Fatigued!

Hrm. I seem to have run out of things to talk about. I only have my dreams this morning left.

I was in bed, and a boy came to outside my room. I don't remember very clearly, but either he was sick, or I was the one sick, but I chatted with him for a couple of sentences. He walked away, turned the corner, and I remember getting the distinct feeling that he disappeared. My mom came, and I asked her, "Is she real?" She gave me the kind of look, the worried, sad look. I felt like John Nash. I was so perturbed. I was seeing things, hallucinating vividly. I don't know if that was considered a nightmare, but it definitely bothers me. I remember making a conscious effort to remember it, which is pretty rare for a dream.

Second one was a much simpler one, but in many ways more meaningful then the other. I was reading the Bible, and came across a block of verses, maybe...6-9 lines long. Small pocket bible, lower right hand side of the page. I was very excited by the verse; my spirit was stirred very acutely. I don't however remember the contents or even the context of the verse though. Even now as I type this while I wait for my visitation leader, I'm just sitting still, letting the remnants, the mere shadow of what was passing through me. Electrifying. Visions of what is to come? What about the above then?

Perhaps I should not put too much weight into my dreams. After all, I have a history of disturbing dreams, depraved in some ways, even. Lust, death, such themes have had fallen into my dream factory raw and dripping, ready to be churned out as polished nightmares, poignant in delivery, shocking in content. Yet, I can say proudly, none of them have happened, or will, indeed, ever happen. Maybe one. Just one. A special one that I still remember. Just that one. The rest are dead and buried, artefacts of a broken-down mind in a broken-down world.

That's it. I really don't have anything else to say. Nothing else that really comes to mind. Everything but the skeletons in my closet that...I'm not ready to share. Some things aren't meant to be shared, I guess. “Moreover if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he hears you, you have gained your brother." Matt 18:15. My brother, and I will know. And God, hehe.

Tired. Typed it out just now during the wait, at home now. Tired.

Wierd Watermelons?

Ha, a seat at last. Laptop’s lagging nuts, uTorrent’s rechecking files due to a bad shutdown. I wonder why, maybe it has something to do with me manually sleeping, then closing the lid, prompting yet another sleep cycle. Guess my laptop’s circadian cycle is off, hehe.

Psychology lesson later, can’t wait. I guess it’s pretty cool to have a lesson I look forward to at the start of the day so I arrive on time, early even. Thank God for strength to wake up and go out on time today. Strange, I didn’t pray last night. Haha, Word just wanted to correct “pray” to “play”. Maybe prayer and playing isn’t too incongruent. Dunno. I woke up early to beat my sister to the shower. I have to admit, I stayed in there and took my time with malicious intent. I just don’t see why she doesn’t want to use the other shower. “Everything is here”, she says. Well, most things are there too. She’s just inflexible and self-centred in this area, just like me in some others, hehe. Gotta pray! Gotta pray! I’m at discipline, moving from desire, on to delight real soon. Hrm, I have two loose ends above I want to expand on, let’s see how I can do it coherently.

Today’s waking up on time was in spite of my lack of prayer yesterday, but I know that it wouldn’t have been possible without God’s enabling grace. For a moment there, however, I felt that I could do it. I. Dangerous thinking, but for my precedence of being late for the most horrid reasons, I would have just ran away with that idea. God’s grace works in every area of my life. I caught a glimpse perhaps of God’s plan to start me off with humility, with knowledge that I can’t do everything on my own. I’ve got to watch myself, I don’t want to be over-religious, to attribute everything to God. I don’t deny that humans have power to achieve, but authority is given by God.

I don’t think I’m making much sense above. Quite incoherent at this time in the morning, but maybe it’s something I need to understand more. I don’t want to be freakily religious. I want to be religious in a relevant yet reverent manner. Ah well, it’ll be clear when God wants me to look at it.

I do regret my earlier actions. I do love my sister, and I know my sister loves me, but it’s just that we sometimes irk each other on purpose, me more than her, admittedly. And I used “then” instead of “than” again. Word caught it, and grammatical mistakes that Word catches should be trivial to me... Here’s for love in the hard times, consistent, universal love.

I wonder if I’ll ever have someone to talk like that to. Just random talk. Maybe my sense of friendship is warped. Haha, probably is.

Bedok! Later.

Time After Time, I Turn To You

Well well, train isn’t so crowded. I’m sitting on the floor again. Indoctrination tells me that it’s unglam, it doesn’t project a good image. Hrm. Am I supposed to be concerned? Part of me says yes, as a Christian, as a salt and light, I have to be concerned about my image. Part of me says no, I don’t really care. I don’t think I really care, it’s just that my mind is concerned.

I had an epiphany in the bus just now. I’ve publicly expressed my view that God will direct me to my girlfriend in the future, but I just realised that God won’t drop someone in my lap. I’ve got to work at a relationship, express interest on my part, and on His part, He’ll guide my actions and my choice. That said, I still don’t have my friendship building skills well-developed and consistent enough, not to mention anything about being natural-feeling about it. Mikki mentioned that I don’t have very well-developed spiritual friends. Very discerning, she’s quite right. She of course doesn’t mean that my friends are not spiritual; it’s just that I don’t have a very good relationship with them. Everything’s very shallow and surface.

I’ve always felt a particular urge to be able to really connect to someone, so I guess even I am not immune to the social DNA handed down over the ages. What do I look for in a friend? Hrm, I do like to share my thoughts, my problems, my life in general I think. It’s what I’ve been doing here in lieu of someone to talk to. I’ll like my friend to share too, which is why that for now, I won’t feel that Shaun is a close/good friend of mine. He can’t share, for obvious reasons. I understand that, but the whole thing turns out one-way. He’s a fantastic leader, perfect for me, wisdom that tempers my youthful naivety and impatience, discerning analysis that supplements my often shallow thinking. I, however, find it a tad hard to treat him as a friend. I don’t particularly connect to him on any level. Is there another element in friendship I’m missing?

Redhill now, 8.00 pm. Time well spent, I’d think. Maybe another one later, hehe.

Squatters in the City

I have lately taken much liberty with my image and taken to sitting down on the floor of the MRT...twice already, in these couple of weeks. I’ve always had a slight against people sitting on the floor, but here I am, doing it. Dunno, it’s the only way for me to be productive on the train I guess. Behaviour evolves with maturity; I’ll see where this one goes.

And a seat emptied was promptly taken. Ah well, cest la vie. Gotta check the internet later to add the correct accents. There’s one over the ‘e’, if I recall correctly. (Back at home! I got the spelling right, but it's "c'est la vie")

Oh yeah, thinking a bit about my giving recently. I haven’t been a very effective steward of my money, in the sense that my giving, while done in love, hasn’t been tempered with wisdom and responsibility. I haven’t tithed this week due to my parents only giving me my allowance on Sunday, and I promptly spent it over $30 at East Coast. I think my fiscal habits are not unsound, but rather just undocumented. Past efforts to document my spending habits have collapsed, perhaps I’ll have another shot at it. Winds of change are scouring my life, harbingers of holy fire that cleanses and sanctifies me. There is resistance in some areas, whole cities that have yet to be taken, but something’s happening as I wait on the Lord. I got that word even as I was praying for a solution to my inconsistency. It surely did not lie with “Just Do It™”. Spectacular failures from the application of that particular doctrine in my life are well-documented.

Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall: But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.

(Isa 40:30-31)

Just came reached school. God is good. I had left late, resigning myself to an “absent” mark. It was my fault, really. I have horrid time management. My...apathy towards school didn’t really help. In spite of all that, I went. There are some things that I can’t really change right now. Well, maybe not can’t, just not currently particularly willing to. However, there are things I can change. I can change whether I go to school or not, be it late or early. If I make it a point to go to school no matter how I feel or what my circumstances are, there’s a point made, there’s a habit formed. I will go to school!

Sometimes I think about how different I am from others, how my circumstances, my upbringing and my own convoluted and undirected thought processes have conspired to derive me of my most basic tenets of maturity. Responsibility, even the most base ones instilled in childhood are curiously absent in me. I feel like Charlie Gordon, my mental age speeding ahead of the rest of my emotions, and indeed, myself. I look at my friends in RI, now RJC, soon to be RI (hehe), and they seem normal enough. They seem to be reasonably well-adjusted individuals, socially, emotionally and the likes, but with my...intellect, in an abstract sense. Indeed, almost all of them have or will far surpass me in my intelligence, both as an abstract and applied measure.

Then again, maybe not. I’m sure they have their own problems, their own issues that they struggle to cope with. I met up with someone who worked with Rafflesians sometime ago, in the capacity of friends, and was given the remark that, “Sometimes, when I talk to you guys, I feel like I’m talking to a 16 year-old with a 60 year-old mind.” Hyperbole aside, it’s very relevant to me personally. I half-jokingly shot back using the common RPG practice of stat allocation as an example, with the character having a limited number of points to put into such areas as Strength, Toughness, Intelligence, Willpower, Charisma, etc. Some like me have the same pool of points, and something has to go.

Ha, class is starting! Blog later, in the train again, hopefully.

God Saturated

Hrm. I do have to apologise to KY and the other girls, as sometimes in catching them as they fell put them in compromising situations. I didn't really realise it until Mikki told me to support KY in front. Mortifying....

Ah well, had fun. Thank God for his grace today. I was with Jin Tao cycling down to return the bike/skates, and the sky was so black. I was praying, "God, please don't let it rain. I'm important to you. You love me as an individual, and what I say matters to you." I told Jin Tao that it won't rain before we hit the kiosk. It did rain, but not very heavily. I really have to admire Jin Tao. He fell quite a few times, but didn't give up.

I'm still indecisive. Should have made the decision to turn back, thank God we did anyway. Something I'll need to change. A bit of a hypocrite...I told Leo that it's not so nice to leave Wei Ken and Uzen alone, and I did just that to help out with the girls learning to skate. They called me, and I told them to stay put for a bit, I'll be back in about 40 minutes after the girls hand in their skates, but also told them to call me if there was anything, or if they are really bored and I'll go back.

Wonder if I did the right thing. Is this an indication of my priorities? I can think of so many justifications for what I did, and so many rebuttals, but I wonder what God thinks. Was that wise? Kevin, Mikki and I were with the girls, leaving Uzen and Wei Ken alone with Leo. How wise was that? Then again, Mikki had to leave halfway, and I helped KY out.

If I had gone back, Jermaine and Kevin would have stepped into my role, but if I had not, who could have entertained the boys and the new friend? I only pray that they had a good time, and did not feel neglected. I don't have the intention of upsetting anyone...

Sherrie called me to pray for me today. That was nice.

Oh yeah! God really knows what makes me tick. To a certain extent I dereive joy from helping other people, and these couple of days has seen me help people in small ways that really makes my day. Yesterday, I pointed out Block...51, I think, of Strathmore Ave to someone who was lost. I had my headphones on, but I saw this lady talking to me, so I took them off. Surprising, really, it's not the first time someone asked for directions or help when I had my headphones on. I would never have asked someone who was listening to music. Maybe it's just me.

Today, I helped a kid put his chain back on his bike. He was fiddling with his bike in the middle of the lane, just slowed down to help him out. It was about to rain then, and Jin Tao was boosting on my bike. I just felt that I should help him out. I wasn't really thinking about Jin Tao waiting there at the moment, feeling guilty about that now. In helping out that boy, I made Jin Tao wait, with him so eager to get back as he was really tired. I stopped and helped the boy.

Dunno, I think that it was the correct thing to do to help the boy, as I spent only about 5 minutes trying to adjust his chain. That was 5 minutes for Jin Tao to rest, and an irreplacable 5 minutes so that the boy could get back. When helping someone causes inconvenience to others, I'll have to be very wise and very sensitive to what the Holy Spirit wants me to do in the future.

It was a God-saturated, Holy-Spirit-filled day today. Awesome! Here's to more prayer, and my first personal fast in a long time.

Show Me How To Live, Teach Me How To...

Yesterday, as I looked at the performers strutting their stuff, a part of me wanted to be like them, to sing, to dance just as well as them. I wanted to be important in something, recognised as superior among my peers.

A bit of lateral thinking leads me to conclude that it’s not a godly desire. I need to know who I am, and to be secure in it. No matter what I do, or how well I do it, my sense of security and achievement must always lie with the God that makes me more than a conqueror in Christ.

Who I am will come when I have a relationship with a person. Shaun has been slowly showing me who I am. Mikki has been slowly showing me who I am. I guess it is not something I can describe in words, but a...feeling, a subconscious process over these two years of interactions with them. God can do the same!

Show me who I am in you, Jesus. Show me logos made rhema. "Out of you shall flow rivers of living water!", You said. I am made productive, so show me, show me who I am in you, what I'm meant to do.

Post or Pre?

I’m not going to arrive on time. Currently on a train to Expo for my Ministry Introductory Course. There’s no wifi, naturally, so I’m just typing this out on word and post-dating (or is it pre-dating) the post. It’s 3:01, and I’m still at Tiong Bahru. I wanted to do the scrapbook, but I think too highly of my creative abilities, hehe, I’ll have to check out scrapblog.com much more in-depth to rush it out by Saturday. I simply don’t yet have the creative ability to churn out a scrapbook on my own. Imitate first, and your own ideas will flow afterwards, I guess, hehe. Today was fun, I got to play guitar for a small prayer meeting today. Mikki led, but I didn’t have the stamina to follow through all the way. I need to build up my guitar playing mental stamina. Physically, I think I’m still all right, but the focus, the mental concentration needed to play for an hour straight, trying at the same time to flow with Mikki is just too much for now. That will come with practice, something that, as Swee Keng always says, I seriously lack.

Pastor’s message is good. What do I have a vision for? Hrm, I think that sharing my visions will help others help me bring them into reality, so:

Health: I want to bulk up! 70kg by next year, being able to get gold for NAPFA.
Finances: $8/h flexible part-time job that interests and engages me by the end of the year
Ministry: I want to be a cell group guitarist by March next year, by my birthday
Career: GPA of 3.8, to bring at least 1 friend to church in the next semester

Hrm. There’s a lot of “I wants”. I wonder what God wants, what Shaun wants, what Pastor Kong wants, what Gladys wants. Building Fund. I want to fulfil my building fund. I think I’ve got an amount. I’m not very sure of it, I’ll reconfirm, but it’s a big amount. Something out of my comfort zone. As Shaun had told me before, we have to be wise about my giving. Move in faith, yes, but with heavenly wisdom as well. I wonder if this is wise. Prayer...I haven’t prayed these couple of weeks. Haven’t read the Bible either. Running on steam now. Hrm. It stops today then. Today is the day of my salvation. Every day, when I wake, I receive my daily bread, my daily dose of the cleansing blood of Jesus. A bit morbid though, when I imagine the blood of Jesus covering me.

Just got this...image. A car crash, and a mother is slumped over her kid. Her kid’s covered in her blood, but alive. Maybe there, the blood no longer holds the connotations of morbidity, but of love, and the ultimate sacrifice. I need that in my heart, every day. You know, I think if I hold that image in my heart 24/7, test everything I do against it, a lot of progress will be made in my life. Pride problems will be solved. Fear problems will be solved. It is possible, to be proud but yet low self esteem, but from today on, I am a confident Bowen, I am a charismatic Bowen, I am a consistent Bowen, I am an accountable Bowen, I am a loving Bowen, I am an accepting Bowen, I am a stylish Bowen. I am all these through the mustard seed of faith that I have right now, sown and continually watered. Just as I am saved by grace through faith, I am all these and more by the grace of God working through the faith in my life.

I really should memorise more verses in the Bible. I used to stick post-it notes for a bit, but it stopped. I’ll surround myself with verses from the Bible. First up will be “Out of you shall flow rivers of living water”. It’s the first logos word that God specifically made rhema to me. Actually...on second thought, there’s one before that.

Ooo. I stopped, for some reason. Smsing I think. 5.54 now. Anyways, the verse was Luke 5:37-39. First rhema from God. “And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; or else the new wine will burst the wineskins and be spilled, and the wineskins will be ruined. But new wine must be put into new wineskins, and both are preserved. And no one, having drunk old wine, immediately desires new; for he says, ‘The old is better.’”

S'long for now.

Mmm, egg mayo

Mmm, a quickie before my eggs are done in 5 minutes.

I tend to be really affected by the people around me. Was feeling horrid yesterday, but being in the presence of other like-minded Christians really provided an anchor for my soul. Unfortunately, it also works the other way around, and I don't think it's supposed to work this way. God's supposed to be my anchor, my solid, unyielding rock. I gotta pray, I gotta fast, keep my spiritual disciplines. Felt like I was walking on water, slowing sinking, just realising that I'm up to my neck in water...

and my eggs are done.

I Love Me! =D

Hrm, Ps Zhaung's preaching.

Gen 1:26 tells us that God has a image of himself, a positive image, but when Adam fell, his image of himself, his self-image, changed. His self-image was no longer what God meant it to be.

On to Numbers, and I just realised that I don't really care. That's not good. Low self-image ties in with my failures today. I guess this is just my childish way of coping, utterly childish, but...delightful, in a certain perverse way I guess. Taking joy in sin...now now now, Heb 10:26, for if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins.

Interestingly, I'm not hearing anything new. Not with my natural ears. Gen 1:33, a twist in his message, saw that coming a mile away. Plastic surgeons having to fix the inside, nothing new either. Yup, if you believe you're ugly, you're ugly. If you think you're stupid, you will behave in a stupid manner. Nothing new. Nothing. Not now. I know all these, but I don't understand. It's all written on tablets of stone. When I come here, I don't come for human understanding. I come for spiritual understanding.

Low self-esteem, I have it, know about it, cause, effects, all these can come out with a little bit of thought. Ha. "God begin to change my mindset". It's so easy to say, retrospectively. I doubt not that with my effort, my brokeness, my willingness to change, I can say that. I can declare that, confidently and without doubt. Such an easy thing to say...

As a man thinks in his heart, so is he. There's no point in having a makeover unless you change your thinkings first

3 things to do:

1. Replace all wrong thinkings with the Word of God
2. Confess aloud the promises of God to yourself
   
3. Visualise in you an image of what you want to see
   

Do you ever get a flash where you suddenly lose your Christian...nature? Perhaps it's an artifact of my weakness in my relationship with God. Suddenly, for a second you just hear these words as an aethist, an agnostic even. It sounds...disgusting, for a moment.

I need a rhema as to who I am. My identity in Christ. Who I am, what I am to do. Clear, unrevocable rhema. I have no illusions that it will change everything, but perhaps it will clear things up.

What do I remember? "Out of you shall flow rivers of living water", I'm called to be a healer. I think I'm called to be a psychologist.

Confessing. I can only confess when I get rhema isn't it? I have to know what is God's rhema for me. What do I have rhema for?

Oh, I missed number 2. Back up! Zoom zoom. Interesting. I've known this, but hasn't really come to mind recently. Ha, but I visualise so much, so many things. It feeds my pride. It feeds my ego. Once I visualise...I can't stop. Isn't that incongruous with a low self esteem? A person with low self-esteem having an enormous ego. Ha. Altar call coming soon. I think I know better then to blog through that. My childishness stops here. I give myself some time to let go, then I will pick up the pieces, here and now. My fall stops here. Next time, it'll be shorter. It won't be so obvious. I won't distract, by proxy, Wei Ken beside me.

Help me see who I am. I don't want to be anyone else but who you want me to be.

P.S My title comes last, so it references my post. Usually...

Eww

Whoa, this is cool. Live blogging from EDGE meeting. I'm super distracted, and the praise and worship didn't help. Then again, everyone else seemed to really enjoy it. Pastor Zhuang led us in kneeling for worship. Then again, it's me, I know, I know.

Offering time. Thanksgiving from Psalms 51:14. I've always had slight problems with offering. I don't really understand how I can give expecting God to give me something back. Shaun did explain it to me, saying that I'm giving to a perfect loving God, but I don't....understand...

Hrm, Jasmine's chasing me. Urgh. Just feel like hiding away again. I don't cope with failure well, and I'm supposed to suck it up, or lift it up to God or something. I know, but once again...I don't understand.