Obedience

Pastor Richard said the bottom line of a Christian is obedience.

How often do we disobey at will? We see the light turn red and think we will get away with it just this one time. We measured our weight last night and think we can just have one more McD meal.

Jesse borrowed some game CDs from his uncle Fatt. He could not get one game working on Kathleen's notebook. I tried to do it. Towards the end of the installation, I saw an old friend - the infamous BSOD (Blue Screen of Death). I have not seen it for a while.

I let it restart and decided to unistall a game component first. Hey, BSOD appeared and it restarted again. I tried again and again to no avail.

That was Sunday.

I brought it to the office on Monday hoping to be able to get a boot disc to repair it. No luck. We have no Vista Home Basic DVD in the office.

I had a wake service to go to on Tuesday so I didn't bring the notebook with me. But before I left home, I tried it again and found hope. I could get into a repair mode screen.

Due to the road blockage for the Merdaka Day parade rehearsal and heavy rain, the traffic was very packed. I requested Pastor Reynold to drop me in UMMC. I needed to use the toilet.

After the service, I noticed a celebrity who probably attended another service. It was Lai Ming of Empat Sekawan fame. (not to be confused with Leon Lai from Hong Kong.)

When I reached home last night after the wake service, I tried to repair the notebook again. I was appaled to find that I could not even do a System Restore.

Today, after a meeting, I did so a research and found that many suffered the same fate. I printed out some suggestions to try. The last resort is to format the notebook but Kathleen would lose all her work. She is now working on her assignments. I copied some files out. I will go through the notebook with her and make sure she has all she needs.

When I installed the game component, I got the usual warning that it is not compatible with Vista and that is might cause problem. As I had done many times before, I just ignored it and chose to continue. In the past I have been able to get away with it. But this time, 'it' caught on to me.

In case you are like the 99% of users out there who don't have an installation CD (most manufacturers only provide recovery discs, in my case, I had to burn my own recovery discs, which are misplaced,) you can download the recovery ISO here.

Lesson learned here: do not be disobedient. Stop at read light (that's what I normally do.) Listen and obey the Holy Spirit's guidance. And in things related to IT (where I may think I am very experienced and clever in), look out for warnings and heed them.

Follow whose guidance?

Casting Crown has a song called What If His People Pray. I love Casting Crown. I'll share the lyrics here.

What If His People Prayed Lyrics
What if the armies of the Lord
Picked up and dusted off their swords
Vowed to set the captive free
And not let satan have one more

What if the Church, for heaven's sake
Finally stepped up to the plate
Took a stand upon God's promise
And stormed hell's rusty gates

Chorus I:
What if His people prayed
And those who bear His name
Would humbly seek His faith, yeah
And turn from their old ways

And what would happen if we prayed
For those raised up to lead the way
Then maybe kids in school could pray
And unborn children see light of day

What if the life that we pursue
Came from a hunger for the truth
What if the family turned to Jesus
Stopped asking Oprah what to do

Chorus I:
What if His people prayed
And those who bear His name
Would humbly seek His face yeah
And turn from their own way
Chorus II:
He said that He would hear
His promise has been made
He'll answer loud and clear, yeah
If only we would pray

Bridge:
If My people call by My name
If they'll humble themselves and pray
If My people call by My name
If they'll humble themselves and pray

Choruses:
What if His people prayed
And those who bear His name
Would humbly seek His face, yeah
And turn from their old ways
He said that He would hear
His promise has been made
He'll answer loud and clear yeaah
If only we would pray

(Choruses and bridge ad lib)

The last line of the 2nd stanza has a reference to Oprah. It is no joke. Do not underestimate the influence of Oprah and the power of media.

I share with you some resources that explains the situation.

The Church of Oprah Exposed
Oprah's Spirituality: Exploring a New Earth
Oprah's Spirituality: It's No Secret
Oprah and Eckhard Tolle's New Earth
Genuine Jesus or Counterfeit Christ?
Ancient New Age

The world is not my home.

What's with all these gay elements?

(I am still awake. So much for the decision to sleep early.)

I reached home at around 11 p.m after the weekly prayer meeting and picking up Jesse from his tuition class. While waiting for the laundry to finish, I switched on both the notebook and the TV.

I flipped the channels a bit and picked Grey's Anatomy on NTV7. (Later I did some research and found the episode to be Testing 1-2-3, episode 24 from season 3.

Among other stories / plots, there is one about a homosexual couple awaiting to adopt the unborn baby which turned out to be twins.

After that, it was My Name is Earl (with the episode called South of the Border Part Dos.) Earl is trying to help his friend win over Catalina. He met a homosexual person whose 'partner' left him. He thought it's because he is not man enough. He blamed Brokeback Mountain for this. He then asked Earl whom he saw as manly to help him to become more manly. Earl was like, 'you want me to help you to be more manly so you could sleep around with men?'

That's two TV shows in a row with portrays homosexuals to be fine and fun.

How did they get through the censorship board?

The ultimate battle between good and evil? Hardly

New Line Cinema who brought us epics like Gone with the With (10 Oscars in 1940!) and the Lord of the Rings trilogy (11 Oscars 2 years ago) and the recent (why?) Snakes on a Plane is planning on a movie called God, the devil and Lucy.

It's the story about God and the devil who got tired of the fight and decided to have a final battle to claim all the souls - they will become human beings without their powers and whoever to get a girl (Lucy) to say I love you first will win.

There is no news yet on who will be casted. You can poke so many holes in the story even before we get the details. It's a traversy to say the least.

The Missionary Game

Take a look at this.

It's cool and simple. The jumping can get trickly at some places. I tried it once and I could only set up 3 out of potential 19 churches.

Here is where you can pray for the rhino to go to sleep.

The head of the natives is so happy to get a copy of the Bible.

This flash game gives a very simplified picture of missions work. You face dangers. You need to understand the needs of the locals and you definitely need prayers.

Just cartoons

Qu called me and asked me about the cartoons. I didn't know what they were until I did a little digging.

You can find them in this blog, in all their glory.

This is the beginning of the post.

4000 terror attacks after 9/11, the world was still slumbering. But 12 innocent satirical drawings in a Danish newspaper, the kind of cartoons printed daily by the thousands in newspapers all over the world, have changed the geopolitical situation.

Tell me what you think.