Meditations

Posted by: thaishin | March 8, 2012

Trimming Down

One of them did not accept my facebook friend’s request but he’s still posting in facebook. The other did not call back after I left a phone message having called him twice. The other did not write back my emails to him. These are real people that I have met face to face and have interacted with personally for a period of time. One of them is a church friend. Another a former neighbor and the other a friend I met in primary school. So I find myself trimming down my email contacts.
Sounds depressing. But it’s ok. It is a fact of life that we lose some friends as we journey on in life. Sometimes we do not know why they left and do not want to be contacted. I will still say hi to them if I met them again but to pursue deeper roots I don’t think so.
Could it be me? Maybe I could be a better friend but I have to admit I am not a very relational kind of person. But again in this life, how many true friends can we have? Or could it be because of changing circumstances? Then what has changed? But fact is they left without a word and it hurts.

6 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized | Tags: Relationships

Posted by: thaishin | February 23, 2012

Loss of holiness

In my last post, I was talking about say this to mean that. When you say A to mean B, you are using part of the subconscious mind to verbalise the thought. The bible says that words are many, sin is not absent. How much more when you say A to mean B, you are sinning more. The problem with say A to mean B is this, sin is not absent and what’s worst is we will find it difficult to concretise it again. We are not able to recall and point to the specifics of the sin we have committed. As this happens, we are not able to confess our specific sins to Jesus and probably will remain unconfessed. As long as sin is in us, we lose our holiness. With sin and without holiness, God does not hear our prayers.

PS: I use the phrase sin accumulates in my first version of my post which I have since corrected – reference to the first comment by Harry

4 Comments

Posted in Sin | Tags: Sin, specific, subconscious, unconfessed, without holiness

Posted by: thaishin | February 6, 2012

Say this to mean that

As parents, we are important examples through which our children may see Christ-likeness. The other major environment which shapes my son’s behaviour is school. We have placed him in a christian school in the hope that he may be exposed to christian culture.

I am exposed to american culture a bit and also to american christian culture by listening to the christian radio program. I am concerned for my son that he does not understand absolute principles. When I say A, I mean A. When I mean B, I say B. But within the broader american culture, when they mean A, they say B to mean A. We live here in america and one day my son is going to work here and maybe marry here, he will have to say B to mean A. But I am concerned for him because I want him to learn absolute. I want him to say A to mean A also in addition to being able to say B to mean A.

In one incident, he was saying something to me. With a change in phonetics, he meant it a different meaning, perhaps in a disrespectful way. When I confronted him by asking him if he meant A. He said no. After much talking to him and later in time, he subtly admitted that he meant A by saying B. Whenever there is subtleness and it is disrespectful, I will always have to confront him so that when he say B to mean A, he will have to say A to mean A to me or at least admit his fault even if it is by saying B to mean A to me.

7 Comments

Posted in Parenting | Tags: concern, culture, Parenting, phonetics, subtleness

Posted by: thaishin | January 12, 2012

God speaks directly to the heart

Sometimes we harbor sin in our heart and the sin is hidden from us in our consciousness. Maybe it is masked by the pride in the heart so much so that we do not see it. Then God speaks through circumstances and rebukes us and we need to ask why because we do not know that we sinned in the first place. I guess for non believers, they don’t ask why because they think it is pure conincidences. For believers who believe that nothing happens by chance, we need to ask why and God will answer. For me, it was through a vehicle with a slogan printed on its body, God tells me specifically what is wrong in my heart and it was timely too as I was questioning in my heart why a certain event happened. He is interested in my heart and He rebukes me. Then be ready to repent when He shows you the secret sin in your heart. At least that’s what happened to me.

1 Comment

Posted in Sin | Tags: coincidence, heart, hidden sin, Sin

Posted by: thaishin | December 28, 2011

Does Satan hear your thoughts?

I know that God hears our prayers if we utter our thoughts to him in our mind because God looks at our hearts. A thought came to mind, is Satan also able to hear the thoughts in our minds even before we utter it in our mouths? The thought can be scary because Satan can cater his attacks on us. Satan prowls around like a roaring lion as stated in James. So is he waiting to pounce on our stray thoughts and wrestle our thoughts to his advantage or he just tempts us with temptations and hope that our will go his way? If he is able to read our thoughts, we have to continually confess our sinful thoughts to God through Jesus. Even if he is not able to do so, we still have to continually confess our sinful thoughts to God as it arises in our minds because we are told to be holy just as He is holy. Any of you with scriptures to address this question?

1 Chronicles 21: 1-2

¹ Satan rose up against Israel and incited David to take a census of Israel. ² So David said to Joab and the commanders of the troops, “Go and count the Israelites from Beersheba to Dan. Then report back to me so that I may know how many there are. -niv

¹And Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel.

²And David said to Joab and to the rulers of the people, Go, number Israel from Beersheba even to Dan; and bring the number of them to me, that I may know it.

-kjv

It seems in 1 Chronicles 21:1 that Satan worked on David’s heart, provoked him into action. So we can imply that God’s peace was absent from David’s heart and he was provoked into action. Scripture did not say Satan was able to read David’s thoughts.

Matthew 16:23

²³But he turned, and said unto Peter, Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men. -kjv

²³ Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.” -niv

Here Jesus is tempted by Satan through Peter to fill him with human concerns but it never says Satan read Jesus’s thoughts.

Our thoughts arise in our mind and heart naturally. Satan is not able to control our thoughts/will just as God does not want to control our thoughts/will. But the battle with Satan starts in the thought front, and he throws attacks at us through words outside of mind/heart and hopes to gain some foothold in our thoughts/mind/heart. Still, it does not answer the question, is Satan able to hear our thoughts. My guess is that he can’t but it does not matter as long as we rely on God’s word for our defense against him. It does not matter to Satan also as long as he can gain a foothold in our hearts.

4 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized | Tags: Read, Satan, thoughts

Posted by: thaishin | December 25, 2011

Happy Birthday Jesus

My Lord and my God, may the whole world celebrate your first coming and anticipate your second coming!!

Jesus is my God and my Saviour, I am a sinner saved by grace

Jesus is my God and my saviour, I am a sinner saved by grace

New Wiper Blades

Today just changed the wiper blades after 2 years 9 months on my corolla. This is the first wiper change after having bought the car new.

The old wiper blade was making a sound. Though it wipes the windshield dry after squirting washer fluid on it, it is not able to clean the windshield as well especially when there’s dew on the windshield in the morning.

The driver’s side and passenger’s side windshield cost the same at $11.99. After tax and after applying a 3 dollar discount coupon, I paid $22.96. The wipers are genuine toyota parts from the dealer. If I buy from auto parts shop, the driver’s side windshield cost more than the passenger’s side windshield. For a medium grade wiper, the quote I got from a parts shop is around 33 bucks after tax.

2 Comments

Posted in Driving | Tags: Driving, Toyota Corolla, Wiper blades

Posted by: thaishin | October 10, 2011

Facebook friends

As I scroll through the list of friends in my facebook account, there is a button that assist me to classify my facebook friends as either close or acquaintances. A thought came to mind, should there not be a category for in-process-to-be-close or in-process-to-be-acquaintance. After all, through time and interactions, friends will either drift apart or become closer, so there should be a in-between category.

Most of my facebook friends are on the island and I am so far away. I guess it’s more of reconnecting with some of my facebook friends that I have been close to before, meeting up with some of them personally when I am back there. I should be forward looking, maybe I should be making some facebook friends over my part of the world.