School of Witness 2011

HAI GAIS,

Haha it has really been awhile since I was here, and was just browsing through the posts as I decided to share something amazing with you all!

Ever since school started, life has been a whirlwind for me, so many amazing new opportunities and people to meet and just everything. And being the person that I am, I kinda went along with everything! So I guess you could say that the time spent in school really flew past , yet I tried and I struggled to remain with Jesus, tried to make an effort to wake up slightly earlier to go for ado/mass in the morning. And as most of my brilliant plans do, it failed after awhile, because once the schoolwork and essays and all the things that was happening kept coming and coming, I found myself sleeping at like ungodly hours, just being too sleepy and unmotivated to do anything :/ Of which I kinda made an excuse, I remember telling Jesus I’m too tired to wake up that half hour earlier and I really really needed my sleep, and I guess Jesus understood.

But like again at like 4/5am in the morning I obviously couldn’t think straight lah. Of course Jesus didn’t need me to spend time with Him, because I was the one who needed to spend time with Jesus. And it really felt like homecoming this morning as I dragged myself out of bed to attend All Saints Day Mass at Nativity. I mean it was a day of obligation and since I had things on in the evening, I didn’t have much of a choice.

And it was really such a homecoming for me, not having been in that church for about a month or slightly less than that, and seeing all the familiar uncles and aunties of the morning masses and smiling at me, and asking me where I’ve been the past few weeks. I felt like I was really part of their community and its so surprising because I never really noticed that the aunties and uncles knew that I was there, and like it was so cute la all of them. I just felt like I really really really missed Jesus and like it’s quite funny because while I was walking to church in the morning my iPod usually plays my worship songs before mass, but this morning it played “I don’t wanna miss a thing”, and I really felt that I missed Jesus as my lover, the one who would check up on me when I’m down, just be with me, and I guessed I really missed spending that special moments with Jesus in the adoration at CSC.

How lovely is Your dwelling place, Almighty Lord

There’s a hunger deep inside my soul

Only in Your presence are my heart and flesh restored

How lovely is Your dwelling place.

Jesus truly completes me, and I just wanted to share this small verse of a song which I can barely remember mixed all together with my new resolution to go back to Jesus and let Him complete me :)

Hope everyone else is well ya :D

In Jesus’ Love and all of what i can give,

OLI :D

Hey sowers!

it’s been awhile since I last visited this blog and gave an update! I was just in the shower earlier when I was suddenly reminded of this blog, perhaps it’s God who wants me to read all the past posts by you guys. Whoa, it really sounds so personal that I can almost imagine you saying those words to me! For that, thanks for making the effort to share your personal stories here! 

Yeah as October is soon coming to an end, as I see the promotion of SOW 2012 going on now something in my heart just makes me feel weird. Weird because it was unusual. It’s something about moving on from SOW this year and having to see how next year is just going to envelope into another journey, another story. I can’t help but recall all those good times we’ve shared as one community of brothers & sisters ( which I treasure! till today! ) and above all, God. 

Yet time and again I’m also reminded that those 6 weeks of being with Him was real. In the course of the year, I’ve slowly realised how the seeds that were planted in my heart was slowing manifesting into small little fruits of His warm & affectionate love towards me. 

I’ve been feeling rather indifferent towards the things around me, maybe confused even as to where God was leading me to in my life. But there was this one day while I was attending mass in SFX that I realised what the prayer of my heart was…

” Lord, let not my heart grow cold…”

& I found myself repeating it over and over again. You see back then when I was praying this in my heart, I could only see and understand what I had in front of me. But now looking back at that incident, I’ve come to discover that PRAISE THE LORD for though I’ve been dry & lost, my heart still desires greatly to be connected and intimate with the Lord!! This seed of desire, is one in which I truly praise and thank God for. 

It is the best gift, He can give to anyone, anyone, like me.

It is this very seed that has brought me to where I am today, fortified by a kind of courage & boldness which I know I can never possess in pursuing Him. 

So my prayer for this morning is that we’ll all continue to water that seed of desire in our hearts and allow that seed to soon flourish into what I’ll call, the tree which is plante by the living streams in Psalm 1:3! 

After all, I am confident that He too desires for us more than we can comprehend!

Truly, my life in Christ makes me strong and His love comforts me!

With all my love & warm hugs,

xoxo

Estelle (:

Hello SOWers!

It’s been 8 months. Since we moved on from SOW. How time flies. You are dearly missed! For the past 2 months or so, I’ve been experiencing this dryness in my spiritual walk. I could see God each day, I saw his hand in things that occur each day yet I couldn’t feel this closeness with God. This oneness, and soaking in his love for me. In fact until this moment, I’d say I am still struggling. Fighting, to cling unto God.

In these months, I saw myself struggling to say that God is my number one. I saw myself, falling greatly into sin, sexual sin for that matter. I constantly felt as if I was living in darkness and it felt like distance between God and myself grew further and further. But its amazing how a couple of minutes ago I was in this state of darkness and now, one moment changed how I saw this period of dryness. The struggle of dryness remains, yet I recognize that the darkness does not cover the person that God has created me to be. 

I was just speaking to Derek via message about 10 minutes ago and Derek asked me a question he always asked. How was I doing. I shared with him whatever I’ve been going through, the state I was in. And I believe it was this moment of grace where I just said to God in my heart that you know what, if you want to say something to me, speak through Derek because you sure haven’t been speaking to me. And so I asked Derek if he could tell me what to do in my situation. And indeed God spoke. I was expecting something like “cling to Jesus” or do something to try to get things to improve. But that wasn’t what Derek said. He affirmed me as a man of God. He spoke the simple truth which I forgot. That I was created to be great. Great in the eyes of our Lord. That I was loved. That I was special. That I am moving forward in the darkness by simply desiring to be in that state of oneness. He reminded me that I was loved by God my father. Yeah, I knew that but I struggled to believe that. And in that moment, something moved within my heart. God moved within my heart and he said 3 simple words. “I am here.” And it was a moment of intimacy. It was words which spoke to my heart. It was words flowing with Love. That God was present. There and then. 

My friends, I enjoy this moment. This moment of love. And right now I fear, I fear that I go back to my state of dryness tomorrow morning when I wake up to pray. And I entered prayer just couple of minutes ago and God just said “Stephen, rejoice as you struggle.” This is just a simple testimony that God is reality. His love is a reality. Your identity is a reality. Your identity as a person set apart is a reality. Your identity as prince and princesses is a reality. Be reminded now that no darkness can completely cover the person God has created you to become. Nothing, absolutely nothing. Thank you Jesus, for this moment. We are loved my friends. We are loved. 

Stephen(:

These few weeks I’ve been struggling so much with regards to my ministry and where God is calling me to, that sometimes I find myself in tears, locked up in my room in school, in the great isolation where no one can hear the sniffles, no one can see the tears in my eyes. 

Yet, I just want to praise God for these struggles because it has truly brought me back to Him. Each time I went into those huge emotional bouts of pain and frustration, I remember our time in SOW, where we had the luxury of time to just be with God and let Him love us. To be with God, and to learn more about His love. To be able to praise Him with no hesitation in worship, to be able to cry at our favourite cross with no qualms, and sometimes to just sit in silence to adore Him in the adoration room. 

And it was all these that reminded me, I need my Lord. I need my Comforter, i need my healer, I need my Saviour, I need the lover of my soul. Every ounce of my strength was gone, every pain and frustration pulling me down- and I knew why. I forgot the Lord, I forgot to trust all these into His loving arms, and instead, I pridefully took all the burdens on my shoulder and said ‘I can do this God! I don’t need you now.’ And I know how wrong I was. In ministry, we need Jesus every single moment to be our strength, to be our guide and to be our leader. 

With this realization and reminder, I found myself trembling on my knees in front of the sacred Eucharist, where our Lord Jesus Christ is, and whispered, ‘Jesus, please love me now. I need to feel your love, I need to know you are here, I need to know I am not alone.’ And I found myself completely breaking down, and inching towards the Eucharist feeling as if I have truly come home to our Father. I felt his loving embrace in that intimate moment and I knew just then, that I could go on serving, I could go on facing all the tribulations in my life- because the Lord loves me and is my strength. 

And I am reaffirmed once again how important it is to give ourselves the time to be with God and to just offer up that 1 hour a week to Him in prayer. Not so much because He needs us to be there, but because we need Him to go on! 

I praise the Lord for his ever loving presence and His availability to us all, how He truly just sits and waits for us to come and receive from Him in the adoration room. 

Love loads,

Victoria. 

Hey SOWers!

How’s everybody doing? Good I hope! I’m sure God takes care of you! Clarissa said to blog more and so, I decided to listen to her! Cas and Clarissa, this is for you! 

Well anyway, my walk with Jesus has been truly amazing this week. A lot of self-discovery as well as discovery of the person and nature of Jesus. I didn’t spend tons of time praying in the adoration room or have a very “big” experience with God but rather seeing how alive God can be in my life everyday. And throughout the week, I started my routine of morning prayer again. 10 minutes of just complete surrender unto Jesus. Be it struggle, emotions good or bad, the day. Completely in surrender unto Jesus. And to be honest, that simple act of surrendering unto Jesus was just incomprehensible. Nothing else mattered and it was just you and Jesus, everything else was just stripped away. I was amazed at how 10 minutes with Jesus could lift me up each day. Simply immersing myself into the depths of prayer. Giving myself entirely to God. 

God seems to be leading me into a deeper time of intimacy with him. For the past few weeks, the passage of how Jesus walks on water and calls out to Peter to come towards him has been resounding so greatly in my heart. Jesus seems to be calling out to me to plunge into the very depths of his love. To seek him even greater in my daily walk. The answer to Jesus was a definite “YES”! It struck me how it was so easy to say yes to Jesus and how it was so difficult to reject him. As I just look back on my journey ever since SOW, this desire to be with God seems to be magnified with each experience with God that I go through. It has come to the point where be it struggles, good times or bad times, my desire is simply to be with God. My desire is to enter worship, to enter prayer, to enter anything that can connect me with the Heart of God and to fall in love with that heart over and over, deeper and deeper each time. Truly, I’ve come to realize especially this week that complete surrender can be a simple act of just saying Jesus take control. Jesus I give you my heart. Jesus I want you and you alone. And it amazes me that each time I say these words, that my heart’s desire is for God, everything just becomes nothing and God becomes everything. And I tell you it changes my entire outlook of things. 

Plunging into this depth of love and just being so immersed in it is my desire. And once again, I commit myself to the plan and the will of God. I desire to be a prisoner of Christ as Saint Paul always says!

Love,

Stephen

Hi SOWers! :)

It’s been a while since I posted, but today I really want to share this glorious revelation to all of you so that you may share in my joy!

Recently, I read ‘The Mass: Heaven on Earth’ by Scott Hahn. I borrowed this book from Olivia, and yes, it has certainly blessed my experience during mass. Scott Hahn explains how the mass is truly Heaven on Earth- and how rightly so! He doesn’t use his own experience, but refers constantly to the bible (especially the Book of Revelations) and also various theological texts to back up his argument.

He explains that the mass is indeed heaven on earth because our God is truly present in the mass, every single day. How can we say it is not an experience of Heaven then, if we believe that our God brings us joy and is the King of Heaven? He is present in the Eucharist and desires so much to be intimate with us, to give us his body and blood and graces us with His presence in the mass every single day.

While we know all this knowledge in our head, how much of it has truly flowed and taken root in our hearts? I am guilty of subconsciously wandering off to various places in my mind, to think of what I’m going to do after mass, to visit places of joy and of hurt, to dive into the pool of thoughts that occupy my mind so strongly. And every single time, I deny myself the true experience of Heaven, being so focused on searching for the apparent heaven on earth and thus missing the mark every single time I go for mass. I get so caught up with telling Jesus about my day, about my problems that I miss being in HIS presence and instead become confined to my own lonely company of insignificant thoughts.

And not to mention, sometimes when there is ‘bad music’, boring homilies, the person sitting behind me or in front of me who talks or is just distracted- I judge. Yes, I judge, and then feel guilty for judging, feel upset over these silly things - and then again, stupidly denying myself the real experience of Heaven.

So yesterday, I went for mass again. I decided not to go for the past few days, owing to my flimsy excuse of being tired, but really, I was lazy. But in the past few days, I realized that I missed Jesus. I really missed spending time with Him and hated this stubbornness of heart. And so when I went for mass yesterday, oh my goodness, it was such an experience! In desiring so much for God’s presence again, and keeping in mind what I learnt from the book, I paid attention. I paid attention to every part of the mass, keeping vigilant watch for the messages that God wants to tell me, for His voice, and for his beautiful presence in the mass. And what a worthy 30 minutes it was. There I heard His voice, ‘I am gentle, compassion. I am faithfulness, I am love. I am strength and I am joy… I am.’ There I felt his presence on the altar, beside me, and residing in me when I received Him in the holy Eucharist. And once again, I just knew, I regained that experience of Heaven in the mass, which I lost when I started growing up.

Everyday God invites us to this feast. To this GREAT GRAND FEAST. Everyday He waits to share this joy with you, to share this Heaven with you, to bless you with His presence.

So often we look for an experience of ‘Heaven’ on earth. We go looking for it in relationships, in school, in food, in friends, in dance, in music, in romantic love, but always leave, never really satisfied.

But everyday, God offers to you the true experience of Heaven. The foresight into our eternal, unknown future in His home. And with so much pain, hunger, loneliness and sadness we experience every single day, 30 amazing minutes of mass, of heaven, is presented  to you to place all your burdens on His altar.

The only question is, Do you want to accept his invitation to His heavenly feast and truly be there?

30 minutes. one mass. one experience of Heaven on Earth.

Love,

Victoria.

Hello peeps!

It’s really been some time since I last blogged. So, I decided to do a reflection and wow, it’s really been a good 2 months with Jesus. The past 2 months has been truly one of immense struggle for me and even until this day, I still feel the struggles and tussles within my heart. But nevertheless, Jesus has been faithful to me in such a tangible way!

Chasing after the heart of Jesus really isn’t as easy as I thought it would be. Along the course of these 2 months, I’ve asked God countless times, “Why must it be so difficult?” But Jesus always gave me the same reply, “It isn’t about how you feel anymore.” And truly, this walk with Jesus isn’t about how I feel anymore. Looking back, the journey with Jesus although difficult, has been increasingly intense each day.  Many days, I’ve felt extremely dry and empty, as if God wasn’t present but as each day passed, I was challenge more and more to believe that Jesus is still there even though I may not be able to feel it. And in times where I fail in my challenge, be it falling into sin, running away or the thought of just giving up, the faithfulness of God never ceases to push me on. It wasn’t God taking away the feelings of dryness or emptiness but the grace of God, unconscious to me, giving the strength to fight for God in these times of darkness. To be a soldier for him and to really fight for him, to fight to receive once again the love which flows from his heart. Truly these months has been one of growth in this area of commitment to the will of God as well as faith in the Living God. The God that is as Alive as ever! 

The months has also been one of great healing for me. I suppose when God places his finger on something, you just know it. And God has been placing his finger on this area of love. Somehow I was afraid of being loved. And because I feared to receive love, my desire for love was not met and I felt very much alone in all these struggles. I felt like I had to carry the burdens all alone. I felt so hurt by a relationship I had with someone and I felt very much guilty for hurting this someone as well as myself. I blamed myself for whatever that happened and I really couldn’t forgive myself. But in the midst of all these, Jesus spoke to me in my time of prayer, “Leave everything. Your burdens, worries, hurts and frustration and just come and sit in me.” He spoke to me once again on Friday, which was the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, “Come find rest in my Sacred heart.” And finally in last Sunday’s Gospel( Matt 11: 25-30), it said come to me all who are tired and weary and I will give you rest. My yoke is easy to bear, so come my child, come. Such intimacy with the Father moved me to tears. And truly, God was there, in my struggles, in my hurts and in my brokenness saying, It is okay to be broken. For Jesus too, was broken man on that cross. But by the power and love of God, he was made whole. And the same applies for each of us! Praise you God!

Love;
Stephen(: 

I’m so happy that I’m spending my Saturday afternoon here at Starbucks with my mac, just planning session for cell. Have been wanting to chill with a good cup of tea and people watch. Yesterday evening was a beautiful night for me. I haven’t been going for bible sharing for the past month because I had to be at Amplify for my Awaken participants who were going and some other commitments. Nonetheless, it was interesting how God brought me back for mass and sharing at SFX. 

The readings for mass somehow really struck me, it was speaking directly to me and to the situation that I was in. I was unknowingly tired both spiritually and physically because of the many camps that happened over in June. What was even more amazing was what happened during sharing itself! Last night was definitely the highlight of all the sharings that I’ve been to with YV. It was so spirit-led and for once I realised that we each are all broken indeed and we come to share our brokenness to make each other whole again through Jesus. I truly felt so human, so vulnerable, this great sense of comfort and presence of Jesus himself just washed over me completely.  

Somehow I know deep within me that I have not been truly transparent and honest with YV about the challenges and struggles that are going through in my life. But after this particular brother’s sharing, I really really found the courage and strength to share that part of me that was so fragmented. Somehow it was like everything surfaced from the darkness into light.  Light, where Jesus is, who Jesus is.  

There’s only one word that could ever describe the night:

KAIROS.

The appointed time in the purpose of God.

I feel like I’m the kid Jesus is carrying!!! 

Thank you Jesus and the Holy Spirit :)