My MBTI - What's yours?

Different results from another MBTI test taken previously.... Wondering if I've changed...

Your #1 Match: INFP

The Idealist You are creative with a great imagination, living in your own inner world.Open minded and accepting, you strive for harmony in your important relationships.It takes a long time for people to get to know you. You are hesitant to let people get close.But once you care for someone, you do everything you can to help them grow and develop. You would make an excellent writer, psychologist, or artist.

Your #2 Match: INTP

The Thinker You are analytical and logical - and on a quest to learn everything you can.Smart and complex, you always love a new intellectual challenge.Your biggest pet peeve is people who slow you down with trivial chit chat.A quiet maverick, you tend to ignore rules and authority whenever you feel like it. You would make an excellent mathematician, programmer, or professor.

Your #3 Match: ENFP

The Inspirer You love being around people, and you are deeply committed to your friends.You are also unconventional, irreverant, and unimpressed by authority and rules.Incredibly perceptive, you can usually sense if someone has hidden motives.You use lots of colorful language and expressions. You're qutie the storyteller! You would make an excellent entrepreneur, politician, or journalist.

What's" Your Personality Type?

The Security Guard

I've only been able to reflect about the previous security guard in my condominium in the past weekend - something I was trying to ignore for the past few months by forcing it to the back of my mind.

I remember the numerous times he had given concessions to my friends in parking/waiting time/ parking just to eat at the nearby eating places (as opposed to visiting someone in condo), the times we drank cold milo on a hot day while chatting about recent happenings, I remember the pride in his voice as he talked about the many grandchildren he had.

I also remember the day on my way to church for service one day, he stopped me with a friendly, "So you're going to church? It's good to be religious."

I dashed off a "Yah, but isn't a relationship with God more important?" and, without waiting for a reply, walked briskly towards the bus stop.

Why didn't I take that opportunity to witness to him, a muslim, and share with him the goodness of Christ? Even if I should miss the last 11:15a.m service, wouldn't it have pleased God more, if I had used that opportunity to potentially bring 1 more soul into His kingdom?

A few months later, I noticed he was no longer around when bringing biscuits to the guard house. It was later known that he was in a coma from stroke and died a few days later.

This made me realize the importance of making every opportunity we're given to evangelise, not to go after people with hammer and tongs, but rather, in making use of every opportunity presented to us, to share what we know about our Lord's goodness. Many times, we cut off meaningful communication in favour of checking against our to-do list; to run in the rat race of adding another feather in our cap, of adding to our accomplishments. Sometimes, the chance for that life-changing conversation is given only once before being lost forever.

Throughout all this time, although he had always addressed me by name, I could not remember his-not even now. Why? The shameful truth is that I never bothered to, too caught up in my supercilious snobbishness which is based on nothing more than man-made social boundaries and privileged circumstances that gave me what I have now.

I pray that I may truly repent and then to be given discernment to see people the way God sees us - unlovable yet loved, detestable yet cared for, undeserved yet given good things - beyond man-made boundaries, social or otherwise that I may do what's right.

Making godly choices

After a bible talk yesterday, a conversation with a friend,Sakae, went like this:

Me: May I ask you a 2-part question?
Sakae(S): Sure, go ahead.
Me: Have you considered if it's godly to go clubbing?
S: I think it depends on the real reasons why you go clubbing. If we're there to hang loose, why not? But if we're there to do sexy moves and get drunk, then as Christians, we may need to consider why we are going clubbing. That's why I would prefer a bar. I feel it's expensive though.
Me: That sounds good, have you also considered if we're being a good steward of our money when we're going to these places?
S: ........ Why don't you ask (a leader's name) about this?
Me: My style will probably lead him to think that I'm questioning his lifestyle choices. I feel that this is a grey area with no fixed rule so it's not something I really need 'guidance' in. Will probably ask people as and when it's opportune to do so to have an understanding of why they choose to go clubbing/not go clubbing. Would you like to ask him?
S: I think I would.
Me: Cool, let me know what he thinks.

Or on going out one-to-one with friends of the opposite gender:

(Another) friend: Haven't you read Joshua Harris?
Me: ([Unspoken] I had read his first 2 books 6 times... each, feel he writes great books which gave me a more godly perspective on BGRs but) He's not God ok?

[Apologies, I must end this incomplete post. Just realized that for posts I don't end in the same block of time I start are doomed to incompletion... I've lost my train of thought!]

Well-wishes for non-Christians?

I'm going to attend the first non-Christian wedding in an hour after a full year of immersion in local church life. As I sit down to pen my well-wishes to my friend, I was struck by writer's block as I pondered:

How can a life be well when you're not in relationship with your maker, no matter how smooth the life may appear?

Debating between a more 'passionate' evangelical message or an indifferent neutral message, I settled on a subtle message: "May your marriage lead to an eternity of joy and bliss" for how can a life without Christ lead to an eternity of joy and bliss?

Suggestions?

Thank you

Thank God for the few people who took the time to send me an e-mail expressing your concern and your prayers. I am ok with Him, questions still unanswered but able to have peace with Him. I am touched and very grateful by the love that comes from a kinship in Christ and especially to the couple of people who offered yours or your wife's counsel and time that I may be encouraged and may persevere on in our hope. The most amazing part is I still don't know you, except for your online identities and I'm grateful at the concern you've shown to a mere stranger like me. For all of you, I pray that God may show His realness and faithfulness to you, that you may fully know and experience His presence with you.

I also thank God for the truth seeker who shared a little about your spiritual walk with me. Thank you for trusting this private portion of your life with me. I am sorry that I have not yet replied and will answer you soon. I pray that you may know His goodness.

For all readers, I know that I am in some of your prayers and I thank you for talking with God about me. Thank you for your support in reading and it's the awareness of you, which keeps me accountable to the will that God wants me to do in my life. I pray that His wisdom will always be in you.

Had composed a song during this period, its tune is unpalatable and lyrics largely private. However, the lyrics of the chorus is a reminder of our hope and I thought it'll be good to share it with you:

Previous verse: Help me stay the faith and keep me safe

For one day our King will come
Jesus Christ, God the Son
To redeem Your precious Bride
Sealed with Your Spirit, clean and white
God, our Father, keep me safe till He arrives

May God's reality always be crystal clear to us no matter our circumstances.

Funeral Planning

Looking at island's post prompted me to start thinking about what I want for my funeral.

I'd definitely want a Christian funeral because it will be a wonderful opportunity to witness to my loved ones. The songs that I would want sung would be 'It is well with my soul' and 'It's your blood'. The passage I'd want explained will probably be Rev 20:11-21:7.

What's in a name?

Before I came to Christ, I've always been known by my Mandarin name - the name which harbours my parents' ideal of me (it happens to be the same repeated word e.g Tingting, lingling etc) and my circle of close friends and loved ones will often shorten it to a single word (e.g Ting ah, Ling ah etc).

It was only the year before I come to Christ that I use my English or 'Christian' name - the name my parents choose for convenience purpose (so that it'll be easier for others to remember your name). It just ocurred to me that most Christians who appeared in my life before I come to Christ be they passerbys, people who witnessed to me, classmates, people who invite me to their church etc all know me by my Christian name although I was commonly known by my mandarin name.

Is there a significance or mere coincidence?

Soul-searching Season

Dear fellow siblings-in-christ and seekers of the truth,

Thank you for being with me, silently reading my blog or posting your comments on it. The awareness of people reading it had helped me to pray about writing entries that edify rather than discouraging ones and this helps to build the awareness in me about what should be right Christian conduct as opposed to complacent habits that I may become too comfortable in.

Because I am in the process of seeking some answers with Him, blog entries may become more rare. Don't worry, He is still my Lord and I think I am very much safely in His church. It is just that as I am walking through this valley with Him, I do not want to write either hypocritically bright entries or burden with my dark emotions that may potentially stumble others.

If you would like to pray for me, pray that I may hold fast to Him. If you'd like to encourage me privately by letting me know you're praying for me, my e-mail is ms.carpediem (at) gmail.com.

May our Lord be with you.

My dear Pa

Prompted by my DG's questioning of a chinese saying, I got into a good mini-dialogue with my pa yesterday morning - rare in all these years.

Me: Pa, there is this saying, "有水的地方，就有华人" (where there's water (e.g sea, lakes, rivers etc), there you will find Chinese) right? Am I using the right words?
Pa: Yah, it sounds right to me. During the golden age of british colonialism, there's also the saying "Where there's sunshine, there you will find the English"
Me: Ooh, that sounds interesting. Have a good day at work.

A brother-in-christ who have had the opportunity to talk with my pa commented that my father is very knowledgeable, and indeed, my father's thirst for knowledge is complemented by his diligence, perseverance and belief that his hard work will pay off. Born into a lower-class superstitious family who proceeded to give him away to a foster family, he fought into the english education system from a chinese one (a feat along the lines of say a beggar working his way to buying an engagement ring from Tiffany's) for his 'A' levels and I remembered laughing at his stories of how he tried to hide behind books to prevent being called to answer questions by the GP teacher. Then too poor to buy books, he used to stay in bookstores, studying Mathematics and English textbooks for free so that he may continuously improve.

To finance his university fees, he took on accounting projects, teaching assignments at YMCA and a part-time job in a government agency then. This led to him missing all his lectures and he regaled me with stories of how he copied his homework from his classmates. And after hard studying for 4 years, he got the much coveted degree and the so-called promise of lifelong security.

Also a very good father, when caned as a child by my pa, I always knew the reason why - never at whim, always with a good logical reason. And often after, he will sit down with me and talk with me, "很痛吗？打在儿身上，痛在父母心中。我心痛过你肉身所感觉的。" (Is it painful? It pains me far more than the pain inflicted on you.) As a young child of 6-7 whose only concept of sleeping means closing the eyes and simply drifting into dreamland innocently, my pa was already teaching me about the sanctity of our own bodies ("Next time should your boyfriend tell you 'If you don't sleep with me, it means you don't love me.', your answer will be 'If you love me, you won't sleep with me until after marriage.' and walk out.")

Ironically, it is because my pa exemplifies the model of a good father, it was easy for me to understand the goodness of our Father in heaven and why He will accept us again and again even after we've done wrong repeatedly - the way a father can fully accept back his truly repentant prodigal child back again and again.

Perhaps because I'm the child that resembles him most physically, there is the implicit expectation in him that I take on his mindset and values. Quite often through my teenage years, I could sense him trying to influence me over to his way of thinking and position. Thus when I declared that I am Christ's, my pa was the one who commented most rigourously and in a deeply disappointed tone, "I thought that of my 3 children, you have your own mind, the strongest mettle and will not succumb to the brain-washing of these hypocritical Christians. Never did I expect you to be so weak."

It pains me that our sovereign God excludes a good, dependable and dedicatedly hardworking man like my father from His grace and mercy and I'm at a loss to understand why. Why are there so many Christians who are blatantly flaunting their sin and insubordination to God and so many good, considerate non-Christians? Consolation from well-meaning friends along the lines of 'You'll understand when you see Him again' feels woefully inadequate. How can I understand and rejoice if my family is not with me when we see Him again?

It is even more painful knowing that if he believed, there is a good chance my ma and my sis would have followed suit. When told that I was going to be baptised, my caring ma, wanting to be in the know of all her darling children's developments, grilled me on the time, the place, the proceedings, my perception of the pastors who lead the church. Gingerly asking her if she would like to attend 'the most important event in my life', she hesitated before shaking her head, "I must follow your pa. If he doesn't go, I won't."

I wish I can end this entry on a high note, but all I feel is despondence and numbness. Prayers feel useless, tears are dried, debates ended leaving broken hearts, explanations falling on deaf ears. Christ's words "Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn "'a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law — a man's enemies will be the members of his own household.'" (Matt 10:34-36) seems unnecessarily cruel when you're the person who has to live through it. My hope, and a foolish hope it seems, is that if He can turn me - a person who had been decidedly against Him and His Son - to Him, He is able (and prayerfully willing) to turn my family to Him.

Guarding our Hearts

Triggered by Pearly's post, I thought about how as girls, desiring intimate relationships, we have a tendency to give our heart quickly to our intended. Our imaginations give hopeful meaning to the most insignificant of communication, and without a thorough consideration of the intended's character, our hearts fly at the slightest hint of mutual chemistry.

My brother-in-Christ gave me advice that should filter away people who either appear ungodly or whose character is yet to be fully known.

Make 3 independent lists of:
1) Qualities in a man/woman which fully please God
2) Qualities in a man/woman which instantly attract me (truthfully, not considering whether these characteristics are godly or ungodly)
3) Qualities in a man I can be a good helper to/in a woman I can lead towards godliness

It was eye-opening when I reviewed the lists after doing this simple exercise.

By making the concerted effort to keep in mind the discrepancy between attractive qualities versus God-pleasing/encouragement of good helper/leader qualities or the awareness that we still don't know if the intended shows God-pleasing qualities, it will help to prevent our heart flying along with the mutual chemistry.

However what should we do if knowledge of each other grows and we become more convinced that the intended reasonably exhibits qualities in lists 1 and 3?

Even if he is smsing/e-mailing/msn messaging you every single day, perhaps even tens of communication every hour, keep to the position that he is only a brother-in-christ and he is only treating you as a sister-in-christ until he expresses the wish to bring the friendship to another level. If necessary, reduce the frequency of one-to-one contact to the point where you are fully able to see him solely as a brother-in-christ.

It works minisculy in giving an imaginative girl like me a measure of guard so for you who are more down-to-earth, I'm sure it'll give even better results. ;) In this way, may we be like Ruth, less distracted by subjects God never meant for us to have and be able to fully focus on what He wants us to do with the lives He had given us.

Our mastery over sin?

Note: This is not the actual interpretation of Rev 17. Rather in reading Rev 17, this was an off-tangent thought that came to my mind - inspired but independent of the interpretation of the text.

"Oooohhh.... this chocolate cake is sinfully delicious."

"Her spending all this money on books is absolutely sinful."

"Errmmm.... they're in a sinful homosexual relationship."

In our world today, there is a tendency to trivialise sin, see as sin in others what may actually only be a differing way of glorifying God in an individual's life (being pharisaic) or simply classifying as sin only what is sexual/obvious in nature.

Yet we know through the bible that sin is anything that offends our Holy God and is contrary to His nature.

In reading Rev 17, I understand the text as in the beginning, the scarlet woman riding, seemingly in control, of the beast, satan's minion, yet being shredded and eaten by the beast in the end who hates her all the time.

Bringing it to a micro level, seeing it applicable to an individual's life (as opposed to a worldly superpower), I recognize its similar element to flirting with sin: In the beginning, to gain what the world says is desirable - fame, wealth or sometimes it may even be something seemingly good like the totally godly/talented/gorgeous man/woman of your dreams, we may start thinking, "That little lie/gossip/backstabbing/unloving conduct/using of another individual wouldn't hurt anyone and will only bring me good, so why can't I do it? After all, if I don't tell that big lie/gossip/backstabbing/unloving conduct/using of an individual in a certain way, God wouldn't be offended would He?"

Like the woman thinking that she's in control of the beast and getting what she wants from it, we think we're in mastery over our lives and the little sins in our lives (while seemingly getting alot more leverage out of our little concessions), we ride the beast, perhaps blissfully unaware it is gnashing its teeth with hate for us as it tempts us down the slippery slope to sin. We lose track of the moment when we lost control and sin has its hold on us, when God gave us over to our sinful desires (Romans 1:21-32) until we are mauled and eaten alive by the beast, allowed by God as part of His punishment.

"Be Holy as I am Holy" is a high calling, a simple statement with very deep implications. It means living a life which does not allow a simple iota of sinfulness in our consciousness; It means not hiding behind the fact that "No human is perfect": that since we will never be perfect, allowing that little sin to pass will still 'qualify' us as godly in man's sight; It means doing our darnest best in every conscious action, thought and behaviour to be guided by God's holy standard which we can only achieve in His strength.

It is only this, the full focus on glorifying God no matter our circumstances that we may fully stay His people - even should our limited strength means that no matter how hard we try, there will be sinfulness in our action, thought and behaviour that we may fully "Come out of her, my people, so that you will not share in her sins, so that you will not receive any of her plagues;" (Rev 18:4) and we may one day shout, "Hallelujah! For our Lord God Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory! For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready. Fine linen, bright and clean, was given her to wear." (Fine linen stands for the righteous acts of the saints.) (Rev 19:6-8)

Agape

Silverust wrote a poem on the spot after a theme of 'Agape' was given via msn. I thought it was pretty cool so I'm sharing it here with all of you.

When it comes to love
Many try to be experts
For some, they love to use words
Birds, trees and mountains are their symbols
Just a fancy way to trick impressionable girls

There are others who are more specific
To the point, that's their trick
But what they are displaying is actually Eros
One of the 3 expressions of love

The other if u are familiar is Phileo
That's when one guy can hug another just like a bro
Between brothers and sisters is a love that's pure
But there's one more on a higher floor
That's agape.

Agape is the way to go,
There is no higher for every meaning has no meaning without God
So love with all your heart, ignore the world around
because it's Agape love that is all that matters to be found.