How Much Are You Worth?

Want to know your worth?
Then check it out at JobStreet Salary Report.

My Reflection:

I happen to come across the above report. If our worth is measured by the amount of pay we collect each month, then I am doing fine. However, we are worth more than just $. Many people who are rich financially are actually poor spiritually or emotionally.

Jesus said in Matthew 6:25,26,33:

25"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes?
26Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?
27Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?
33But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

Again God said in Isaiah 43:4,5:

4 Since you are precious and honored in my sight,
and because I love you,
I will give men in exchange for you,
and people in exchange for your life.

5 Do not be afraid, for I am with you;
I will bring your children from the east
and gather you from the west.

Our true worth is how God looks at us, not how people look at us.

Work And Relax

Thank God for blessing me in my work. Many exciting things have taken place this month. I can see God's hands in the work I do, though sometimes I may feel a little lost due to the heavy responsibility I have been entrusted with. Nevertheless, God has opened ways for me to be connected to people of influence, people who can help me do my work well.

Well, before I go into full swing in my work in July I will take a break first. Strange isn't it? :P

I will be going for my church retreat in Malaysia again during the first week of next month. This time round we will be climbing higher to Cameron Highland. As always, we will also include our shopping trip in KL over the 2 weekends (before and after retreat). After that some of us may proceed for another trip to BKK.

I am looking forward to it. :D

Lessons From My Laptop

My laptop seemed to be 'dying' soon as it turned blue (literally) suddenly on many occasions. On Sunday, I decided to backup everything so I could do a system recovery to restore everything to "factory state".

All things seemed well till I made a mistake on Monday when I pressed the wrong button. I wrote over my Incredimail backup file stored in my external drive with an empty one. Gosh! All my emails were gone! I was quite upset with my own careless mistake which could cost me much of my time to re-download all my emails. I wondered what lesson God wanted me to learn from that. "Perhaps I should start my life anew on a clean slate?", a thought ran through my mind. Hmmn.....

To my surprise, I discovered that my D drive partition with all my backup files remained even when I did that system recovery, which I thought should be gone. There I found my Incredimail backup file! Praise God! Hmmn... so what lesson was I suppose to learn then? There is hope?

Well, it wasn't as simple to import the backup data as I thought. Each time I tried to do that it failed, showing an error message saying that my backup files were too big (716Mb + 104 Mb). It could only accept up to 700Mb. After spending much time figuring out what to do, finally I decided to import the smaller file first. I got back my emails but my address book was missing... it was found in the bigger file which I couldn't import. So how?

As always, I will never say die till I try, try, try! Yes, that's me.... very persevering. I made it work finally using a different method from what the instruction said (which couldn't work in the first place when I follow it).

Moral of the story: Never give up easily and commit what you do to God.

Where Are the Real Men?

As I read my thoughts written one and half year ago (1 Nov 05) in my old blog, it is interesting to note that what I knew then and now never change -- it's hard to find a "real man" who truly loves....

Blogged on 1 Nov 05:

Once again, today's "Daily Encounter" which I subscribed to has encouraged me as it always has. God never fail to speak to me at the right time through this simple yet profound article. I would encourage all of you to subscribe to it too...

What is Real Love? (read full article from Daily Encounter, 1 Nov 05) Thus real love is unconditional; that is, it is love without strings attached. It doesn't have hidden motives for loving someone. When one gives love it is always gratifying if that love is returned, but real love loves regardless of the response of the other. It always has the other's best interest at heart—and this sometimes calls for tough love. The Apostle Paul also noted in this masterpiece on love, "When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me." In other words, real love is the fruit, perhaps the highest fruit, of both emotional and spiritual maturity. So to grow in love we need to keep growing in both emotional and spiritual maturity. (1 Corinthians 13: 11)

My Thoughts:


What struck me in this article is the quotation, "When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me." So true!

Very often, we behave just like a little child even though we are grownups. When we don't get what we want we throw tantrum; we sulk, cry, say something harsh, do something we soon regret, etc. Many of us are emotional "babes", including myself. It's time to grow up! It's time to "put childish way behind me".

I suppose this emotional stunted growth is due to the lack of love during one's early childhood. So, even as an adult, one would still cling on to the past deficiency of love. This is true at least for me. I guess one of the ways to overcome this is to find someone who can give "real love"... who can give assurance of love constantly and unconditionally. However, finding such a person isn't that easy. :(

Even the most loving man I came across would behave like a "child" at times under pressure and stress. So I guess I have to be a 'real woman' (in my case) myself. To be one I have to grow spiritually. The more I grow in Jesus Christ, the more mature I will be, the less "childish" I will be, the more love I could give.

Winners vs Losers

Excerpts from Winners vs Losers:

"According to your faith be it unto you." - Matthew 9:29

A winner sees an opportunity in every risk while a loser sees a risk in every opportunity. Winners know that to risk nothing is to risk everything, that if
they are going to win they need to be willing to try, to take chances, and to risk failure. That is, they have to be willing to strike out if they are going to hit home runs.......

True winners make sure their goal is in harmony with God's will and, because of this, they know that with his help there is always a way to achieve their goal.
Furthermore, they believe in their cause. And they believe in themselves in a healthy way. Therefore they expect to win, believe they will, and do so.

They also know that if they tried and did their best, they have already won.

My Thoughts:

I used to be a "loser" in the past by the above definition. I was a very pessimistic person, or you may call me a 'worrier'. ;)

However, I have changed a lot over the years. As I began to know and trust God more each day, I have become a "winner" by the above definition again. The secret of my change is found in the second excerpt, where I make sure what I do is in harmony with God's will as much as possible.

How?

To know God's will, I need to read the Bible daily, go to church every Sunday, have fellowship with Christians who love Jesus, pray for guidance, and be sensitive to the Holy Spirit prompting in my heart.

Right, all of you can be a "winner" too if you do likewise. :D

Mothers

Two days ago (Friday), there was a bad news that the Taiwanese fighter jet crashes; 2 pilots, 2 Singapore soldiers , and six other Singaporean soldiers were injured, with two in critical condition. Thank God that many of the Singaporean soldiers were not in the military base at the time of crash, otherwise, there will be even more casualties.

This news moved me deeply as someone I know well was also there for the training. Suddenly, I could feel the anxieties of the family members, especially the mothers, when they were waiting for the news to know who were the casualties, and wondered if their sons were one of them. Imagine the relief the mothers felt when they knew that their sons were safe. On the other hand, the anguish of the mothers of the dead and injured personnel is indescribable.

Today is Mother's Day. I wish all who still have your own mothers around to have a wonderful celebration with them, thanking them for all the good things they have done for you, some of which may be done in silence.

To the mothers, I wish you a...

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY.

25Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. 26When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, "Dear woman, here is your son," 27and to the disciple, "Here is your mother." From that time on, this disciple took her into his home.
- John 19:25-27

Women Are Complex Creature

If you kiss her, you are not a gentleman

If you don't, you are not a man

If you praise her, she thinks you are lying

If you don't, you are good for nothing

If you agree to all her likes, you are a wimp

If you don't, you are not understanding

If you visit her often, she thinks it is boring

If you don't, she accuses you of double-crossing

If you are well dressed, she says you are a playboy

If you don't, you are a dull boy

If you are jealous, she says it's bad

If you don't, she thinks you do not love her

If you attempt a romance, she says you didn't respect her

If you don't, she thinks you do not like her

If you are a minute late, she complains it's hard to wait

If she is late, she says that's a girl's way

If you visit another man, you're not putting in "quality time"

If she is visited by another woman, "oh it's natural, we are girls"

If you kiss her once in a while, she professes you are cold

If you kiss her often, she yells that you are taking advantage

If you fail to help her in crossing the street, you lack ethics

If you do, she thinks it's just one of men's tactics for seduction

If you stare at another woman, she accuses you of flirting

If she is stared by other men, she says that they are just admiring

If you talk, she wants you to listen

If you listen, she wants you to talk

In short:

So simple, yet so complex

So weak, yet so powerful

So confusing, yet so desirable

So damning, yet so wonderful.....WOMEN!!!

(written by someone called *Gucci Man ©*)

My Reflection

Interesting! No wonder it is said that "the best man wins", in relation to courting a woman. Not easy to court a woman and win her heart, isn't it? It takes a lot of effort in understanding and balancing between the extremes of women; need lots of patience, love and perseverence to succeed.

But I guess it is easier to court Malaysian women since I was told by a Malaysian female friend that most Malaysian women are still very traditional and they follow their parents' preferences for sons-in-law. So the first thing a man should do is to 'court' his mother-in-law-to-be. ;P That was precisely what a guy who was interested in my friend did... quite successful ya.... hehe. And I undertsand that guys who don't practise this tend to lose their sweet hearts' (even though both love each other) because of parental objection.

People

As I reflected on some of the poem I wrote in the past, I observed that the same truth of the matter stays even years down the road... I am still as puzzled by the complications in people as years before when I wrote the poem below:


Some people - poem
- written on 29 Sept 04

Life is so complicated - prose
- written on 8 Oct 04

My Strength and Comfort

Whenever I read about the hurts of others I would feel for them immediately as I could put myself in their shoes easily. Whatever these people had gone through isn't new to me.

Many people find it so difficult to forget the past when a relationship ended. The pains and hurts go on and on for months and years. Am I made of steel? No. I do feel the pain too when bad situations happen to me. The only difference in my case is I have my God of comfort. As I do my devotion every night, God encourages me and helps me go on for another day, and another day, and another day... Slowly, but surely, He sees me through in my times of distress and heartaches.

So here I am, seemingly strong and courageous. Yet I know that without the Lord, Jesus Christ, I would have been in a sorrowful state.

A Sad Day

What someone I respected said to me and what someone I cared about did to me today made me feeling so....

Further Studies?

Information overload for me soon? There are so much things I want to read up but so little time.

This afternoon, I was toying with the idea of taking a DBA (Doctorate of Business Admin) programme. It will take 2.5 years to complete based on the program offered by UniSA programme (download brochure here). Do I have the time to complete it? Possible, if I don't get distracted by anything else.

God seems to be speaking to me through tonight's devotion on The World Wide Web. Wow! The message is so timely. After the devotion I continued to read an article WATCH WHAT YOU LEAN ON which taught me something:

"Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight." Proverbs 3:5-6

YOUR JOURNEY…

• In what ways do you regularly bring God’s thoughts and guidance into the loop in decision-making? In what areas of your life do you usually go with your gut-level instincts?
• How can you begin to acknowledge the Lord in your everyday decisions?
• Take some time to read through Proverbs 3. What is the role of God’s wisdom in our lives? According to this chapter, what is the net gain of seeking God’s wisdom rather than relying on our own?
• Pray specifically about an issue where you need God’s clear direction. Make your request for wisdom as specific as possible, and then wait for His response.

Yes, I need to pray for wisdom in the decision I make.