Monday, July 30, 2007

Friends

"Friendship is like wetting your pants. Everyone can see it, but only you can feel it's true warmth." - unknown

Wasn't feeling well today and I just couldn't muster up the strength to cook myself anything to eat. So my roommates made me some chicken congee for dinner. Totally made my day.

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Monday, July 23, 2007

Junked

I'm not sure why but for some reason, it's absolutely hilarious watching someone get "junked." Some may refer to it as being kicked in the junk, kicked in the balls, canned, or throttled. Whatever you call it, it's funny - unless you're the one on the receiving end of the kick. Although most men will agree with me, only a very small contingent of women do. Maybe it's because you only appreciate how much it hurts from experience.

Ahahaha. These pics never cease to amuse me.

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Sunday, July 22, 2007

I Can Only Imagine...

This weekend we were singing a song called "Heaven is a Wonderful Place" at a church fellowship gathering. It's real simple:

"Heaven is a wonderful place!
Filled with glory and grace.
I wanna see my Saviour's face,
Heaven is a wonderful place!"

We repeated it several times and each time we replaced "wonderful" with our own descriptive words like peaceful, joyful, awesome, and superlicious! It reminded me of a great song written by MercyMe about six years ago called "I Can Only Imagine." It's one of those songs that when I listen to it and close my eyes, it brings a smile to my face.

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Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Apostasy?

Normally, late night conversation topics are pretty random and usually quite trite due to the fact that your brain starts to shutdown. Tonight's was an exception.

It started off with a mention of apostasy (basically renouncing one's beliefs) with respect to Christianity and then moved to a discussion of whether the preservation of salvation is conditional upon continued faith in Jesus Christ. In short: once you receive salvation through faith in Jesus Christ, can you do anything to lose it or is it a done deal? From a soteriological point of view, I discovered it was a conflict between tenets of Arminianism (salvation can be lost via apostasy) and Calvinism (salvation can't be lost and those who are lost were never really saved in the first place).

Reading passages like Hebrews 3:7-19 (NIV) and Hebrews 6:4-6 (NIV) confused us a bit because we both agreed more with the preservation of salvation being unconditional. If you truly come to know God and accept what He's done for all of us, how can you turn your back on that? We're saved by grace so that means that we've done no work to earn our salvation. So by this logic, we can't really do anything to "unearn" our salvation. Romans 8:38-39 (NIV) states:

"For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

So it seems that nothing can separate us from God. Also, Paul talks about a man who "will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames" in 1 Cor 3:11-15 (NIV). This seems to suggest that on the day of judgment, some believers will basically just barely squeeze by God's purification process. The fruits of their labour in life will be burned up as meaningless pursuits but because they are covered by the blood of the lamb, Jesus Christ, they themselves won't be destroyed by the flames.

Although it was really cool to work through all of this regarding apostasy, the bottom line is that nobody knows whether a person is truly saved except that person and God. So really, trying to come to a clear winner on this whole apostasy topic is pretty pointless because we can't readily identify who's saved and who isn't. Because of this, we should "encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin's deceitfulness." My friend made a really awesome point that really stood out in my mind by saying that it's not up to us to decide whether people are saved or not. It doesn't matter if Calvin or Arminius is right. We're called to make disciples and that means if someone falls away or is discouraged, we try to help them back up regardless. It's exactly like the military code of leaving no man behind. It doesn't matter if they happen to be dead or still barely alive out there on the spiritual battlefield. Our duty is to do whatever it takes to bring them out of harms way and back to safety.

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Monday, July 16, 2007

Shout Your Fame!

Yesterday in church I was just so encouraged by the first song that we sang called "Shout Your Fame." There was just something about the whole song and the bridge that goes "Jesus I decide to live, live a life that shouts Your fame..shouts Your fame!" that just really lifted my spirit up.

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Thursday, July 05, 2007

I <3 Vacation

The last month or so has absolutely blazed by at warp speed. It seems like only yesterday I was starting up my mid-year holidays. I had such an awesome time hanging out with old and new friends over the past couple of weeks.


Eric, Meera and I rented a car and drove out to Coolangatta for the weekend. First time driving on the wrong side of the road. It was actually not too bad as long as there was traffic to follow. We caught some beautiful sunrises, saw some dolphins swimming around some early morning surfers, took some surf lessons, and just relaxed on the beach. And to think that this was all done at the start of winter here in Queensland - absolutely mind boggling. I did manage to catch a few of my own waves but I have a long way to go before the Billabong Pro Competition.


Next up was a second visit to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary. I had been there one before with my dad way back in January and I must say that the koala's were a lot more feisty this time 'round. We watched a bunch of them playing/fighting each other, got to feed some more kangaroos, and got attacked by parakeets. Albert made his debut as a bird handler with an owl as his sidekick.


Last but definitely not least was the sailing trip to the Whitsunday Islands. Nine days + one catamaran (the Don Gato) + seven mates = one great trip. The sailing part was absolutely awesome and I learned the basics of tacking and jibing the jib. We started off with some pretty wet weather. The day we arrived it was the coldest it had ever been since they started keeping meteorological records about 150 years ago. But it worked out well because we had some great winds for sailing at the start. Near the end of our trip, the sun finally broke through the clouds and it was just gorgeous.


Highlights included snorkeling among the many corals and reefs; watching dolphins swim in Macona inlet; the great food; hiking up Whitsunday Peak; getting a gorgeous view of Whitehaven beach; and walking among sting rays along the beach.

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