I watched what is now my favourite video earlier today, after Niko sent me a link to it. It's a video based on the Parable of the Unmerciful Servant in the Bible (Matthew 18:21-35), and it's CHO CUTE!
The video has adults acting out the parable as told by kids, and aiyoooo it's just so cute lah! So cute that I was bugging so many people to go and watch it xD
To whoever sees this, make sure you watch until the very end of the video!
While 2014 brought a lot of change in my life, it also brought many reminders that no matter what happens, no matter what changes, God will never change. He is the same yesterday, today, forever.
God has always been a faithful God, and He will always be a faithful God.
God has always been a loving Father, and He will always continue to be a loving Father.
God has always been a solid rock, and He will always be there to hold me steady.
God has always been there for me, He will always be there for me.
Sometimes I tell people "You're awesome! Don't you ever change!". Well, we are only human. We change. Whether it is on purpose or subconsciously, everybody changes. We can change for the better, we can change for the worse. Whatever it is, there is no denying that as human beings, it is in our nature to change.
I'm so glad that God doesn't change. He is the same yesterday, today and forever. I never have to fear that God will suddenly stop loving me just because I've done something wrong; I don't need to worry about my future because I know He has had a perfect future planned for me from even before I came into this world; I'm not afraid that bad things are happening because God is trying to punish the people, because I know God is a God of love, and love so great that everything we have ever done that deserves punishment has been put upon Jesus' shoulders, and Jesus has taken the punishment for anyone who believes in Him, so I know, I am certain without a shadow of a doubt, that whatever disasters and whatever horrible things that happens, it is not a sign of punishment. The punishment had already been taken by Jesus, by the blood that was shed by the one perfect man who chose to came down for us. For me. Wow.
Well, 2015. Bring it on!
I've never been one for new year's resolutions, but I do have to say that for 2015, I just want to learn to love Jesus more, for the love of God to mould me into the person He wants me to be, and for that love to guide me in all I do. I will definitely stumble here and there, but I look forward to a brand new year of me learning to trust in the Lord more and learning more about Him.
I am back from a one-week Raya break, which I thoroughly enjoyed (although it was too short!). The best part about the break was that my whole family was around! Niko is on his year-end break, and koko got a week off work too, so all 5 of us were home! That was fun :D
Happy faces all around! :D Around. A round. 'Cause we're round, geddit? Geddit? HAHAHA
Church camp was going on too, and that was cool. Many other "young people" managed to make it to camp too, so it was fun hanging out with some of my "old" church friends, as well as making some new ones. It had been a while since we had a proper meet-up, the people from my Sunday School/YF/BB days. I am actually really grateful that I grew up in church and had this bunch of friends growing up, they probably kept me out of a lot of trouble! :)
Photo stolen from Eunice. This is my generation! :D
Of course, I also met up with some monkeys friends from secondary school! Since I was only in BP for very few days, I didn't get to meet up with some people I really really wanted to meet up with, but I did manage to have a meal (or two) with some of my TIGS friends! We actually met up to buka puasa at a beryani place, and of course, we made so much noise we made a complete fool of ourselves by being shushed by another customer, being told by the owner of the place that he can tell we are a very "lively" bunch of people, and having our photo taken and uploaded onto the place's Facebook page. We finally took the hint and shifted to McD, since it has proved itself worthy of swallowing our loud, excited voices and squeals and helping us not feel too awkward :D
Hahaha this picture took wayyyy too long to take, but I say it was worth it! :)
Weird people will be weird. Some of the faces that coloured my secondary school days!
All in all, I would say that was an awesome Raya break. I am reminded yet again by how blessed I am to know so many amazing people and to be able to call them my family and friends.
1. You could say that I am now based in Kuala Terengganu. Orientation started about three weeks ago and I actually really KT so far. It reminds me of home - friendly, more traditional than modern, peaceful. Actual classes and postings haven't started yet, but that's coming soon!
2. I am now 21 years old! I celebrated my 21st birthday around friends, the first time I didn't celebrate with my family on the day of my birthday itself since I was already in KT. I did have my birthday celebrated by the beach, with some friends, so that was pretty cool :)
3. I am at home right now, but I'll only be here for a few days before I have to go back to KT and actually start classes and stuff. I have been told that my skin got darker, and that my hair grows fast. Hah. The things people at home tell you the moment they see you.
4. This might seem random or irrelevant to some, but I can't NOT blog about this because ladies and gentlemen, I have found my favourite shop in the whole wide world. There is an RM2 shop directly opposite where I am staying in KT. It has everything! I'm thinking of asking the management if they want to pay me for being such a good ambassador and advertiser for them, not to mention such a loyal customer! All I'm saying is, everybody's Christmas presents this year might or might not all come from a certain RM2 shop.
5. I am now waiting for friends and family to visit KT (I mean visit me in KT!). It actually is a really nice place, not as ulu as everyone thinks it is, Pulau Redang and a few other islands are just short boat rides away, keropok lekor can be found on every other corner around town, and I am there! Bottom line is, I am now all for people visiting the East Coast, especially KT! It is a really nice place :D
Wow it has been a long time since I last blogged properly!
Anywayssss, I wanted to blog about this because I want people to know that I passed my Professional Exam 1 (PE), and all glory belongs to God! :)
Just a few blog posts ago, here, I blogged about how God brought me through my 1st final exam in medical school, and at that time, I told myself that I would work hard and work consistently in Year 2. That did not happen. At all. I ended up missing most of the first week of classes because I only came back from Canada after classes started, and from then, I got lazy to catch up with my studies and my intention to be constantly up-to-date in terms of my studies flew out the window. In fact, I think I put in even less effort in my studies in Year 2 than in Year 1, something I didn't think was possible seeing how little effort I put into my first year of medical studies.
When my PE was coming up (the giant finals that covers everything from Years 1 and 2 of medical school), I was still in denial, always coming up with excuses not to study, doing so many other things I convinced myself I needed to do that had nothing to do with my studies (of course), and just doing everything but studying. It came to a point where I literally had no idea where to start studying, no idea what I could possibly do to be able to be prepared for my PE.
In other words, when my study break started, my new excuse for not studying was worrying about where to start studying. I had a huge pile of notes to study, most of which I had never touched, ever. There were so few sets that I had ever touched throughout the two years, but even that was so long ago I couldn't remember a single thing. Things weren't looking so good for me.
But God is good. Day after day, I received so many reminders of how great He is and how I have victory in Him. He reminded me in so many ways that He was in control and He loves me and He always wants what is best for me.
Still, it was not easy at all knowing that there was a really important exam coming up, and knowing I would never be prepared in time for it. I was so far behind in my studies it was physically impossible for me to cover enough ground to even dream of passing the exam.
Even so, God never gave up on me, even when I started to give up on Him and on myself. He kept reminding me of what was done on the cross, and that because Jesus died on the cross for us, victory was already mine, victory over sickness, victory over problems, victory over whatever mountains placed in front of me. "Hey," God was telling me, "the battle has already been won for you! Jesus has won it all for you!"
While I was focused on the mountain of notes I had yet to conquer, God kept reminding me that because of what was done on the cross, my mountains had already been conquered. While I told myself that there was no way I would be able to pass my PE, God was telling me that nothing is impossible for Him. While I kept worrying, God was telling me to rest and that He had everything under control. While I told myself I deserved to fail and I was going to fail, God told me that while maybe I did deserved to fail, God is full of grace and mercy and He would not let me fail even though that was definitely what I deserved.
I started trying harder to study properly towards the last few days before the exams. However, I didn't have the momentum to study and it would take me such a long time to actually get into "study mode", and that usually only lasted a few minutes. I was easily distracted, and I didn't know what I was doing.
God still kept me close to Him, and He told me to rest in Him and His power. He reminded me over and over of His goodness and faithfulness, His grace and His mercy, and most of all, of His love. Even while I was staring at the mountain of untouched notes that should have been proof that there was no way I was going to pass the exam, I started to feel the peace of God. I started to believe and to proclaim that through and in Christ, nothing was impossible; that His grace is overflowing; that His blesses, and blesses in abundance. I started to really understand that Jesus had taken all things bad and nailed them to the cross so many years ago, so that I can now freely receive all the blessings and love and all things good that I can never deserve, but can now enjoy because of Jesus.
If I were to compare the situation between last year's final exam and this year's PE, I would say that I had studied a lot less percentage of things this year; but still somehow I had more faith and I was more restful this year. I was less panicky and I had learnt to trust in God more this year.
Oh, and I learnt something I never realised before in church sometime during my study break. There is this verse in the Bible (Matthew 17:20) about how if you have faith like a mustard seed, you can tell a mountain to move and it will move. This verse is a pretty common one, one that I had heard so many times before. But what I never linked it to before was the verse in Romans 12:3 which says that we are each given a measure of faith.
An analogy is this: you put both your hands together to make something like a bowl, and you scoop up uncooked rice. You have what we call segantang beras in your hands. Take that as "a measure of faith" we are given. Already given. We have that in us once we receive Jesus as our Lord and Saviour. Now out of that, all you need is faith the size of a mustard seed to move a mountain. Take, for example, a quarter of a grain of rice, and take that as the amount of faith you need to be able to move Mount Kinabalu just by speaking it. Faith as small as a mustard see. How little faith out of the faith that has already been given to us do we need to move a mountain? It isn't all that much, is it? And let me tell you, MUSTARD SEEDS ARE TINY! A mustard seed is way smaller than a quarter of a grain of rice! So just imagine, with Christ, it doesn't take all that much to move a mountain, just a small dot out of so much rice we have!
This really encouraged me because it helped me realise that it wasn't about how much faith I could muster up, but more like how little was needed out for the measure of faith already given to me. I stopped worrying that I would fail BECAUSE OF my lack of faith.
Besides only having so little studying done, a few extra curveballs were thrown in during my exam period, just so they could be overcome to make it even clearer that God's awesomeness knows no bounds. The day before my first day of exams, daddy and mummy were going to fetch me back up to KL. By then I had resorted to mindlessly flipping through as many sets of notes of possible, never mind that nothing went into my head by just flipping through my notes. That Sunday morning, the more sets of notes I took out to flip, the more nervous I started to feel. It was all just too much. After a little while, I decided that it was time to step away from my bundle of notes (and my bundle of nerves with it), and time to travel up to KL so that I could continue flipping through my notes when I reached KL.
We loaded all the things we needed to bring into the car. When we were ready to go, the car wouldn't start. Daddy tried and tried and tried, but the car just refused to start. Finally, we decided to take the other car, so we had to shift all the stuff into the other car instead. After that was done, we finally left the house. Since it had been hot that past few days, the car was really warm, and we decided to open the windows to let out the hot air and let in some cool air. When we wanted to close the windows, lo and behold, one of the windows wouldn't close. The window was stuck wide open. Completely open. Since there was nothing we could do to close the window, we had to have it looked at because no way we could travel all the way to KL with one completely open window.
Since it was a Sunday, all daddy's mechanic friends weren't working. Thank God one of daddy friends, a car accessory shop owner uncle stays in our taman, and he was home, so we went to his house for him to take a look at the window. He took the door apart, and apparently some window mechanism inside the door was broken, and it couldn't be fixed there and then. To cut a long story short, the uncle managed to force the window close, and he managed to find a long piece of wood to hold it close for our trip to KL. So we traveled all the way to KL with the inside panel of one door sitting in the uncle's house, so that the piece of wood holding the window closed was visible to all who looked at the door from the inside, and with wires sticking out all over from the door. And finally, FINALLY, after around 2 hours, we were ready to go.
So we thanked the uncle profusely, and we were finally off. Again. Yayyyy! By then all feelings of nervousness about my exam had evaporated, and I was more amused than anything else by the turn of events. And then, after a few minutes of leaving the uncle's house, we noticed that the back lights of the car was on. We pressed all the buttons for the lights but they still didn't go off. Daddy said that the lights would drain the car battery really fast, so traveling with that light on was not an option. I was pretty sure by then that these were all signs that I shouldn't go to KL for the exam, but mum and dad disagreed (haiyaaa!). Well, no harm trying, right? Hahaha
Anyway, we turned back to our taman to see if maybe the uncle knew what was wrong. Before reaching his house, though, daddy stopped the car and after some fidgeting with the doors and the buttons (and pretty much everything that we could fidget with), the lights went off! So once again, we were on our way to KL! This time, though, the car didn't give us anymore problems and we got to KL safely, thank God! :D
That was the day before my exams started. My PE lasted 3 days, with 2 papers the first day, 1 the second, and 2 the third day. On the second day of exams, I woke up with a sore throat, and that evening, I started to feel a bit feverish. I felt lousy, but didn't come down with an actual fever. I went to bed early and twisted and turned in bed for a long time trying to fall asleep. In the middle of the night, I woke up with a fever and headache which felt like there was a disco party going on inside my head. I felt horrible. I prayed that the fever would go off and I wouldn't have to sit through my last two papers with a fever. In the morning, I woke up and (thank God!) my fever was gone, and the disco party had ended :D
A few days after the exams finished, when the list of students called for the viva voce exam came out, I was already in Kota Bahru with daddy, mummy and niko, for niko's birthday. Daddy had bought the flight tickets some time back "by faith". And true enough, I wasn't in the viva list :)
When the actual results came out, we were still in KB. I remember. We were in KB Mall, where niko was getting some stuff he needed. I got a call from a friend, Karen, telling me that I passed. It took some time for it to sink in, and in that moment I felt so relieved and so thankful to God because I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that I only passed because of Him. There is no other way to explain how I passed.
Me passing is nothing short of a miracle. Honestly, if you see how much of my notes I have read through, compared to the big heap of notes I was supposed to study, you would know that this pass is all God. I cannot take any credit for passing, not at all, because I don't deserve to pass. It is His grace that brought me through my first 2 years of medical school, and it is because of Him I can look forward to starting Year 3 with the rest of my classmates and friends.
My God never fails, and I am blessed. So, so, so blessed that I am His child. His grace never fails to amaze me :)))
This song "In Christ Alone" by Brian Littrell is one of my favourites. It is in Christ alone that I place my trust and find my glory in the power of the cross :)
I love the lyrics:
In Christ alone will I glory Though I could pride myself in battles won For I've been blessed beyond measure And by His strength alone I'll overcome Oh, I could stop and count successes like diamonds in my hands But those trophies could not equal to the grace by which I stand
[chorus] In Christ alone I place my trust And find my glory in the power of the cross In every victory Let it be said of me My source of strength My source of hope Is Christ alone
In Christ alone do I glory For only by His grace I am redeemed For only His tender mercy Could reach beyond my weakness to my need And now I seek no greater honour in just to know Him more And to count my gains but losses to the glory of my Lord
[chorus] In Christ alone I place my trust And find my glory in the power of the cross In every victory Let it be said of me My source of strength My source of hope Is Christ alone
David had seen Goliath. He knew what he was up against. He knew Goliath was big, huge, in fact, but, of course, not as good looking as David himself *modelling pose*. He knew Goliath was ruthless, he knew Goliath was confident, and to be honest, Goliath was really really intimidating! I mean, how big can a person be? Goliath's height was ridiculous. His weight was ridiculous. In fact, his whole size was ridiculous. And what was up with all that facial hair?
Still, David knew that Goliath was nothing compared to his God. David just knew that the God in him was far greater than whoever or whatever was before him on earth. Even before the battle started, David knew how it would end. He could already taste the victory. David was ready for some fun with Goliath!
With that in mind, he bent down to pick up five stones, nice, smooth ones he found in a stream, and placed them in his bag. He knew he only needed one go at Goliath. After Goliath was down, he would still have four stones leftover. Hmmm. Oh well, he'd be ready with his stones in case Goliath's brothers tried to be funny with him after they found their brother was defeated by a little boy and his sling. David took his sling in his hand. This sling had been with him through so much! With a pat on his little bag containing the five stones, he was ready to face his giant.
Standing in front of Goliath, he was ready. So was Goliath, apparently, since he started moving towards David in attack. David started running towards Goliath too, reaching into his bag for one of the stones he had placed in there earlier. He placed the stone in the sling, looked up at Goliath's face, saw that nice, shiny forehead, thought it would make a good target, and started to sling towards that target.
David aimed, slung, and let go, holding his breath as he watched the stone make its way from his sling, flying upwards, picking up speed until it hit Goliath square in his forehead. Many gasps were heard. Some soldiers stopped blinking, some stopped breathing, some found their hands covering their faces.
Everything seemed to move in slow motion as the stone sank into Goliath's forehead. Pain distorted Goliath's facial expression, and suddenly, Goliath was falling down. Everybody who was rooting for Goliath was confused. What had just happened? What was their best warrior, their hero, doing lying faced own on the ground? Why wasn't Goliath moving? And why did he fall faced own when the stone hit him on the forehead from the front? They couldn't understand what was happening.
David, however, knew exactly what was going on. Making his way towards the lifeless Goliath on the ground, he imagined God giving Goliath a firm high five on the back of his head the moment David's stone touched his forehead. David would have laughed out loud right there and then, imagining God's high five and the Philistines' looks of disbelief and confusion, but he had a job to finish.
He took Goliath's own sword, and made it abundantly clear to the Philistines that this hero of theirs was never going back to them. The unthinkable had happened. The little shepherd boy had defeated the giant, with only a sling and a stone! Of course, with the help of the God of all creation.
God is ready to high five our struggles and enemies at the back of their heads to make them fall face down in front of us too. You know He can do it because, come on, He is God, what can't He do? So we need to have faith that He can and He will guide is through our troubles and our problems. Pick up the stones in preparation for the battle, give it our best shot, and see God do His thing.
