give surprises to women. Some women don't like surprises. Men can surprise such women by not surprising them. Gerald, shan't spoil this for ya.. heh heh. God will have mercy on ya..

Best Small Group Competition

2005-04-04T09:02:00.000+08:00

Sorry everyone for the delay in updating our cell group blog! I've been so overwhelmed with schoolwork that it's difficult to find time to write.

Charles really deserves a Best Boyfriend Award after what he did on Friday for Lyn (he planned a surprise birthday party for her all by himself!! so sweet rite?). Talk about scoring lots of points...

For cell group, we started really late at 9 after the party. Thanks Lion King for the simple 3-song worship session. Simple but meaningful.

We decided to focus the time on sharing instead. We started off sharing about embarrassing moments in our secondary school days. Jin shared about her ex-ah lian days in RV (and how eileen missed a fight cos of height limit.. haha... kidding!). Eric recounted when he won a "diao" contest when he was in sec 1 with his cute puppydog eyes and innocent questions. Don't see him no up I tell you. Although he skinny skinny short short one.. he was one hell of an ah beng. Zhiwei the versace-specs ah beng still thinks his specs is in vogue.

After rounds of heavy laughter, topped it up with yummy apple strudel (thanks lion king! happy birthday!), we moved into a session of deeper sharing. Yan shared about the difficult choices he need to make about his university application. I was really glad that he shared about his passion for alienated families, how there are many christian families experiencing a gulf between the parents and children due to lack of communication. I pray that God will continue to use him in that way to glorify His name. Marc shared about his dad's financial difficulty. I guess it must pained his heart to see his dad driven to such desperation.

Shawn announced that he just entered On Bended Knees into the Best Cell Group competition (Zone). Winner gets $200 for retreat! Immediately, everyone was enthusiastic about winning.

"Women shall come in veils and sit in the back row."

"It's worship time. Bring out the harp and lyre."

"Who wants to share? Everyone raises their hands. MEEE!"

"Print our own cell group liturgy. 'And now for announcements, deaths...' "

"Make Ee Guan tie a rope around his foot before he enter!"

"Didn't Eileen used to wear a bell around her ankle? She can be the high priest!"

"Wow.. very 'high' indeed."

Alas, it was all an April Fool's Day joke. Shawn was tempted not to reveal the joke until after Ee Guan comes to visit us, and see how we behave then.

Blings Blings

2005-03-25T01:09:00.000+08:00

Sorry for the late update guys. I've been so tied down with fyp that I couldn't even breathe. Finally can look forward to our great feasting tmr as we break fast together! yay! I sure hope tmr will be a special time of fellowship and bonding, and also remembering what Jesus did for us on the cross. Yeah man! Can't wait!

Last Friday was as usual GREAT! Played this singing game planned by Lynn. We were split into two groups. Each group was suppose to sing two lines from any song with the word she specified. First word was "love". That was quite easy. All the cheesy songs came up (Eternal Love, This Love, I Love You Lord). Next was "rain". The other group outsang us with "rain rain go away". Ok, I got to admit, that was ingenius. Third word was "eye". Jun Jun was so cute. She immediately answered "Goldeneye! Goldeneye!". After that, I couldn't get that song out of my head.

Yan led bible study for that session. Thanks for all the honest sharing. I'm sure all of us could identify with all his experiences. And I thank God that He has called him out to be holy and pure. As usual, Yan blunders are so cute. Yup. He was not fettered by all the fast cars, hot babes and "blings blings". Hahahhhaha...

I can't record much here cos I left early to rush home to finish my fyp. Was quite distracted by fyp hanging at the back of my mind and couldn't really concentrate on listening too.

Oh well, I do hope everyone's fasting well. I last heard chuuling is going on a fruit fast, gary lunch fast, shawn beverage fast, zhiwei 6-6 fast, jin daniel fast... I sure hope everyone has found fasting beneficial during the past week! Thank you God for your grace and for seeing us through this week!

Mercy

2005-03-12T09:51:00.000+08:00

I really want to thank God for the cell group yesterday. I thought it was the best session by far this year. As I looked back from the start of the year, I can see God working in this group, taking us a little step at a time every Friday (of cos, God doesn't only work thru this cell on Fridays). Yesterday was really great. Eileen took a break from her lessons and was back with us. Jin brought her boyfriend, Weiping, to cell too. (Now we got too weipings in our cell!! Guess who's the other one?) God was with us, and was speaking to us during worship, prayer and even the bible study discussion. I felt very strongly that God was leading us yesterday as we discussed about what it means to be merciful. There's a message that God was pointing to us admist all the discussion.

The verse for this week is "Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy." Gerald brought up his example of freeloaders in his project groups. How should we deal with them even though they leech off the efforts of their groupmates? Eileen shared about how she used to be a freeloader, and the effect of her friends extending their grace and forgiveness towards her. Zhiwei shared about this guy who is osctracized in school, and how the Christians in his school continued to show love for him even though many people disliked him. This speaks a very powerful testimony about Christ.

This reminded me about the story of Zacchaeus the tax collector(Luke 19). He was the chief tax collector, everyone hated him and regarded him as a "sinner". But Jesus chose to stay at his house. As a result, Zacchaeus changed for the better, giving half his money to the poor and pay back four times the amount to those he cheated. Jesus showed mercy and it resulted in the salvation of a soul.

When Shawn concluded the bible study yesterday about how showing mercy is very important as Christians. It differentiates us from the rest, especially in this meritocratic society that we are living in. It allows Jesus to shine in us. In the picture of mercy, there is salvation. As Shawn pointed that out, I felt this check in my spirit that this was what God wanted us to learn and show in our daily living. Imagine the lives we touch, the souls that can be saved, the lost that would be found again if we exhibit acts of mercy in our lives.

Yesterday, a friend of mine commited suicide and passed away. Lynn, Jin, Eileen and Gary know her too. We were all in shock when we received the news. The reason that drove her to that act was her depression, mostly depression from work. Yesterday was also the day she was supposed to receive assesment of her job. But in the end, she chose did not turn up for it. She was stressed and upset about it prior to that because of the last assesment she received. The supervisor gave her a very very very bad evaluation. Imagine how the situation would change if there was mercy. I'm not saying to lie and give a good assesment even though it is bad, but could there be more mercy shown that wouldn't lead to this?

We can keep arguing about how to deal with the situations that we face and not come with a concrete answer. Should we give a freeloader what he/she deserves? Should we tell confront this person? There are different choices that we could have made. We can come up with different action plans but still don't know if it's right. I guess, at the end of the day, it is not the action but the motivation that matters. The question we have to ask ourselves is: have we shown mercy to others? Once we set our motivations right, the correct step will follow. At the end of the day, we can then stand before the throne of God and tell Him that indeed we have shown mercy. Showing mercy not because they deserve it, but because God first showed mercy on us.

The passages that we studied talk about the helping the poor and the needy. Psalm 41 says "Blessed is he who has regard for the weak." I think the weak can also refer to people going through emotional struggles and depression. Have we shown our compassion and love towards them? Have we, in our busyness, forgotten to spend time with friends who are hurting or who are in need of a helping hand? I think we should not neglect this group of people because it is very prevalent. We might not know anyone who is hungry and poor, but we would definitely know at least one person in our lives who is struggling with problems and hurts. Are we able to show love and care for people like them around us?

Blessed are Those who Hunger and Thirst After Righteousness

2005-03-05T10:34:00.000+08:00

Look at our two masterpieces! The first picture is Gerald's car after colliding into the traffic light. Look at Charles' artistic rendition of car smoke coming out of the car! The second is the bespectacled, wide-mouth Lion King with lots of hair and a crown on his head.

This week's verse is "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they will be filled." I thought this study spoke to me and was very much looking forward to cell group on Friday, eager to see God at work during our time together.

At the end of the discussion, I felt compelled to ask this question to everyone: are you sastisfied with your life? Upon reflecting, we realised most of us are indeed satisfied with our lives. God has blessed us with great family, school and friends. No reason to complain about life at all. Then I asked if everyone is satisfied with God.

From that simple question, I thought God is revealing to us our comfort zones. Being hungry and thirsty is a sign of dissatisfaction. When in that state, we are inclined to feed ourselves until we are feeling satisfied. Thus, we came to a conclusion: we can be content with our lives, but we need to be dissatisfied with our spiritual lives.

I apologise for confusing everyone during Friday. I'm not very good at articulating my ideas sometimes. But the lesson did taught me something. Let me try to pen this down.

There is a God-shaped void in all of us. However, being man, we are all carnal in nature. We don't turn to God naturally. There's inclination in all of us to sin, to love the world, to fill this void with fleshly things. Thus, blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness because we don't crave righteousness naturally. But is by God's grace that He draws near to us. He is calling us when He reveals this dissatisfaction in our lives to us. Then, we have a choice: to turn to worldly things, or to turn to Jesus-- the source of living water.

As Christians, we need to see God's hand at work in our lives. Everyday is a day of His extension of grace towards us; His saving grace that we are able to know Him and come to Him. Not everyone can see God in their lives. Not everyone even have the opportunity to read the bible. In view of this, we need to turn it into compassion for our those who are unsaved. Let us live by grace and not take for granted what God has bestowed upon us.

After our bible study, we decided to have a time of prayer. To show our love and support for Jerry, who's facing many daily struggles, we laid our hands and prayed for him, kimchi style. Then, we had a time of group prayer together, asking God to instill in us the desire for Him.

What If God Had a Blog?

2005-02-26T00:22:00.000+08:00

This question spun off when somebody blurted out,"Ay, the bible is God's blog!"

God forgive us all the blasphemy that came out after that.

"View God's profile. Photo unavailable. Likes: A broken spirit and a contrite heart. Dislikes: satan."

"Currently listening: hillsongs, jars of clay."

"1st degree friends: Gabriel, Moses, Elijah...."

"Blog entries are archived into B.C. and A.D."

"Testimonial: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth..."

Ok. The list was endless. (I can't remember anymore larr... got more to add, just comment below.)

Today's bible study was on chapter 3, "Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth". I think today's bs spoke to different people differently. The question that arose was not uncommon to us: won't we be losing out if we need to constantly submit to others?

Eric and Marcus made a very good point. We need to recognise that all the rights that we think we have belong to God, and without God we are nothing. What right do we even have to begin with if we want to talk about power. Like what Marcus puts it, "The only right that we have is to die!!"

To answer the question of how to be meek, we need to acknowledge and be secure with our identity in Christ. Our identity doesn't come from ourselves, our family, our cliques, our job or even our hobbies. If we constantly remind ourselves that who we are is in Christ Jesus, redeemed by His precious blood, it will be easier to be meek. There's power in the knowledge that we have, but we kept it under control.

I think there's alot of power demonstrated in meekness even though it is said to be power under control. Just look at Jesus. The very fact that He is able to die on the cross for us is because He knows that He is God. Because of what He did, there is the power of the cross. And like what it says in 1 Peter 3:4, meekness paints a very beautiful picture for me. Just imagine this: someone picking a fight with you, hurling insults like "You are stupid!" or "You are ugly!" at you. But instead of letting it get to you, you simply smile and walk away because you know you are not stupid and ugly. I believe that by not losing our temper in any conflict, we have already won the argument.

I thank God for today's lesson. It taught me a very beautiful quality and reminded me to constantly exhibit it in my daily life. I thank God for today's cell too. I thought it was quite personal even though most of us haven't met for at least 2 weeks. We had alot of fun playing the intense 1-2-3 game that Jerry organised (Thank you Jerry for the chocolates and sweets!). Eric looked like Shikamaru when he was closing his eyes, seriously concentrating on the game.. haha. The discussion and sharing we had was also very meaningful too.

Thank you God for your Spirit binding all of us together! I don't know about the rest, but I felt really refreshed at the end of cell just now. And I know for sure God's presence was there with us, touching our hearts... just as what I prayed for.

P.S those of you who have blogs, please let me know.. then I can link it on our cell group blog.

Boh Cell This Week

2005-02-22T23:10:00.000+08:00

Last week's cell was cancelled cos too many people couldn't make it. Zhiwei, Shawn and Jin got Law Ball. Gary went to a seminar. I got 12stones bbq to organise. Lynn and Charles got school work. Gerald, Lion King couldn't make it. That makes more than half of the group.

Well, hope cell group will resume with a bang this Friday!

Oh, Charmaine just made her decision to come back to nus! So great to have her around! She really adds to the energy level of the group!

Blessed are Those who Moan... I mean "Mourn"

2005-02-12T00:00:00.000+08:00

Yan was so funny today when we were playing Animal Game. He fumbled and came up with 2 new animal gestures: the Super-hallelujah and the Jiggle-Octopus. The moments were priceless. I really couldn't stop laughing.

Before we started cell group proper, Chuuling and Marcus voiced that they didn't really like the material that we were using. Some of the feedback gathered was that the teaching by Pastor Benny was extreme, too narrow and the daily study was rather repetitive. Gary explained that it was extreme because that was how Jesus taught it to be; His teachings were radical and counter-worldview. Nevertheless, we decided to stick with the study til we finish it.

I think today's study spoke to me in certain ways. It reminded me that we must never be conceited with our Christian walk. "So if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don't fall!"- 1Cor 10:12. I think for most of us, we feel that we are alright, just a little sin here and there. Honestly, I feel that this is a danger that our small group is facing-- complancency and comfort zones. There's pride in our lives that hinders us from meeting with God. Each conviction that brings about repentance is an expression of the grace of God. More often than not, we are numbed to these convictions because we think these sins are too trivial, or we think our Christian life in general is fine. Without convictions and humility, without recognising that we always fall short of the glory of God, our Christian walk will always be powerless and constipated.

Blessed are the Poor in Spirit

2005-02-06T23:05:00.000+08:00

Today was our first official structured bible study session! One baby step closer to our vision for this year.

Before that, we played a game of Marc's Human Checkers. Don't ask me to explain it here. Our activities seems to be getting more and more challenging. Well, my team lost. I'm starting to think it might be me. Every Friday also lose one... sob.

Anyways, Shawn and I decided to go through every single question of chapter 1-- day 1 through to day 7. It took much longer than we expected cos there was alot of discussion for some of the questions. At the end of it, some of us feedbacked that it became more of an intellectual contest, a battle of wits, an aimless argument, rather than an earnest seeking for the truth for ourselves. There were suggestions that our next bs should be more concise and controlled.

Well, so much for a slow start. I guess much can be improved after our "trial run". Gary and Marc will be facilitating the next session(yes, Marc is facilitating! gasp!). Shawn decided that 2 people should be preparing for the bible study before cell each week. I thought it was a great idea now that there will be more purposeful interaction outside cell group time and more people can participate in leading the bs! Plus, for people who missed this week cell, Gerald has volunteered to post the answer sheet on our yahoo group. Soon we can have our own TYS. But ya, we agreed that every week, someone will volunteer to compile the discussed answers so that absent people won't miss out much.

During supper, we found Jerry carrying this really cool tissue packet.

It reads "Tom Cool... M:I-3". Didn't know even tissue paper is into spoofing nowadays.

Dead Ant, Live Ant

2005-01-29T01:39:00.000+08:00

Thanks to Shawn making this blog public, now I feel overly self-concious writing this. Now must make sure I spell korrectly eg. baK kut teh. (I still think it's spelt as "ba" leh cos it's "ba chor mee", not "bak chor mee".)

Today's cell group activity was a little different from our usual stick-our-lazy-butts-to-the-chair game. We played scavenger hunt, planned by our gamemaster and mistress, Gerald and Bernice. The evil duo made us rummage through bushes for dead leaves and pebbles, catch ants and pluck leg hair. I think the security guard (RICHARD is his name! yeah.) must have thought we were quite a funny sight, seeing all of us run around the condo frantically. My team lost by 6 points just because Gerald thought our ant was not alive enough(which is not true cos you can see the poor ant's legs twitching k!) and our "pebbles" were stones, not pebbles.

After that, Shawn gave a sermon. Ok lar.. not sermon, but rather a persuasive message about why it is important to be grounded in God's word.

With reference to Mark 12:29-31-- the Greatest Commandment-- as the framework, Shawn gave 2 main reasons to study God's word.

1. We love God.
In order for us to love someone, we need to know who he/she is. Likewise for our dear Abba Father. John 1:1 says Jesus was the Word. We can only know God more intimately through studying His word. Many times, we think we know God and we make Him up according to what we think Him to be. It is easy for us to fall into this trap if we don't dwell in His word.

Also, the word is our spiritual sword and a lamp in our times of darkness. In Luke 4:1-13, even satan quoted scripture. If we don't know the word well, and lines are blurred, we become easy prey for the devil to attack us.

2. Love our neighbour.
2 Tim 3:16 and Col 3:16 both indicates that we need to pull any of our brothers/sisters back to the path of righteousness by showing them the word. We also need to seek comfort from God's truth, not from things of the world. There's great joy and comfort when God's word become alive to us and being in tune with God.

How to study the word? Charles came up with this clever acronym.
Ponder- think about the word. Reflect.
Receive- Meditate. Listen to what God has to say.
Ask- pray and present our doubts to God.
Yield- surrender everything and obey.
Exercise- apply it in our lives! (Jas 1:22)
Remember- memorize scripture!! (Psa 119:11)

My thoughts: I think throughout the whole Bible, esp in the OT, are God's promises to us. Our God is a covenant-keeping God; whatever expounded in the bible will hold true and come to pass. God's word is the truth that will set us free from strongholds. It is important for us to study God's word in order to grow and abide in the Lord. I'm glad the cell is heading this direction in terms of growth.. and I'm quite excited about where God is going to take us this year as we begin to feed on His word.

One more thing.. Charmaine is helping in setting up a young adults ministry in Wesley. Next sat is the meeting. I guess we still have to pray about this too.

New Beginnings

2005-01-22T01:53:00.000+08:00

Yay! My very first cell group blog entry! This is shawn's idea. He wanted to keep a journal for the cell group and he thinks both of us should each have one. Hence, the cell group blog! YAY!

ok, i keep yaying cos i must be enthu.

Today was our third cell group of the year. Lynn was supposed to do worship but was late because of some conflict with her family. She later then shared with us how important it is to always go back to God whenever you are angry (her dad was making alot of noise about a toner?!?). So, to kill time, we had sharing.

Some stuff that I remembered from sharing. Lion King just started to see his counsellor John (wow i got such good memory!); Gerald wants to seek support from his parents for his car racing endevour; Marcus has to pass his next flight test or he will get suspended (but he's not worried about that cos he seemed strangely excited about going to SMU); Eric couldn't decide whether to go NUS or SMU (and the cell group decided for him through democratic means).

After that, we had a personal time to write down a vision for ourselves so that Shawn can return it to us after 6 months.

Eric pulled a WHATever. Zhiwei displayed a set of nifty dynamic footwork (shuffle shuffle shuffle CROSS! shuffle shuffle shuffle HEART!).

Also, Shawn and I decided to do the Benny Ho book study on the Beautitudes. That will be our appetizer, then followed by our main course of the Gospel of John. Woohoo!

Supper: Ba Kut Teh at Balestier. 11 cellulites and countless soup refills.

On a deeper note, I think God is answering my prayer. I am beginning to feel more at ease with this group, and better at showing love to them. Like what Lynn said during worship, these people should be my family. I wasn't emotional, but it did set a slight warm fuzzy feeling in my heart after cell.