All Things New

It's a verse in a Bible, immortalized in a Steven Curtis Chapman song. It's also very very true.

My Sunday mornings are something like this:

Woke up, at 8am by alarm, slept till 9am. Made a cup of coffee from my fast dwindling stock of Ipoh White Coffee and did the day's chapter on Experiencing God(courtesy of Bern). At 9.30, Ed says Wilson is coming to pick us up for church, which he does. Along the way, we see various other ppl walking, and end up with picking Ben, Julia and reaching church just as Erik leads the congregation in "Blessed Be Your Name". As 7 of us pile into church, the pastor, John Isherwood greets us and TaiBo who's on drums flashes a grin at us.

The songs are all familiar today, and for the first time in a while, I'm near the front, singing my heart out to a God who listens, and speaks right back to me. During the song "There Is None Like You", the thought just comes unbidden to me; truly, there is no one that touches me like how God does. As I look back, the times I've cried, the times I've doubted, the times I've felt His comfort so palpably, the times I've been driven to trusting Him in order to move forward, the times I've been open and honest, have all been with Him. No one else in my life has shared ALL these emotions with me, or has been with me throughout them all. Truly He's worth the long hard search.

Later, as John Isherwood speaks on prayer and Luke 11:1-13, I start making notes to make sure I don't fall asleep. He asks us to think for a moment that prayer is like breathing. He then goes on to say that the Greek word for 'breath' is the same as 'spirit', as in the Holy Spirit. And if the Holy Spirit is in each one of us, addressing Him should be like breathing, and as regularly. Another truth comes to light. He goes on to mention Daniel, whose prayer of thanksgiving caused him to be put in danger(Daniel6:10) and Jabez, whose boldness in prayer was given honourable mention in the Bible(1 Chron 4:9).

As the service ends, I cannot help feeling refreshed, despite the fact I have exams tomorrow, that things didn't go the way I expected a few days ago.

"Because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness." Lamentations 3:22-23