Zhenzhong 小弟's world of rainbow colours.

Tuesday, January 02, 2007

11:49 PM

Happy 2007!

Yup, 2006 have just left us and 2007 just arrived... 1st post of the year... Nothing much to say actually, just felt like recording some of my wishes/goals to look forward in this year...

I hope to be more focus with my studies in the coming 2nd semester. There is a high chance I'll be taking 6 modules for the 1st time, and 4 of them being New Media (NM) modules, which are arts modules, I really pray that God will provide me with the clear mind to understand and the consistency with my work...

I hope to pick up new skills too. Haven decided on specific ones, but the few choice I thought of are:
- driving
- learning new musical instruments like drum (or improving existing ones like keyboard/guitar)
- IT skills, maybe in the area of video-editing, programming, etc.
- take up proper singing course? (or join church choir?)
- learn new language? (continue my self-learn japanese)
- baby-sitting skills (practising with my niece...)
- drama skill (to participate in church drama during ESS)

Well, one thing i really wanna thank God for the past one year in 2006 is my physical health. One of my breakthrough pledge prayer points back in Jan 2006 was actually for physical health protection. For people who knew me before, they will notice that I am not really physically healthy usually. I tend to fall sick easily and the recovery period usually took very long. Hence, it costed quite some inconvenience both in my studies as well as my ability to do things properly. And amazingly, throughout the past one year, I would say God has really blessed me with a good health. And I also are more conscious with my diet as well as the motivation to jog regularly (training for marathon). I can feel that my health is really well all these while. Thus, this coming year I will keep up with the healthy lifestyle!

The other main thing I hope to see changes this year will be my own spiritual growth. Compared to my physical health, I would say my spiritual condition from the past one year has been quite a roller-coaster ride. Many of times, I found myself trapped in the deepest valleys... And after much reflections and discussions with people, I realised that the root issue is back to the fundamental. "Am I maintaining an intimate close relationship with God on a daily basis?". It seems like I have cared too much about what I did on the outside, but never did grow in the inside. So, I really pray that from the start of this year onwards, I can perserve and strengthen my own prayer life with God.

I took up the advice from Jasmine, who suggested to us during last service to start a "Complete-the-bible-in-a-year" plan in 2007. And guess what? Yesterday while I was taking out my new 2007 christian calendar out and placed it on my studying table, I realised that that calendar actually has a 1-year bible reading guide, where it has written how much we can read each day in order to complete the bible once at the end of year. Thank God! That really helped me in taking the 1st step in starting the plan. It was a good start. Although today is just the 2nd day, but I prayed that I will slowly able to cultivate this good habit until it became a real natural desire for me to discover deep 'treasures' & 'wisdom' from it. I guess one way to make sure I will continue to do that perhaps is also to blog an entry every day and record down something I have learnt each day. (or at least a frequent basis...)

As I have a Life Application study bible, I will be quoting a bit from it to help me understand the some of the verses... =)

"And the Lord God commanded the man, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die." [Genesis 2:16-17]

Quoting from the Life Application bible:

"Rather than physically preventing him from eating, God gave Adam a choice, and thus the possibility of choosing wrongly. God still gives us choices, and we, too, often choose wrongly. These wrong choices may cause us pain, but they can help us learn and grow and make better choices in the future. Living with the consequences of our choices teaches us to think and choose more carefully."

Why would God place a tree in the garden and then forbid Adam to eat from it?

"God wanted Adam to obey, but God gave Adam the freedom to choose. Without choice, Adam would have been like a prisoner, and his obedience would have been hollow. The two trees provided an exercise in choice, with rewards for choosing to obey and sad consequences for choosing to disobey. When you are faced with the choice, always choose to obey God."

That is something which struck me when I read today. I used to ponder about the reason why God allow us to face with trials & temptations and fail at times. Indeed, it would have been much worse if God don't give us the freedom to choose. Thank God for helping me to understand this in a deeper manner. =)

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