Whatsoever Good

Day seven Turn Pressures into Power by Bishop TD Jakes YouVersion Bible app There’s not much you can do with grapes that will increase their value. There are only two worthwhile things you can do: nurture them with your hand or crush them under your feet for making wine. The Lord endured His own painful process to grow us into something that would become what He already is.  Christ is the person gathering the grapes of our lives, having to reach between our branches to obtain them and risk getting pricked and bruised by the thorns we use to protect ourselves. Simultaneously, He is the person who treads the grapes in the press, getting His feet scarred in the process. Looking at Christ, we should see that He is making wine out of us and His own bruised places because it’s in the crushing vats that the wine of the grapes and the blood of His feet are mixed. He’s paying a personal cost for our transformation.        Likewise, it costs you something to be great ...

Day six Turn Pressures into Power by Bishop TD Jakes YouVersion Bible app One thing I’m certain of is that God loves me. I’ve been through too much in my life and seen how the Father has taken care of me to say that He doesn’t have His hand on me. I can hardly speak about how I’ve seen God move in my life without becoming overwhelmed. I realize that some people don’t feel that way about God. They look at their lives and can see only negativity that forces them to ask, “If God loves me, why does life keep hurting me? Why do I keep losing everything that’s valuable?” Really? Is what you lost that valuable?  In this season, in this stage of your life, the fruit you’ve held on to has been culled, and you’re desperately trying to stop the bleeding. On the outside, your blessings have been taken from you, and the exterior pangs you feel are accompanied by the inward agony for what you cannot reclaim. But the Master has not placed value where we have. Whereas we long for what has been ...

Day five Turn Pressures into Power by Bishop TD Jakes YouVersion Bible app How exactly did the cross become the much-beloved symbol of our faith? Doing a bit of research, I discovered that Helen, the mother of the emperor Constantine during the fourth century, allegedly went on a quest to find the actual cross upon which Jesus had died. She searched the known world until she found what she believed to be the antique wooden artifact, which had started to splinter and crack. But what to do with it?  How could she spread the gospel once she found what she had been looking for?  Helen took carious slivers and splinters of the wood and sent them to believers and churches around the world. With these wooden fragments, people from every corner began venerating the cross and contemplating its reality. Seeing part of the actual cross caused people to pray and worship. Gradually, the cross began to represent something sacred, sacrificial, and sacramental.  Prior to Helen’s quest...

Day four Turn Pressures into Power by Bishop TD Jakes YouVersion Bible app Some years after I finally accepted my calling, I remember pleading with God to allow me to preach. It was one thing to not even want the calling in the first place. But to be called and then be forced to sit in the background and listen to people speak from books of the Bible they couldn’t even properly pronounce was the most aggravating experience of my life. It was during my inner court period that the Lord was developing my gift. I would be in the shower, preaching to bars of soap and washrags. I would be walking through the woods of West Virginia, laying hands on trees. All of this might sound comical to you, but I now see these moments as part of a season of fermentation.  I spent years cleaning out the baptismal pool and leading devotional services before worship began, wondering when it would be my time to stand and proclaim the infallible Word of God. My heart would ache because I knew I had somet...

Day three Turn Pressures into Power by Bishop TD Jakes YouVersion Bible app We waste valuable time and energy any time we think we know better than God – even when we can’t make sense of the circumstances in which we feel buried. Especially when we cannot see anything except darkness and can only smell the stench of decay. During such moments, we must trust that something is growing. Something is being birthed in the invisible realities we likely cannot see. An unplanted seed is nothing more than constrained potential. We love the thought of being gifted and having the ability to do something great, but we don’t smile so brightly when we are placed in the refining processes of life. But aren’t these two intimately connected? How can we have one without the other? We cannot rightfully ask the Master Husbandman to skip out on the development of our lives simply because we are uncomfortable with being alone in dark places.  The presence of pain in your life isn’t a prophecy of your...

Day two Turn Pressures into Power by Bishop TD Jakes YouVersion Bible app Most people love the thought of being gifted and having the ability to do something great, but we don’t smile so brightly when we are placed in the refining processes of life. But what happens to a seed if it’s not planted?  We cannot rightfully ask our Vinedresser to skip out on the development of our lives simply because we are uncomfortable with being alone in dark places. To keep a seed from being planted is to condemn that seed to never realize its full potential. It is a fact that seeds are meant to be covered to die.  No matter who we are, where we are in life, or where we’ve come from, we must begin to appreciate the ugly stages of our inception. When we allow the Lord to shift our mindset, we begin to see that everything that has ever happened to us has happened for a reason. If we look back at the sprout that pushed itself through the ceiling of dirt above it, we discover reasons behind our ...

Day one Turn Pressures into Power by Bishop TD Jakes YouVersion Bible app When we suffer, we seek answers. Perhaps it’s the desire to regain some semblance of control over circumstances that remind us of our utter powerlessness in certain realities. Or, maybe it’s just our human longing to believe that everything happens for a reason; we believe that all the details of our lives should fit together like puzzle pieces revealing significance beyond anything we can see from our surface perspective.  For those of us who trust in the goodness and sovereignty of God, this compelling need to understand why certain events occur is no less stringent. Even as we cling to the promises of divine truth, we scrutinize our natural world for answers that require supernatural solutions. Somehow we inherently believe that if we can understand the motivation and contextualization of our crisis, then we can contain it, reduce it, and eliminate it.  Rarely do we glean the understanding or revel...

Marriage in my grandmother's generation was like one man for theirs lifetime. Either it would seperated by death or divorce, they would remained faithful for one man. Marriage in my mother's generation, baby boomers generation, it was like a trial and error. If the first marriage didn't work, the second might work. If the second still didn't work, they will apply the saying of the third time lucky, and so on until they find the right man who can support their life and their kids, or until they got tired of men. Marriage in my generation, millennials, is like will never happen or will happen so later in our life. We are sufficient economically and emotionally, we don't need a man to define our life or to make our life happy.

I go among trees and sit still. All my stirring becomes quiet around me like circles on water. My tasks lie in their places where I left them, asleep like cattle. Then what is afraid of me comes and lives a while in my sight. What it fears in me leaves me, and the fear of me leaves it. It sings, and I hear its song. Then what I am afraid of comes. I live for a while in its sight. What I fear in it leaves it, and the fear of it leaves me. It sings, and I hear its song. After days of labor, mute in my consternations, I hear my song at last, and I sing it. As we sing, the day turns, the trees move. John O’Donohue To Bless the Space Between Us

We ought to love other beings unconditionally but do help with boundaries

Too much politics corrupts democracy, and too much democracy gets in the way of policy. Politics is about positions, policy about decisions, democracies produce compromises, technocracies produce solutions, democracy suffices, technocracy optimizes.

How to Win Friends and Influence People Dale Carnegie It costs nothing, but creates much. It enriches those who receive, without impoverishing those who give. It happens in a flash and the memory of it sometimes lasts forever. None are so rich they can get along without, and none so poor but are richer for its benefits.  It creates happiness in the home, fosters good will in a business, and is the countersign of friends. It is rest to the weary, daylight to the discouraged, sunshine to the sad, and Nature´s best antidote for trouble. Yet it cannot be bought, begged, borrowed, or stolen, for it is something that is no earthly good to anybody till it is given away.  And if in the last-minute rush of Christmas buying someone should be too tired to give you a smile, maybe we can leave one of ours for them. For nobody needs a smile so much as those who have none left to  give !  give ! https://www.thesun.co.uk/living/23...

Follow Jesus Deny yourself Carry your cross I still remember the first time I heard this verse was when I was in senior high school. I did a retreat in Tumpang during my school break. I remember my first reaction when a Catholic priest utter these three things. I consider them as a very important message from God to us, which a must and have to do things for everyone of us. I wrote it down quickly on my notes so I won't forget (I wasn't the type who takes a note during any talks), and start repeating it again and again during the retreat until they are deeply engrained in my heart and the note won't be necessary any more.  Talk ourselves into our own purposes, mutter the book of law which is inside us, make it happen with our faiths. There are something bigger than yourself, talk yourself about it, have courage to advocate these people who needs help. Holy spirit is comforter, Jesus come to the world to bring change, to confront and sometimes create conflict. Talk yourself ...

Words cannot change reality, but they can change how people perceive reality. Words create filters through which people view the world around them. Forget what you regret, regret what you forget. Unfuck yourself, be who you were before all the stuff happened that dimmed your fucking shine. Never let your computer know that you're in a hurry. Computers can smell fear. they slow down if they know that you are running out of time. Comfort is a drug, once you get used to it, it becomes addicting. Give a weak man consistent sex, good food, cheap entertainment, and he will throw his ambition right out the window. The comforts zone is where dreams go to die. You live most of your life inside your head. make sure it's a nice place to be. Don't study because you need to, study because knowledge is power. Study because they can never take it away from you. study because you want to know more. Study because it enhances you. Study because it grows you. God could n...

In Praise of the Earth Let us bless The imagination of the Earth. That knew early the patience To harness the mind of time, Waited for the seas to warm, Ready to welcome the emergence Of things dreaming of voyaging Among the stillness of land. And how light knew to nurse The growth until the face of the Earth Brightened beneath a vision of color. When the ages of ice came And sealed the Earth inside An endless coma of cold, The heart of the Earth held hope, Storing fragments of memory, Ready for the return of the sun. Let us thank the Earth That offers ground for home And holds our feet firm To walk in space open To infinite galaxies. Let us salute the silence And certainty of mountains: Their sublime stillness, Their dream-filled hearts. The wonder of a garden Trusting the first warmth of spring Until its black infinity of cells Becomes charged with dream; Then the silent, slow nurture Of the seed's self, coaxing it To trust the act of death. The humility of the Earth That transfi...

Today is Murdoch University semester one 2020 graduation ceremony for students from business, art, and criminology schools. Congratulations people It's a very big and beautiful full moon tonight And God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work: 2 Corinthians 9:8 KJV

One of the beauty of working in retail is the opportunity to experience customers' behaviours at first hand.  A customer want to lose weight, she bought dietery products but too lazy to return the products she doesn't want to the original place. The products she didn't want were just near to the products she wants, she didn't even bother to think, look, and move her hand to burn a bit of the calories. A girl with acne problem spent an hour in acne section, she picked up every single products but never return the products to the same place. I clean up after her mess when she left, but not long after I tidying them up, she returns unapologetically to the same section and create the same jumble again just before my eyes. Oh my gawd, please girl how can you expect to win your acne battle if you can't clean up after yourself, something that just go without saying. Practice some good behaviours, it definitely will brought up good results and change your life for the bette...

For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Hebrews 4:12 KJV

Today, I was being reminded a lot about being broken by Youversion devotional Bible reading and Lao Zi, the Chinese classic teaching from the Tao Teh Ching. There were times that I felt lost in this world, I have a comfortable life but meaningless, I feel content and discontent at the same time, I just could not find my sweet spot even with the help of many motivation quotes and self-help books such as "Cure for the Common Life" by Max Lucado. Couple times I uttered the idea about leaving everything and start living an uncertain and hard life just to find something meaningful to my husband. However, to do that kind of life is also hard for me because I am the type of person who likes certainty, security, organising, and planning. I was inspired to do the hard life because I have witnessed myself on how joyous the "poor" people life is. They have nothing materially in this life but they have so much joy to share, they might have so little but they have never af...

You are what you captured, read and listen. Last year after I completed my degree, I have lots of time in my hand. I have had spent most on my relax time on social media such as YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook. I received heaps of news and information from these three platforms only. All these information spread on social media have changed my MBTI personality from the Defender ISFJ to the Advocate INFJ; from the protective, warm and caring to the mystical and idealist. In 2019, I was so bloody active on promoting good causes and good news, increase the awareness of the people on the latest issues that happened around the world, pass on some petitions, greetings people, give comments, give likes to people post, get involved in online discussion, joined international group, etc. My friend also mentioned about the trend of social justice warrior, and how common it is among us millennials. With the advancement in technology, the search engines algorithms on the internet help us to pick t...

Lately, I have been writing my blog rushingly to the last minute. On early January I start to write around 8pm and it gave me like almost 4 hours to add things or edit the words. I love writing but I realised I might always have the same writing style, which might be too monotonous for the reader. People like to watch other people life, that what I learn from the social media. Private photos and videos are well received and liked than photos of your pets or the natures. I like to keep my private life private as much as I can, but I might have to share my life a bit here and there.  I was attending blues and jazz jamming session with my husband today. There were roughly more than 20 or 30 people at the hotel tonight. I look around and realised that I was the only Asian in the room. I told my husband about that, and he just smiled.  I often feel proud if I found myself different than other people at work or at school or among family and friends, but when I was the on...

And he hardened Pharaoh's heart, that he hearkened not unto them; as the Lord had said. Exodus 7:13 KJV God is really the only director in our life, what we have, what we thought, everything that happens to us was allowed to happen by God. Our choices in life have been directed by Him, He knew us before us. This is also highlighted by the scripture below But when you pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think they shall be heard for their much speaking. Be not ye therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him. Matthew 6:7-8 KJV Our Father prayer is the first prayer that stuck in my head when I was a kid and the first prayer that I memorised when I was learning English on the fourth grade, and it is the only prayer that I can recite when I moved to Australia. At church, my favourite section of the mass is the part when the pilgrims sing the "Our Father", I have a slight dash sometimes when...

The books I have finished reading in January 2020 are: The Art of Growing Up by John Marsden Harry Potter and the Cursed Child by JK Rowling The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle The Gifts of Imperfections by Brene Brown Some of the notes I took from these books are: The Art of Growing Up by John Marsden We are all product of the past, product of our parent's parenting style. Parents should be aware of the unhealthy ways they construct childhood and adolescence, and the dangers these bring, parents need to rethink about their prejudices and expectation to their children Loving the world is easy but loving the person next door that's difficult, we often talk big dream big but we failed to do it on the smaller scales daily. In short, hypocrites are everywhere, me too Parenting advice Accept that, as children grow, the style of parenting must evolve from the "I'll do everything you need' approach which is mandatory in the first months of life. Gradua...

For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: Job 19:25 KJV The midday moon 

Happy February guys, second month of the 2020 already, woooww!!! Time went fast when you are having fun aye. John O'Donohue is one of my favourites writer. I genuinely love his insights and his relationship with the words. Check it out one of his englightening poem For a New Beginning In out-of-the-way places of the heart, Where your thoughts never think to wander, This beginning has been quietly forming, Waiting until you were ready to emerge. For a long time it has watched your desire, Feeling the emptiness growing inside you, Noticing how you willed yourself on, Still unable to leave what you had outgrown. It watched you play with the seduction of safety And the gray promises that sameness whispered, Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent, Wondered would you always live like this. Then the delight, when your courage kindled, And out you stepped onto new ground, Your eyes young again with energy and dream, A path of plenitude opening before yo...