ST GEORGE'S CHURCH

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

In this article we are going to share with you the Church of almost 200 years old, built in 1816. This historical church is one of Penang's major beautiful heritage landmarks and reputed to be the oldest Anglican church in South East Asia. It is none other than St George's Church in Penang. No wonder that St. George has also served as a fountain of inspiration to writers
(like Shakespeare), artists and musicians.

The most famous depiction of St George Church was his battle with a
ferocious dragon (such as the one shown here from The Catholic
Community Forum).

It is located at the corner of Lebuh Farquhar and Jalan Masjid Kapitan
Keling, both roads are historically significant in this part of the world.
Your tour to Penang will not be completed if your tour did not cover
this area.

This piece of history, resembling the early 19th century Church, will be restored through on-going restoration works. The full beauty of this church will be revealed once the restoration project is completeed as scheduled in November, 2010.

This restoration works will bring back its former glory. This grand restoration works include cleaning and restoring the roof's Marseilles tiles, using the 'cocoon' method for salt desalination on the lower parts of the church walls, restoring parts of the interior as well as door panels and repainting the church.


This church survived through second world war, when it was damaged by 6 Japanese bombs which, fell into its compound. As a result, the pitched roof was significantly damaged at that time. This could have caused the clock to be either destroyed or removed. Now, effort is made to place the replica of its 1.2 m original clock, which was portrayed by a water colour painting of the church showing the clocks facing north, south, east and west, drawn by Mr John Turnbull Thomson, an influential British architect and artist who lived from 1821 to 1884.


Luckily, other areas of this church are well maintained as the church was constantly used by churchgoers before they moved their services to the Parsih Hall while the restoration work is ongoing.


Though my stay in Penang was only four days and three nights, I find it meaningful and fulfilling as I have the chance to recall my old memories.




Your Chief Servant,


James Oh
Founder and Group CEO


Skype me at james.oh18
http://liftyouup.blogspot.com

IS GOD THE AUTHOR OF SIN ?

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Answer is definitely No if you are referring to the real intention of the Living and Mighty God. He is very consistent with Holiness - abundance of love and slow in anger. Because of His characteristics the fallen angels took advantage of Him and wanted to be god as well. He sent His only son to earth to redeem our sins is also part of the BIG picture He initiated from day one. As the Mighty God knows everything in the first place, he knows how the fallen angels and human beings think from day one.

This can be seen by how God chose his people as advocated in the Scripture, as follow:-
By men’s nature – unless the person is drawn to Christ granted by God.
In Exodus 7:2 -5 Now we know that God did this for His own glory and as a sign to both Israel and Egypt .

In this case, God knew that Pharaoh would not hear and bow to Him. God knows that the Pharaoh will harden his heart which is already desperately wicked and will do harm to any person who does not obey him. After Christ, we should take the interpretation that his sin destroy his ownself. However, if you view from the Law through Moses, it is acceptable that this is due to divine judgment repeated in the Scripture.

God have given humans the free will. In this sense, he will not revoke the free will which He has given though His covenants. He knows that those who refused to listen to Him will naturally face disaster. God intervenes to rescue His people out from Egypt as they cried for His help. You can see how He parted the red sea to allow them to cross over and not others who chased after His chosen people.

As such, you can see that sin can come in so many different forms, with and without the individual's knowledge. In the above case, we were told that Pharaoh feels uneasy when he see Jews. God knows every heart and Pharaoh's heart is also not an exception.

That’s why we have to constantly deny ourselves and take up the cross and follow Him as we have inherited Adam's sin. You can see that pagans also recognize that the greatest enemy is sin of themselves. – invisible to them. And yet sins can manipulate the minds so as to achieve some extraordinary achievements to certain extent. The difference here is that they pushed themselves to achieve them, not in our case where God is using us, as the vessel to do His work, and not our work.

Here, once we open our hearts to Him and He shall make all these visible in our eyes and we are able to see things from His perspective. By grounding our hearts with His word and leading us to trust Him more. We shall then always let the spirit take the lead, rather than our flesh. Never underestimate the power of sin, we cannot see on our own eyes, we need Christ to make it visible. Wouldn’t that this point has been well demonstrated in scripture.

At the same time, we must be cautious too as the devil can also quote bible very well. He (God) warns us about these things out of love, so that we don’t fall. He understand ourselves more than us. He knows how many hairs each of us have, far better than us. Such a illustration can be obtained through Jesus' own experience where the devil also tried to tempt Him on three occasions. He knows that the devil will tempt Him, so do us.

Again, we will receive His blessing of protection from the devil who cannot touch us because we belong to Him. Similar to the story line of a wolf. It claimed to have similar status like the tiger when it bring the tiger to the jungle and claim that every other animals was running away from it similar to the tiger.

That’s why we treasure His relationship very much. It’s more than just a political relationship, which goes deep into our hearts. Internalisation to be Christ like - the goal for every Christian.

If we understand that no one can come to Christ provided it is granted by God. On our own will, we are incapable to do so. This is the result of the sin committed by Adam and Eve.

Consequently, we want virtually to have unlimited power and authority within the sphere of our domains. – the danger of our own self desire. And the only restraint on our self wickedness is the holy arm of God. In this sense, the free will given to us is to choose whether to follow God or follow our own selves.

Will in the verse should be read as passive hardening. God does no violence to Pharoah’s will. In the above case, Pharoah chose not to obey Him and follow his own will which brought self destruction to himself.

Similarly, once freedom of our flesh takes the lead, and not spiritual, then we are certainly exposed to sin.

Now we can clearly see how God let the evil inclinations and evil intentions of fallen men to bring about his own redemption. Or so called free will of man. Similarly for Judas’s case. It must be reminded that God never coerce any evil thing on him, rather his own evil action that brought him self destruction.

God gives mercy to the elect by working faith in their hearts. He gives justice to the reprobate by leaving them in their own sins. One group receives mercy, on the other hand the other group receives justice. No one is a victim of justice. We can’t complain that there is unrighteousness in God.


Your Chief Servant,

James Oh

Founder and Group CEO

Skype me at james.oh18

LIFE IS ABUNDANCE OF LOVE

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,


LIFE

I felt sad when I heard about;

Faith without love is dead;
Love without work is also dead;
Similarly, Faith without work is fatal.

It is a dead end to me, so I look up and cry to Him;

Then, I heard a whisper from the above;

Faith with love is Life;
Love with work is also Life;
Similarly, Faith with work is alive.

I jumped up with joy..

And I heard another wisher announcing:-

To work with love is passion;
To reap life to its fullest;
Is to live with abundance of Love.

BIG PICTURE

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

The danger of detailed indwelling of His words may cause element of pride to creep into our life so easily without our knowledge. The danger is so rampant and may cause the Big picture of His fundamental principles to become blur and evaporate from our hearts, so to speak.

From the surface, everyone maybe talking differently. But they are actually talking about the same issue with different perspectives, according to their individual level of understanding. As none of us is perfect except Christ, this indicates well that He is holding the wild card and none can be independent from Him. As such we need to seek Him and cling to Him closely so as to walk with Him without any distraction. Look at the example of King David, who had clung to Him so closely yet he committed a couple of serious sins.

It is crystal clear of our sinful nature, the tendency of such sinful act is extremely high. This has been well substantiated in the Scripture pre and post Christ. For instance, Peter had even denounced Him three times after He was prosecuted, the one who had spent time with Him during his (Peter) life time. Don’t mention about us, who has no such privilege.

Wouldn’t you agree on how He constantly reminds and cautions us about the human's sin, which normally operates against God's characteristics that are full of abundant love and slow in anger. He wants us to trust God and ask God to intervene, so that we can walk in accordance with His will, and not our will. Through alignment to His perspective that we are able to walk by faith, and not by sight.

Our greatest enemy is our own selves, which is invisible inside us. Inwards rather outwards. Which is always misunderstood by us as if it is derived from external forces or circumstances, rather than ourselves. As such, this had been addressed by Matthew in 16:24 - self denial before we take up the cross. As we usually act or pretend to be good with God. Alternatively, we make our own god which is fully controlled by us, and not the other way round. No surprise to me that so many gods were created by humans in the past (Read the book of Romans) till to date.

Denial of oneself is the very 1st step in taking up the cross, deny yourselves and your thoughts. In endeavoring to attain the real knowledge from God, we must be very careful in using our wisdom to interpret the Scriptures according to the way we believe rather than the common understanding of the crowd that is pleasing to our ears.

Deny, in like manner, your own power. Cherish the deep conviction that it is those who are weak; those who are nothing that God can use. No wonder that God always use the weak to perform the miracles, contradictory to common understanding of strong person who has so called talents in a particular field as we normally understand. By believing so, it may undermine God's power. Continuous denial of your own power is the way to draw the power and grace from God. His grace will make anyone lacks nothing no matter what condition he is in. Despite his physical body may cry out in pain. However, the inner man inside him will stay dominant and help overwhelm his pain. As such, he can cry out rejoice, the way so many saints have experienced. It well illustrates the norm and the power of God's grace. That is very crucial to have these two perspectives from our eyes.

That's why trusting in Him wholeheartedly is crucial so as to let him take the lead always. Hasn't He demonstrated to us that He can overcome all temptations because He obeys His Father, who is inside Him.

He shall grant us “Special Goggles” so that we can see the invisible. So that we are able to see how He dwells with us clearly. He wants us to pray for that particular person and keep on trusting Him to do the miracles if it is His will.

Blessed because you can see all these things.
Blessing is not equal to our human understanding of comfort.
Blessing is something to put our soul to good rest, peace of mind. Once you have tasted the sweetness, you will never want to let go.

Even gentiles also aware of the wisdom that the greatest enemy is their own as the saying that no one can stop you - rain or shine, but yourself.

As such, we need to clean and clear those impurities with the assistance from the Holy Spirit, which is the whole plan why God planted this spirit in human hearts in the first place. It also affirmed why we always long for Him.

At last but not least, we pray that this article is able to assist you to see this big picture clearly by now. We pray in Jesus' wonderful name. Amen.


Your Chief Servant,

James Oh

Founder and Group CEO

Skype me at james.oh18
http://liftyouup.blogspot.com

UNTITLED

My Dearest friends,


Talent is not enough,
Positive altitude is not everything,
Love is great
Love is mighty
Love is life
In short, love is everything
Nothing is impossible through love.
God is love
God is everything.

Your Chief Servant,

James Oh

Founder and Group CEO

Skype me at james.oh18

http://liftyouup.blogspot.com

GOD IS EVERYTHING

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Talent is not enough,
Positive altitude is not everything,
Love is great
Love is mighty
Love is life
In short, love is everything
Nothing is impossible through love.
God is love
God is everything.

Your Chief Servant,

James Oh

Founder and Group CEO

Skype me at james.oh18

http://liftyouup.blogspot.com

LIFE

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

I have no life in the past
I assumed it is the life I am searching for
I worked hard for my assumed life
I thought I could do it through my own way

Through job, I find vanity
Through money, I find vanity
Through power, I find vanity
That is not the true life

When I cried to the Lord
He whispers to my heart
My grace is suffice
Will make you lack nothing

I know it is hard for you to believe
That’s why I sent my only begotten Son to die on the cross
To accomplish everything for you
For those who believe in Him, will have Life

It sounds too good to be true
Yet it is the truth
Knowing that Human by themselves can’t do good
Repent now and receive the salvation

For those who are born again
Shall see His kingdom
Then you shall be convinced and convicted
Your heart shall voluntarily open to Him

He is knocking at your door
Waiting for you to open your door
Once you open it to Him
He will join you forever

Then you shall have life
Life with abundance of love
Is a great blessing from the above;
Grace and peace shall be with you forever.


Your Chief Servant,

James Oh

Founder and Group CEO

Skype me at james.oh18

http://liftyouup.blogspot.com

SUBMISSION

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Obedience is not a bad word,
Neither is it rude,
It is not an oppressive force;

It is to acknowledge His existence
To appreciate what He had done for you
To show your love towards Him
Because He loves you first

It is a natural response of your hearts to Him
After He had convicted and convinced your hearts
That make you submit to Him voluntarily

By doing so, you shall eat the good of the land
That is why He provides for you in the first place
Because He cares and loves you more than anything
His blessings to you from day one when you are born

Through obedience, you appropriate the seeds of blessing.
That is the way you shall be clothed in humility.
Through humility, you shall be able to live victoriously

Now you can see how great is His love to you.
Deeper than ocean;
Higher than the sky;
It is beyond measurement

Cheers and have a lovely day,

James Oh

THE OPERATION OF SIN

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,


May be it is good to dwell with this issue earlier by tackling and understanding it first. Here, I am using the metaphor of “plucking the ripe fruits first”, whereby we should pluck the low hanging fruits first, and then move on to the higher ones on the tree.

Our Christianity walk is a journey and not a destination. However, there is a great blessing that God make us realize that our purpose on earth is to achieve Christlikeness – that is the tangible outcome we are seeking on earth, so as to walk right with God. This is very much in accordance with the principle, approach and spirit of the Bible as a whole. I would rather call it a Big Picture.

RIGHTEOUSNESS

To apprehend the true meaning of this word, it is easier to express it in a scale where righteousness is pointing towards one end while sin is pointing to the other opposite end. Since the true meaning of righteousness varies from one individual to another, therefore it may be useful to understand meaning of sin first.

SIN

Sin is defined as something other than righteousness. Sin violates religious and moral laws. It may be caused by something from the weaknesses of our flesh eg. physical desires such as pride, honour, comfort, pleasure, ego, jealousy, ect…In a nutshell, it can come in many different forms, whether you like it or not. It has to to be given equal weight as rightenousness.

As we are well aware that after man fell, no man can do good with his own ability. Hence we must be extremely serious about this subject which no one should take lightly.We inherited the original sin from our ancestor, Adam and Eve. Bear in mind that both of them stayed in the garden of Eden near to God. Here, the devil was so smart and deceive them to take the fruit of knowledge. This well illustrate the point of the devil's power, is very much stronger than any of us or all of us. Another good point to note seriously is that they are near to God, yet the heart is not wholly dedicated to God, they fall eventually. That’s why the scripture also gives us sufficient warnings to safeguard this force, because they can come in thousands or millions forms. Worse still, they may be invisible in our own eyes.

We must be aware of the operation of sin so that we will not get ourselves expose unnecessarily. It is clear that righteousness always triumph over sin. Bear in mind that our Lord, Jesus was also tempted by Satan who can quote Scriptures so well. However Jesus is the perfect man, without sin and can conquer devils. He, as a human had demonstrated the way to conquer them and win the victory for His Father. He had performed perfect prayer before He was put on the cross and claim the victory for His Father. He descended to world to carry out a purpose for His Father. Being adopted children of Him, wouldn’t you think that we were created for His purpose as well. Our purpose of Christian life is also to gloriify God our Father. I am convinced that I shall first deny myself, take up the cross and follow him, the process of being Christlike.

Here, my purpose of this paper is provide an in-depth understandings of this operation, which I am strongly convince that I am able to see all these – as a great blessing from the work of the Holy Spirit. If not, there is no way for me to see it so clearly with my own ability. Similarly I am also convicnced that the stronger your faith is, the clearer picture you can get, which others can see. This is the fundamental of understanding the faith by itself.

It is a great blessing to opt for this Christian walk because we have a mighty and living God, who knows the human being so well that on their own, they can’t walk right with God. That’s the reason He sent us a helper to guide us and stay inside us so long as we open our hearts voluntarily to Him. That’s what He say “I am waiting at the door, whoever opens shall join them. We must understand Him that being a loving God, He has abundant love, but he is slow in anger, will not use force to enter our heart – free will of our own.

To receive His love, we need to open our hearts voluntarily to Him. Then only will he help us to see the devil or our enemy. The impurity of our heart must be removed and replaced by Him. Then He can help us see the invisible but not limited to the devil. By then we can safeguard ourselves and will not fall into temptations.

In order for us to apprehend fully the correct perspective of righteousness according to God’s will, perhaps it very much easier and clearer for us to understand the other extreme end of how sin works, well before we can draw a thin line between these two boundaries. Hence the level of your faith will determine its understanding and application.

Therefore it is more appropriate for us to fully understand the lower end before we build up our strong foundation of righteousness. Word by itself can be used as a double edge sword – well demonstrated by our Master, who knows the word perfectly and can defend himself against the devil who tried to tempt Him. The question arises is who else can do the perfect job. I am convinced that Christ is the only man that can do that. That’s the strong reason why He asked us to deny ourselves No one can replace Him – that why our mission here is to be Christ likelike. Therefore it is important that we reveal to others what God reveals to us, so that He can reveal more to us. The growth of our faith.

Your Chief Servant,

James Oh

Founder and Group CEO

Skype me at james.oh18

http://liftyouup.blogspot.com

SECOND MIRACLE WITH MY FRIEND

Dear Loving Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Grace and peace to you.

Thank God, for His grace that I step forward to share with you another miracle, with the sole intention of glorifying Him. I know that all this is His work and I am made use of as one of His vessels.

One night, I was invited by the same Christian friends to join their bible study group at their newly found church at Kelana Jaya. Before our bible study class, I made use of the toilet and flush water before I left. I noticed the water kept on flowing out from the tank. I tried to stop it, but to no avail. My friend saw it and came in to assist, but also to no avail. All of the sudden, the phrase of John 16:24 that says "until now you have asked nothing in My name. Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete." struck my mind again. I then proposed to pray about it. The moment I finished the statement, he cried out "done." Both of us instantly thank Lord again for His good work. This second miracle truly make my friend convinced. I can't really recall whether we shared this incident with the rest of our Christian friends there.

Thank God for His wonderful blessings again and hope to see you again,

God bless

James Oh

EXTEND YOUR HANDS TO US, PLEASE

Dear Loving Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

America in Deep shit;
We heard your voice even you don't cry out;
We wanted to let you know you are not alone;
The rests of the world is trying hard to reach you

America, you are not fighting alone;
We want you to continuously lead;
This set back is not the edge;
But it is a turning point;
And it meant to make you stronger;

The rest of the world will never abandon you
America, America, America
We heard your voice
That's why we are trying to reach you

We know that you are hiding away from us
Nevertheless we keep on trying all feasible means to reach you
We just want to let you know that we will never give up hope to reach you
We know you will keep on trying to hide away from us

We know how you react, and the pains you are suffering
Even though you hide from us
We never blame you
But don't belittle us although we are not so big as you think
But our heart and voice is overwhelmingly BIG

Even you reject us thousands times
We wouldn't feel the pains contrary to your view
That's why we still have the energy to keep on reaching you
Even when you keep on running away from us

What we need from you is
You extend your hands to us
We are willing to hold your hands to walk through the journey with you

That is our commitment and we will do it wholeheartedly
We will gather those liked minded people
To sing this song and continue to sing this song over and over
Until and unless you extend your hands to us

We know how you think
We are not irritating you, as you perceived;
We know that is not your fault
But we can't leave you;
Ignore or abandon you

This is because we care and are concern for you
That's why we ask you to extend your hands to us
So that we can reach you

We will not give up and will continue to sing this song
Until and unless you extend your hand to us.


Here, we invite artists, producers and those who are keen to work with us to hit in a big scale, on commercial basis, so as to create a huge impact to lift people up. Then please email to jamesoh1003@yahoo.co.uk or skype me at james.oh18.

Please help us to spread the news. Thank you in advance,

Thank you and look forward to hear from you soon,

Before you leave this blog, please click at the title of this article to view the first draft of the song being blogged at the website of famous author, Miss Lilous Mace.

Thank you for your precious time and wish you a fulfilling weekend.



James OH

THE SERMON ON THE IMPORTANCE OF HUMAN LIFE

Dear Brothers and Sisters,


Last Sunday, my family attended our Sunday service at the DUMC church, Section 13, Petaling Jaya.

The sermon for the week was centred on the importance of human life, which made us so excited to share with you. Its importance was well entrenched in the Scriptures as follows:-
1. Life comes from God and belongs to God (Genesis 2:7).

Here, you may able to see the rationale why many countries are moving away from death penalty for serious crimes. This move has been advocated by the International Human Rights Association and the voice has been well accepted worldwide. Their arguments is in line with Scripture.

Second issue is involved with greater sensitivity on the status of abortion. Here, it is very much dependent on the circumstances. If it is life threatening to the mother, then the case may be treated differently. Similarly treatment should be also extended to rape victims. Their choice of keeping the baby is dependent on the mother's will. They can choose to give the baby up for adoption after the delivery.


2. Human beings are made in the image of God. (Genesis 1:26,27)

God appointed human beings to be the trustee for all other creations on earth. As such, human beings is God's treasure.

3. In our body is the precious life-blood which God puts in us. (Genesis 9:5,6)

One thing is certain that no matter how advance is our technology, we cannot produce anything identical to the nature. For instance synthetic rubber is not as hard as the natural rubber. Worst still, scientists cannot produce blood and that is why all hospitals frequently ask the donors to step forward to donate blood whenever the blood bank runs low, despite we have entered into 21 century.

4. We do not have the ability to reproduce human lives that are eternal.

We cannot produce blood through our own invention, nor can we reproduce human beings in the laboratory. We are very certain that we cannot do this in the future as well.

5. Inherent in every human being is the potential to change the world for good.

This is something very great that the Mighty God has given to all human beings: the ability to cope with changes for good. This attribution is solely contributed by God to human beings with the following features:-

1. Rationality - this enable us to use this to the maximum for the good of human beings through our brain - the great gift from God.

2. Morality - God calls the shot and not anyone of us. In this connection, He gave us His Word. Everything and anything should be looked upon from His perspective.

3. Creativity - Inherited from Him so that we can use our creativity to cope with the changes and for our good.

4. Eternity - no matter what, our hearts always long for Him.

5. Personal - so that human can build relationship with God directly. We will step forward to be His witnesses from generations to generations so as to glorify Him, and not us.


Hope the above discussion has given you an insight of the importance of human lives. We also pray to Him that He will reveal to us should we have any different interpretation. We pray in His wonderful name. Amen.



Your Chief Servant,

James Oh

Founder and Group CEO

Skype me at james.oh18
http://liftyouup.blogspot.com