Last night was Regen's 3rd birthday and we met up at Merilyn's place to count God's blessings (with no parental supervision as Uncle Jimmy & Aunty Florence were out of town :)... not that us responsible working adults needed any anyways!)
Walking in I was met with good old Rowas' happy "Julia Goolia" greeting, then saw big Mix sitting comfortably on the couch. Apparently he's taken time off his busy schedule from being Dr Vet in HK to see his much much muchly missed brothers and sisters in Christ at Perth BP... yeeaahh right!! He's here more becos of Dave & Maryann's wedding in a week's time!
The night began by singing songs from TSMS, some sharing then Mazaks' message on Obedience and Blessings. Greg Mazak has always been one of my favourite speakers plus the bonus of having on-screen notes, I got a lot out of last night's message.
Here are a few dot points of what I learnt (and want to apply):
- Trust the Lord (Prob 3:5,6)
- We do not need to understand, all we need to do is to lean on God who will make our paths straight and bless us with success in the things that the Lord wants us to do: to glorify Him
- Fear the Lord who blesses us with personal prosperity (Prob 3:7,8)
- Make the choice to fear the Lord
- Humility: Low opinion of who I am
- Reverence: High opinion of God
- Repentance: Turn away from evil
- Honour the Lord who blesses us with physical prosperity (Prob 3:9,10)
- Honouring God is a "choice"
- It is not a prosperity gospel; we give because we want to honour God who is worthy of all honour
- Chastening is proof that God loves me
- It is not the punishment of sin (that was taken care of at Calvary)
- At times, the righteous does not prosper but that does NOT negate the message that the pathway to blessings is obedience to God
- In all things, big and small, I want to acknowledge God (which I do not now). Often it's only the big things or things of uncertainty that I commit to God while leaning unto my own understanding for the rest. How dumb is it for me to rely on my limited, fallible knowledge and not consult my heavenly Father who knows all things?
- Obey. full stop.
After discussion we had some party pies, sausage rolls, cake, fruits, finger foods & this "yeast-free" bickies. Jason made a point of how they are like the jumbo version of the ones used for Lord's supper which I thought was quite funny cos I didn't see it before! Adrian reckons that sausage rolls always taste nicer at other people's house and Micah was just happy to see meat pies smothered in dead horse (FYI dead horse = OZ slang for tomato sauce). John took our orders for coffees and they were de-li-sh, Rowas went the extra mile to put the cream from the cake into her flat white. Nice move Rowas, nice move!!
A few people had left by this time so the rest of us decided to play iMAginiff after the discussion had turned to hospital maggots and motorcycle accidents in Taiwan. I must say, it was another nice move from Rowas to introduce the game.
This is how the game works: a dice is rolled and a player is chosen as the "subject" of a question. The question has 6 choices and each player vote on the answer they think is correct. Players will score if they chose the most popular answer - even if its politically incorrect, the tribe has spoken! This was fun as you get to see what others think of you and how well you know each other. Some questions were easy and some were tricky. For example, the group was unanimous on Merilyn building a snowman on a ski trip, Micah disputing the amount upon receiving a $10k inheritance, Julia the cookie monster, Darrell wanting an Elvis Pelvis, Rowena the Wonder Woman and Wendy being Tweety bird if she was a cartoon character. Other questions were total guess works that divided the group, questions not even the subjects themselves knew the answers to. Truc led the scoreboard by far and despite a few sabotage attempts to challenge her that saw her reverse a number of steps, she soldiered on and claimed the winning title. This game was hilarious with no need of banks (monopoly) nor dictionaries (scrabble). But it did require the very basic of logic thinking: ie, if your cards are orange, you move the orange thing on the board and not purple, Darrell. If you are the dice thrower and you get the question correct, you move 2 spaces not 1, Darrell. *lol*
Only Agnes from Adelaide (or was it Melbourne) could decribe Regen's 3rd birthday. She says and I quote: "Awesome Man!"
