απαρνουμαι με - I Deny Myself (Me)

Last year around this time, I decided to get a tattoo on my chest saying "απαρνουμαι με" (refer to the picture). It means "I deny myself" or "I deny me" and comes from Mark 8:34 which says, And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.

I love this tatt and it has been a good reminder for myself to daily take up my cross and follow Jesus every time I look in the mirror. And whenever a Christian sees it and asks what it means, they understand it immediately. The whole meaning of it sinks into them and they get it! Although it has prompted gospel conversations with non-Christians, I realised recently that I do a really poor job in explaining what it really means to me. When they ask me what it means to deny yourself, I usually opt out and say "It's a Christian thing". Sometimes something that simple opens opportunities to talk about Spiritual things, sometimes it doesn't...in the end, whatever happens, happens. But I'm just so dissatisfied with my answer. It just seems so...careless...so I decided I will put thought into this and spew here :)

As a person, one thing that has become so apparent to me is how much I love myself. Sure, I may not seem like the most self-centred person you know, but I think selfishness can manifest itself in many different ways. Okay, just to be clear, I think there is a difference between caring for yourself and being selfish. It is important to care and love yourself, but when that is the most important thing and other people or things around you matter less, it becomes selfish, in my opinion. As a Christian, it becomes difficult. There's this constant struggle of you wanting to do whatever you feel like and you wanting to do what God wants, because you love him (John 14:23). To be clear, I am not saved/a Christian because of what I do or how I love; I am a Christian because of what Christ has done for me. He took the punishment I deserved and I believe in Him as my Lord and Saviour. To really believe this, you sort of have to love him...haha and it is because I love him that I strive onwards to be more like him. Also, as Christians, we are not called to be perfect...that is impossible...we are called to strive towards it (Philippians 3:12) and follow Christ (Mark 8:34)...not impossible but still difficult. To make an analogy about this tension i was talking about earlier, when you are married or dating or even just have a close friend or pet you love, you won't just do whatever you feel like. You will consider their thoughts and express your love for them by putting their needs ahead of yours...it's that deep sacrificial love I'm talking about. It's not easy to always love...it's hard and it takes effort. Loving when things are good is easy. Still loving someone after they hurt you or if you just aren't feeling it...unconditional, sacrificial love...is hard. I don't just randomly love God, I love him because he first loved me...he sacrificed himself  for me when he died on the cross for me even when I did not deserve it (Romans 5:8). That is the kind of love I am called to as a Christian. I am called to love him and others around me with that love (Matthew 22:36-40). 

In a recent My Utmost for His Highest post, Chambers says, "The passion of Christianity comes from deliberately signing away my own rights and becoming a bondservant of Jesus Christ." This reminds me so much of my tattoo and 1 Corinthians 9, when Paul says how he lays down his rights for the gospel! This is so important when it comes to being a Christian but also one of the hardest things to me. This tattoo is meant to be a reminder to me of what I mean when I say that I am a Christian...and how I should be living...Denying myself, putting God and others before me, and living a life of humility. The Bible talks about Christ's humility in Philippians 2:1-11 and essentially defines humility as considering other's interests, and putting them ahead of your own interests. I believe one aspect of love is expressed through being humble.

This tattoo is a reminder for me to take my faith seriously. It is a reminder to deny myself and take up my cross. It is a reminder to love God and others. It is a reminder to be humble. It is a reminder to rely on his help instead of my own. It is a reminder for me to press on and not live a nominal Christian life. It is a reminder to be disciplined.

1 Corinthians 9:24-27

"Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified."

I know my thoughts were kind of jumbled, but I hope you got the gist :)

shooting star

I know I've posted this video like a million times on my blog, but yeah! I was listening to it today and this evening, I saw a shooting star! haha crazy!
Sometimes, I do wonder how my dream girl is doing! :P

Anyways, I'm hoping to start up a morning prayer thing weekly on Mondays! :) hopefully it goes well!!

and... i met this girl who always ends convos with God bless or something! and i realized that I feel uncomfortable doing that!! I need to work on it...

May you all have a blessed day :)

Jireh!

Temptation

"But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called 'today,' that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin."

- Hebrews 3:13 (ESV)

Some thoughts I had just now is that temptations in your life are really a result of doubting the goodness of God. We are called to consider all things rubbish in comparison to knowing Christ (Phil 3), but how often can we say that? Or even, how often can we say that we are even striving for that? We are called to strive and called to persevere in our faith no matter what, yet I would say temptations always come into play to try and wreck your faith.

There are 2 ways I see temptation:

1. Seeing the crap in your life and doubting God's goodness
2. Seeing the good/pleasures in the world and doubting the need of God's goodness

It's a nasty little thing! In Hebrews it talks about exhorting each other daily so that we won't be deceived by sin! It is a deceitful thing, and if left untouched, can bore deep holes into your heart that can shipwreck you! Therefore brothers/sisters, put on that armour of God! haha (eph 6)! It will help you fight! One thing I realized recently is that when you put on armour and go into battle, you don't just stand there hoping that the armour will protect you from everything/anything. You fight still! You defend yourself still! You could fight without armour, but you will also be easily slain too. So while we put on this armour to fight sin, remember that your role isn't one of complacency but one of diligence and vigilance!

May 4, 2016

So today was a nice day!
I'm just burning time before my small group starts but i'll just go through my day...
I woke up at 4:50am today to go to the gym with my housemate and it was her bday today! fun times!
LOL i did EMOM 15mins 3 reps BS...started at 140kg for the first 10 sets, next for i deloaded to 100, then back to 140 for my last set... it was intense! then i worked on my pulling strength and core after! that was fun

hmm school was good too! learned stuff! hopefully i become a better PT! no lies, some of the stuff I did today was so dull... like the research lecture.. and I caught up on a research lecture today too during my break! i almost killed myself! haha so bad :( but it's done! so i'm happy about that! :) i got a mark back for one of my courses too! did better than I expected so thank God for that :) really though! I don't think i was feeling as prepared as I wanted to be yet I got a very gracious mark! haha thankful!

anyways, thats about all the time I need to burn!

oh before that, i started watching symphonies on youtube! LOL i don't know why, but I kind of like it! It kind of reminds me of who I was and stuff that I used to enjoy a lot! And it's like nice background music/also fun to just watch it! I think ppl in the library today thought I was weird...just watching an orchestra in a Science library.. lOL oh well!

Anyways,
BYEE

small group time! :)
Big MACs down under!!

Colossians

So today, I decided to read through Colossians! It's a good letter haha! I realized I need to keep my blogposts short to make this a sustainable thing so I'm going to be...super brief on what I learned/stuck out to me today! haha

1. Perseverance in your faith - Colossians 1:23
2. We are to warn people! - Colossians 1:28
3. Do not be deceived/deluded by things of this world even if they are plausible arguments - Colossians 2:4, 8
• We have died to these elemental spirits so we should not submit to them! - Colossians 2:20-23
• note (elemental spirits = elemental principles)
4. Since we have been raised with Christ, we must seek things of Christ - Colossians 3:1-4
• What does this look like? Putting to death and putting away Col 3:5-10, and putting on Col 3:12-4:6
5. Walking in wisdom and grace - Colossians 4:5-6
6. I want to be like Epaphras!! Colossians 4:12-13

Okay cool!

Also, listened to a little seminar thing! And one thing I wanted to point out was that when making spiritual goals, it is important to always think about and specify the "How?" and "When?" and to have someone keep you accountable with these measures. And that it is always important to continue striving and there is a godly dissatisfaction with where you are spiritually...basically, knowing that you are not already perfect, and strive towards the goal God has placed for you (Phil 3)!
It's not about knowing more about God, but knowing who He is.

Matthew 18

So i decided i'll just write down a quick reflection of what I learned while studying the bible with my friends in small group!

Last week we went through Matthew 18...particularly v21-35 on the unforgiving servant.

Some things we talked about was the following:
1. Can you forgive if the other party didn't ask for forgiveness?
2. What does it mean to forgive?
3. What does v35 mean?
4. Does a plea for forgiveness demand forgiveness?
5. What does it mean in v17 when it says treat them like a Gentile/tax collector?

Initially, I found the first question really interesting because if you look at our relationship with God, we don't receive salvation unless we repent first. But here, Jesus says to forgive 70x7 times (aka a lot). Even if that person hasn't asked for forgiveness and sinned against you, you need to forgive. If you look at the previous paragraph, it talks about how to go about doing that. Which leads the the last question. Treating them like a Gentile has nothing to do with being unforgiving, but rather, the opposite really. We treat them as an unbeliever who needs to hear the gospel and who has a need for Christ in their life.
So, what does it mean to forgive? I think it has to do with making peace with yourself and that other person and reconciling it and not holding on to the past. There really is wisdom in that whole "forgive and forget" thing! Obviously, be wise and learn from the past, but learning to see past things and learning to give the person a chance to build back their trust from you. Even if the other person doesn't seek forgiveness, we are still called to forgive them in our heart and wait for them. Kind of like the prodigal son's father...who waited at the window every day for his son to come back and just embraced him when he came back...and just loved him where he was at! (that story always gets me...every time!)
What does v35 mean? Basically it's saying that we ought to forgive like God forgave us. God forgave us a way greater debt...a debt that was impossible (like in this case, 10k talents...which means 10000 x 20 years worth of wages!) If someone did that to us and we were truly grateful, we'd do the same to others because we would have been moved by what they did to us!

Okay, just for fun, google says in Australia, the average income before tax is $74724! lol okay so to do the math... 74724x20 years = $1494480 = 1 talent! This guy owed 10000 talents...so lets just add on 4 zeros to that number to get...$14,944,800,000!! omg... that is almost 15 billion Australian dollars!!! (which is around 11.2 billion USD...just to keep things standard)! that is crazy!

One thing I really liked that we brought up was that forgiveness hurts. This guy who forgave this man the 10k talents...that's a lot of money! That hurts to just say, I forgive you, you owe nothing! In the same way, for God to forgive us this impossible debt, Jesus had to die on the cross for us.
So, we forgive because God forgave us! But does a plea for forgiveness demand forgiveness? Not really, but we should! Demand is the wrong word. It really comes back down to the whole, we forgive because he forgave us! If we really are changed by it, we should forgive. That doesn't mean we need to forgive immediately...but make an effort and try actively to forgive. Some things are hard to forgive...some things we'd say is impossible to forgive...and that is when we need to rely on God for strength for those things.

Jireh

2016

It is January 1st of 2016! Happy New Years everyone!

Reflecting back to last year around this time, I had no idea where God planned to have me. I had no idea I'd be here, in Australia! It's actually sort of crazy. All I can say is that I have no idea what God has in store for me these next few years, but I know it will be more than I will ever imagine. Whether it's going back to Canada, Staying here in Australia, Dating or whatever, I am excited to see what will happen.

One thing that I have noticed is that my relationship with God has been rocky recently. Temporary things just seem all the more attractive and my sight on eternity has been blurred, but God in His grace has kept me close...even if it's not what I wanted at that time, I thank Him for it! I pray that God will bring some Christian friends into my life where we can talk and grow together and keep each other accountable. I need people to call me out when I screw up and not be afraid of "judging me". I'm so annoyed of how tolerable people have become with everything. It's not wrong to share your ideas. And if you think something is truth, you should be able to freely speak the truth and not feel bad for it.

Anyways, it's been a while since I blogged! I almost don't even know what to say anymore! I feel like I used to have so many things on my mind all the time! Now, it's not much haha!

Jireh!