A timely reminder

Chapter 38 from the book, "Relationship Principles of Jesus"....

"Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous." (Matthew 5: 44-45)

Question to consider: Have I asked God for the strength to act with love towards someone who is treating me as an enemy?

a HUGE gift from God

Here's the story:

Hubby and I have been eyeing the iMAC for a while because of the no-CPU concept.... plus we also found a super nice and slim computer table to go with that online.. :) Problem is, both of them added together = huge purchase.

Lately, we have been on this "clear the house of clutter" project.. and so the 2 items are really appealing.

Because of the amount involved, we contemplated over a long time and prayed to God honestly about our hearts' desire. We specifically asked God to give us the peace to go ahead with the purchase.

When we first thought we had to peace to purchase them online, we sat down at the computer ready to click and go. Suddenly, hubby asked me, what are we going to do with our existing computer and tables then? Haha :) when he asked me that, immediately, I lost the peace to click and go! Then I told him, hmmm...looks like we have to wait and not go ahead with the purchase yet. We do have to responsibly settle our existing tables and computer first before buying anything new.

After that, we embarked on the give everything away project :) Thankfully, we managed to give away all of them to people who either need or would make good use of them! Only after settling everything did we have the peace to click and go! :)

That's not the end of it... the beautiful table arrived 2 days ago and the iMAC arrived today :p...the funny thing was this, hubby, out of the blue yesterday went to explore an unused wallet of mine (initially thinking that maybe he could use it but thereafter realising that it was too girly.. haha...) in the hope of finding some money :P....and to his surprise, he found a cheque in my wallet!!!

Best part was this, the cheque (which has expired), is for $X which almost matches exactly the amount we have to pay for the 2 items!!!! The cheque was actually a gift to us quite some time back.

We were both very pleasantly surprised because we were prepared to be out of pocket by $X....with that cheque of about $X.... we feel like we have just received a huge gift!!!

And we both are thankful to God for leading us throughout this purchase and pleasantly surprising us this way :p

One important lesson that we learnt though...God wants us to be good stewards of everything God has given to us. We cannot just spend $ in any way we want and lead to unnecessary wastage of resources.

We feel so loved by God really... hehehe

Candra's first self-initiated prayers

The very first one that we still cannot quite understand...

Candra: Dear Father, please help me to 'tar-sher' my body, in Jesus' name I pray, Amen!

For mama

Candra: Dear Father, please help mama..somemore babies. (skipped the 'have' :p haha)

For her little brother

Candra saw a little puppy in her devotion book today and said she wanted to pray for the dog.

I went...errr....how do you want to pray for a dog?

Candra: Err.............Dear Father....please help didi not be scared of the dog. :) [Joshua's been afraid of our dog Farnia at my mum's place]

That was so sweet I thought :)

I know God loves me because...

I have been using a book called "100 ways to know that God loves me" with Candra for devotion.

Each day, one truth will be taught about how we know He loves us.

This is what Candra loves to say,

"I know God loves me because...God loves me :)"

That to me, is a profound statement and can be interpreted in 2 ways.

1) God's loves is such an evident fact that there we hardly need to further describe how He loves us and the ways in which He shows that.

2) Because God loves us, He will cause us to know that He loves us. Knowledge of His love is the foundation of life.

I do feel encouraged each day after our devotion time together....It's wonderful being reminded of His love.

Encouraged

This morning, Joshua was displaying naughty behaviors on the highchair while taking his solids.

Usually, as a part of training him, I would constantly remind him not to repeat the same naughty action. I would probably go something like, "Joshua, pls don't do that" or "Joshua, no, no".

Candra would often imitate me by repeating after me. But this morning, she said something different that really struck me. She said, "Joshua, please obey mama".

My girl's really growing up.. :) by saying that to Joshua, she showed me that she has some understanding of obedience. That to me is really crucial for the bible commands children to obey their parents. I was encouraged by that :p

She has also been enjoying praise songs.. what's really cute is this.. she uses, "this is my favourite song" or "my favourite song is.." on a thousand and one songs! :) haha.. well, she doesn't quite get the idea of 'favourite' huh.. haha..but it's nice to know she enjoys singing them...and I must say that it's really enjoyable listening to little kids praising God!

Putting aside her other naughty behaviours.. this girl never fails to brighten up by day with these encouraging moments... :)

Candra's understand on holy communion

(In mandarin)

During Holy Communion one sunday..

Mummy: Candra, this biscuit represents Jesus' body.. Jesus died on the cross for our sins...and this ribena drink which is red in colour represents His blood..because He bled on the cross..

Candra: Mama, I also fell down and bled and need to eat biscuit and drink ribena!

Mummy: Errr.......err.....?????

Candra wants more siblings :)

(In mandarin)

Mummy: Candra, we should pray for at least one person each day. Who do you want to pray for today?

Candra: Thinking hard...

Mummy: How about auntie KW, she is getting married and now very stressed....

Candra: No!

Mummy: Then who do you want to pray for?

Candra: For mama

Mummy: Oh.. how do you want to pray for mama?

Candra: Pray for mama to have a baby in stomach

Mummy: Haha :P ok

Candra: (Placing her hand on my tummy voluntarily)....

Mummy: (Leading her in prayer).... Dear God....please give mama, a didi (bro) OR meimei (sis)

Candra: (Repeating)...Dear God... please give mama, a didi (bro) AND meimei (sis)!

Discovering Joshua

Joshua cried for 2 whole hours just now after being put down for bedtime.

Hubby and I were initially clueless as to why he kept crying. We tried to ease him of all possible discomfort... even after all that, he continued to cry.. and we could tell he was crying in protest. We did what we used to do during his sleep training phase, that was to go into his room to comfort him in intervals...we did that many times over the 2 hours but still he went on and on...

My instincts and his behavior told me that he wanted to be nursed even though he was not hungry. That's the weird part.. he has always been self-soothing to sleep.. he sucks his left thumb.. but for some reason.. he wanted to be nursed... and when I tried to give him his thumb, he would shove my hand aside.

The battle between us and him went on and on and on...until we decided that we may have to spank him to get he message across to him. That was a difficult decision because afterall, Joshua's only 7 months old. Most people would say infants at this age are too young for that. But we remembered that Candra was spanked even earlier when she too gave us sleep problems and it worked for her. So that made us consider doing the same for Joshua.

After praying and hearing him protest for 2 whole hours with hard crying, we finally decided to do it. Hubby spanked him once, he cried even harder..then he looked to me....and I knew I had to spank him again. When we left the room, he continued to cry.. but the crying was less intense and we felt there was a change of heart..and shortly thereafter... silence... our boy got the message and decided to give up.

Maybe some would feel that I was being cruel to him because nursing him would have avoided all that crying... but to me, giving in this once equates to cultivating a new habit which may encourage unnecessary night-waking... moreover, he has proven himself to be able to sleep on his own for the last 4 months at least.

This boy is strong... I knew that from his 8 weeks of sleep and routine training.. but this time round, I felt it even more strongly.

May God have mercy on us and on this boy especially... I cried so hard while praying for him with hubby throughout the whole process..

God trains us while we train our children...