Church camp 08

So during the merdeka weekend I find myself in nilai attending my ex-church, church camp ;)
It was great just to be back where I was staying / studying last year at a house in nilai, brought back memories of staying alone / away from home during pre-u as well as in ywam, browsing through old notes, written journals and just enjoying peace and quiet....

church camp was great as well, catching up with old friends was a bomb, listening to an awesome speaker from Sabah was refreshing, and just reflecting my own walk with God while hearing His voice, here's some of the stuff learnt at camp:

1. The speaker gave a a testimony of a Sabah pastor who's house got burned down, one son got burned to the bones in the fire, the pastor risked his life trying to save his second/third sons and got 80% burned, before passing out, tells his wife to take care of the kids. In hospital the second son died while the third was 35% burned. Before his last breath, in excruitiating pain and agony, he struggles to lift up his hands, and whisper "puji Tuhan (Praise God)". His hands never came down. The speaker challenged us with a question, What is greatness? riches? honour? prosperity? size of congregation? No. One who can still praise God in the fire. That's greatness.

2. The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked, who can know it? (Jeremiah 17:9), the speaker challenged us to really dig deep into our hearts and ask God to search us out, every secret sins, to confess them before God and make right with Him. The speaker talked about Moses's prayer not to see his wretchedness appear, and David's fall into sin and genuine repentence to be cleansed again and again (psalm 51 - Wash me thoroughly). She mentioned that our salvation should be as a lamp that burns (keeps on burning - Isaiah 62:1) , and cleansing is a continual process.

3. The inside controls the outside, It's what's going on in the insides of us that needs to be dealt with, cuz often times it controls what we do/say (on the outsides). Just like how we wash ourselves everyday (bath), our insides (thoughts, mind, will, emotions) needs to be cleansed (brought before God) to be dealt with everyday. 'Unconscious is the most deadly', meaning to say, the things which we are unconsious about (most of the time, like pride, greed, lust etc, can bring out the worse in us, anger and so forth).

Many many other things I've learned in the saturday and sunday I was there. To mention all would take some time, we also had a christian minister and politician giving his testimony (super cool!) and we also got to see some fireworks outside the church camp (merdeka!), as well as eat local foods like durian and chi-ku-teh!

All in all, I guess I really thank God that I decided to follow my family for this camp, missing out on other events (such as Monash ball) wasn't much of a missing out at all, spending time with family these past few days has been very meaningful, went for merdeka dinner with dad and sis, catching up with old church mates and listening to God, totally made it worth it. Praise and Thank God!

right now? it's back to the books and assignments ;)

take care!

Japheth ;)