Bah this thing is dead... I will now post my qt's on here i think. i hope no one visits this anymore

Singed...

Give me relief from my distress;
be merciful to me and hear my prayer.
How long, O men, will you turn my glory into shame?
How long will you love delusions and seek false gods?

In your anger do not sin;
when you are on your beds,
search your hearts and be silent.
*
When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
the son of man that you care for him?
*
In his pride the wicked does not seek him;
in all his thoughts there is no room for God.
His ways are always prosperous;
he is haughty and your laws are far from him;
he sneers at all his enemies.
He says to himself, "Nothing will shake me;
I'll always be happy and never have trouble."
His mouth is full of curses and lies and threats;
trouble and evil are under his tongue.
*
Not because of who I am,
But because of what You've done,
Not because of what I've done,
But because of who You are,
I am a flower quickly fading,
Here today and gone tomorrow,
A wave tossed in the ocean,
A vapor in the wind,
Still You hear me when I'm calling,
Lord, You catch me when I'm falling,
And You've told me who I am..
I am Yours.
*
---dark clouds drifting off---
*
"I'm not eternal, but God is... things dont happen because I am who i am and what I do, but they happen because of who God is... wow I feel like that dark patch of clouds moving away really feels like cleansing"
*
God is bigger than the air I breathe
the world we'll leave
God will save the day
and all will say
My Glorious
Glory glory send Your glory...
*
Calmer than the sky
far away so blue
land of living God
grant your peace on earth
breathe peace
breathe your peace on us
so we might breathe you deep
*
"peace... I need peace in my life... peace, contentment, and humbleness"
*
We stand and lift up our hands
for the joy of the Lord is our strength
we bow down and worship Him now
how great how awesome is He
and together we sing
everyone sing
Holy is the Lord God Almighty
the earth is filled with his glory
Holy is the Lord God Almighty
the earth is filled with his glory
*
"the earth is filled with his glory"
*
When I think about the Lord
how He saved me
how He raised me
how He filled me with the Holy Ghost
He healed me to the utter most
When I think about the Lord
how He picked me up
turned me around
how He set my feet on solid ground
It makes me wanna shout
Hallelujah, thank you Jesus
Lord you're worthy of all the glory,
and all the honor, and all the praise
*
"Lord, you are worthy! Let me be reminded of this time, I pray that my worship would be incensce...grant me peace and contentment... I have a lot of things to work out with You... I lay my pride before You, I leave all my troubles before You, may You have a bigger presendence in my life."

Look what came in the mail:

6. HOST AN ENGINEERING REALITY TV SHOW, AUDITION 5 OCTOBER WGBH Boston is holding auditions for hosts of a new, engineering reality TV show, based in Boston, Mass. The show will feature teams of teens interested in engineering, who compete by solving problems and building machines. Hosts will provide humorous running commentary.

So I was just checking my email and I get this newsletter from IEEE... and yes they are making a reality tv show for engineers... this is too funny to not put up, what is america coming to?

C.S. Lewis is nice to read...

So today, I was reading some stuff written by C.S. Lewis and it just never ceases to amaze me how logical and wise this man is.

"Consequently atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be a word without meaning."

Something so complicated to explain, but wrapped in a nice analogy that makes comprehension easier to grasp.

"But anyone who has been in authority knows how a thing can be in accordance with your will in one way and not in another. It may be quite sensible for a mother to say to the children, 'I'm not going to go and make you tidy the school-room every night. You've got to learn to keep it tidy on your own.' Then she goes up one night and finds the Teddy bear and the ink and the French Grammar all llying in the grate. That is against her will. She would prefer the children to be tidy. But on the other hand, it is her will which has left the children free to be untidy. The same thing arises in any regiment, or trade union, or school. You make a thing voluntary and then half the people do not do it. That is not what you willed, but your will has made it possible... Why, then did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. A world of automata --- of creatures that worked like machines--- would hardly be worth creating. The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstasy of love and delight... and for that they must be free."

We've all heard this free-will problem arise over and over again in the course of our discussions and thinking. I think that by giving us free will, God reveals his greatest mystery --- love. Why in the world would God have relationships with us when he has perfect communion within the Trinity? As a painter loves his painting, God loves His creation... He loves us enough to give us a choice to love Him or not. Although, like the kid who doesn't clean up his room, many of us reject His love. But because of God taking the risk of giving us free will, we are allowed to truly love Him or to truly reject Him.

Sigh... so many things I want to read, but I'm just not doing a good time of time management :(
I got a 319K test on friday that I have not studied for, and I'm like 3 units behind in my self-paced class. Time to step it up Xiao! Never realized how busy I was gonna be this year with interns, co-ops, school, ministry, etc. Maybe I'm over-exerting myself too much? Time to really start giving things up to God, instead of just holding on to it as long as I could, until it is too late to give up. Only by God's grace will I be able to successfully come out of this year.

It is Yours. Thy Kingdom Come Thy Will Be Done...

Prayer brings people together...

It's true, if anything prayer does bring people together. Tonight we had a sophmore guy prayer meeting that was beyond my expectations... so thanks God for breaking that restraining thought. We spent like almost an hour talking about what prayer really means to each one, and things were shared that really brought us together. Everyone was very honest about their current prayer life and much words of wisdom were spoken amongst the group. It's so encouraging to see how just a group of guys can come together one day and share and talk about one of the most fundamental yet so private aspect of a Christian life... My ideas of prayer, I think, have been changed for the better... but still trying to collect my thoughts...

What do you think prayer is?

Anyways, today Peter and I met with our small group guys for the first time... and it also exceeded expectation, I think God's just really breaking my kind of thinking style and just showing me how vast He is. Praise God for an awesome group of guys, I can see most of them want a group to really get close to and share with and even to really get into the Word. I know the last statement seemed kinda like a "duh" but then if you really think about it, scripture study may not be the activity that captures everyone's deepest admiration. But anyhoo, excited to really see what God has in store for this year!

Too bad I have more reading to do, that's all for now.

Put up a new song that I heard at Echo today. The chorus was moving for me... I guess I have similar cries out to God as the person who wrote this song did. Sometimes God seems so distant that you just want him to be a physical entity that you can rest your head on or even just shake His hand. Today has been very eventful:

Morning: Went to EV Free's college sunday service called Echo. Sheryl Fletcher (spelling?) gave a message about community that we are going to be focusing on for the next 7 weeks. She's a really strong speaker that makes service seem like just a regular conversation. She touched on a lot of points about what it means to have true community... out of the things i remember, she mentioned:

transforming community (a community has to transform people to be more Christ like)
where truth could be shared (one of those "duhs" that really do not happen in communities we witness)
where grace could be extended (definitely one of the few things we see in community, cause people are always judging others or what not, rather than just extending grace and compassion for them)
where needs are met (true community will go out of their way to meet the needs of their members)

so yeah, that's a REALLY condensed form of it... but it was very enjoyable. It's funny cause you expect the Church to have these kind of communities, but the reality is that, it doesn't and it really needs to build the body up with these kind of communities for healthy growth and to keep the members in fellowship rather than in cliques.

Lunch: Waterloo's Texas Philly .... Yeah I shouldn't have ate it, but the salads were the same price so I was like... oh what the heck, once can't hurt ? and it did feel real good to eat greasy food, but yeah I think I let myself slip :-0

Afternoon: REVENGE BEASTS --- IM football team. Wow this team is so fun, I think each of us are gonna really enjoy being in this group and everyone is really friendly and stuff. So today we had our first game and we won! So even though we just met yesterday and practiced for like an hour or two, we didn't do that bad and picked up on things really quick... so yay for new friends!

Night: Went to Echo again for the Dating, Sex, and Relationships seminar where we watch Tommy Nelson on video and have a little Q&A session later. Interesting stuff, it'll definitely help me set some clear standards for Dating and Marriage and surprisingly, all of this is in Song of Solomon, the controversial book in the old testament that many people do not believe the Bible even has in it. But yeah, I should've brought some notebook and pen to take notes, but yeah so I missed out on the note taking so far, but next time I'll try to be more specific.

There ya go... hope all the freshman had fun at EKG and met a lot of your peers... you'll be spending 4 years with them, good luck. So that's about all I had to say today, hope it wasn't too much :)

Small group 04-05

Dang... I can't believe I just sent out the email to Peter and mine small group guys... Sooner than you think, we will be meeting regularly and I'm still taken back by this chain of events. I do not know what to expect, but I know all my expectations should be out the window so God can work His magic. I hope Peter and I as well as the rest of the small group leaders can get some prayers about this so we can step aside and allow God to work in the small group.

I'm still pretty overwhelmed about all the things happening around me... tons of new people, finding time to hang out with people, exercising, eating right, studying, etc. Oh, Echo group tomorrow! Excited to see how God will put me into the Ev Free church and if that is where He wants me, still not sure, but I'm gonna give it a shot. As you can tell, my thoughts are not well collected, but I'm tired :-D so I suppose that is an excuse.

EE story of the day: I spent 10 minutes on the phone with Andrew Miu and Eric Chu trying to explain to them how to draw the greek tau for some addition/multiplication box problem... but they ended up coming to my room so I took 2 seconds to draw it for them and yeah... that's as exciting as EE gets, makes me reminesce my freshman EE classes... when they weren't impossible :-p Ok enough crying, laters!