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It’s time to give my Daddy God the due credit for what He’s done for me…

For a while now, I stopped thinking that He would answer my prayers…

I’m not talking about the big major earth shattering prayers, for the church, for the nation, or even the ones for my life direction… Those He’ll definitely answer… I mean the tiny prayers, the little ones to get a parking lot, or to get a treat from someone… Situations where God gets you out of trouble… To me, those answered prayers are little gimmicks that He does for new believers so that they know He is real…

But I’m no new believer… I’m stuck with Him for life, and we both know it… It’s all about having faith and trusting Him even when I don’t see anything happening… So I assumed I was out of the running for these random blessings…

Thank goodness, my God doesn’t think the way I do… Cos He blessed me in 3 different ways at 3 different times, in 3 days…

The First Time

The rigours of the new job demanded that I make several drastic changes to my life, in dressing, personal grooming, and being ready for any situation that crops up during my work… So I spent quite a bit of money in my first month, getting new corporate clothing, new comfy yet pretty shoes, getting specs with an accurate prescription, and even getting a hassle-free hairdo…

With all the big purchases out of the way, I was really reluctant to get the small things, like a small bottle of perfume to mask kopitiam food smells, and to always smell pleasant for afternoon assignments… I figured that for those small things, I’d wait till I recouped my losses the next month.

One afternoon at the office, one of the marketing guys came round to my desk and gave me a tiny hat box. It was a set of sample perfume from Acqua Di Parma! I couldn’t believe it! It’s a pretty little bottle and the scent is really lovely. I got exactly what I wanted without having to pay for it!

That was score 1 for the Big Guy in the Sky.

The Second Time

I was low on funds and I needed to get a cab. The nearest ATM was too far to get to and I was already running late. So I hailed a cab and asked if the guy took NETS. He said he accepts credit cards. I have a sub card from my dad so I agreed.

When I arrived at my destination, the bill was $22.30. I opened my wallet to get my credit card and I couldn’t find it! I’d left it with my sister weeks ago and never got it back from her!

I check the cash: $17 in notes. That wasn’t gonna get me anywhere. I tried to call my friends whom I was going to meet, hoping that they’d be able to bail me out. No answer. Desperate, I opened up the coin compartment to pay with whatever I had.

To my surprise, I took out coin after coin. $1 coins, $0.50 coins, $0.20 coins, $0.10 coins. It suddenly occurred to me that I might actually have the money to pay my cabbie. So I started counting: $17 in cash, 2 $1 coins, a few $0.50 coins… I got to $22.20 when the cabbie stopped me. The last 10cents he said, was fine. So I paid up and left…

In the lift, I was curious to find out how I could have had so much in coins. I peeked into my coin compartment once more. All I had left, were 2 shiny gold 5cent coins. The last 10 cents.

At that moment, I knew God provided the cab money. Like the story of the widow filling all her jars and all her neighbour’s jars with olive oil - when the last jar was filled, the olive oil stopped flowing. God knew I didn’t have my credit card (even when I thought I did) so He provided all the coins I needed to pay my cabbie, right to the last cent, and stopped.

The Third Time

The boss sent me out on a strange assignment, to shoot the skyline on one particular day. It was a rainy cold day and my boss said the clouds outside were so low that the tops of the buildings were blocked by the clouds. He wanted that picture.

So I ran out with my camera and my brolly. But it was the shift changing hour. There was no cab in sight. The cab stand was full, and there were no operators attending to me.

I kept checking the top of UOB to see if the clouds were still hovering around. When the cloud dispersed, my heart sank. At that point, I asked Him for a little help to keep the clouds there, and for a cab to come by willing to take me to the different locations.

The cab really did come by. And he brought me to my two locations. I stood there with my camera shooting. At first, there were no clouds. Then a breeze came and carried the lower clouds across the sky, covering the tops of the buildings, and then carried it away again. I got my first shots.

At the second location, the clouds were covering the tops of the buildings even more than before. I started shooting. The breeze came again, moving the clouds across the different buildings, and I shot until the sky was completely clear again.

When I left, a young man decided to get the picture I had, with his point and shoot camera. He even stood at the exact same spot I did. But I knew it wouldn’t be the same. After all, my Daddy God had put the clouds there for me and moved them away when I was done. Heh…

In the busyness of daily life and work, I sometimes forget that my God can move mountains, that’s why I’m writing this down, so that perhaps, next time, I won’t forget so often anymore…

Another silly realization…

I was just telling my cell how my week really went downhill at the first half of the week, and then picked up completely by the end of the week.

And it was all because of cell!!

L cell gave me a new burst of excitement to love people and pray for them. And today’s cell reminded that in my weakness, I am strong in God… Dunno why that sharing stuck with me… Cell also forced me to think about what I really want to do and accomplish… Instead of just rushing though life…

And the one part where I really felt God’s presence… The impromptu worship session where I played, together with Sarah-Jane, my theme song “Heart of Worship”. God’s presence was really awesome and warm and so comfortable.

It’s something so intrinsic yet I have to constantly remind myself…

Music is my greatest worship to God.

Pastor Wilson’s message during YAS was a very enlightening one…

It was the first of the new sermon series called “Finding God’s Will”

[insert punny joke here]

Anyway, one thing stuck with me during his message… That is, the difference between God’s will and God’s decisions…

We all know that God’s will is unchanging. But then, why is it that situations are turned around when we pray? Have we changed God’s will??

Nope.

P Wilson raised the example of Moses and God to substantiate that. God had already made a covenant with Abraham, a long time ago, to make him into a great nation. But during the time when Moses was receiving the 10 commandments from God, the Israelites got terribly impatient and made a golden calf to worship and give thanks for coming out of Egypt safely…

What the Israelites did was terribly ungrateful. They basically turned their backs on God, who saved them, and worshipped an idol that they made. God couldn’t tolerate such behaviour and told Moses that He intended to destroy the entire nation and start a new one with Moses.

What was God’s will here? To make Moses a great nation? Or to make Abraham’s decendents more numerous than the stars in the sky?

It was the latter.

God’s decision to destroy the Israelites and rebuild it with Moses was His reaction to the sin of the Israelites. It was a consequence of the Israelites’ sin.

Moses recognised this and pleaded with God to pardon the Israelies from the consequence of their sin, and for God to continue to enforce His Will (i.e. to make them His chosen nation). Of course, there are other things to consider, like that God might have been testing Moses of his reaction to such news, wanting Moses to intercede for the Israelites, but we can’t go into that much detail here…

In the same way, when we pray, we are asking God to enforce His will and not the consequences of our sin. So at times when things turn around for the better, we haven’t changed God’s will. We have only asked God to enforce His original will.

Praying suddenly made sense!

Our job is to sieve out and recognise God’s will, and pray that He will enforce it. No matter what the situation may be. That was a revelation to me that God’s will is to prosper me, to give me a sound mind, to make me the head and not the tail… Things that I’d read in the bible before but never really grasped.

What has God been speaking to you? What is God’s will and promise for your life and your situation? Recognise it! And start praying it into being!

Been ages since I last heard that question…

It’s the question that pastors ask their worship leaders during altar call ministry time… The worship leaders are expected to hear or sense what God wants to do, find an appropriate song that helps to bring out God’s message, and play it on demand as soon as this question is asked… And our worship leaders usually have a song… I didn’t…Good thing P Kenny had a song in mind…

It made me wonder if that question can be used in places other than in services or cells…

When you had a long day, “what’s the song?”
When you are waiting for a job, “what’s the song?”
When parents are persecuting you, “what’s the song?”
When you are miserable and upset, “what’s the song?”

Asking that question makes you stop and think from a different perspective… What’s God’s purpose for such events? What does He intend to do? And how should we respond to Him?

More often than not, the response involves praising and thanking God… Even when it doesn’t make sense…