Extract from Pastor Kong Blog : Daily Devotion

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You must be very careful when you want something very badly from the Lord. Because when you want it badly enough, God may give it to you. However, you must be ready to face the consequences of your request. That is why prayer requests must always be according to the will of the Lord. And sometimes when your prayers don’t come to pass immediately, it may be because it is not God’s best for your life. But if you stubbornly insist on it, God may grant you your wish, even when He knows it is bad for you. Psalm 106:15 says, “And He gave them their request, but sent leanness into their soul.”

You must make sure that the desires of your heart are in alignment with the will of God, that your heart is in tune with God. And what you are seeking is also what He desires for your life. Otherwise, you may live with regrets later on. Despite the repeated warnings Samuel gave about the danger of having a king, Israel refused to listen. Eventually, God granted them their wish. Saul became their king … and what a terrible leader he was for the nation.

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This simply defines what kind of psychology we should all have in our prayer requests. Thank God for giving such a revelation to Pastor that has been imparted to us.

March 17th, Wednesday 2010 is a special day for me. This is the day I first fell under the power of the Holy Spirit. I recalled, I was seated second from the left of the 7th center row at the floor area. On my left was Liu Bo, a fellow SOT student from China Liaoning. On my right was Chee Keong, my team 29 member. Pastor Derek was laying hands on people in the front randomly. I remembered one lady laid on the floor for a very long time. I kept praying in tongues, hoping and believing that i'd experience the power as well...

Then it came. It came as if a wave of air crashed on me. I just felt weak and fell back onto my seat, although I still had my senses.

We are taught not to look for the manifestation, but for the person, the Holy Spirit ! But this experience just brings about so much revelations for me. Firstly, the Holy Spirit is real! Jesus really left the Holy Spirit on earth for believers! With this, I can accurately be assured that everything else in the Bible is true already. Because the experience of the Holy Spirit is very tangible and is in the supernatural realm, and it was true. What more of the physical blessings promised by our Lord !? I wished I had a loudhailer to tell everyone of this experience I had. But I can't. I don't want to attract comments like, "Good for you lor." Some people will just think I'm boasting to people about my relationship with God. That's not what I want to do. I want to be a conversionist.

Hi. Been busy with alot of things. Stressed out, tired but happy...

'Don't Give Up!' , says Margaret Court. Don't give up on my dream.

Need your help in a short survey.

Hello handsomes and mei nius,

Hope you can help me fill up this questionaire at this website. It is about smoking and relationships. It will just take you 3 mins. 11 questions only. :) 

Please state if you are a smoker or non smoker before you start the survey questions. Your answers will remain anonymous.

Thank You.

http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dHNYSTdnTzRqWm12UDFWUi1zLWFtQUE6MA

Regards,

Jian Chao

Semester 2 is starting tomorrow! I am reading only 6 modules, including laboratory. I registered for some electives but did not get it. Now I am hoping to grab them while others drop during the Add/Drop period in the next 2 weeks.

My problems are so minuscule in God's eyes. He can do all these and beyond !

Psalms 37:4
Delight yourself in the LORD 
and he will give you the desires of your heart.

My Yr 1 Sem 1 results are out! GPA 3.21 out of a possible 5. 

Below is a breakdown of the results. The target I prayed for was actually 3.5. But i guessed I wasn't faithful enough at times. But still thank God for whatever I have.

Just a short recap on my resolutions for this year. No 3. is done. No. 4 is very possible. 1 and 2 is out due to some serious setbacks.

1. Grab the basketball rim, not touch it. [Before Aug]
Why i have no succeeded? I didn't really put my heart to train on this one, especially when I started training with Ronnie. Because getting vertical height is just one small aspect of doing well in hjump.

2. Start trading options live and make real money as I enter Uni.
The truth is, I didn't have sufficient funds to trade options. I realised that the recommended risk-taking of 2% per trade would translate to requiring a USD2000 account to start with. I still have what it takes to do well in this and the strategies still look viable. So my plan now is to trade forex until I have a large capital to start on options.

But this year has been great. My first year with God. Doors were opened for me in the area of my hjump. Got the chance to train with a national jumper. Made so many friends from church. I really wonder what would have become of my social circle this year if I didn't go church at all this year. Although I've suffered physically more this year, I felt less worrisome about my future, as i know it is well handled by God's hands.

Today is my birthday! For the 21st time! And first time I did on my big day was to get out to Riverwalk to donate blood. The blood gang had Sam Lu, Jiawei, Sherrie and me. Sherrie was low on ammo(iron count) so only the males went for the blood bath. Me, being the chiongster, probably took the shortest time amongst us three to finish the sacrifice.

Be safe everyone. I'm turning in now. ZzZzZzZ

Ahh, exams are coming to an end soon. By next Thursday I would have completed my last paper for this semester. But my heart is heavy. Why? Because I have a irritatingly painful corn(or I think is plantar wart) under the ball of my left foot. I don't even feel like training my run for IPPT on 9 Dec. It just seems impossible to pass it. I foresee that I'll either go to the military Medical Officer for an excuse letter if possible or suck thumb and just do my best for the IPPT. 

Here's what I plan to do though. Try a bit of running these couple of days to see if the pain affects my running gait. If it's really bad, I'll seek the MO's advice armed with my National Skin Centre referral letter. It shouldn't be a problem talking to him about it because I didn't purposely caused an injury to myself so that I can be excused for IPPT. I guessed I was training too frequently and pawing my feet during jumps training. However above all, I'll just follow what God has in His plan for me during these few crucial weeks. I am still keeping my faith on my dream of clinching a medal from SEA Games in high jump. Wild and far I know, but it keeps me going, and believing. 

Today's service by Pst. Kong was smashing. He started with the time horizon before a professional becomes one. It takes 10,000 hours. Yeah It's just about the lifespan of a light bulb. SUCCESS= Talent+ HARD WORK. 10,000 hours of it. 

Then the second part of the word was built on Caleb believing in God all the time. One important message for me to bring home was, "Prayer is what will make your dream come to pass."

Earlier on before the service I attended the water baptism on the rooftop of the church building. It was sweltering hot before the actual ritual because everyone squeezed shoulder to shoulder under the big white tent. And so, Xiao Hui went and came back as Ruth. Peng Bo (or we call PB) left as PB and returned as Nick. Guo Lei departed and emerged as Gary.

And seriously, Ruth really draws a resemblance of Joanne Peh. But Ruth is like a mini version. Haha.

Took part in Citibank FX challenge yesterday. I only had 4 hours of sleep before i had to woke up at 6am. 

Some details:

Prelim Round (NTU)

2 sessions in a round. 50 teams. Top 8 teams advance to finals at 2.45pm. Bank 33 clinched top rank. uh, that's my team. 

Finals

3 sessions. Only top 10 will be awarded prizes. The 2 people in the best team gets intership at citibank trading section!

So my team was really doing great in the session 1 of the finals, where we needed to deal with 2 currencies. We were up 1.4mil in profit/loss. The session 2 saw the addition of another currency. We lost all that profit because we tried to split our focus evenly on all 3 currencies. That situation didn't change till the end, when we saw a slight increase in our P/L in the 2 original currencies. So all in all, we were up 300k. But not good enough for the top 10 since the last on that list was 1.7mil. Winner locked in 5.7 mil. In conclusion, our fiercely discussed strategy worked in an environment of 2 currencies, but not 3 when the flurry of news breakout made things worse.

Good exposure. Great workout for my heart, which raced crazily during the sessions.