blind eyes open
-1 Corinthians 6:19~20-

I've been reading Kris Vallotton's latest work, Purity: A New Moral Revolution.
Here are some good words in Chapter 3 -- THE GREAT ESCAPE:

Living From Your Virtues

Years ago, I read a book about the life of Benjamin Franklin. The author recounted that Franklin decided who he wanted to be early in his life, and he wrote 13 virtues to guide all of his decisions so that he would be become that person. Benjamin Franklin didn't want his emotions, his circumstances, or the pressure of pleasing others to determine his destiny, define his personhood, or dictate his legacy. I was so inspired by the idea that I could live out of my virtues instead of living from the circumstances of my life that I wrote my own virtue list. The process of envisioning who I was created and called to be and then writing down the virtues that would enable me to become that person was so exciting. Here are a few of my own -- maybe they will help to inspire you also:

• I will serve God first and honor Him always, both in life and in death.
• I will be honest, loyal, trustworthy, and a man of my word, no matter what the price.
• I will keep my values, regardless of how much they cost me, and if I fail, I will be quick to repent.
• I will treat all people with respect, whether they are friend or foe, because they were created in God's image.
• I will strive to love everyone, despite their opinions, attitudes, or persuations and inspite of how they treat me.
• I will be loyal to my wife, both in thought and deed into eternity.
• I will live to bless and empower the generation to come and leave and inheritance both in the Spirit and in the natural for three generations.
• I will never work for money or sell myself at any price. I will only be motivated to do what I believe to be the right thing and reveive my sustenance from God. I vow to be generous no matter what my circumstances may be.
• I will live my life to bring out the best in people and to bring them into an encounter with the real and living God.

Virtues help us to live from the inside out instead of from the outside in. No longer do I live by other people's rules. Instead, I live by values that guide my attitudes, which in turn determine my choices. Choices dictate my behavior. My behaviors become manisfestations of my personhood, and my personhood leads me into my destiny.

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Set the New-Year resolution aside for a moment.
It's time to build a Virtue List that lasts for eternity.

Johnny

Man this past Sunday service was something different.

The Holy Spirit was so thick in the room that the weightiness of Him just fell in an amazing measure. I believe something was broken through during worship. I love how He would just come in and mess everything up and turn the world rightside up =)

I especially like the last part of worship when I started to play these two chords -- Emaj9 and G#minor7/A. Man I really had no idea where those two chords came from, but they are the chords for the moment. I LOVE RICH CHORDS. They just melt me from head to toe when the Spirit starts to move! Baptize us with the Holy Spirit, baptize us with fire!

I am also very proud of our drummers, Shinny and Kay, who played during Sunday service worship for the first time! They did even much better than practice!

Aaron's sharing on mentoring and becoming spiritual parents was simply profound. That was totally what we needed to hear that the moment. The sharing was full of truth, wisdom, and love. Aaron, you're a great man of God!

Jesus, thank You for walking in the room and hung out with us. We really love You, Holy Spirit. We are raising expectations for surprises, gem stones, feathers, healing, or just whatever You wanna do!

Johnny

This is for real.
God is so real!!
His faithfulness is never-ending.

As soon as I got back home on Friday, Jack and Annie told me that someone gave me plane tickets to go to Kansas City and back for the Onething conference!

God is so faithful and I am so blessed. I will definitely go with a huge empty bag and fill it up with lots of intense teachings and revelations from the Lord and bring it back!! Freely receive, freely give!

This is probably the first time ever that God's provision become so real to me. Once again, I ahve been wanting to pay a visit to IHOP for almost 2 months, not necessary the onething conference. But when Mike Bickle sent out his personal invitations to the conference, some how I just knew that I HAVE TO be there. So I started to do some research on tickets, but I do not have money for tickets.

And surely the Lord provides! The person who gave me the tickets has told me that he wanted to give out tickets to someone and then somehow he was told that I really wanted to go to KC, and now I have tickets!

I am so excited inside and I am so excited for this event. I'm raising my expectation. I had an amazing breakthrough back in 2006, and I believe there will be another one coming up in less than 3 weeks! Lord, expand my horizon and speak destiny to my heart!

One more praise report: I was actually planning to DRIVE to Kansas City with 7 other friends in 2 cars! But I had to call the roadtrip off because I got the tickets. So the driver of the other car actually started to pray for God's provision too when she heard that I got tickets to go to KC! She has also been wanting to go to KC and she was so ready to drive there BY HERSELF! So last night I just got a news that her friend had the conviction to BUY HER TICKETS! Craziness! God is THE provider! He forms the heaven and the earth. He works things miraculously.

Flight. Check.
Lodging. Check.
Transportation. Check.
Readiness. almost check.
Consecration. almost check too.


Johnny

ps. PLEASE interpret my dreams for me! I'd love to know what you think! Just click on the MORE DREAM!! post and the EVEN MORE DREAM!! post under December in "Previous Posts" on the left of this post!

Man I love those amazing dreams, and the one I had on Friday morning was fairly interesting. Quite an important dream, says my gut feeling and spirit man. So here it is:

I was in the Batman movie (the most recent one). Somehow the Batman lost all his strength against the Joker, and he (Batman) was trying jump off the building. One of the police officers who were going to arrest Batman for killing a hostage (in fact, the Joker did it). And one of the officers has Batman's girlfriend. Somehow a black car (a Mercedes or a BMW) appeared by the side of the building (in the air, I presume), and as Batman leaped over the car, trying to jump down to the ground floor, in the air, he got cut by a knife that was thrown by one of the officers.

And then Batman fell into the alley between two buildings. I somehow was on the ground level and walking toward the entrance to the alley, and as I reached the crossroad, a WHITE PRIUS drove out from it. And Joker was the driver. I hid and not to be detected. Joker has, in the car, Batman (I do not know whether he was killed or not), and also the man whom he killed in the first place, whom I realized was my best friend.

I got back home and somehow no one at the school would believe me, and I was so afraid to tell my best friend's mom what to do. And somehow, right before I was about to call her up, I got an email from her.

It's a slideshow full of encouraging words and images that proclaim the God is good and how I am a man of God. And finally I reached her and told her that her son was killed, she said she has been preparing for this moment. And somehow the reason that my buddy was killed was that he had a political disagreement with his schoolmates down in Carolina, and somehow he died by believing in McCain.

Here's the last bit of the dream, very interesting:
I tried to tell people about this, and finally the news got to Lou Engle through a phone call while he was in the office. I think Lou was the sheriff or some sort -- an important figure of justice.

The dream felt so real and I can feel all the emotion around me and within me.
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I wish the dream could be simpler than I don't have to interpret them lol.... love you Lord no matter what.

Joel 2:28 - 30! Woohoo!

Johnny

On the morning of 12.04.08, before I woke up:

I'm in some sort of a mission as a spy or something. I went to a foreign country and got to a place to kill someone, I got to the place by a taxi. It's like an outdoor plaza that has 2 or 3 levels. I went upstairs, with a desert eagle on my right hand, and I took out my one-eyed telescope and looked around and see whether there are enemies on the rooftops. And then I saw something coming towards me, gaining the speed.

I saw that it was a monkey/chimpanzee heading my way in the air to strike me down. And I was looking with my one-eyed scope, and I just had enough time to blew out one of its legs and killed it with what is now a shot gun.

I went upstairs and realized that one of the enemies just got out of a shower, so I hid right pass the corner and ready to tackle him in surprise. So eventually I punched him a couple times and he fell off the side. Too bad I did not get to kill more enemies or a boss.

Cause the scene changed.

I was with a friend at her church, attending a prayer meeting/service. The friend's from the OC area. We were sitting on the side. Somehow I went up to the front and a child, about 4/5 years old, came up and started to lay his (or her) hand on me and pray for me. I started bawling and crying and just soaked in His presence right there.

After that, my friend had to go up on the stage and rehearse. She was playing a pan flute. I went outside and called up Eric and told him where I'm at. He seemed to know where I was. Suddenly I realized that the church is actually meeting in a Chinese restaurant with all those round tables and stuff! Outside of the entrance to the restaurant was a lobby, and in the center of the lobby were a small, open shop with bookshelf full of Bibles, worship music books, and CD's. And as we (some more people from Impact got there too) were there, I saw Pastor David Tai passing by! I started to tell him about Impact and how we have moved to a new location. And the only thing I remember him saying was something to do with praying hard through the transition.

It was about time to leave, so I went back in to say bye to my friend, but she was still on the stage, but we made an eye contact. Then I left.

Another Scene Change....

Somehow I was on a plane with many different people, and I realized that many of them are not going to LA, so I asked them why are they going there. They answered, "the plane will go to LA and stop there first and then go to _______ (wherever they are from). Here's the thing, Los Angeles is actually NOT on the way to the final destination, rather, it is further to go to ________ from LA, but they chose to take this flight.

So finally the plane got to LA and I was trying to find a way off the plane, and the plane was about to leave the gate! I was searching for elevators that would take me down to the ground level, and finally I got into this elevator, and I realized that I actually entered into a supermarket, like Ralphs! Nonetheless, I pressed LEVEL 2 (there is no LEVEL 1 for some reason), and the elevator (or rather, the entire supermarket) started to go down 2 levels (I was on level 4).

I went out and trying to find a staircase to go down to the ground level. And finally I saw a ramp that goes down, and I finally got out of the plane, but the surroundings did not look like a plane at all. That's about it.

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Pretty interesting for sure. INPUTS?

Johnny