A Just And Merciful God

• This post, is in response to dear Dan, who asked a question in comment to my post, :("However, this angered the Lord and caused the city to be hit by a plague" if God is all that great and sacred,shouldn't he be willing to forgive all that we do? shouldn't he willing to accept our flaws? why must God ask for something in return? why can't he bless us and love us irregardless of whether we trust him or not..?)
• I am really glad someone had actually read my blog, thought about it and posted a question. Not sure from which part of the bible did Dan got that verse from as there were many cities hit by a plague, but it doesn't matter. I believe he is just showing that God did got angered and punished some people for their sins.
• So Dan asked me, shouldn't God be forgiving and accept our flaws if He is all great sacred? Yes, in fact, God is forgiving and has accepted the fact that we are all imperfect. All of us are sinners, God understands that full well. Thats why He prepared for this by sending His own son Jesus to die on the cross for all of our sins. In fact, by sending His son to die for us, God has already shown that He has already forgiven us for our sins. Let me show you how. In the old testament of the bible, that is before Jesus took the sins for us all, people who sinned against the Lord would be burnt, swallowed by the earth and most commonly, stoned to death. That isn't too forgiving compared what we have now right? We don't see people getting punished by God for their sins anymore, no cities get burnt or hit by a plague because of their sins, no one gets stoned to death for committing adultery. No. God has in fact already forgiven us.
• Let me give a real life example. Lets take sins as a crime, which it is, and that would make us all criminals as we are all sinners. We face the judge in court and we are sentenced to a fine. We got no money to pay and thus will need to go to jail. Just as we are getting pulled to jail, someone comes into the courtroom and offers to pay up the fine for us so we don't have to go to jail. That person is Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ has already put up His life to pay for our sins so that we don't have to go to hell. That in fact is an act of forgiveness by God already, as in John 3:16 say "For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."
• So you would ask me, if God is forgiving and accepts our flaws, why do us christians still preach about hell? Shouldn't everybody go to heaven coz God has already forgiven all of us? Well, thats very logical. However, this isn't entirely true. You see, God has given Jesus Christ to die for us, and thus taking our sins so that we can be free and go to heaven. This is a gift to us. God gave this free, as a present. But why are people still going to hell? Thats because these people didn't accept this gift. People didn't accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and saviour. You see, if someone gives you a present and you rejects it, do you think you will get to keep the present? Of course not. If you rejects Jesus Christ, then of course you will not receive this forgiveness and salvation that Jesus Christ has brought with His death.
• Ok, back to the courtroom example. Say the person offers to pay up your fine, and you say "no I do not need you to pay my fine for me." Do you think the person will still pay up for your fine? No way. It works the same way here.
• Then you ask me, why do God have to punish those who sinned then? Why must God even punish people? Why did God create hell anyway? My answer is simple, God is a just God. This means that He has justice and simply cannot let those who are not repentful and sinful get their way to eternal life in heaven. My God is not a God who slacks and just let people off in their sinful nature. My God has His principles and is just, and therefore must punish people who sinned. It is just like the judge in the courtroom, He has to be just and issue punishment accordingly so that He is not seen as corrupted and without principles. Would you want to serve a God who lets murderers, rapists and thieves who has not repented of their ways to get the same salvation as you? Of course not. Because you will say that it is unfair as you have been a kind person all your life. God understands that. God don't let the crooks go free without paying for their sins. And the only way to pay for our sins is through Christ, or to go to hell ourselves, its our choice.
• Why must God ask for something in return? Why can't He bless us regardless of whether we trust Him or not? This is interesting. Did God ask for anything in return? Did God say that you must give Him $1000000 for Him to bless you? Of course not. God simply asked for us to trust Him and have faith in Him. It works in a very simple way. Let me give an example to illustrate this. Say your car broke down and you cannot figure out how to fix it. Some guy walks past and offers a helping hand. And your reply is "Are you sure you can fix this? You don't look like someone who knows how to fix this. I think I better do it myself." Do you think that person will help you to fix the car? Of course not. He will just walk off because you did not have faith and appreciate his help. Same thing with God, how can God bless you and help you if you do not believe that He can do it? That is why I say that we must have faith and then God can help us. And yes, regardless of whether we trust Him or not, God has already loved us, thats why He gave us His son to die. "For God so loved the world..." John 3:16 didn't say for God so loved the christians. No. Its the world. God loves everyone, regardless of whether they trust Him or not.
• So, I hope that after reading this, many doubts about God can be clarified. And please, if there are still any doubts, feel free to comment. Don't hold it back. Don't procastinate. Everyone deserves to know the whole truth so that they will get a chance to be saved as well.

Us VS God

• Many a times, we get into a struggle with God. Its not that we have grown cold in our faith, its not that we are losing our faith, its just that some priorities get in front of our God. And these priorities might not be bad. They don't have to be drinking, smoking, clubbing, gambling etc. They can be healthy activites such as simple work or studies. I take one example: we say we cannot go for a church activity because exams are near and we have to study. Reasonable. Logical. Acceptable. Thats for the "exams are near and we have to study" part. Yet, by doing this, we are quite showing that we do not trust that God can pull us through, and we are simply doing what we can by ourselves to help ourselves. Yes, we still pray that God can help us, but we are sacrificing time that used to be set for God to be used for our studies, just to be a fail-safe.
• I am not saying that studying for exams is wrong. It is important to study for exams. It is definitely needed to prepare ourselves for the exams. However, we ask ourselves one question - will God help us more? Or will our own studying help us more? If we have faith in God, then of course we will choose the former one. Note, I am not saying that we do not need to study, thats coz God only helps those who helps themselves. What I am saying is that why do we want to sacrifice time that used to be for God, to be used for our studying? How much can we exactly put into our head in that few hours that we decide to use for studying?
• Studying for exams is very logical. It is important. Yet many a times, God works in very illogical ways. I take the example of Joshua chapter 6 from the bible. The Israelites were told to march around the city of Jericho for six days, with priests and horns. Then on the 7th day, they will have to march 7 times around the city and sound a loud blast so that the city wall will fall. Ok, totally illogical here. Instead of charging straight into the city to attack, they are told to march around with all their men without doing anything? I am sure the enemies in Jericho must be laughing at them when they saw the march. "What clowns" they must have said. Yet, as we read on, we saw the walls of Jericho eventually fell as the Israelites did what they were told to. It is because God does not need to be logical to work things out. God just needs us to trust in Him.
• We must stay trusting to God always. It is very important. We see in 2 Samuel chapter 24 that David counted his men, just to see how strong he was. However, this angered the Lord and caused the city to be hit by a plague. In 2 Samuel 24:10, we see that David actually exclaimed that he had sinned greatly. Why? Seeing how mighty your army is very logical thing to do, what? Why is it a sin leh? Well, it is simply because by doing that, David is seeing how powerful he is capable on his own, and is relying less on God. Isn't this the same thing when we decide that we need to rely on our own strength rather than relying on God for our studies?
• Lets get this straight. I am not saying that we should all give up our studies and just go serve God everyday. No. I am just saying that even when we need to make more time for studies, that time cannot come from God's time. We need to have faith that when we actually spend our time to serve God, God will help us even more and pull us to even greater heights. That is the faith that we must have. Yes, studying on our own will only get us so far, thats coz its still our humanly abilities. But studying and relying on God will get us beyond our limits, thats coz the strength of God is limitless and His arms never fails to reach us when we trust in Him.

Track And Field - Evangel Style

• Yesterday, which is 9th september, was the 1 day special track and field event for Heart.Sports Evangel. Ya, its called Track and Field and Supergames. So basically theres the normal running events - 100m, 200m, 400m, 800m, 4 X 100m, 4 X 200m, both men and women. Each region sent 2 person to run per event. As for supergames, I am not too sure what are the games but theres Tug-Of-War, and some other telematches and a poison volleyballoon game.
• So, I basically skip the details as I did not pay much attention at the event. But I do know that region B, my region, managed to clinch 1st for 800m (by Commando Cedric) and 4 x 200m. Impressive results. Also, Region B won all the other regions to win champion for the Tug-Of-War event. Power heavyweights like Chester and Derrick definitely added much strength to the region's pull. Chester even wore jungle boots (when Ton asked him to bring boots, Chester didn't know he meant soccer boots) and looked like a gold miner.
• As for me, I represented the region for the 400m event with Chun Seng. Started off very slowly, I was last for half of the race. Then at the halfway mark, I start to put one gear up, then another gear, then another gear. Untill eventually I managed to catch a 2nd for the region. I was glad. The guy who got 1st was really good, he didn't slow down. Hehe, I learnt the wait then kill techniques from the documentaries I watched whereby the lions will wait for the prey to tire down then pounce for the attack. Also learnt the pushing gear technique from Weihong who paced me earlier in the morning and taught me some tips on running.
• Another note is that the Melvin really did very well. He ran pretty fast for 200m but due to the cramp track, was only able to make it about 3rd or something. He also helped to win the 4 X 200m for region B! And the thing is he wasn't even supposed to run as he was reluctant to come for the event, but after much persuasion, he came. Then the guy who was supposed to run for 200m didn't come, so put Melvin lo. Wah, he surprised everybody.
• So the event was concluded and region B was declared the overall winner of the event. Yeah! Region B managed to get champion for supergames and a close second for the track events against powerhouse region A. Felt really nice to know that we did well.

Messed Up Interview

Well, this is a rather old clip but I just forgot to put it up. Theres actually supposed to be an interview with an IT expert on some case between Apple Music and Apple Computers over some music downloading thing. Thats not the main point. The thing is, they mistook this guy in the video as the expert and just brought him ON AIR. Note he is no expert, and he has no idea what the heck was going on. He then gave a "FACE OF HORROR" and went on answering the questions as if he was an expert. Funny guy, he's just so calm when answering the questions, even though the answers were just out of point. Even the interviewer was caught in a shock and could not talk properly at the end of the clip.

Don's 10 Rules To Good Leadership

1. Lead by example. Do what you want your followers to do. Don't do what you don't want your followers to do.
2. Put yourself on the line. Take all the shit when it comes. Don't ever try to push the blame.
3. Share the rewards. When theres a reward, share it with your followers, don't enjoy it yourself.
4. Serve. Being a leader is to serve the followers, not the followers serve you.
5. Never focus on the position. Don't focus so much on you being a leader, focus on how you can serve out your duties.
6. Be proactive. Thats how you lead a group. A passive leader is basically dead.
7. Sacrifice. Your time, your resources, sacrifice, you know you need to.
8. Always be the first to try things out. If you have something new to try, don't make others do it for you.
9. Do the most work in the group. Thats how you can make the group work.
10. Leading with a whip works only on the outside. Leading with a heart works on the inside.