Bad week

Last week seemed to be a pretty bad week.

Had a huge fight with wife. Somebody carelessly backed into my beloved S2000. Lots of celebs such as Michael Jackson ended up dead. There were lots of other little things too... Everything just feels all wrong!

Anyway, pastor Jim reinforced the idea of Jehovah Shammah... that God is there with us whether good or bad!

At least wife's bros arrived safely and we had fun... and we're not fighting anymore... and nobody ran into me... and nobody really close to us are dead yet...

Micah 7:7 But as for me, I watch in hope for the LORD,
I wait for God my Savior;
my God will hear me.

So may God continue to be with us whether thru thick or thin... Below is a picture taken by wife's bro... using some special technique which made LA look like it's on fire! But may LA be revived or rekindled by the Spirit's fire... not the real fire or course! ;)

(Micah 4-7, 174.8lbs, $3.099)

Hosea 10

12 Sow for yourselves righteousness,
reap the fruit of unfailing love,
and break up your unplowed ground;
for it is time to seek the LORD,
until he comes
and showers righteousness on you.

Good and bad....

The couple of offers we made... none of the Condo owners decided to sell to us... Very disappointing, but all we can do at the moment is to continue our search and trust in God that He'll prepare a more suitable one for us later I suppose.

As a consolation prize, at least we were fortunate enough to book a relatively cheap trip to Miami at the 5 star Ritz Carlton resort! Hopefully it won't rain..., but even if it does, I guess we can still enjoy a relaxing time at our posh hotel! ;)

This weekend also had an opportunity to have dinner with Jo E whom I haven't seen for years! It was also nice to see some old friends from Kam Kwong Church..., but it's also kinda sad to see how we've grown apart. Just like the chinese saying, 'there are no banquets that won't ever end!' I'm thankful and appreciative of knowing them, perhaps we'll have more 'banquets' to come in the future... or not. All in God's hand I guess...

Pastor Jim on Sunday continued to talk about 'seeds'. He also prophecied over us saying that God's going to do 'something special' for all of us during the summer timeframe..., but of course it's conditional... he talked about 7 things that we can expect...
1) break up fallow ground, prepare our hearts thru repentance
2) plant seed(Word of God being the seed of course, we don't need a religious experience to get the Word... we can just as easily get the 'seed' from the 'seed bag' which is called the Holy Bible!)
3) nourish to flourish, just as Apostle Paul plants churches, Apollo waters it... just do whatever we can do so that God can ultimately grow it...
4) we also gotta be patient during waiting periods, but of course waiting doesn't mean we do nothing, revert back to 3 when necessary! ;)
5) of course if we carried on, surely we'll bear fruit!
6) expect to be pruned by God so that we may bear even MORE fruit!

There was also this point 7 which I either missed it or he's going to continue on next sunday... ;)Anyway, considering what happened to my former church, perhaps that's just God's way of pruning us... preparing us to produce more fruits later on? Besides that, even during day to day life now, I'm sure wife feels like she's getting pruned left and right by God because of me... ;) But we are indeed getting better and better though. That's for sure...

(Hosea 4-6, 174.0 lbs, $3.199)

Fight, fight, fight!

The stress of buying a house caused wife and I to have a pretty big fight again..., but at least everytime we fight, we managed to get a better understanding of each other, we managed to make the change, perhaps too slow for wife's sake, but at least things do get better! Another side bonus of course is that it helps wife lose some weight. She was in a pretty good mood recently and was complaining about weight gain, but I guess God indeed does make all things, whether good or bad, work together to benefit us! ;)

Anyway, the stupid fight was over... we're now left to tackle with 2 different condos to deal with. One of them we both like very much is more expensive... and the other one is less expensive, but we don't like as much... after talking with Aunt Jean and developed a best strategy to go forward, hopefully we can get the place we want... if not, then hopefully we can get our 2nd choice. If not, then I suppose we'll just wait some more if that is indeed God's will! Besides offering our best possible price, I also wrote a letter trying convince the seller to sell to us! If after trying our best and still can get it, we'll just have to trust God that place isn't for us I guess. But until Monday evening comes (that's when seller reviews all offer), we'll remain hopeful!

Pastor Jim also preached an interesting sermon today... explaining how our thumbs are like 'prayers', our index fingers are like the 'Word' pointing to us the way..., and our middle fingers are like ways to 'reach out' to others(to help, not to screw others of course), our ring fingers signifies our commitments or 'Convenants' and our little fingers represent being 'giving'... and it's thru all those 'fingers' that we can actually 'grip' securely God's seeds and blessings to us.

I suppose I have been using all 5 of my 'fingers' so far, but I just need to practice using them some more I think. May God can help train me how to grip better so that I won't let His Promises slip thru my fingers too much..., given my procrastinating nature, I'm sure I've let a lot of things slipped away... :(

Anyway, wife and I ended the weekend having dinner with her old high school friend at the Duck House again. We had a pretty good time and we probably gained some weight again... ;)

Tough call indeed... weight gain while in a good mood? Or weight lost while in a bad mood? May God help us to be able to maintain a healthy weight while in a healthy mood too! ;) Oh, also, may God help us get that condo! We believe both sellers are Christians, so yeah, our prayer is that may we get what's best for us! Surely He knows! :)

(Dan 1-3, 174.8 lbs, $3.099)

General Motors becoming Government Motors?

Today is a pretty historical day that an iconic company such as GM is declaring bankruptcy after 100 years! Such thing is probably unthinkable just a few years earlier! But amazing thing is that the market wasn't all that affected by it today and continued to climb pretty bullishly because of some encouraging financial data..., but I'm not sure if the economy is that fundamentally sound to warrant such a rise. People are just irrationally speculating I think..., but anyway, we'll see.

We also spent most of the weekend looking at condos again. Only saw a couple of properties that are decent... and we've decided to make an offer again to the same condo that we've already made once few weeks earlier..., but we'll see how things go on this too. Supposedly the seller is a Christian, actually both properties that we liked are occupied by Christians I think... hopefully God will influence them to lower their prices for us! ;)

Pastor Jim's sermon is getting a bit too 'pornographic' lately, especially for Jack! He talked about why God asked the Jews to be circumcised... because without the extra piece of flesh, it'll be easier for the 'seed' to flow thru... well, I'm not sure if that's really the case sexuallly, but I suppose it does make sense for us to have circumcision of the heart... to get rid of the excessive flesh that's preventing God's Seed to come into our hearts... when we are catering too much to our 'flesh', yeah, naturally we'd end up forgetting more about God. Anyway, so may God also help us cut away extra un-needed flesh off of us so that we can be closer to Him. Wife is complaining about a bit of weigh gain, so yeah, less flesh the better! ;)

Also still reading Ezekiel..., so many judgments and horrible prophecies. So haven't been able to find any more encouraging verses to remember... some atheists really hate God for being so judgmental..., but hey, if you don't want to get judged, then don't do evil! So I suppose the moral of those stories in Ezekiel is that we should not forget about God and should fear God... if we don't want to end up like them...

(Eze 31-33, 174.0 lbs, $2.939)

PUSH!

Memorial weekend is usually the biggest auto racing weekend, with Monaco GP and Indy 500, but the races had been rather boring..., fastest qualifier wins the race in the end..., but I still enjoyed watching them though.

This past LONG weekend has been pretty boring overall too especially for the wife, but we did manage to at least enjoy a new burger that I've developed that can perhaps rival the In-and-Out burger! We've also got a new work table for me from Ikea... we've also for the first time tried out the Metro train in LA! We've been on metros in lots of other various cities, but never around LA, so we figured we try go shopping in Hollywood while minimize pollution! ;)

Anyway, pastor Jim sorta did a rehashed sermon this past weekend. So that was kinda boring too, but still something worthwhile some meditation I think. He talked about dreams vs fantasies. I've had plenty of dreams..., but of course not all of them came true... actually, not all of them are capable of coming true... so I guess they were just fantasies. But nevertheless, I do believe dreams can help motivate us for otherwise, I'd often not feel like doing anything! ;) Wife disagree about dreaming, thinking it's a waste of time, worse yet, it can often times disappoint when it's unfulfilled! Anyway, I don't know who's right and who's wrong... surely if we're just mindlessly day-dreaming, for sure that can be a waste of time I suppose. But how do we know that we're dreaming a worthwhile and achievable dream?

Well, we can only hope that God will help us out on that I suppose. Like Pastor Jim said, we just gotta allow God's(seed) Word to penetrate us... don't allow our hardened hearts to reject the seeds... we also gotta nourish the seed, if our dream is in line with God's will, we just gotta have faith that it will be realized! And like delivering a baby, we just gotta keep on PUSHING! (Pray Until Something Happens!)

(Eze 28-30, 174.8 lbs, $2.839)

Whew!

Got super busy at work starting beginning of last weekend. Hopefully things can slow down a bit so that I can catch my breath a bit... About the only interesting thing that we did was watching the Star Trek movie. It's not bad, but it ain't that great either. I guess I was expecting too much!

Anyway, finally finished reading the book 'Sources of Power'. Not sure how long I've been reading that, just occasionally a few pages here and there while sitting on the toilet! ;) I was planning to finish reading that on the plane during my trip to Taiwan, but watching movies was the only way I could stay awake in order to deal with the different time zones... I've decided to read up on some books regarding how we make decisions because I'm sometimes known to be kinda indecisive! So, my conclusion for this book is that basically I'm just too 'inexperienced', that's why often times I'd consider too many options. "Experienced" decision makers often knows what to do that works at any given situation... So anyway, I guess the main point I got was that I need to gather more experience so that I can make more inform decisions faster!!! ;)

So I suppose I'm more appreciatieve of the extra work that I'm doing because it's adding to my 'experiece'! ;) I'm even 'experiencing' my wife more by having more 'fellowships' or digging into each other's brain kinda talks. Hopefully I can really gather and sort out these experiences and help me become a better decision maker! ;)

Pastor Jim also finished up with his 'Lamp' or 'Word' series. I'm kinda glad that I've been able to maintain reading the Word even when things got real busy! I do try to find verses here and there to try to remember by and then post them in this blog, but lately, I've been reading a lot of God judging His people... so I guess the main point is that we probably should just remember to NOT do evil like the Jews back then so that hopefully we can spare judgement!!! May God have mercy on us... and may we behave ourselves like Noah, Daniel and Job...

(Ezekiel 13-15, 174.6 lbs, $2.759)