Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Everything - Tim Hughes

Vincent from Light got this very meaningful christian song which he would like to share with everyone. Thanks bro!~ =)



God in my living
There in my breathing
God in my waking
God in my sleeping
God in my resting
There in my working
God in my thinking
God in my speaking

Be my everything x4

God in my hoping
There in my dreaming
God in my watching
God in my waiting
God in my laughing
There in my weeping
God in my hurting
God in my healing


Christ in me x3 the hope of glory
You are everything


Jesus everything x4

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

~Exercise Time!~

Our section is not only about fellowship while feasting, but cultivating a healthy body too!~ =)

Sun 5 Oct 2008

A few of us "fit & sporty" types on yet another cycling trip from ECP to Changi Village (along Park Connector Network) and back, total of about 35km. Changi Airport runway at back:


"Neverending" 7.5km park connector stretch from East Coast Park to Changi Beach Park, runway on left.

Monday, February 09, 2009

TCC YA Event - Survivor

Sun 13 Jul 2008

Combine Light & Mimosa group. Sunnydale had their own team.

"Swearing-in ceremony"


~SQUEEZE!~


Bombs away!!!

Wednesday, February 04, 2009

Quest for Love : John and Betty Stam

This is one of the love stories mentioned in Elisabeth Elliot's book "Quest for Love".

The story of a missionary couple who went to China and... met an untimely death.
In these turbulent times, I am encouraged by stories of bravery and of people coming to know Christ. 

Let's press on for more!

Courage Concealed
A missionary couple whose looks deceived
by Mark Galli

In grainy 1934 photos, missionaries John and Betty Stam stare at the camera through tortoise-shell glasses. Betty's hair is pulled back, and John wears a dark suit. The faintest hint of a smile rests on their innocent, perhaps even naive, faces.

Yet the pictures deceive. They mask the singlemindedness within, a resolute courage that drove the couple apart, then reunited them to serve in war-ravaged China until an untimely and gruesome death.

In the late 1920s, foreigners in China found themselves caught in the vice of civil war. Many missionaries were murdered, so in 1927, half of all foreign missionaries were evacuated. Two years later, when the head of the China Inland Mission (CIM) asked for 200 new recruits, 89 men and 111 women volunteered. Among them was Betty Scott, the daughter of Presbyterian missionaries to China and new graduate of Moody Bible Institute.

While at Moody, Betty attended CIM-sponsored prayer meetings and Bible studies, where she first met John Stam. He, too, had his heart fixed on China. With so much in common, the two were immediately attracted to one another. It seemed God was pointing their future in the same direction.

But they balked at marriage. John knew he would be asked to work in areas "where it would be impossible to take a woman." Nor could he ask her to wait for him—he still had a year to go in school. Missions, not matrimony, would come first. So Betty, without John, left for China in 1931. They did not expect to see each other again.

United forever
Following his graduation from Moody in 1932, John sailed for Shanghai. In a twist of fate, Betty, after a year of missionary work in the country's interior, became seriously ill and returned to Shanghai for medical care. There she and John had an unexpected reunion that resulted in their engagement. Within a year they were married, and in September of 1934, Betty gave birth to a baby girl, Helen Priscilla. The Stams were sent to Anhwei province, where there was "no danger of Communists in the area," the local magistrate assured the CIM.

But within two weeks of their arrival, the Stams were arrested by Communist soldiers and placed under heavy guard. John wrote CIM headquarters and relayed their captors' demand: a $20,000 ransom. He closed with, "The Lord bless you and guide you, and as for us, may God be glorified whether by life or by death."

The soldiers also discussed how to dispose of their baby, since she would be a liability if they had to flee. A local farmer heard of their situation, and stepped forward to plead for the baby's life. The soldiers said it would be his life for hers. He agreed, and he was killed on the spot.

The next morning, as Betty was bathing Helen, soldiers suddenly burst in and ordered them to leave the house—without baby Helen. John and Helen were stripped to their undergarments and paraded down the street. A crowd gathered as a soldier read their death sentence.

A Chinese doctor, a Christian, made a last-minute plea for their lives; without hesitation the Communists condemned him to death. John begged for mercy for the doctor, but to no avail. Then John and Betty were ordered to their knees, and in quick succession, both were beheaded.

Thirty hours later, a Chinese evangelist found baby Helen abandoned in a house. He concealed her in a rice basket and made a dangerous journey over hundreds of miles of mountainous terrain and delivered her to her grandparents, the Scotts.

Helen, raised by her grandparents, became a school teacher and eventually settled in the eastern United States.

Though the Stams' missionary assignment was cut short on earth, their influence was long lasting. Over the next decade, hundreds of young men and women volunteered for missionary service as the result of their resolute courage—a courage concealed by tender faces.

Thursday, January 15, 2009

BFF- pureNRG



BFF x4
Good times are behind us
Good times still to come
Can't help but smile just thinking about
The crazy things we've done

No way to know for certain
What the years will bring
Not too many guarantees
But there's one sure thing

BFF, BFF
You and me together
BFF, BFF
Always and forever
BFF, forever

Let the days unravel
Let the years unfold
I can hardly wait to see
What the miles ahead will hold

Flying or falling
We'll face it side by side
Can't be separated
Come on and take this ride


Best friends forever
We're best friends forever
BFF BFF
Always and forever yeah
BFF BFF

Wednesday, January 07, 2009

Margin or Marginless?

From Mimosa cell leader, taken from purposedrivenlife.com


Margin or Marginless?
2009/01/05



God, listen to me shout, bend an ear to my prayer? You've always given me
breathing room, a place to get away from it all. Psalm 61:1, 3 (MSG)


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


A lot of people are on overload and headed for a crash. Consider these
statistics:


· People now sleep 2½ fewer hours each night than people did a hundred
years ago.


· The average work week is longer now than it was in the 1960s.


· The average office worker has 36 hours of work piled up on his or her
desk. It takes us three hours a week just to sort through it and find what
we need.


· We spend 8 months of our lives opening junk mail, 2 years of our lives
playing phone tag with people, and 5 years waiting for people who are late
for meetings.


At least in the U.S., we're a piled-on, stretched-to-the limit society
that is chronically rushed, chronically late, and chronically exhausted.
Many of us feel like Job did when he said, "I have no peace! I have no
quiet! I have no rest! And trouble keeps coming" (Job 3:26 GWT).


Overload comes when we have too much activity in our lives, too much
change, too many choices, too much work, too much debt, too much media
exposure.


We're stressed by information overload; we're stressed by accessibility
overload ? we're connected all the time. Simply put, we're stressed by the
pace of life.


Is there a solution? Yes. The solution is to put some margin into your
life. Margin is breathing room. It's keeping a little reserve that you're
not using up. It's not going from one meeting to the next to the next with
no space in between.


Margin is the space between your load and your limit. But most of us are
far more overloaded than we can handle, and there is no margin for error
in our lives.


Dr. Richard Swenson, MD says this: "The conditions of modern day living
devour margin. If you're homeless we direct you to a shelter. If you're
penniless we offer you food stamps. If you're breathless we connect you to
oxygen. But if you're marginless we give you one more thing to do.
Marginless is being 30 minutes late to the doctor's office because you
were 20 minutes late getting out of the hairdresser because you were 10
minutes late dropping the children off at school because the car ran out
of gas two blocks from a gas station and you forgot your purse. That's
marginless.


"Margin, on the other hand, is having breath at the top of the staircase,
money at the end of the month, and sanity left over at the end of
adolescence. Margin is grandma taking the baby for the afternoon. Margin
is having a friend help carry the burden.


"Marginless is not having time to finish the book you're reading on
stress. Margin is having the time to read it twice. Marginless is our
culture. Margin is counter-culture, having some space in your life and
schedule. Marginless is the disease of our decade and margin is the cure."


Tomorrow we'll look at four benefits of building margin into our lives.















Four Benefits of Putting Margin in Your Life
2009/01/06



"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in
heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my
burden is light." Matthew11:28-30 (NIV)


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


Here are 4 immediate benefits you'll receive by building margin into your
life:


1. Peace of mind. When you're not always hurrying and worrying, you have
time to think, time to relax, time to enjoy life. We had a bird come into
the building one evening before service. He started singing, and it was
just like we'd been given an invitation: "Just relax. Everybody except
those sitting directly under the bird, relax."


2. Better health. Unrelenting stress harms our bodies. We all know that,
yet we let it continue day after day after day. Many times we only build
margin in our lives after the heart attack almost happens or does happen,
or the blood pressure skyrockets. Why do we wait until our health plummets
before we make this decision? Why not realize thatwe need to build some
margin intoour lives now? The truth is your body needs downtime in order
to heal. Race cars make pit stops occasionally in order to get repaired.
You can't fix anything going 200 miles an hour. Yet, we try to repair
ourselves while we're still racing through life. Margin builds in time for
better health.


3. Stronger relationships. Lack of margin is one big reason for the
collapse of the American family today. When we don't make relationships a
priority and make time for each other, our relationships suffer.
Relationships take time; and margin provides the time to sit and talk, to
listen and enjoy one another, and to provide the comfort we each need.


4. Usefulness in ministry. When you're overloaded by activity, you can
only think of yourself. You're in survival mode, just trying to make it
through another day. But being available to God for his use makes all the
difference in this world.


When you have no margin in your life and God taps you on the shoulder,
saying, "I'd like you to do this for me," your first response isn't joy.
Your first response is, "Oh, no! Another thing to do! Sorry, God ? I'd
like to do that, but I'm just too busy."


We end up resenting the great opportunities God brings into our lives. But
when you have margin, you're available for God to use.


You don't have to live on overload. You don't have to live in survival
mode. Begin today to build a buffer around your schedule. Then enjoy the
benefits of margin and see what God does next!

A conversation with my boss

Hi everyone,

I shared this at cell yesterday evening and wanted to share with you too the conversation I had with my boss yesterday morning. I hope it will encourage you as much as it has for me.

My boss called me into his room at around 9:30am yesterday to talk about performance appraisal for 2008. Btw, he is a cell leader at FCBC. The conversation started normally and he was telling me how I seemed to be working too hard and spending too much time in the office. He was saying how it was important to have the right work-life balance early on in life, otherwise it will be hard next time on the family since these are habits that take time to change. Imagine your boss telling you to work less and go home earlier! That was not all. We started to talk about how we see work, whether we live to work or work to live. Suddenly, he remarked "work is worship unto God!" I almost fell off my chair as normally people don't openly talk about God in the office, especially between superiors and staff.

After that, he quoted the verse "Seek first the Kingdom of God and all things will be added unto you." He then asked me, "So do you know the Hebrew word for 'first'?" I shook my head. He followed up by saying, "'First' comes from the Hebrew word 'proton' which means 'centre'." Many a times, when I hear this verse, I always think that there is a list of priorities in my life and God wants me to put Him and His kingdom at the #1 position. However, the truth is that God wants us to put His kingdom in the centre of our lives and everything else will fall into place naturally around it. This was such a refreshing revelation! No wonder God says everything that we do (work, play, study etc), it is a worship unto Him. We no longer need to compartmentalize our life into days/hours for church, cell, work, family if we can put His kingdom in the centre of our lives and everything else that we do is integral and part and parcel of seeking His kingdom.

In reality, there is no secular life vs church life if every seemingly secular thing that we do is an act of worship unto Him. For myself, I am asking God in 2009 to help me to use the work that I am doing at EDB as a shining testimony for other people in the marketplace, that this work is part of my ministry that will impact lives around me. I pray that God will impress this beautiful truth upon all of you as well. Before I left the room, my boss reminded me, "Ask God to reveal his destiny for you as you think about our career plans in the next few years." I want to praise and thank God for sending people to speak into my life and reminding me to always seek Him and put His kingdom in the centre of my life.

Cheers, from light* cell member who works for the govt...