Lighthouse N394

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What do you taste?

According to legend, a young man while roaming the desert came across a spring of delicious crystal-clear water. The water was so sweet he filled his leather canteen so he could bring some back to a tribal elder who had been his teacher. After a four-day journey he presented the water to the old man who took a deep drink, smiled warmly and thanked his student lavishly for the sweet water. The young man returned to his village with a happy heart.

Later, the teacher let another student taste the water. He spat it out, saying it was awful. It apparently had become stale because of the old leather container. The student challenged his teacher: "Master, the water was foul. Why did you pretend to like it?"

The teacher replied, "You only tasted the water. I tasted the gift. The water was simply the container for an act of living-kindness and nothing could be sweeter."

Self-motivation without gratitude is impossible. Our energy is "sapped" when our entire focus is on what's wrong instead of what is right with our lives. One of our greatest challenges is to live and love in spite of pain and disappointment...to find gratitude in the midst of it all.

"Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow."

Effect of words on water

Last weekend, pastor shared on the profound effects of words, music, pictures and even thoughts have on water causing it to form beautiful crystal or otherwise. To read more on this interesting study by Dr. Emoto, click here.

So, let us all be more conscious of our words and thoughts!!

What we did on Sat's FOP

Janice's wearing Winnie's glasses.

Doing the "flower" pose.

两朵花. 2 flowers!

Now 三朵花...

The more the merrier.

V signs.

Dunno what pose also, but it was fun!

Ling Ling & Winnie's Birthday

We have two not 同年, but 同月, 同日生, same birth date, sisters in the cell group. Double celebrations!

The birthday gals singing to each other...

...blessing each others. Okay, the whole cell group blessed them too!

Ling Ling & Winnie - almost "金兰" 姐妹 (sworn sisters?), haha.

With their partners.

Birthday gals sharing their birthday wishes for the year.

What's so amusing?

Hmmmm....

I wish for...

Ling Ling shared her birthday wishes - a life God wants her to live and good health. Please continue to pray for her!

The surprise element - durians! There's where the smell was coming from all this while.

Yummy king of the fruits.

Birthday cake and durians - an unlikely combination.

Wrong answer! "Punishment" was eating durians.

Winnie taking on her punishment quite happily as we can see....

What's coming up next?

Presents!! See the eager look on Ling Ling's face, hehe.

Finally, here's my present!

Think the birthday gals were happy with their gifts.

Another surprise - flowers from Hai Song...

... and flowers and kiss from Daniel! Those under 18 please go to next picture. Haha, good thing we are in an adult cell group.

Finally, after all the excitement, the cake was being cut. Happy birthday, Winnie and Ling Ling!

Our CG personality!

Today is the our first CG meeting and I am truly very excited. The bible says in Prov 28:19 that w/o a vision, the people perish, so I want to start the cg right and share with you the vision that I have for N394. I was asking God, what vision does He want me to cast tonight at my first cell group meeting and as I prayed, I felt God impressed in my heart, the word ABS. Just like everyone has his unique personality, a cg also has its unique personality. So what does ABS stand for ?

1. Audacious -
We wanna be audacious. To be audacious is to be fearless, daring or unrestrained by any sense of inadequacy. AR Bernard said in the business breakthrough dinner 2 years ago that audacity is the key to success. If we want to succeed, we need to have guts, we need to be fearless. You can’t breakthrough if you always think within your limits. In prayer, we want to overcome the barrier of being TOO CAREFUL, too reserved, too safe. Sometimes, without knowing it, we’ve reduced our prayers to what we think is safe, to something so small that even if God didn’t answer, it wouldn’t make a difference! So we need to be people whom dares to dream. Those in my previous CG, last year end, when pastor preached about the 4th dimension, tapping on the power of imagination. I shared with you I made myself visualize my boss singing praises of me, tapping on my shoulder saying job well done to me. At that time, 6 months in my job, I was the bottom of the team on the scoreboard with the least sale. Today, after 6 months since then, I am now 3rd on the score board, amongst a team of around 25 people. I felt inadequate last year, yes, but I had the audacity to dream, because the bible said as the man thinketh, so is he, so I shaped my thinking, and things around me changed accordingly.

2.Bonding -
We want to be people whom are bonding. When a team is strongly bonded, it moves as one. It is effective, efficient and enjoyable. Imagine together with me, that if everyone has a bonding mindset, when a new friend visits the CG, the members automatically just want to bond with the person, finding common grounds with the person, go dinner with him, go movie with him, very likely, in no time, the person would be integrated into the CG and the CG will grow. And when a CG is bonding, enemies will find it hard to penetrate.

3. Spirit-sensitive -
To balance it, we need to be “S”, spirit sensitive. Yes we want to be audacious, dare to take risk, but only on things that we clearly hear from God. If God say “GO”, we go, never hold back. To hear clearly from God, we need to be spirit sensitive. For that to happen, we need to develop consistent spiritual habits, having your own daily quiet time. Prayer and fasting is part of your lifestyle, when the church calls for an overnight prayer meeting, the cell group will rise up excitedly and say “let’s go” rather than take a back seat.

So my vision for the CG is that we will become people whom are audacious, risk takers in the marketplace, yet spirit sensitive, obedient to the things of God. We will be people whom are bonding, that as we carry out the great commission to bring in the lost, we will be able to connect with them and integrate them into the house of God.