interesting 1-hour commute

The moral behind having 4 boyfriends

Helloooo..
I found something interesting in my email, so I thought of sharing it with you guys.
DISCLAIMER: Don't be fooled by the word "boyfriend" in the title. This article is recommended for guy-readers too! hehe.. Enjoy!!
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Once upon a time there was this girl who had four boyfriends.

She loved the 4th boyfriend the most and adored him with rich robes and treated him to the finest of delicacies. She gave him nothing but the best. She also loved the 3rd boyfriend very much and was always showing him off
to neighboring kingdoms. However, she feared that one day he would leave her for another. She also loved her 2nd boyfriend. He was her confidant and was always kind,considerate and patient with her. Whenever this girl faced a problem, she could confide in him, and he would help her get through the difficult times. The girl's 1st boyfriend was a very loyal partner and had made great contributions in maintaining her wealth and kingdom. However, she did not love the first boyfriend. Although he loved her deeply, she hardly took notice of him!

One day, the girl fell ill and she knew her time was short. She thought of her luxurious life and wondered, I now have four boyfriends with me, but when I die, I'll be all alone.'

Thus, she asked the 4th boyfriend, 'I loved you the most, endowed you with the finest clothing and showered great care over you. Now that I'm dying, will you follow me and keep me company?'

'No way!', replied the 4th boyfriend, and he walked away without another word.. His answer cut like a sharp knife right into her heart.

The sad girl then asked the 3rd boyfriend, 'I loved you all my life. Now that I'm dying, will you follow me and keep me company?'

'No!', replied the 3rd boyfriend. 'Life is too good! When you die, I'm going to marry someone else!' Her heart sank and turned cold.

She then asked the 2nd boyfriend, 'I have always turned to you for help and you've always been there for me. When I die, will you follow me and keep me company?'

'I'm sorry, I can't help you out this time!', replied the 2nd boyfriend. 'At the very most, I can only walk with you to your grave.' His answer struck her like a bolt of lightning, and the girl was devastated.

Then a voice called out: 'I'll go with you. I'll follow you no matter where you go..'

The girl looked up, and there was his first boyfriend. He was very skinny as he suffered from malnutrition and neglect.

Greatly grieved, the girl said, 'I should have taken much better care of you when I had the chance!'

In truth, you have 4 boyfriends in your lives:

Your 4th boyfriend is your body. No matter how much time and effort you lavish in making it look good, it will leave you when you die.
Your 3rd boyfriend is your possessions, status and wealth.When you die, it will all go to others.
Your 2nd boyfriend is your family and friends. No matter how much they have been there for you, the furthest they can stay by you is up to the grave.
And your 1st boyfriend is your soul, often neglected in pursuit of wealth, power and pleasures of the world.

However, your soul is the only thing that will follow you wherever you go. Cultivate, strengthen and cherish it now, for it is the only part of you that will follow you and continue with you throughout eternity.

------------ <3 -------------
Being happy doesn't mean everything's perfect. It means you've decided to see beyond the imperfections.

Life is A Challenge & You Strive To Win -- You Strive to Overcome

One of the Most Inspirational Speeches of all times



This is a video I found on YouTube of Alpacino giving a very inspirational speech about striving with determination.

please don't mind the vulgarities (I can't erase it)...

Purpose-driven thoughts

I write today, with a purpose to share several messages. Lately, I've been pressed, by multitude of factors, to complete the tasks I've been entrusted. Not surprisingly, I treated these issues with much contemplation and lack of confidence. Fortunately, I was able to gear up and alter the course of my life. In light of this, I would like to share some thoughts.

I) Purpose driven life = focus on God
I cannot think of a better sentence that represents the crux of the book than "Focus your body and soul on the greatness of God." Throughout the Purpose Drive journey, I believe many of us gained deeper insights to life. No doubt, some of the values the book advocated challenged our definition of living but instead of regarding the book as a severe source of controversy, I urge all of you to take a step back and evaluate our own lives. Question your idea of perfection and see the works of God throughout your life processes. Like Roy mentioned during a dinner (and I am paraphrasing): if he had (more) involved God in his job searching process, maybe things will be better. These words resonate with my train of thoughts at that very moment. When looking for a job, I made three crucial mistakes: 1) I relied on my own limited ability. 2) I did not grab opportunities created by God. 3) I did not ask myself, “What can I do for you”. Purpose driven life and the bible corrected these errors I made in life. Consequently, when I followed the wills of God, that is to focus on Him and to always be a servant, I was shortly offered employment. Amen!

II) Purpose driven life is practical
When I first read the book, I was totally repulsed by the extremities of Rick Warren’s preaching’s. As a baby Christian at that time, I was not ready to admit that we have only one purpose in life: “to worship and follow God.” Fortunately, after a year of experience and a second reading of the book, I came to my senses and realized the power of God. Some of you might raise queries regarding self-achievements and personal pride. Some might even go to the level of advocating the contradiction between following God and success (as I did before I was saved). Such arrogance I had two years ago that even my sisters had some reservations reaching out to me. But, following God (as Rick Warren preached) is totally practical! In our education life, we rank our priorities. For instance, some might place leadership as the top most priority while doing your laundries and socializing being less prioritized tasks. In other words, being a real leader is the ultimate purpose and having a clean suit and many friends are sub-purposes. Indeed, it is easy to point out that the two categories are deeply intertwined with each other since a leader cannot present him as a respectable figure without clean suits and trustworthy friends. Similarly, bringing this idea to a higher level, we understand that following God is our ultimate purpose but this is not our only task. As sons of God, we got to have clean shirts and many friends to spread the words of God. We have to pride our achievements and show the world the blessings God bestowed to us. And we have to perform many sub-purposes but we have to perform all these sub-purposes, according to the wills of God.

III) Recognize your inability.
Within the school of western philosophy, thinkers purported that we have to be confused to gain new knowledge. I understand that my friends are less receptive towards paradoxical jargon but yesterday night, we brought up an interesting topic on knowledge and wisdom. God gave us knowledge and analytical skills but as human beings, we are too far away from the wisdom of God. In light of this, I propose 3 ways of gaining knowledge through confusion. No doubt, the best way is to consistently pray for His guidance, for our God is the only figure that is perfect (remember perfection is absolute?). Second, we could observe our friends’ way of life, absorbing the systems that would work for us. This is not to say that we have to conform to other people’s way but this type of mix-and-match, trial-and-error method might be a good way to improve ourselves. Remember, we have to be humble and receptive towards correcting ourselves. Third, we have to look for models of the same kind (philosophical huh?). This is the point that I have realized recently. Your have heard the sentence “learn from other people’s mistakes” and “learn from your own mistake”. The former is easy to implement, since we, as human beings are always ready to mock as other people’s misfortune. The latter is usually more difficult to practice. As an individual who takes pride in my personal accolades, I find it difficult when someone (whose name shall be concealed forever) challenged my life systems. Soon, arrogance sets in and every negative comment is eradicated from my mind. As a result, I was not able to correct my way in life drastically. Fortunately in my case, God brought (in front of my face) a failed scenario of my system (whose name shall never be mentioned on Earth). The similarities between the two of us is uncanny and when (he/she) exemplifies thineself right in front of my face, it resembles looking through a mirror, an image of myself full of negative elements. It is at this point of time that I realized the folly of my ways.

I am full of incapability but I am not entirely useless. These few weeks have been revolutionary for me. It is the first time in my life that I evaluated myself so extensively. Thanks to a number of people, Roy, Veli and my FA group, I was able to realize the need to alter my principles. Like all of you, I am constantly struggling with midterms and schoolwork. But I urge all of you to take a small step backwards, review the things you have done and change your ways of doing things. Like redoing your assignments, I am confident that most of you will find a “changed you” more satisfying to present. God bless you (and America)!

A Trust

A reflection on Purpose Driven Life - Day 5.

Life is a Trust.

This is the life that God has entrusted us with. He has prepared for us everything that we need ahead of time, none of them that we deserve. It is only by His goodness and faithfulness that He has given us health, wealth, wisdom and everything good in life. However, life on earth is only temporary and as such, everything that we have here, we don't actually own them - God has lent them to us. They aren't only obvious material possessions, but are inclusive of your relationships, friends, families, time and money.

Our God has put us in charge of managing everything that He has given us. He wants us to... manage our relationships, time and money, among other things, well. As good managers, we have to be careful of handling our possessions. So friends, whenever you feel like wasting your time, money and even ending a friendship with someone, remember that they have been given to us for a reason, and we are not to take them for granted. For everything that we do, have their implications in eternity.

So friends, be good managers and manage your life well! As the saying goes, "one life, live it."

Have a great Purpose Driven Life Campaign! =)

Wanna piece of Me???

1 Corinthians 1: 18

18For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

How many of you have, one of these days, forgotten about the significance of the cross?
Today, I want to share with you guys a powerful sermon from Ps. Mark Venti of Generations Church, Seattle (dari podcast ku hehe) about the power of the cross & God's sacrifice.

As a start,
we know that Bible is God's love letter with themes like grace, mercy, compassion, and love and with the Cross being the centerpiece of our faith.
God also often refers to the church as a bride and Jesus as the bridegroom.
WHY? "because salvation resembles a marriage covenant and has everything to do with a life-giving relationship that causes you to live out the things you ought to be doing and that comes from our relationship with Jesus Christ."

Refer to Genesis 2: 20-22.
When God created Adam, He creates a "comparable" helper for him, a woman. If it wasn't so, Adam couldn't have fulfilled his destiny (to populate the earth). For that to happen, God had to put Adam "into a deep sleep," took one of his ribs and formed the woman.
The same thing took place thousands of years later when Jesus came into the earth to fulfill God's plan...

of salvation for mankind. Nobody is comparable to Jesus, but God decides to use us humans to work with Jesus to accomplish His plans. He wants His plan to include people. That's why we have the church. In addition to that, He also lets us have the freewill to choose Him & out of this relationship, share the love of God with others. Similarly as to how Adam was put into a deep sleep (sleep is often described similarly to death in the Bible), God calls Jesus to take death upon His shoulder and this sacrifice brings about the church. 

Cross: "power of God to us who have been saved"

We need the power of the cross everyday!

A divine exchange took place when Jesus died on the cross.
He paid the penalty of our sins just so that we can be "brand new" & have eternal life.
He traded our wickedness, pride, anger & lust with His righteousness, purity & peace.

God brought us to Jesus through the cross so that we can be fruitful, multiply & be partner with Jesus to begin the change in the world, make intercession & communicate the truth that sets the generation free. 

It may be hard to comprehend God's love naturally because it's irrational.
Our whole life, we think tt we get only what we deserve & tt we have 2b holy & righteous before we can present ourselves to God.
It's kind of like when we want to trade our stinky, old pair of socks w/ a pair of new shoes. It'll sound foolish if anybody would want to trade with us.
But it's written in Romans 5:8 that "while we are still sinners, Christ died for us."
We are not perfect but we're forgiven. 

We can't stop our addictions/ fix our lives by our own power.
But,
  That's when God wants to come into our lives.
  He was waiting for us to cry out to Him to fix our lives.
  God wants to trade our imperfections (pain, anger, etc.) for His healing & peace.

  That's the transforming power of the cross.
  That's His grace, His love, and His mercy.

It all happens by the power of the cross, the power of His blood, sacrifice.

Jesus came into our lives wanting to share everything He has with us, to bless & pour out His love for us. He wants to be in our lives & be the all encompassing thing in it.

P.S.
Some of us are still carrying one of those "filthy rags" in our lives right now,
but God is asking us; do we want to hold onto these things or make a trade with Him?
A trade that doesn't make logical sense but is possible only through the power of the cross.
The cross & its power is there both on the day we got saved and on every day of our lives.

So, let go of the things and we can be "partakers of His divine nature" - have a piece of God that comes from inside of you. (2 Peter 1:3-4)

Site update: "Read More" feature added

Hello guys..

The "read more" link at the end of each post is working now :) Thanks to my friend David for teaching me such skill lol.. anyway, if you guys were about to post entries now, you'll see things like

"< span class="fullpost" >
blank space
< /span >"

when you select the "Edit Html" tab.

Now, to "cut" your post so that the readers will see only part of it, enter whatever you want to see the moment you enter our blog before the < span class="fullpost" >

In the blank space... enter the rest of the entry you want to "hide" until one clicks the "Read More" link at the end of your published post. Gd luck! :) Please email or text me if you guys are confused, like I was when I first started. Haha.. God bless you!

-Eva

Day 1

It All Starts With God

Hi everyone, I'm glad that you're a part of this campaign. I wanna congratulate all of you beforehand because I know that you'll benefit from this book! It is very crucial that you maintain the discipline to follow a reading plan--it'll be even better if you can make a personal commitment to dedicate 30mins-1 hour a day to read the book and REFLECT on the content of the book.

Anyway, I wish you all the best in the quest to find your TRUE purpose of living! If you have any questions about the book, verses or anything, feel free to contact your group leader or you can reach me at my e-mail or cell... take care!


GBU