Stolen Thoughts

My friends and I visit a special-needs centre almost every week. It is part of our group assignment for our university course. Today, we met a volunteer who was about my age. He was extremely friendly and confident. He was also completely open about his life and seemed to be a very positive and happy person. After talking to him for a bit, we found out that he scored very well in his STPM examination, plays the piano and finished grade 8, plays the guitar, has appeared in the newspaper numerous times because of his academic achievements and is currently a top student in his interior design course in USM.

These achievements might seem normal for most people but for him it is different because he is deaf.

I was reminded of my struggles a few weeks back. There was an upcoming exam that I was nowhere near prepared for and I had already done horribly on the previous exam. In my course, if you do not pass a certain score at the end of the year, you have to repeat the ENTIRE year. The amount of money and effort and time that would be wasted is just not worth it and it would be really embarrassing. The people who failed the previous years are actually quite hardworking and smart which made me even more scared because that shows how difficult it is to pass. I was really really stressed out but I couldn’t focus because I kept thinking that this was not what I wanted to do as a career. I had no motivation whatsoever to push myself and I just caved in. I wanted out. It just did not seem worth it.

I talked to various people ranging from my uni counselor to my parents to my friends. But the fear in me, I had to handle myself. God didn’t seem to be listening either and people didn’t seem to understand. I felt like giving up. Then a few days before my exam, I was doing my quiet time using a devotional book and it was based on this verse:

Psalm 13[a]

For the director of music. A psalm of David. How long, LORD? Will you forget me forever? 
 How long will you hide your face from me? 
 How long must I wrestle with my thoughts 
 and day after day have sorrow in my heart? 
 How long will my enemy triumph over me? Look on me and answer, LORD my God. 
 Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death, 
 and my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,” 
 and my foes will rejoice when I fall. But I trust in your unfailing love; 
 my heart rejoices in your salvation. 
 I will sing the LORD’s praise, 
 for he has been good to me.

The devotional said:

Sometimes, in the emotion of the moment, our minds play tricks on us. We think our loss is worse than it is. We may feel like the songwriter David who, in the confusion of the moment, thought God had forgotten him.

When David later recalled what he knew rather than what he feared, his sense of loss turned into a song of praise (Ps. 13:5-6). His renewed joy foreshadowed what is now ours to recall: Nothing can rob us of what is most important if our life is “hidden with Christ in God” (Col. 3:3).

Rest your assurance on God’s love in your heart—
not on the fear in your mind.

It spoke straight to where I was at that moment and I was reminded of God’s amazing love. Why should I fear when my life is hidden with Christ in God? I realized then that it was fear that was binding me and that was just ridiculous because that would mean that I didn’t trust God.

Today after meeting that volunteer – a complete and total stranger, I was suddenly reminded of that incident when fear bound me.

Colossians 3

Living as Those Made Alive in Christ Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your[a] life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

So, just an encouragement to set your heart on things above. Trust God, He has a plan and He loves you ;)

-Phoebe Lim

http://eu.fotolia.com/id/12376834
http://combemartin.blogspot.com/2008/11/light.html
http://realmofgod-parable.blogspot.com/2007/06/god-longing-for-you-gods-amazing-love.html

Salt & Light of the world

It is true while the Christian reads the Bible, the Non – Christians read our lives. We as Christians are always called to be salt and light of the world, as this is what God has commanded us to do. Now as we dwell in this topic, what does being Salt and Light means? To first understand, we must know what does salt and light does.

In older days, people do not have the advantage of the electricity, so, they have no light. Life is 12 hours of light, and 12 hours of extreme darkness. So when they are in the dark, they feel afraid, they have a sense of fear. I mean, lets face it, we don’t like being in the dark, simply because the darkness holds a lot of unknowns to us, we might ask, what if a ghost pops out, what if this / that appears? But when Christ has instructed us to be the salt and light of the world, He
has ask us all to be let our lives shine before them. Jesus wants to fill us with His presence, and as light, our lives should provide them the direction to go that is to Jesus Christ, the light that shines, the comfort and the hope that we bring to those who are weary / sad / even to those who are searching for the meaning of life. Think about the people we can encourage today, and while we are at it, we must always keep in check our walk with God. Because as light provides direction, we need to ensure that we are the light, and this can only be done, when we keep a good relationship with God. We need to pray and ask God to give us the consciousness not to live our lives carelessly.


Being the light also depict that we should be transparent to each other. Simply put, we should share our lives with one another and to allow our friendship to go beyond just the physical / emotional areas of our lives, but rather the spiritual part that we cannot see. A good way of doing so might be checking on each other quiet time, and the struggles we face day by day in our lives. In contact with people day by day, we should appear as who we are to the people we see. Simply because, our friendship/ our family with them should be as genuine as Christ has asked us to be, to love one another as Christ has loved us.


Salt has many functions, amongst such is to enhance the taste of the food, to kill bacteria, and to preserve food. In this world of brokenness, are we doing our best to preserve God’s truth and His message of LOVE, are we standing up for the values that God wants us to uphold in our lives? Along these lines, I would like to share that the one thing that truly separates us Christians and others is the fact that we are united in the blood of Jesus Christ, try to think about it, although people can be friends, but their friendship has only relations of friends, but when Christ has called us together, He has called us to be His Children, to be in the family of God, to preserve His truth even in a dying world. Are we doing it? An easy implication to draw from here is that, are we standing up for the right things God has commanded us to do? Are we making a stand for God when He is mocked? An even tough challenge I have to throw to myself too, are we mocking God with our lives because of the things we do sometimes? Are we enhancing and preserving what God wants us to?

Being Salt and Light also does not necessarily be to the world, we should also be aware that we are to be salt and light to the Christians we come into contact our lives. Because a true salt / a true light is one who allows God to be at work in their lives. We as Christians are called to be modest in our approach, to be sincere in our actions. Jesus has called us to be the light of the world, a city on a hill cannot be hidden. Being the salt and light is ultimately important because that is the essence and the core of being a Christian, because only by being transformed and filled by the Holy Spirit, we can have the fruit of the Spirit, and when we have these attributes, only can we be Salt and Light to the world, only then, our testimony about Jesus Christ and His work on the cross will be effective.

We should always thank God for choosing us into His Presence, while we live and breathe, may Our Lives be an offering to The LORD.

- John Khor

Images taken from:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2008/apr/14/betweenarockandahardplac
http://www.emmanuelnazarene.com/?p=252