1 Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God,

To God’s holy people in Ephesus,^[a] the faithful in Christ Jesus:

² Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Praise for Spiritual Blessings in Christ

³ Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. ⁴ For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love ⁵ he^[b] predestined us for adoption to sonship^[c] through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— ⁶ to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. ⁷ In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace ⁸ that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and understanding, ⁹ he^[d] made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, ¹⁰ to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment—to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ.

Being called an apostle is really something. The meaning of a apostle is a messenger and ambassador. Messenger and Ambassador. Thats something. That means that Paul is a person who represents Christ and more than that, is a messenger of Christ. We are all apostles, ask ourselves are we messengers of Christ? Are we representing Christ? Ephesians is written in the context pf this place called Ephesus. This is an ancient Greek city,

He opens the book of Ephesians with praise, praise to our Lord Jesus Christ. "predestined us for adoption to sonship." It shows that God wants to take as as his children, not just adopted children but children through Jesus Christ. Jesus can choose to reveal to us His will in visions and dreams. His will is to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ. 

Job's Graduation

⁷ After the Lord had said these things to Job, he said to Eliphaz the Temanite, “I am angry with you and your two friends, because you have not spoken the truth about me, as my servant Job has. ⁸ So now take seven bulls and seven rams and go to my servant Job and sacrifice a burnt offering for yourselves. My servant Job will pray for you, and I will accept his prayer and not deal with you according to your folly. You have not spoken the truth about me, as my servant Job has.” ⁹ So Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite did what the Lord told them; and the Lord accepted Job’s prayer.
¹⁰ After Job had prayed for his friends, the Lord restored his fortunes and gave him twice as much as he had before. ¹¹ All his brothers and sisters and everyone who had known him before came and ate with him in his house. They comforted and consoled him over all the trouble the Lord had brought on him, and each one gave him a piece of silver^[a] and a gold ring.
¹² The Lord blessed the latter part of Job’s life more than the former part. He had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen and a thousand donkeys. ¹³ And he also had seven sons and three daughters. ¹⁴ The first daughter he named Jemimah, the second Keziah and the third Keren-Happuch. ¹⁵ Nowhere in all the land were there found women as beautiful as Job’s daughters, and their father granted them an inheritance along with their brothers.
¹⁶ After this, Job lived a hundred and forty years; he saw his children and their children to the fourth generation. ¹⁷ And so Job died, an old man and full of years.

Job Graduates! Why do i say so? Because Job has passed the test! God put Job through a test and he passed! So, what is the result of his passing? Very good as seen from what God gave him. Job pleaded with God to take Him away, but did not once discredit God's justice. Sure, Job asked God to take Him away, to end the suffering. And Job totally do not understand why God did this.

You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my plans without knowledge?’
    Surely I spoke of things I did not understand,
    things too wonderful for me to know.

But he pressed on and did not sin and trust God. He did not do anything stupid. He did not curse God nor blame God. He had the God-i-dont-understand-why attitude not the its-all-your-fault attitude. There is a huge difference. I will talk more on it soon! :D Job is a very interesting character in the bible!

⁸ “Would you discredit my justice?
    Would you condemn me to justify yourself?
⁹ Do you have an arm like God’s,
    and can your voice thunder like his?
¹⁰ Then adorn yourself with glory and splendor,
    and clothe yourself in honor and majesty.
¹¹ Unleash the fury of your wrath,
    look at all who are proud and bring them low,
¹² look at all who are proud and humble them,
    crush the wicked where they stand.
¹³ Bury them all in the dust together;
    shroud their faces in the grave.
¹⁴ Then I myself will admit to you
    that your own right hand can save you.

The Lord spoke the Job these! I just found these amazing. Firstly it is God who questions Job. God asks Job this question.: 
Would you discret my justice? Would you condemn me to justify yourself?

We really do that a lot. We live on this earth and a lot of things seem to be out of our control. We dont understand a lot of things. More over, we cannot see the big picture. We are limited by our human understanding and we can only comprehend the now. That is a huge limitation. Compare that to God who can comprehend everything. He see everything and can control everything. We are in some situation and we dont understand why, we try to justify ourselves, we try so hard to come out with our own version of reasoning. Like, I have already done this and that. We question God, we ask God of the reason why are we in this situation. We ask and question God. But do we condemn God to justify ourselves? We question him to the point of condemnation? We ask Him why are we in this situation? We question and blame God? We disobey Him? God is justice. There is no question about that! we know that is true but yet sometimes we go back and condemn Him. God describes His glory in the rest of the verses. Although mankind can achieve many things, but none can be compared with what God can do. Himself.

Christmas Bash

This Christmas Bash has been fun to produce, yet all the actors were filled with the spirit while producing it. For me, it was really my first ever time acting in any sort of drama. It went extremely well! I really want to thank God for all the help He have rendered to me! Before the show, I prayed to God asking God to pour His presence unto us, so that we can go and perform to our best! Thank God that he really poured His presence unto us while we are acting! I was quite worried that i would not act well because this was my first time acting, the character i am acting is the exact opposite from my personaility. But it is really great and encouraging that people told me that i acted really well! I am totally not expecting that! Thank God for everything He had done! :D

Is He not the one who governs justice?

¹⁶ “If you have understanding, hear this;
    listen to what I say.
¹⁷ Can someone who hates justice govern?
    Will you condemn the just and mighty One?
¹⁸ Is he not the One who says to kings, ‘You are worthless,’
    and to nobles, ‘You are wicked,’
¹⁹ who shows no partiality to princes
    and does not favor the rich over the poor,
    for they are all the work of his hands?
²⁰ They die in an instant, in the middle of the night;
    the people are shaken and they pass away;
    the mighty are removed without human hand.

 How could Job say God is unjust when we see Him governing justice? God was the one who administer justice to those who "think they are above the law", like kings and queens. He judged each with partiality. He does not favour the rich nor the poor. He is objective in his judgment. He removes people, judges people without us interfering. Neither can we interfere God's work. Our God is sovereign. If we know that is true, how can God be unjust in judging Job? God is impartial and He is good regardless of the situation. He is only wanted people to gain some spiritual benefit in the process, whatever the process is. In this case, it is Job going to another level in his relationship with God.

Who really understands Job?

² “Hear my words, you wise men;
    listen to me, you men of learning.
³ For the ear tests words
    as the tongue tastes food.
⁴ Let us discern for ourselves what is right;
    let us learn together what is good.

⁵ “Job says, ‘I am innocent,
    but God denies me justice.
⁶ Although I am right,
    I am considered a liar;
although I am guiltless,
    his arrow inflicts an incurable wound.’
⁷ Is there anyone like Job,
    who drinks scorn like water?
⁸ He keeps company with evildoers;
    he associates with the wicked.
⁹ For he says, ‘There is no profit
    in trying to please God.’

¹⁰ “So listen to me, you men of understanding.
    Far be it from God to do evil,
    from the Almighty to do wrong.
¹¹ He repays everyone for what they have done;
    he brings on them what their conduct deserves.
¹² It is unthinkable that God would do wrong,
    that the Almighty would pervert justice.
¹³ Who appointed him over the earth?
    Who put him in charge of the whole world?
¹⁴ If it were his intention
    and he withdrew his spirit^[a] and breath,
¹⁵ all humanity would perish together
    and mankind would return to the dust.

 Elihu really is doing something really unusual in that time. He not an elder, therefore considered not wise. Yet he is lecturing 3 older men and Job. That is considered outrageous in that time. It is equivalent to us going up to a professor and lecturing him on the things that he taught. That is outrageous. Yet, his words speak truth. so much truth. Elihu was teaching Job about God's heart and character. In any case and situation, God is still great, he does not pervert justice. From 

¹² It is unthinkable that God would do wrong,
    that the Almighty would pervert justice.

Means that God is just. He does not do something that is out of that nature. He will always deliver justice. Everything he does will always be in response to something we have done:
 
¹¹ He repays everyone for what they have done;
    he brings on them what their conduct deserves.

And based on that He will always judge us accordingly and do unto us on what we deserve. Why is that so? Because God is the creator of heaven and earth. 
 
¹³ Who appointed him over the earth?
    Who put him in charge of the whole world?
¹⁴ If it were his intention
    and he withdrew his spirit^[a] and breath,
¹⁵ all humanity would perish together
    and mankind would return to the dust.

That is the key. God can kill the whole of humanity in a breath if he will. So, God cannot pervert justice. He is justice. The things that happen to you are just. That is a fact. But why does it happen if it is just? That will be answered soon :D in the next verses. 

Suffering... Unlimited suffering.

¹⁹ “Or someone may be chastened on a bed of pain
    with constant distress in their bones,
²⁰ so that their body finds food repulsive
    and their soul loathes the choicest meal.
²¹ Their flesh wastes away to nothing,
    and their bones, once hidden, now stick out.
²² They draw near to the pit,
    and their life to the messengers of death.^[c]
23 Yet if there is an angel at their side,
    a messenger, one out of a thousand,
    sent to tell them how to be upright,
²⁴ and he is gracious to that person and says to God,
    ‘Spare them from going down to the pit;
    I have found a ransom for them—
²⁵ let their flesh be renewed like a child’s;
    let them be restored as in the days of their youth’—
²⁶ then that person can pray to God and find favor with him,
    they will see God’s face and shout for joy;
    he will restore them to full well-being.
²⁷ And they will go to others and say,
    ‘I have sinned, I have perverted what is right,
    but I did not get what I deserved.
²⁸ God has delivered me from going down to the pit,
    and I shall live to enjoy the light of life.’
 ²⁹ “God does all these things to a person—
    twice, even three times—
³⁰ to turn them back from the pit,
    that the light of life may shine on them.

The passage above really speaks to me because we see here that this passage was said in the old testament, which means Jesus had not walked on this earth yet this passage says exactly the same thing as those passages in the new testament. people can experience pain, chastised in a bed of pain. So we ask why do we experience such pain? such suffering? Maybe some of us can reason that it is because of the sin in our lives. whether it is committed by us or by the generations before. people can take such suffering till the point of death. Then these people are told to make their life right with God. Some ransom has been paid for and they were renewed. They were saved from hell (God has delivered me from going down to the pit, and I shall live to enjoy the light of life.). God can do and allow pain and suffering to happen in someone's life just to make sure they understand that they need God and to summarize concisely:

God does all these things to a person—twice, even three times— to turn them back from the pit, that the light of life may shine on them.

So that their lives maybe saved. This was so so concise and epic. Everything happens for the good of Christ. Even though Jesus had not died on the cross but what this passage was preaching was the same and consistent with the new testament! God sent Jesus to be the offering, the ransom mentioned in verse 24. So that people can be delivered of their sins. So that people can receive eternal life not eternal damnation. 

Just to add on from the Life application Bible, Job already knew these things which was consistent with the things the Job mentioned previously and Elihu was accusing Job of not listening to God which was not true at all. Job was a Godly man.

Mission Trip to Philippines

Team 4:

Andy Chia
Jun Jie
Eric Han
Joseph Ng
Wei Hao
Hannah Lai
Kai Qin
Siew Yu
Faith
Xue Le

1 December

I am excited for the trip! This trip is going to have many different experiences but the purpose is the same, it is to serve one God! Regardless of the purpose, it is to do God's will. Especially in this trip, we are really uncertain about so many things! We do not know a lot of things, even the pastors do not know a lot, cannot plan ahead properly because of the lack of knowledge. We touched down safely in Cebu at 5.30pm. Brought down our stuff and all the boxes and solar panels. We were stuck in the customs! They did not allow so many boxes to go through customs. We prayed for God's help and He did let us go through without the necessary paperwork. We checked in to a nice villa and had a good dinner. The people here in Philippines have this problem of rubber time. Being on time here is not a priority. Our dinner took a long time to come, but I was grateful for the dinner. We closed the day on a high note! Excited and ready for the next few days and the things that we are going to do.

2 December

We had a great breakfast and after that we were ready to prepare for the skit. We were actually supposed to leave earlier at , but because of this so called rubber time, we were delayed for ferry at 5.30pm. We practiced the skit called "Reconciliation" for a good 2 hours. Frankly speaking, I think our team was not really prepared to do and perform the skits. I have been acting as "Adam" in the skit. The story is about the event that happened in Genesis 1, about God's creation: Adam and Eve. Its about Adam and Eve being tempted by the Devil and fell to sin. Then Jesus revealed his awesome plan to save the world through His own death. While I was going through the skit, I was thinking and praying about how can I relate to the people there. I have 2 'Eves', one of them is Hannah and the other Wan Jun. After which we left the nice villa and went to take the fast craft to Ormoc. I was praying on the fast craft that I can act out the role of Adam well and all the actors in the skit can portray a good play to touch the hearts of people there.  I even re-read Genesis 1-2 to get a feeling of Adam and the original story written in the bible. We reached Ormoc safely. Things were not as solid as we planned. I saw the destruction of that place for the very first time. The place was badly damaged by Yolanda. There were no lights on the streets. Food was not abundant. There were many people! And we saw many houses without roofs and damaged walls. I really felt the destruction first hand. I was already prepared to live in poor living conditions like the one that we saw. But when we reached the motel, we all prasie God for His provedience. It was like nothing we were expecting. There were lights and air conditioning. Though we all had to share the function room of the hotel, but we still had such great amenities! At least we had working electricity and had 2 toilets to work with! The building was standing and had no problems with its structure other than some damaged pieces of roof. Totally amazing place at ground zero.  Praise God for that! We had awesome dinner at a local restaurant and experienced rubber time for the first time. We waited for nearly an hour and a half for it to arrive and the place was not full! But the meal was good and filling. We had a good first night's rest and were excited for the next day ahead.

3 December

We woke up to a great breakfast. Has 2 sunny side ups, bread and ham. We really thank God for His providence. We were totally expecting to eat our energy bars already. Today we have a plan. We plan to go to this village, which they call it Baranggai here. We want to give out rice at this house church in a village! The plan was to distribute the collection tags in the afternoon and have them to come back and collect the rice at 3pm using the tags. So we gave out about 900 tickets. Our people were mostly in charge of the queuing outside the house church. I was in charge of the people at the end of the line, making sure they stay in a single file and start a new line if necessary. The crowd started pouring in, it was manageable. People came intermittently and we only had around 200 people at any point queuing. That was still manageable! I talked to the locals there. They were friendly and great! Even after the disaster, people can still put a smile on their faces. They kept thanking us, and some asked us where are we from. One lady even offered to shelter some of us under her umbrella while she was queuing. It was great! We gave out about a thousand tags. Running along side the tags giving operation, we also had some other team manning the "solar car" where solar panels were set up to charge the local's phones. The car looked ridiculous with solar panels ontop and having leaves attached to the sides to shelter people from sun. Then it was about 1pm and we went back to the motel to eat lunch. Lunch was great. We were preparing to head off again after some rest. We left the motel at 2.30pm and reached the house church again at 3pm. When we reached, we were totally not expecting what we were expecting next. We saw about a thousand people there. All standing around unorganized out side the church waiting for the rice to be distributed. The amount of people there was scary. One, it can turn into a stampede. Two, people can become rowdy and riot. Three, we have no idea how to manage these people. Totally no idea. We were discussing during lunch on how to make people queue up in batches of 50 to collect the rice. We had a plan and now that is clearly not going to work. One of the pastors in that area told us that it would be better to get the people into districts and then they will go through a name list and distribute the rice using the list. All the time the people doing security were praying. Praying that we would be safe and that things all will work out fine. If the people turned angry then we may really lose the situation. I was really praying for God to help us there. There were too many people and too little of us. We had trouble communicating to the people as we needed to organize them into districts and areas. That was really a challenge. But thank God we cleared the whole crowd in the end. We have people coming to us and thanking us for the rice and all. I was really happy after that. Happy that we came here a few thousand miles to came here to share the love of Christ. We were all really happy seeing all the smiles. Despite all the news in the world, and all the help that people pledged. We found out that for quite a number of people, this was their first time receiving aid, which was really surprising. I thought that aid had already reached there. We gave away about a thousand 4kg bags of rice and 3 thousand cans of sardines. That's a lot of food. But for a thousand its just sufficient. We had a tiring day at least for the guys, standing in the hot scorching sun shouting at people. But we learn to trust God, to trust that He will bring us through. It was tiring but spiritually filled. We were so happy that we are of help to the locals there. I was excited for the play! Excited but not nervous. We were having a night rally at a basketball court in the village. There was no stage per se but we just used the area in front of the audience as stage. The turn out was great. While the others were ushering, preparing the stage. We were preparing the skit, running through the final few practices before that actual run. Everything in the skit went well and the response from the audience was great. Praise God for that. We has alter call and many raised their hands to receive Jesus into their lives. Praise God! After which we had a healing session where each team is in charge of a chair where people who need healing just come forward and sit on that chair and we would pray for the person. I was astonished at the people there. It was like anyone who came into that chair and we prayed and the person was healed. Thank God for healing! Thank God for the weather. It did not rain! :D The stars were very beautiful and pretty, we cannot see this sight in Singapore.

4 December

We woke up to another great breakfast! Really thank God for that! :D Scrambled eggs! Really really thank God for the food. I really never thought that we would have such food! Really! Today we have a long day ahead! we are going to distribute more rice! We first went to visit the houses of the people who received Christ and healing at the rally yesterday. There were some issues! Our list was not with us. The translator(the pastor) was the one who wrote down the names and took the paper with him. So what we did was to consolidate the other teams names and split the people equally among the teams. So we went out with a list of names! We went out and started out to find the people. It was difficult to find the people as there were many houses and no system to identify the correct house! There was no address but only the name. So we had to ask around to find the correct person. It was quite difficult. After some time, we found the first house. We installed the solar panels and prayed with the family in that house. Andy went ahead to find the next house, so we got separated. When we were done, we were supposed to meet Andy at a specific meeting point. So when we were done we went back to that meeting point. But unfortunately, we could not find Andy there but only one of the other team. The other team was Melissa's team. We witnessed first hand on how good Melissa's teams were so good with kids. They could attract so many kids and beyond that were ministering and teaching these kids songs and knowledge. It was awesome witnessing that! For some reason that we do not yet know, our translator(also the pastor) appeared out of no where holding the piece of paper that listed all the names of the people we prayed for yesterday at the rally. So now, we can go ahead without Andy and can visit the people that we prayed for! Thank God! So we went and left some people behind to inform Andy just in case he came back that we recovered our list and are on our way to visit the people. We went to a few houses and blessed these people with the solar panels. It was awesome! Later when we were returning, we found out that it was really well planned by God! Andy was really busy talking to the people and really sharing Christ with this young man there. While that was happening, we had something to do because the pastor appeared suddenly with that list! It was really awesome! Praise God! Then we went to distribute rice at the school. The guys were responsible for the transportation of the rice while the girls and the younger guys were responsible for the giving out of rice. Andy was in charge of the distribution of the rice. It was very tiring carrying the rice. The rice sacks were heavy. Very heavy. The operation at the school went very orderly and organized. We even have soldiers from the Australian army and Philippine army to ensure that it sent smoothly. Later some of us stayed back at the school to set up solar panels while the rest went over to the next school to give rice. The setting of solar panels were all in a mess. There was a lot of miscommunication! We could not work out the exact number to give and they could not work out the exact number of solar panels they needed. However after some time we sorted everything out! In the process, some of us went over to the next school to set up solar panels. I also had the opportunity to really talk to and encourage a fellow mission tripper! He felt really discouraged at how little thing he could do. He felt really useless! I went over with another mission tripper to encourage him! We had a great chat him. I told him, whatever we do is not to compare with others. I cannot compare with what pastor did or what John did. Because every single person has their own role and their own purpose by God! And all we need to ask ourselves is whether we had tried our best. Whether we have done our best. Really! And then we prayed with him and brought our focus back to the night rally that we are going to have tonight. when we were finally done with the panels, the rest of the people came back from the other school and we all started to prepare for the night rally. I was one of the skit people and we went to practice the skit. All the other people knew their roles and did their roles amazingly. It started to drizzle and we really prayed against the rain and sure enough, God answered and it stopped raining and the skies cleared. While we were practicing and the time drew near to the actual performance, we were suddenly told that another team would be replacing us. Later we found out, it was pastor's idea to switch as we should give different people to try out acting the skit. Well, even though I was fired from the skit! I get to watch the skit! :D it was funny seeing other acting out the skit! Real funny! I was praying for the salvation of these people here while all these were happening! The time came for the healing session! We prayed for people and people were healed! There were many awesome praise reports! Later we packed up and went back for dinner. We were hungry and tired. Today was really tiring for all of us, but spiritually filled. So many things to thank God for!

5 December

Today was the last day we are going to be in Ormoc city. Today we would be taking the ferry back to Cebu. We set up solar panels at another 2 schools. We experienced the corrupted culture here! We were setting up the panels and the person in charge was telling us that there will be one given to the Captain for his personal use! That was ridiculous! Pastor immediately said that these solar panels are for the school and none will be given for personal use. And that was it. While we were setting up solar panels, we went into a class room where a teacher was teaching the class about Jesus Christ! That was pretty cool. :D we left that place and we went back to the house church to settle some repacking of the rice into proper sacks for accountability. The guys were doing the repacking while the girls went to play with the children. we also learn that instead of taking the ferry at 1pm we would be taking at 3pm instead because of some delays. We went back to the motel and went to pack up and get ready to leave. We left for the ferry, the journey took less than expected. It was faster than the journey to Ormoc surprisingly! When we reached Cebu, then I really saw and compared the difference in the level of destruction! Buildings here were all fine! Electricity was still working! We had sort of a "R&R" at a local shopping center called SM mall! We ate dinner and shopped there! I bought 2 computing books there! It was cheaper than in Singapore there! We checked in into the same villa that we stayed and rested well.

6 December

We woke up to the motel's breakfast and prepared for the flight back to Singapore. This trip has been a very different trip. A trip that we all relied on God, because we really have no clue on what to do and what to expect. this trip has too many things to thank God for! :D Amen and Amen! Singapore! :D