Easter/Birthday Week

Haven't been posting for a while. Figured I'll just update my blog on this past week's events. I have been contemplating on switching to Tumblr though. We'll see about that soon.

My birthday week started on the 22nd of April, with a Switchfoot concert in Melbourne.


Having been their fan since my teenage days, this was one of the best birthday treats ever. Not to mention I was in the front row. I might upload more pictures later. They're mostly on facebook already anyway.

The day after the concert, a bunch of us headed down to Rawson's Village where OCF Victoria was having this year's Easter Camp. Camp was really enjoyable but exhausting.

Note to self: do not say yes to every opportunity to serve in the worship team. Ended up playing in every session from the moment I arrived at camp.

OCF Clayton:


And we continued our proud tradition:



Camp was over by Monday; that left me with just four days before my big day.

On Tuesday, a bunch of OCF-ers from Clayton met up to do some shopping at Moorabbin's DFO. Spent almost $75 on a yd. dress shirt, two Roger David hats, and a vest and shoe from Cotton On. After shopping we headed to Chadstone to catch the Fast Five, which in my opinion was much better than the last one.

So, for this year, my housemate, Julian Loh, has his birthday on the 28th, just a day before mine. Talk about coincidence. On the eve of his birthday we invited several friends to enjoy a meal together. Wilson showed off his culinary skills with some Tempura Prawns, Chicken Teppanyaki, and Miso Soup. I just made some steamboat in case our guests were still hungry.

After dinner we headed down to the city to wait for midnight. After celebrating Julian's 20th, we stayed in the city to watch the Real Madrid v Barcelona game. Needless to say, Messi's goal was sick. Arriving home at 8-9am the next day, we pretty much crashed for most of the day.

My big day finally came and we headed down to Brighton Beach to spend a few hours soaking in the sun. With winter coming pretty soon, I'm not optimistic on our chances of ever enjoying the sun on the beach like this; not till Spring at least.

At night, 40 odd OCF-ers gathered at Sophia's where I was having my birthday dinner. If any of you are reading this, I am indeed touched by your presence and thanked God for all of you guys, who made my 21st birthday, one of THE best ever. Not to mention my first overseas.







Thanks for all the cards and gifts! :D


And after Sophia's, the party continues....


I never got anywhere near my 21 shots. One absinthe, 2 Jägerbombs, and 3 other unknowns were enough to give me a KO. Good thing I had a place to crash in the city that night.

And on Saturday, well, the Tim Tams were delicious.

Finally, Sunday. The day to cap off one of the best weeks of my life. Arsenal beat Manchester United in the English Premier League. Woot!

Life's as awesome as it can get. Being surround by people you love as you celebrate your 21st is something I'm sure everyone wants in this world. Not forgetting all you people back home in Malaysia as well. I miss you guys and it's too bad I could not celebrate my birthday this time with you guys.

Till we meet again.

joewinlee

Random

To Lynette:

This is for you

SOMETHING RANDOM

Thank you for reading

:)

Directly related to my earlier post:

How many times
Can I push it aside
Is it time I befriended all the ghosts of all the things that haunt me most
So they leave me alone
Move on with my life
Be certain the steps of left and right don't fight the direction of upright

I'd rather forget and not slow down
Than gather regret for the things I can't change now
If I become what I can't accept
Resurrect the saint from within the wretch
Pour over me and wash my hands of it

It's time to decide
Which is out of my mind
Cause it'll be me unless I put some thoughts to rest and leave some faults behind
I'll watch the glint in my eye
Shine off the spring in my step
And could be blinding depending on the amount of You that I reflect

Cause I could spend my life just trying to sift through
What I could've done better but what good do "what if's" do
Oh oh
Oh oh

There's something I should tell you now

Devastation and Reform

Isaiah 43:18-19

A verse given to me more than a month ago.

I had been searching all this while,

of all the things in my past.

It had to be this.

And in the end it's nothing but
The shell of what I had when I first started

A cup or two?

I can never get my estimation of food portions right. I either cook too much or too little. especially rice. I can never remember exactly how much rice i can eat at once. And two cups of rice is really a lot of rice. Nevertheless I had delicious lamb stew to eat it with. especially with all that delightful gravy. No pictures this time I'm afraid. But you can go have a look at my earlier post.

Did anyone else notice the heavy advertising by Microsoft in HIMYM S6E04? I mean, whoever have seen a lappie with a Microsoft logo? And bing maps suck. Stick to Google maps. It can save your life.

Anyways, tomorrow it's do or die. My semester-long battle with MMM132 (Management) will soon be over. Wish me luck. Or blessings if you don't do luck.

Pedal Board Frenzy

After using my friend's pedal board last Friday at OCF, I realized what an awesome experience it was to use one (not to mention how cool it looked, heh). Not satisfied with my Line6 Pod:






Or my Zoom G7.1ut:






I have made 'building my own awesome guitar pedal board' one of my life goals. It may be like this:







Or this:









Or even THIS:







Heh, the first one's more realistic, not too mention I already have that exact same wah pedal. Since I already have a Boss distortion pedal my next target is a delay pedal. And after that, a compressor, chorus, flanger, reverb, heavier distortion....... ...

"faith"

Having had no other inspiration to write about, I decided to write about something we discussed in Bible study last night at OCF: faith. We have been going through the book of Hebrews for the last couple of months and last night we reached chapter 11, which, arguably I think is one of the most famous chapters of Hebrews. So here goes a brief summary on what chapter 11 is and, in general, what faith is all about:


One of the questions we had to tackle was: "What is faith and how different is it from hope?"


v1: Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. (KJV)


Verse 1 can be separated into two parts: substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen. From the first part of verse 1, what we get is that faith is the substance of things hoped for. The word "substance" comes from the Greek word hupostasis (hoop-os'-tas-is), which means, in terms of abstract: assurance. Another meaning is confidence. So from these we can garner that faith is the assurance/confidence of things hoped for.

(On a side note, that is exactly how the ESV Bible puts it, but I'm just going through all that again to explain where'd they get it from)

The second part of verse 1 talks about faith being the evidence of things not seen. Again we look back at what the Greek dictionary says about "evidence". The original Greek word is elegchos (el'-eng-khos), meaning "proof" or "conviction". To have faith is to have real conviction of things yet to happen.


So back to the question of what is the difference between faith and hope: in my opinion, hope is the basis for faith. We can only hope so much for something, but with real conviction and assurance, that hope becomes faith. In Romans 8:24-25 the apostle Paul also talks about hope: v24 For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? v25 But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it. Hope comes from the Greek word elpis (el-pece'). It means to have expectation or confidence. So for the conclusion for this question is that hope is something abstract, it is just an expecting thought. From that thought we get faith. This may be backed up by James 2:17: Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.


Now then you may ask me, "So does that mean we have to work for faith and our salvation?" Well, to get the answer to that we need to turn to Romans again. In chapter 3 v20 it says "Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified..." and in v28: "therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the works of the law." And in chapter 4 Paul goes on to talk about how Abraham was justified by faith, not by works. The apostles James and Paul may be contradicting each other in their respective epistles. What James is really trying to get at is that if your faith is genuine, then it is going to manifest itself in your life. If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation, old things have passed away, behold, all things have become new. That word "become" is the key word here. It tells us that there will be a manifestation of our faith when we believe in Christ. It can be an action as well: look back at the "hall of faith" in Hebrews 11, all the great people of the Bible did something to show their faith. Eg By faith Abel offered.. By faith Enoch was translated.. By faith Abraham obeyed..


So how then do we really get faith? How do we build our faith? Faith is really essential in our daily walk with Christ because in v6 it says (paraphrase) But without faith it is impossible to please God. Our answer can be found in Romans 10:17, So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing the word of God. Why the two "hearing"? Hearing in Greek is the act, the sense, or the thing heard, be it from fame, from reports, from preaching, etc etc. That first "hearing" actually means listening to testimonies of other fellow believers. Anything that we may have heard from other believers that is encouraging will build our faith. A classic example: remember how Jesus walked on water? How did Peter walk on water as well? He had the faith to do so, because he saw Jesus doing it first. So basically what we should do as Christians is to read about encouraging testimonies, be it about healing or any other signs or wonders. Read up on the heroes of faith, all the biographies. Just throwing in a couple of suggestions. So the second "hearing" is basically to continually read the word of God. I don't think I will need to elaborate further on that.


So to summarize what I've just talked about, faith is the assurance/confidence of things hoped for, and to have faith is to have real conviction of things to happen. Hope is the basis for faith. Hope is just a thought or an expectation, faith is the manifestation of that hope. We do not need to work to prove our faith, but if your faith is genuine, that manifestation, that "works" will naturally be evident in your life. And lastly, to build our faith, we need to pay attention to the testimonies of others, and the testimony of the Bible.


ps, if you have any disagreements or if you were blessed, please leave a comment =)