Taking Up The Cross

“For if you choose self-sacrifice and lose your lives for my glory, you will continually discover true life. But if you choose to keep your lives for yourselves, you will forfeit what you try to keep. For even if you were to gain all the wealth and power of this world with everything it could offer you — at the cost of your own life — what good would that be? And what could be more valuable to you than your own soul?” Jesus. 

(Matt 16:25-26 PT).

God answers; with presence @pktfuel

When we limit our prayers and desires to the material, we are limiting our perception of what God can and wants to do in our lives. We limit his will. Imagine if we lived and prayed like God’s will for us has more to do with WHO we become, not WHAT we become? How we move through the ups and downs of life, not the removal of the downs?

God hears us all – our every word and prayer. And he longs for us to see him more and more as he is. The divine who is peace in storms, strength in weakness, wisdom in foolishness, hope in hopelessness, purpose in rejection, forgiveness in repentance, restoration in brokenness, life in death…

Present in prayer.

Seek God to fashion you in the midst of your season, not to remove the season of fashioning. Open your eyes to see that beauty can come from the most unexpected places.

Jesus prayed, “not my will but yours be done…"

Maybe we should too.

**

On a sidenote, something very interesting to read about :) enjoyy!

https://thehardcastle.wordpress.com/2014/02/16/%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%81%D8%B1%D8%ADgioia%E5%96%AC%E4%BC%8Ajoy%D7%A9%D7%9E%D7%97%D7%94joiealegria/

Conformity | Transformation

“Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.” 

Rom 12:1-2 (MSG).

:)

+

my lovely lunch today,

that i forgot to take photo until halfway through

oh how i'll miss this when I leave to UK

love you chicken & hor fun.

muacks

and burger last night woohoo

 oh yes, rebel baby. 

i look bad, but oh yes, rebel baby.

holy crap.

OMGOSH

-SATISFACTION OF A GOOD BUY/BARGAIN-

Lol :') happy tears!

I've been pondering for ages, and last I checked was 2 days ago - RM 247.00 cheapest. But I had to confirm with other people first hence didnt buy.

This morning I checked, RM 291, argh painful - and annoying too, cuz the server wasn't working very well. I tried at least 5 times to get it through > to no avail.

An hour later, I was happy to find that it was RM 247!! Then I hurriedly booked it, tried to complete the process at least 5 times, after being redirected to pages after pages in between. I keyed in my dad's card 3-4 times > so heart attack cuz you wont know whether it's been charged or not.

>>> to no avail.

And now, 4pm++ holy moly, RM 129 - the usual price to fly back to KK.

:)

If you look at it one way, it's interesting and amusing the way God works :) holding the system down > resulting in my frustrations > so that I get the cheapest bargain?! Maybe to help save me some bucks since I've spent some doing Christmas shopping yesterday..

Don't know whether that could be it, people may call it lucky, but since I don't really believe in luck.. Hm, but if this is it, how cute and adorable! Am very grateful. Feeling shameful too cuz God still did that despite me venting my frustrations o.O hehe.

beauty of devotions - God speaks

p.s. these days my devotions have been so point. it’s crazy.

just as my previous post vented my frustrations with being careless & [the fact that i have to spend big bucks to mend the holes :’(], the devotion speaks of “You cannot control everything, and that’s OK”. - http://www.pktfuel.com/surrender/?mc_cid=d7587cdfd6&mc_eid=5fd9564641

For the past two days, the devotion spoke of “beware the barrenness of a busy life” & “you can always turn your eyes away” > which shared about how being productive isn’t always great, that it’s worthy to take our time through certain events in life. and how to determine what we should invest our time in, how to assess what gives us value... > which is what that's been constantly mindboggling me. (straight to the heart feels)
super timely. 

you can check out the links here:

http://www.pktfuel.com/waste-of-time/?mc_cid=05326332a8&mc_eid=5fd9564641

http://www.pktfuel.com/my-eyes/?mc_cid=9e5ced8a88&mc_eid=5fd9564641

precious moments with mum

Hello world~

not really sure what I’m feeling today, I don’t rmb clearly tho rmb feeling quite upset/disappointed/agitated earlier today. 

[partially overslept + forgot that mum was coming + this guy in uni who gives me the creeps + how im so imperfect + maybe just cuz i hadn't eaten.l.]

despite all this, God i thank You for this moment, i thank You for mum :)

mum and her constant cuppa drink huehuehue

+  my food journal today:

started off my day with a bunch //

and then mum left me, so i went to makan around 5.30pm ++, was strugglnig with the menu as usual - was battling between pork + squid bbq or vegetarian bibimbap actually. I settled for the latter cuz i wanted to get Texas chicken after & the thought of all things meat just incited paranoia in me. plus i kept reminded myself to be more thrifty

and then it came with this, pre-dish/appetizers?

super filling, amen mm mmm.

i bought Texas chicken back to the hotel.

Then as i showered and settled down, my laptop couldn't connect to the internet. 

So i dressed up again and went down to starbucks. 

Christmas pannetone frap

The guy gave me a 30% discount so I only paid Rm 12+ instead of RM 18+. 

unsure why, but def a plus!

am loving my DEVOTION today :)

Find this post here!

Turn away my eyes from looking at worthless things, and revive me in Your way. 

Ps 119:37 (NKJV)

Waste of Time – Part 1

Distractions are EVERYWHERE. There’s always another book to read, movie to watch, friends to catch up with, post to make on Facebook, picture to perfect with VSCO for Instagram, emails to write, room to clean, friend to call, errands to run, Netflix show to binge, shopping to do, food to cook, services to go to, hair to wash… ha! You name it, there is an endless amount of things for us all ’to do.’

And I don’t know about you, but most things on my list seem viable. Even Netflix. (yep… I said it. Ha!) How do you decide what is a distraction and a worthless project to engage in and what activity is beneficial and productive for you?

I told someone once that I wanted to write fiction. His response to my desire was that fiction didn’t change lives and, therefore, wasn’t a worthy pursuit. I don’t think he quite meant it in that way, but at the same time, some of the “less practical” things in life can be seen as wasteful, and an added extra if we have time. We tend to think that the most important things are the tangible, measurable, productive things… The physical output of our lives. Everything that doesn’t directly correlate to that can be (I’m definitely not saying should be) labeled as wasteful.

Here’s what I know. You can waste your life away on productivity – you can waste your children’s years, you can waste every sunrise and sunset, you can waste the art galleries that adorn our towns and cities like Christmas lights shining all kinds of beauty into the world, you can waste that song on the radio, you can waste the love of your life, you can waste your youth, you can waste your wealth on material possessions, you can waste knowledge on greed and fortune… you can waste everything you have on productive, measurable, workable things. And at the end of it, have no one to share it with.

Socrates said, “Beware the barrenness of a busy life…” and Dolly Parton (Did I just quote Socrates and Dolly Parton in the same sentence – INDEED I DID – #winning) said, “Never get so busy making a living that you forget to make a life.”

If you spend your life on productivity alone, it will kill your soul. We need both beauty and productivity, rest and play and work, sleep and exercise, food and water – we need a balance of all these things to keep our heart, mind and body functioning at their best.

Spending a day resting is not a waste of a day. Feeding your imagination with a novel or a film is not a waste of time. Walking slowly through an art gallery is not a waste of a walk. Listening to a podcast on science is not a waste of hearing. Tinkering in the shed fixing up an old classic is not a waste of elbow grease… on the contrary. It’s often these things, these seemingly wasteful things, that empower us for our best productive work.

So again, the question is, what is wasteful? What should we divert our eyes from?

Ps 119:37 in The Passion Translation reads, 
“Help me turn my eyes away from illusions so that I pursue only that which is true; drench my soul with life as I walk in your paths”

Perhaps the better question to ask is, “what is my path to walk?”

To be continued…

haiiii Disemberrr :)

went shoppiinnn' for foundation and makeup remover after dinner ketchup with Destiny :) 

what a lovely time spent with such a beautiful girl! we should totally do this more often.

I was so sakai when buying cosmetics, 

now I feel one step closer to becoming like Ms Li Sher hue hue.

^ totally drilling into my head the responsibility to make big bucks to afford ok lifestyle in za futurr.

it's been soooooo long! sooo good to see you again :) 

i'm sorry that we stopped talking, im generally terrible at things like this,

i need to learn to deal with it instead of jeopardizing friendships again in the future.

am happy for you though :)

welcomin' xmas :)

Twas' a really good night out, 

welcoming xmas whilst celebrating the wrap up of assignments, 

as well as me being natural, relieved, myself for the one time in a long time, 

maskless hangout, extented to round 2, 

Cosans helped in welcoming the best festive of the year :)

drink was artsy, but then looked like crap afterwards^ haha.

literally close to perfect!

butterscotch latte or the such :3 christmas specials wee~~!!!

Ah fu, ma ogcp buddehhh.
3 hrs skype man.

Just because I can

Because Jesus has given me strength,
And it is done.
So I will finish, and complete, well.

They, Them and Jesus

Find this post here:

Parables are NOT illustrations or fables meant to reveal a certain point. They are provocative stories designed to make us think. They get under our skin, into our hearts and mess around with our world view. They are disruptive, oddly encouraging, and leave you with both questions and hope alike. Today, being so far removed from the cultural aspects of Jesus life, it’s easy to read the parables two-dimensionally and not think much of them… But they have depth and meaning that can only be grasped when you understand how they function. Jesus rarely interpreted his parables, and this in itself reveals how they work. The meaning bends and morphs over time, through situations and depending on where you’re at when you hear it, making them timeless and transcendent.

***

The more correct translation is “Mystery”… and NOT some weird, out there, hard to find mystery. But one that requires faith to be seen. A mystery that leads one to silence… to “be still and know that (he is) God…”

To live alive to the mystery, to be able to hear and see, to receive the seed that The Sower plants, is a life of faith. But how often does fear play on our faith, knocking it around a little, causing a touch of blindness and an ounce of deafness.But does our ability to hear and see effect God’s ability to keep on revealing his mystery? Has he turned off the sun and sent the moon to bed simply because some cannot see him in them? Does he silence blessing and hide his generosity because there are those who can’t see it for the goodness that it is? Does he hide the cross because some cannot fathom its power?

Paul reminds us that
 “even if we are faithless, he will still be full of faith, for he never wavers in his faithfulness to us!” 
(2 Tim 2:13)

God

Where my courage ends,

Let my heart find strength in Your presence.

here, now

Fix my eyes, 

on the things that I can't see now

And all I see,

is the glory of Your name