Wednesday, November 7, 2007

NO more condemnation

today I watched a sermon video by Ps.Joseph Prince. his sermon was talking about "Grace & Favour".
He said one thing that striked me a lot, it was about the story in John 8:1-12. When there is condemnation, there will be more sin produced. but in verse 11, Jesus said to the adulteres woman, "Neither do I condemn you, go and sin no more." Jesus takes all the condemnation toward our sin, so that we can sin no more. but nowadays, what most happens is the opposite ,"Don't sin, then I will not condemn you."

on the verse 6 in John chapter 8, it was said that "But Jesus stooped down and wrote on the ground with His finger,..". remember who wrote the ten commandments? it was God Himself, isn't? and who is Jesus? Jesus is God! When He wrote on the ground with His finger, He redeemed us from the law, He gives us GRACE.

When we are in Christ, there is NO MORE CONDEMNATION (Romans 8:1). we live under the grace, not under the law. How beautiful it is to live in Jesus :). However, this message doesn't ask you to keep sinning because there is no more condemnation, no! you'll know what I mean :)

blessings,

Tuesday, November 6, 2007

End of my degree... Grace of God.

tomorrow will be my final presentation for this semester, and after that I have finished the degree (^__^)
3 years has almost finished, all of the journey in Brisbane. if I looked back, I realise that I can't finished all these years without His grace.
I had problems with socialising in Australia at the very beginning of my year, and it affected my studies. timid and a bit low self esteem. I enjoyed alone at home and did my homeworks at home. I could not stayed long at uni because I was afraid to meet my friends because I did not know what I should say for conversations.
however, I learnt how to adapt. I tried to know them and understand how they live, their culture, and everything.
these few days, as I was getting busy preparing for my assesment, I neglect my time with God.
but then, during these weeks, especially last week on the Sunday's sermon, I was reminded that relationship with God is important.
one thing that I learn about realtionship with God is how we have relationship with the person we love as well. relationship with God is not something that can be played around, but it is something that we have to fight for. we need to protect, nurture just like in any other human relationship.
do not come to God only if we have request or asking for blessing (of course God will be happy to bless us).
in each of us, there is Holy Spirit. he always there to accompany us. so, start having conversation with Him. don't neglect Him. in any circumstances, talked to Him (just like praying), just like if we are having conversation with our friends.
blessings,

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

dream versus aspiration


what's the different between dream and aspiration?
source:
The Kiss of Heaven, by Darlene Zschech (I read the Indonesian translation )

in her book, Darlene makes a statement: if you can think on how you can do it, then it is not a dream. that is an aspiration. few things about dream: it is a Hardwork! it needs focus! there will be long hours, frustation, tests and time to relax.
When we are in the presence of God ( i hope this is the right meaning as in Indonesian translation it is said 'kesenjangan Allah'), it feels uncomfortable. we need to keep learning to always say," I can do all things through God who strengthens me" - Phil 4:13 it feels unfair. sometimes, it does not look like our dream but look like our nightmare. however, in every circumstances we need to always say what Psalm 31:15-16 says, "my times are in Your hand; Deliver me from the hand of my enemies, and from those who persecute me."

Darlene also reminds us that this all is not about us. God gives us dream to serve other people. He gives us health to go, to serve and help other people. often we enjoy with our dreams to happen, and we put our focus on it. it makes us unable to see what God actually has put into the palm of our hands. we need to realise that His mercy and His goodness that makes every thing impossible becomes possible.
one of the way to see our dream becomes reality is to help other people's dream becomes reality as well. it's about unity, and it's all about Him. when we realise that our dream are made to bring people to Him, there will be no words can describe how satisfy we might feel. our dream will start with little things that we are assigned to do. where would bigger things come if not comes form small things, right? and the last, keep a positive attitude. let positive words that keep coming out of our lips.

blessings,

Sunday, October 28, 2007

the wounded soul

Last night, I ran from reality. I was driven by my imagination and emotion. I ran to a place where I could sit alone, cried. I was crying and angry toward myself, toward the situation, but I burst it all out to the person that I care about. I blamed him for everything. hoping him to fix everything about the problem that I had made.
afterall, I didn't get what I want but I get what I need.
I sat there, hoping for an angel to come. hoping for a miracle. I was all wrong! I felt everything inside me are mistakes. "why am I not the same with everyone? Why should I feel this way? I make all the mistakes, I can't get better than this!". I felt that I deserve a punishment from God, from someone that I hurt.
All I need is just love. love, approval from the right source. I thought to myself, if Im filled with love, then I won't be like this. the truth is the love is already there, but I keep pushing it away. the love keeps calling me, but I deny him. my mind and my heart are too full with rejection and wounds. I thought that Im not deserve to be loved.

wait...it's all wrong!

here is some reading from "Captivity, page 68-75, by John & Stasi Eldredge":
"- The messages of our wounds - and how they shaped us
The wounds that we received as young girls did not come alone. they brought messages with them, messages that struck at the core of our hearts, right in the place of our Question. Our wounds strike at the core of our feminity. The damage done to our feminine hearts through the wounds we received is made much worse by the horrible things we belive about ourselves as a result. As children, we didn't have the faculties to process and sort through what was happening to us. Our parents were godlike. We believed them to be right, If we were overwhelmed or belittled or hurt or abuse, we believed that somehow it because of us - the problem was with us.
... Many women feel that, by the way. We can't put words to it, but down deep we fear there is something terribly wrong with us. if we were the princess, then our prince would have come. If we were the daughter of a kind, he would have fought for us. We can't help but believe that if we were different, if we were better, then we would have been loved as we so longed to be. it must be us.
...Some women who were sexually abused choose another path. or, perhaps more honestly, they find themselves compulsively heading in another direction. They never received love, but they did experience some sort of intimacy through their sexual abuse, and now they give themselves over to one man after another, hoping to somehow heal the wrongful sexual encounters with sex that has love to it.
...the vows we make as children are very understandable-and very, very damaging. they shut our hearts down. they are essentially a deep-seated agreement with the messages of our wounds. they act as an agreement with the verdict on us. "Fine,if that's how it is, then that's how it is. I'll live my life in the following way..." The vows we make and the things we do as a result of our wounds only make matters worse.

- Wounded feminity.
as a result of the wounds we receive growing up, we come to believe that soem part of us, maybe every past of us, is marred. Shame enters in and makes its crippling home deep within our hearts. Shame is what makes us look away, so we avoind eye contact with strangers and friends. Shame is that feeling that haunts us, the sense that if someone really knew us, they would shake their heads in disgust and run away. Shame makes us feel, no, belive, that we do not measure up-not to the world's standards, the church's standards, or our own.
others seems to master thei lives, but shames grips our hearts and pins them down, ever ready to point out our failures and judge our worth. we are lacking. ... if we were not deemed worthy of love as children, it is incredibly difficult to believe we are worth loving as adults. shame says we are unworthy, broken, and beyond repair.
Shame causes to hide. we are afraid of being truly seen, and so we hide our truest selves and offer only what we believe is wanted. if we are a dominating kind of woman, we offer our 'expertise'. if we are a desolate kind of woman, we offer our 'service'... Shame makes us feel very uncomfortable with our beauty. Women are beautiful, every single one of us. it is one of the glorious ways that we bear the image of God. but few of us belive we are beautiful, and fewer still are comfortable with it. we either think we don;t have any beauty or if we do, that it's dangerous and bad. so we hide our beauty behind extra weight and layers of unnecessary makeup. or we neutralize our beauty by putting up protective, defensive walls that warn others to keep their distance.

-An unholy alliance.
Over the years we've come to see that the only thing more tragic than the things that have happened to us is what we have done with them.
Words were said, painful words. things were done, awful things. and they shaped us. something inside of us shifted. ... we adopted strategies to protect ourselves from being hurt again. a woman who is living out of a broken, wounded heart is a woman who is living a selfprotective life. she may not be aware of it, but it is true. it's our way of trying to "save ourselves."
we also developed ways of trying to get something of the love our hearts cried out for. the ache is there. our desperate need for love and affirmation. our thirst for some taste of romance and adventure and beauty is there. so we turned to boys or to food or to romance novels; we lost ourselves in our work or at church or in some sort of service. ... Much of what we call our "personalities" is actually the mosaic of our choices for self-protection plus our plan to get something of the love we were created for.
the problem is our plan has nothing to do with God.
the wounds we received and the nessages they brought formed a sort of unholy alliance with our fallen nature as women. from Eve we recived a deep mistrust in the heart of God toward us. Clearly, he's holding out on us. We'll just have to arrange for the life we want. we will control our world. but there is also an ache deep within, an ache for intimacy and for life. We'll have to find a way to fill it. A way that does n ot require us to trust anyobe, especially God. a way that will not require vulnerability.
in some ways, this is every little girl's stroy, here in this world east of Eden.
But the sounds don't stop once we are grown up. some of the most crippling and destructive wounds we receive come much later in our lives. the w ounds that we have received over our lifetimes have not come to us in a vacuum. There is, in fact, a theme to them, a pattern. the sounds you have received have come to you for a purpose from one who knows all you are meant to be and fears you."


back to my story... I was thinking to stayed out until late. hoping to disapear and gone. but God is good. something warns my heart and it made me to decide to go home. when I went home, I just realise that there was a wide road that I crossed that if I was not careful, I might hit by car. I was so driven by emotion that my eyes were blinded.
So here I was, I arrived at 10pm, waiting for a phonecall from a friend that stay there to give the support.
to open out our eyes, to see that precious little things that come to our path are too precious to be take for granted.

Let go and Let God

"if you love someone (name the person you love)...you will always believe in Him (God) , always expect the best of Him(God)." - 1 Chorinthians 13:7 TLB

To let go doesn't mean to stop caring, it just means I can't do it for someone else.
To let go is not to cut myself off, it's the realisation that I don't control them.
To let go is not to enable, but to allow learning from natural consequences.
To let go is to admit my powerlessness, which means the outcome is not in my hands.
To let go is not to try and change or blame another, I can only change myself.
To let go is not to care for , but to care about.
not to fix, but to be supportive
not to judge, but to allow another to be a human being.
To let go is not to be in the middle arranging all the outcomes, but to allow others to effect their own outcomes.
To let go is not to be protective, it's to permit another to face reality.
To let go is not to deny, but to accept.
To let go is not to nag, scold or argue, but to search my own shortcomings and correct them.
To let go is not to adjust everything to my desires, but to take each day as it comes and cherish each moment.
To let go is not to criticise and regulate anyone, but to try to become what I dream I can be.
To let go is not to regret the past, but to grow and live for the future.
To let go is to fear less and love more.
To let go is to let God.

(source: Daily devotion, sunday 25th March 20007)

Friday, October 26, 2007

"For the joy of the Lord is your strength"

from : Joel Osteen "30 thoughts for victorious living"




Nehemiah 8:10 - ...for the joy of the Lord is your strength.




"The joy of the Lord is our source of strength and the enemy knows it. He knows that if he can get you down and discouraged, before long, you'll be weak and feeble and he'll be able to easily defeat you.


when you are full of joy and have a good attitude, you keep yourself strong. that positive attitude of faith paves the way for God to work miracles in your life-it paves the way for God to turn your situation around!"




from : CVC (27th October'2007)




"her attitude toward something when she isunder pressured. when we have joy we have the strength.


the attitude of people that have joy:


they are like baloons, two things. when a baloon is pressed it can blown up or it can be flexible. the joy person would have a flexible attitude.


she can impact other person with her joyfullness eventhough she is actually at the down level of her life.


she sees everything from God's point of view when something bad happen.


there are two types of human when they are facing problems:


- react


-respond : took startegy, think before she acts, how should she acts when she got a problem