1. psalm 89

    Saturday, July 17, 2010
    By johnny


    30 "If his sons forsake my law
           and do not follow my statutes,
     31 if they violate my decrees
           and fail to keep my commands,
     32 I will punish their sin with the rod,
           their iniquity with flogging;
     33 but I will not take my love from him,
           nor will I ever betray my faithfulness.
     34 I will not violate my covenant
           or alter what my lips have uttered.
     35 Once for all, I have sworn by my holiness—
           and I will not lie to David-
     36 that his line will continue forever
           and his throne endure before me like the sun;
     37 it will be established forever like the moon,
           the faithful witness in the sky."

    Tears were in my eyes when I came to verse 33. How deep the Father's love for all of us! How vast beyond all measure! Who can compare to His unfailing promises and His unending faithfulness? There's no one like our God! He's a God who does not and cannot lie! Lord, I won't let go of Your promises. I won't forget Your love.

    johnny
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    Posted by johnny at 2:21 AM 1 comments

  2. Ma Famille

    Sunday, July 11, 2010
    By johnny
    These people God has put in my life are what's really important to me. I love them with all my heart. As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord! I believe it! I proclaim it! Hallelujah!


    johnny
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    Posted by johnny at 1:27 AM 1 comments

  3. Lowest Place

    Wednesday, July 7, 2010
    By johnny


    God has so many promises, and I definitely need to remind myself of them many times because God doesn't say "O wait and see that the Lord is good" but rather "O TASTE and see that the Lord is good"! I want to taste God's goodness, and I've been tasting it every day!


    This month of preparation before the trip to West Africa is going to be quite exciting because on one hand I need to trust in the Lord for His provision but also do my best to come up with my share of financial support. O God I trust in You! I certainly hope some doors would be opened up (or rather I'll have to knock on 'em first) for me to teach some piano! I need to kick my own butt to start writing a theme song for West Africa with Annie and Luke...


    He brought me out into a spacious place;
    he rescued me because he delighted in me.
    -Psalm 18:19-


    You give me your shield of victory, 

           and your right hand sustains me; 
           you stoop down to make me great.
    -Psalm 18:35-



    Somehow I still can't get over with how God rescued me because He simply delights in me and how He stoop down just to make me great. This is mind-blowing. I don't need to know the reasons, maybe He'll tell me when I see Him, but if someone told me He's going to give me the shield of Victory and sustain me for the rest of my life, heck I'd take the deal in a blink of an eye.


    Like what Steve Chua shared @ Regeneration on Ezekiel's River and the song "I've Got a River of Life" which we sang on Sunday, I'm not satisfied with ankle deep, knee deep, nor waist deep water, but getting lost in the river and let go. When Steve was sharing, I thought about my snorkeling time in Hawaii a couple months ago and how it was simply impossible to take control of where I was floating because my feet could not touch the ground. Many times I would try very hard to try to grab onto a rock to temporarily stabilize myself, but when the wave came, I could not hold on anymore.


    So come and rush over me and let the river flow in the lowest place, I gotta get lower and lower!


    johnny

    fun fact: the Dead Sea, the place where the River of Life heads to as described in Ezekiel 47, is the lowest place on the planet! how cool!


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    Posted by johnny at 1:47 AM 0 comments

  4. simple layout

    Tuesday, June 8, 2010
    By johnny
    found this simple and beautifully made template at bloggerbuster. took me a little while to get everything working, but i have to say i love it! i'm just going to keep it simple and clean. i just need to have simple faith, a faith that is only a size of a mustard seed, because it's then mountains can be moved and victories won.

    Do you see what this means—all these pioneers who blazed the way, all these veterans cheering us on? It means we'd better get on with it. Strip down, start running—and never quit! No extra spiritual fat, no parasitic sins. Keep your eyes on Jesus, who both began and finished this race we're in. Study how he did it. Because he never lost sight of where he was headed—that exhilarating finish in and with God—he could put up with anything along the way: Cross, shame, whatever. And now he's there, in the place of honor, right alongside God. When you find yourselves flagging in your faith, go over that story again, item by item, that long litany of hostility he plowed through. That will shoot adrenaline into your souls! Hebrews 12:1-3 

    everyone should have The Message version. it's totally awesome to read.
    still studying. still hanging on the cliff until wednesday afternoon!
    it's in my weakness that Your strength is made PERFECTO.

    johnny
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    Posted by johnny at 4:24 AM 0 comments
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  5. One or the Other

    Saturday, June 5, 2010
    By johnny




    It wasn't so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn't know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It's a wonder God didn't lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on his own, with no help from us! Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah.     
    Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It's God's gift from start to finish! We don't play the major role. If we did, we'd probably go around bragging that we'd done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.
    -Eph 2:1~10- (The Message)
    For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me.

    -Romans 7:19~21- (NIV)
    What's mercy without judgement? Mercy would not have its power if there is no judgement. To God, they are two sides of the same coin. He created salvation because He desires to demonstrate who He is. As written in Ephesians 2: "Saving is all his idea, and all his work...God does both the making and saving." Not us. We cannot save ourselves by reading more Bible, singing more worship songs, going to more conferences, though they are essential to our walk with Christ.


    What's mercy without judgement? Mercy would have its power if there is no judgement. To God, they are two sides of the same coin. He created salvation because He desires to demonstrate who He is. As written in Ephesians 2: "Saving is all his idea, and all his work...God does both the making and saving." Not us. We cannot save ourselves by reading more Bible, singing more worship songs, going to more conferences, though they are essential to our walk with Christ.


    Maybe I'm not making it clear enough. We're all in the same boat of doing-the-things-we-hate in Ephesians 2. And when we want to do good, evil is right there (Rom 7). It's the Garden of Eden all over again. As we are in God's eyes "locked gardens and sealed fountains" (SoS 4:13), we ARE the embodiment of Garden of Eden. We have to make choices between the Tree of Life and the Tree of Death EVERY DAY, whether we like it or not. We either feed our spirit men with eternal substances or fulfilling carnal desires with a moment of satisfaction.


    Go big or go home!

    Following Jesus is not an easy task. We do not get to heaven simply because we accepted Jesus and were baptized in water when we were still babes, but through obeying what God commands: Love Him with all our heart, should, strength, and mind, and Love others as yourself (Luke 10:27).
    Christianity should never be about names or fame. It's not about lighting and glitter. It's not about numbers. It's about making decisions with the love for God and others. It's about doing good works and singing songs with a heart that loves God and others. It's about casting our crowns before the Almighty instead of casting stones at our brothers. Christianity is never meant to be an "easy religion." We either go big or go home. THERE IS NO IN-BETWEEN because God will simply spit us out of His mouth as written clearly in Rev. 3:16. It's a matter of LIFE and DEATH, and the choice is ours.


    This is the reality: We either stay as slaves of sin or become tramplers of the snake. We need to realize our identity in God as His sons and daughters and the authority we have in God's Kingdom over the kingdom of darkness. When we follow Jesus, battles are ensured to come, and our job is to win them with the assurance that the war has been won two thousand years ago on that Cross with Christ's sacrifice. We are prone to fall, but He picks us up and carries us because when He places challenges before us, He wants us to partner with Him to conquer them!

    Once our eyes are opened to this eternal truth, it's so easy to share this love and take it to the streets of suffering, pick up the cross and follow Jesus into the homes of the broken, and be of ambassadors of Light in the valley of the shadow of death. It's time to get our of the four walls of church and BE one!

    The clock's ticking.
    Johnny
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    Posted by johnny at 5:01 PM 0 comments
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blind eyes open you only live once.
open your eyes. His love never fails. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works,
which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.
~Ephesians 2:10~

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