Nothing...

Who am I?

Nothing....

Without Him....nobody.

Fallen nature, fallen short in every way... of His glory...

I now finally understood what it means, that we need to live by His grace every single day, every single step of our way in our lives.

Because no matter how hard we try...we are imperfect. Fallen short.

And that's the beauty of it all...that there is nothing we can do, to earn ourselves this grace.

Absolutely nothing.

It is a gift...and all we need to do is receive

Now this life...

No longer I who live, but He who lives in me... =)

I am blessed. Beyond word...blessed...

Thank You...Thank You...Thank You for all that You are. And all that I am. And the realization of who I really really am, without You =)

Do you dare?

Last night, I pledged my love to God. It was amazing. I was in awe with all that God has done in my life. Truly there is no other place I would like to be in, than in places where He is. I will not go where His presence is not.

As I was counting my blessings, I was brought to a remembrance. I have been a Christian since Dec 1 2002. Gone through, ups, downs, time when I backslide, and time when I came back to God. Today as I was worshipping God, reflecting on His goodness in my life...laying my prayers and all I could offer on the altar for Him, I asked God: God, have I done You proud? Have I answered Your call and the vision You have given me? Have I done Your will,. Lord? What can I give or do for You?

God brought me through a flashback in my walk with Him. Truly, I m totally amazed by how God has shaped a big part of my life. How my life has been so impacted by visualizations, imaginations, and passion in my life. I came to realize, that our passion is actually very very close to God's will for us in our life!

When I first became a Christian, I looked at those singers on stage...I visualized that one day I want to be able to sing and make people cry and touched. Back home, I often sing to the mirror...hahaha! But, months later, I was the worship leader in my youth church. And during my first worship leading, number of girls cried. You know when you are a baby Christian....the childlike faith truly could move the hands of God!.....I remember I was praying for my family to get saved one day because I don't want to be an underground Christian my whole life. So I was praying and praying, and by faith I believe that year itself, one of my family member will get saved. In 2003, I boldly approach one of my cousin and shared the gospel with her. Guess what? That day itself, as I was praying for her (take note I was only a few months old christian)...deliverance happened. From that day onwards, my dearest cousin who was like a sister to me, came to Christ. Today, she is an amazing church leader in Penang engaged to a mighty man of God as well.

Eventually as time passes, the desire of the flesh came in.... when I saw the passionate seniors serving God in such a big way...I told myself...I want to be a leader in church too! Of course my motivation back then was about being glamor...True enough I became a youth leader...but eventually backslided, because it was all for the wrong motive. Even though I was a youth leader, but my life with God was totally unfruitful...nothing was left of me for the next generation. No inspiration. Nothing.

However, surprisingly, eversince I got saved, I have always wanted to be a pastor....not to say that it was a glamor job...but I just wanted to be able to help others change their lives for better. Since my parents forbid me from attending bible school, I chose the next course nearest to bible school pastors...that is PSYCHOLOGY :) Hence, I enrolled and my journey in KL started.

As I came to KL in October 2006, I was totally lost and under depression. I wanted to come back to God, but I do not know how. I couldn't bring myself to tell my hometown pastor anything. Praise God, I stumble upon a bunch of housemates who were city harvesters back then. They were eager to bring me to their church! I was rather cynical as I wanted to attend my church.....not theirs...However, it was in CHC KL that I finally found my way back to God. In December 2006, I told God...I want to be a person that would be able to use my life story (real life story) to encourage another person. I want a breakthrough with God. True enough, God made that happen. in 2006, I came out of depression and sucidal tendencies, and this stories had been a great tool for me to motivate members I counsel eversince.

Then eventually, I asked God for opportunity to serve Him more, but this time...not with a wrong motive. I want to serve Him but I want the right heart.. Not for fame or glamor...but to really do His will. In 2007, Shirley offered me to be an intern. Out of fear, I rejected it because I was afraid that I may be overwhelm by the glamor and leave God again. Nonetheless, as Shirley spoke to me, I took up the challenge and I made a promise with her...that whenever she finds me serving God for the wrong purpose, for fame, for glamor, that she would stripped me off immediately. She agreed.

Eventually as I followed Shirley, looking at the way she preach, and the way she love and counseled people, I visualized within me, one day I would like to be able to preach and love others like her, where every sermon will cut into people's heart and every act of love will make a person want to change for Jesus. I want that chance to make a difference in the world. 2008, I was appointed Cell Leader.

Then, in 2007 as I joined my first ever emerge, looking at Felicia praying on the stage such a sincere prayer....I told God...God, one day...I wish I m as brave as her, and as impactful as her, that when she prays, Your presence just come down. That day, so many young people being there, whether Christian or not, I believe they would have sensed something different when she prayed. One day...when I m bold enough....in 2008 itself, I was given a chance to lead a cluster, Not only to pray, but to share my testimony to thousands of people.

In the midst of all these, I also often visualize that one day I will be able to preach to hundreds of people, with God by my side, to challenge young people to come to God. This has not come to pass yet, but in 2009, I was a step closer. During a mission trip, even though there were not 100s of young people, but 50 young people responded to the altar call with 6 salvation decisions. I was totally in awe at how God could use such a broken / totally imperfect person like me!

In 2009, as I went through a tough season, crisis in my finances.....I was struggling through with my building fund. By faith, the building fund problem was solved. And I told God...God I believe one day,  You will give me a testimony to share about Your goodness through giving. that I refused to be defeated by this situation in life. I will keep sowing until You ask me to stop. In 2010, I was given the chance to share my Building Fund testimony, not only in church, but also in Setiawan, to encourage others in their giving.

Having thought through all these, I realized, that God has planted His call deep in me. And His call is very close to my passion. Everything that I ever dreamt of doing for God (not everything yet, but most of the things) He made it happen. But is the process toward there easy? No...I went through persecution in family, I went through financial struggle, I went through mocking of friends, I had to deal with difficult members.

What I m trying to say...within everyone of us, there is a call of God, close to our passion. We have to decide to water that seed, to not only visualize...(I assure you when you visualize it God will give you opportunities to make it come to pass, if it is in His will). You not only have to believe you can do it in the fourth dimension, you have to take the courage to step out and DO IT. Not just see it or imagine it, but do it.

Our destiny could vary according to the decisions we made in life. If I had chose a different path, perhaps pharmacy, or if I had insisted my rejection on taking up the intern role, I wouldn't have had the chance to do all that I had imagined to do with God with all my might. If I had shut the door of opportunities in front of me again and again and again, I could have big dreams in God, but nothing would get done. If I chose to succumb to the voices of discouragement that says I could not do it, that I m not worthy, I m not good enough...I wouldn't be where I m today..

Friends, to live for Jesus isn't easy. To live for Jesus requires a lifetime of struggles! With the flesh, our personal selfish wants, needs, and feelings. But to live a set apart life for Jesus is a CHOICE. The choices I made, bring me to where I m today...good  and bad.....

With that, does it mean I live a perfect life? No...I still make wrong decisions...I still mess up in certain areas in life, I still bang my head sometimes...I m not perfect. But on this journey to perfection, to do the will of God, is not about being ambitious or successful...its about being obedient to the call He has planted within us. Alot of times we can be very passionate about something, but not courageous enough to take a step of faith. The truth is, God has always waited for us to take that one step to be able to manifest His glory.

We are His hands, and His feet....Before He could use em, we gotta surrender these hands and feet to Him..

By all means, dream and dream big for God. My God is larger than my imagination :) He  is able to use me for many all the things I could ever imagine. But the question is, m I willing to be where He wants me to be?

I still have big dreams.....to be a nation changer for Christ. I m still very very very very far from it....but is it impossible? Looking back at all He has brought me through...I believe God is trying to tell me....it is totally possible. But it would require obedience and willingness on my part....to die to my flesh and live for Him....The choice is in my hand. The more you ask God to use you...prepare that you would have to go through more too :) ...do you then, dare to dream....but more than that...do you dare to step out?

When we grow older, when life seems to be so vague with their ups and downs, when things are not really going well, when times are tough, and there seems to be too much risk already, and we seem to prefer stability more.....would we still step out, believe, dream and be bold in our imagination as when we were a child....? Would we remember these dreams, and still hold on to it, believing we would see it come to pass?  Would we still have the faith to do His desires and will here on earth?

What then can I do for You, God?...:)....Plenty...He said. The issue is not with the "what" or the "how"....the issue is "will we?"

Something I would love to ponder on too :)

You need grace....

It has been so long since I last blogged. Life have been pretty amazingly FULL and PACKED! Nonetheless, I felt compelled to update my dead blog. Eversince the busy days, these pages had been dead! LOL...Well, busy life: Good and bad. Good thing is I learned a lot about myself lately. Bad is, at times it drives me crazy. LOL. Such is life, always have to learn to manage and balance. But excited to live in! :))

In this season of life, I learned a lot. About myself, and about things in life. Yesterday, I spent whole day with a close friend of mine, Siew Min. Just chilling. We talked about life, about things we go through. Its pretty awesome to see how we both have come so far. Yet at the same time, each season, there are new things to battle, new things to learn, new things to fight for. What an exciting life I m living. All glory to Jesus :)


As I was pondering on my life today. I realized, being 8 year Christian, I have been really harsh to myself. I expect myself to be perfect, or at least be able to iron out most of the things already. But recent events really break me and make me humble. I thank God for all these. Have always tried to manage and balance things on my own, not realizing that I have pushed God aside in the solution part. Now I know, apart from doing my part, I cannot leave Him out of the picture. I always thought it was my own thing and I MUST force myself to solve it. But the truth is, I m just not perfect and I constantly need His grace.

Being in the working world has revealed a lot about myself too. For instance, I realized that I m not a very detailed person. I forget things easily. And at times I overlooked things. Well, do I  have this problem before? Yes. But being a student, I wasn't forced to deal with this part of my life. I could still do well and manage. Now that I m working...how can I ignore details? It is totally ESSENTIAL.

So, these past few months, I feel rather bad as an employee, feel that I could not perform, and a lot of times beat myself up for being careless. Tried many ways to be more detailed, but as much as I try...there will still be things that I missed out. So I guess in my mind there is this battle, that I do not see myself as a good employee. Rather disappointed with how things are. Got scolded a few times by different people, and felt really bad about how things goes...going to work isn't exciting anymore.

Nonetheless, the more I try to solve it, the more I realize, there are more and more things to look into. So I ran to God....not knowing what else I could do as it is rather disappointing. Detailedness is indeed not my strength. And as much as I try, there will surely still be one or two things I forget. So as I was praying one night, God brought me to my past, and the first day when I worked. He asked me: Do I think I have improved very much in this detailedness area from day 1 I worked....I thought about it...."yea...indeed I did improve. But the point is, I still forget things, and I still upset people!" Then God asked me: "So you expect yourself to be totally flawless and perfect within a year you work? You have been like that for the past 23 years! Think about it....you have not been in this field before. You study psychology, there are so many new things which you have to relearn, many things are totally new to you...Can't you have some grace on yourself. The point is not whether you forget things or not, but the point is have you improved?"

God told me to think about the process I have been through and learn to appreciate my experiences. See, He is right. It is not that I m living in ignorance. But throughout the process, I have learned that I cannot do everything on my own. I need to learn to focus and prioritize, I need to learn to say NO to certain task with the things I already have at my hand, I took bullets before, I rough it out, I learn how is it like to talk to suppliers, to negotiate prices, to do a brochure, to manage a website, to talk to regional offices, to run an event, to do some social media marketing.....I have actually come quite far! :) ...Do I get better each day as I rough things out? I do! :)) See...this is the one thing that I fail to see time after time. I just want myself to "ting" and become "the perfect employee". LOL. Foolish? Yes.

*Pats on back* :) Well, that is just one of the examples. This season of life, is yet an amazing one for me. I rough through SO MANY issues in just one season. The transition period is the hardest most people say. They are totally right! Hahaha. You just have to get used with everything else which weren't there before. And you got to manage, learn, make mistakes, fall, getup, try, learn and all over again until you get it right!

But in the midst of all these, we often forget about one thing. That we need grace. The grace of God and the grace on ourselves. I have learned that, it is necessary that we have grace on ourselves, to learn that we are not perfect...and constantly we need God to be with us. Yes we can be disappointed, upset, frustrated, stressed up with life. But who do we go to? We go to God...be broken...and get restored, and tomorrow is a new day. I have learned this season very much, that when we have grace on ourselves, we perform better. We become more positive.

Using my workplace as an example: For the past month, I have been going to office everyday with a mind that today I will learn something new, today I m going to conquer all my work. Do I still struggle with the same thing? Yes. But m I more positive? totally. Even if I m being scolded, I realize I m learning to take it in more relaxedly in comparison to before. And I have become more THICK SKIN! Lol. My brothers told me that it is necessary to be thick skin when we work. If our skin is too thin, we can go for any job, but we will surely not last the distance. One scolding or mistreat, or unfairness will result in us resigning. Wow...now that is the first word of wisdom I heard from him :P hahaha...Kidding. He is an amazing brother. Love him a lot.

So.... with this grace we give, it tears down the expectation we have on ourselves to PERFORM beyond our own capability. Recognize our weaknesses, and continue to motivate ourselves to keep going instead of giving up. And most importantly, make us need God even more :) I cannot do anything without His grace. And...this grace on ourselves, is indeed very important. And it can only come, if we come broken before God, allowing Him to come in and enlighten a few things about us by receiving HIS grace. My ibu Shirley Boon calls this the breaking of false self image. hahaha! And I realize how important this grace is so that we won't constantly beat ourselves up and become wounded in our soul for not meeting our own CRAZY expectations (humans....). Not saying that we can have the passport to slack. But grace fuels us to keep going and acknowledges us that it is alright to make mistakes.

See, this is something common every Christian would tell you. In fact, I told many people about this too. But telling, and going through it, is really very different. It was a struggle for me as I haven't been graceful since my study years (beating myself up for not having expected results). And does this make me feel acceptant of myself as an imperfect human being? No!

But to be graceful is indeed something really essential as a human. That you have to acknowledge to YOURSELF, you are actually not perfect, or expected to be perfect. You are expected to learn along the way and become better. This past month, being graceful toward myself, I have realized I have become more graceful to others as well. :) Love your neighbor as yourself - depicts the grace you have for yourself also determines the grace you have for your neighbor. If you are stingy in your grace for yourselves, you will be stingy in giving grace to others...especially your loved ones...who need it very much as well being imperfect human beings.

The one dinner both Melvyn and I have on this date (25th October 2010) with ibu Shirley, and ayah David, the prayer meeting marks a change in my life. This date, I will never forget. These two people have made me realize so much about life within an hour of dinner. To go before God, broken, and deal with everything we have in life with God, not with one another or myself. Some solutions need grace from God..See...it is only very common that as human we often leave Him out of the picture, thinking that it is our own problems to solve. Its not His fault. Of course it is not His fault! But I came to realize that we need the grace of God, not because we have done anything wrong, but we need His grace to help us have grace on ourselves. Him being our example and model. The grace of God allows us to let God in to do a deep work in our lives to bring us to greater heights and new breakthroughs. And a lot of time we are too afraid to let Him in, because it means being pushed to  an uncomfortable zone. But the fact is, He can only do deep works and spiritual operation when you are ready to come before Him, being graceful enough with yourself to accept the imperfections He about show you, the pain to go through and know that you need Him all the time...to deal with them. We need God to help us open up our conditional grace be it toward ourselves or others.



I thank God for these two people who come to shake hell's hole, sharing their lives, and breaking lies for me to see what I cannot see sometimes. Since the beginning of the year, this is the One thing I have been waiting ALL YEAR...Since beginning of the year, I felt that 2010 is going to be an amazing year of breakthroughs. This is indeed the best year of my life, because in this season, I have learned so so much that I couldn't imagine I would have learned all my life.

Grace is therefore a gift from God.....and also a CHOICE of your own (whether to give or to receive) :) .If you are struggling with certain weaknesses in your life or others' weaknesses, I just want to let you know...you are still worthy, they are still worthy... and it is not about being perfect. But it is about going on to perfection that concerns God. Have a little grace on yourself and others, it will take both you and the other person a long way

Therefore, I finally understood what it means when someone say.....You need the grace of God to carry on in life.....His grace is the benchmark...and His grace helps you to have grace on yourself :)

toodles~