It is always easy to start off well (i am a pretty good starter) but terrible at keeping things going in between and towards the end, I'll make a mad end dash towards the finishing line cause all I will want to do is just finish it good or bad, finishing is all I ever want to do sometimes.

Serving the final four weeks here has been harder than I thought, especially last week, where I kept falling ill and the flu that knocked me out for 4 days. It's a hard fought flu to recover from, to recover in time that I'll make it for the retreat (which does make me think if it was a good choice). All I know the past week has been a week of grace that brought me through and through, to have enough to make it through.

Talking to the boy yesterday has made me realised one thing - Base your life on emotions/feelings and watch your world swing from a week of faithful to a week of faithless, because it is what you think what it is. It reminded me of Eugene Peterson's - Getting to know your identity isn't about getting to know yourself but in knowing what God thinks of you, that you are transformed only when you know what your maker thinks of you. That will be the reason why you are living, discovering your calling and the gifts He has entrusted you with.

It doesn't matter how long you've been a christian, how many mission trips you have been, how much you know the bible but it is about your relationship you have with God. TMT 09 shirt spells it out, It isn't a religion but it is a relationship with God. Simple as it may sound but it baffles a whole lot of people that again and again, we try to fix God up in a box, tell Him a list of endless to do lists/excuses and boundaries and asking Him to work within it because that is what we signed up for.

So we worship/sing/pray, oh Lord be the centre, take us deeper, we want to see your face and when the opportunity rises, for it is what we have prayed and God comes in and tries to take us deeper, we freak out and tells Him a list of a million reasons why it can't be me/not me/i can't do it/my past/my failures. Everytime He tries to break the boxes again, we find another fig leaves/box to try to box Him up once again and to do it within our comfort levels again.

Again and again, the cycle goes, I sit and watch and realise, how classic we humans are, that we try to think of a billion "new" ways in being creative and coming up with stories into reasoning out with God why it can't be me.

It is scary to realise how much we spend our lives going through this cycle again and again, 3/4 of our lives fighting this, to realise the truth that I write in a yellow stickon note that I paste on my monitor that I stare at it each and every single day to remind myself as I start my day of work -

"Sometimes, some things can only be discovered through passionate pursuit and desperation" - Bill Johnson

Sometimes, we pray that we just want to seek His face/His presence, circumstances shows the heart of it why we are seeking His face/presence. When we want it hard enough, when we want Him hard enough that if we really aren't going to experience Him today, we're going to feel like we're better off dead, then perhaps we haven't really found the reason worth living for.

Talking to the boy always makes me realise more truths that as I talk it out to him and I myself reflect and realise the best advice and note to self every single day I awake, "fix your eyes on Him". It is that important and the moment we lose sight of Him, we lose sight of the very hope we carry each and everyday in us and we will forget to live from His presence and it is when we will settle for everything else because we have forgotten who He was and what He has said over us and what He has destined for us.

A momentary lapse, an endless cycle of scurry, a fall, a pick up and how we'll have to learn how to once again, fix our eyes on Him again. The biggest encouragement each and everytime you fall and have to pick yourself up again, is how much stronger you come back after you fall and how it etches a memory at the back of your head, a lesson of the importance of running with Him and along side Him.

By the grace of God, here is another day, waking up was a terrible pain and hard thing to do this morning I felt like giving it all up. Screw it, screw work. He somehow doesn't give up on me whenever I do and that is all that is sufficient to take me through, not because I can, but because He will.

Listening to Hillsongs - Yahweh (Hillsongs Chapel) version cause I heard Joel playing it during the retreat and how he was saying I'll like it. It is true, i like intimate/stripped bare and simple worship.

Reminds me of the greatness and how big you actually are, and who I am, in you. Did I say how I love the word and the name Yahweh. The depths and widths the name holds.

I love you, beautiful one.