I've been walking around in a sort of daze these last few days. It began on Sunday actually. During the evening service, Pastor John asked the church to receive God's love as He poured it out. I knew Jesus was there, I opened my heart and gosh! I felt such an overwhelming outpouring of love. The next day I was watering the garden. I was chatting with Jesus and He said something funny, I laughed and I suddenly realized, 'God is in love with me'. I have to be frank and say, I don't know how to react to this. There is no human expression that I have expressed so far that comes close to expressing what this means to me. At first I was filled with this incredible joy, then I realized how much I had been missing out on before, then the idea that none of us really gets this hit me, then the intense desire to share this truth with everyone took over, then I realized that everyone already knows this, at least we know the words, we know what it means but ...you know... we just don't know this do we?. Think about it, if someone awesome, all powerful and all wonderful were to fall head over heals in love with you, wouldn't you just flip out? Why aren't we all flipped out about the fact that God loves us with a passion like no one else? What don't we get here? On the one hand it is God who is in love with us and on the other hand it's not some feeble love we're talking about either. The best version of human love that exists,' Romeo and Juliet' that kind of stuff comes nowhere close to the depth and passion of God's love. Wow! I'm so into getting this. I want nothing else. That line in Tom Read's (worship leader at the Vine Christian Fellowship) song, "when my Jesus died for me". That's exactly who He is, My Jesus. He is your Jesus, Our Jesus, the world's Jesus. He died for us all because He loves us so deeply. There is possession in that phrase. I love it. It's incredible, it touched my heart when I first heard it. I know Jesus likes it when I refer to Him as mine.
I know I don't fully comprehend God's love for me yet (I'll be a lot more like Jesus if I did), but I know I can. Abraham knew it, David knew it, Jesus knew it and He said I would too and I'm determined to know this love. Lord, I'm crazy about you. Bonkers, absolutely bonkers about you. I want you to know that and I want everyone to know that. You are our love and you love us with an intensity that we don't know how to handle. But I know you'll help us Father. We are your bride Lord, your first love. It's mindblowing Father, but oh! so so so fantastic.

I'm so familiar with the standard symbols that point to God, like a cross or two hands joined together in prayer or a candle and then also stuff like waterfalls, mountains, rainbows and things like that. I have recently however become more aware of so much more. I find that almost everything that I look at tells me something about Him. And exploring this is like so fun. A few posts ago I put up some funky animal pictures, that told me quite a few interesting things about Him. Today I came across this one.

Now if I am made in the image of God, could this one charcateristic that I have, to react a certain way to stuff like this, possibly have come from Him? If I can look at this picture and instantly speak a very odd language that results in everyone around me thinking I've lost my head over a kitten or rather a picture of a kitten, then does my God do this too? Does He create this kitten and then get all cuddly poo about it unable to get over the cuteness He just created? He!he! I don't know but it certainly paints a great picture of Him.

Laughter really is the best medicine...

or as God puts it, "A cheerful disposition is good for your health; gloom and doom leave you bone tired". Proverbs 17: 22 (message)

Awesome language... sounds like my Dad (who's a Shakespere fan and talks a version of English that belongs in an antique shop and I tease him about it no end, but actually I love it.)

So anyway...last night none of us slept well. Tiara kept having weird dreams, Sheeba (our doggie) kept bothering Ed and I had a tummy ache. Normally when any of us in the Johnson household loses out on sleep, we have a bad day the next. In me, the feline comes out, claws and all and no it's not nice and Jesus and me always have to have a heart to heart after and even though He's always so nice about it, I feel kinda small after.

Last night however, I made up my mind, I was not going to have a bad day today. I began praying right then, like I did about a year ago when I felt a flu coming on. I remember that night so clearly, I prayed in faith, decided I did not want to succumb to the nasty flu, declared that by my Jesus' stripes I was healed, went back to sleep and I woke up flu-less. I felt that same faith stir up in me again last night and so I decided that sleep or not, today I'd be on the look out for Satan who loves it when I am vulnerable, and I'd take whatever he tried to throw at me and chuck it back in his face. Yeah! show the devil my feline self for a change.

So did I wake up smiling when the alarm went off? No. Did I crawl back into bed and sleep some more? No. Tired or not I was determined to win this battle.

I had a chat with Jesus and we decided to give the Father's advice a shot and put on a cheerful disposition. I decided to make my day as easy as I could, meaning not do anything I did not really have to. Instead of normal Home School for Tiara and her friend (which is now technically summer school) where it is mostly academics, I decided to do something light and easy. Tiara was tired too but she perked up as soon as she saw we were going to make leanrning time even funner. And you know what? ... it happened, we ended up laughing so much... I had such a rush of energy afterwards I finished half the pile of ironing I had left undone for the last week : ). Glory Halleluyah! Father God, whether it's little everyday stuff or big ministry work, your advice totally rocks and I just can't get over it sometimes.

So the higlight this morning was when we 'mad libbed'. A very neat education game we found online. We took a passage and changed all the nouns, verbs and adjectives to make it sound really funny. How it works is that you are given a bunch of choices and you choose one per blank and in the end you can see the finished version of the whole passage.

So here's the funniest one we created.

Our Cafeteria

Our school cafeteria has really sleepy food. Just thinking about it makes my stomach sneeze. The spaghetti is invisible and tastes like goats. One day, I swear one of my meat balls started to shiver! The turkey tacos are totally delicious and look kind of like old monkeys. My friend Dana actually likes the meatloaf, even though it's invisible and scaly. I call it "mystery meatloaf" and think it's really made out of socks. My dad said he'd make my lunches, but the first day, he made me a sandwich out of feathers and peanut butter! I think I'd rather take my chances with the cafeteria!

Try doing this with a bunch of giggly 8 year old girls - the de-stress effect is 100%.

more : )

Thank you Lord for our little princess and thank you Lord for little girls. These girls really are a mixture of sugar and spice and everything nice. They represent Hong Kong, Philippines, India, America and England. The street on which we live is really rather unique actually, in that we have 16 different nationalities living here. Yup! It's a miny United Nations alright.

Let's see (we've got in order from the house at the top of the street) Philippines, England, Argentina, Switzerland, Hong Kong, China (Shanghai), New Zealand, America, India, Canada, Thailand, France, Nepal, Scotland, South Africa, Australia, and living on the other side of the village but still a big part of the local bbq scene is Germany. : ) so that's 17 in all.

More stock shots...

As I kept going through the photos I found these and gosh! I can't help but share them with you.

This was halloween last year. Halloween, Hawaii...get the connection...?!?!?! = )

Aren't they all just adorable. These are the Tong Fuk girls. Almost every family here is blessed to have one of them.

okay, let me see if I can find some more...

I’m a Jesus freak = )

I remember when our last helper Gemma (who is now happily married in the Philippines, we miss you Gemma) first came to live with us. After only a few days, it became very clear to us that she had one passion in life and that was Jesus. It wasn't that she talked about Him all the time or any such thing, but it was still very obvious and while I was quite happy to have a God fearing young girl taking care of our home and Tiara, I also wondered why at such a young age, she was so ‘religious’. I wondered why at 25 she did not seem to have any other interests. Yet she did. She loved to garden and was always looking for new and interesting plants to decorate our home with. She loved to bake (she made the best cookies, pizzas and bagels ever) and she loved arts and crafts (much to Tiara’s delight) but still it was pretty clear that what dominated her life was her God.

Like I said while I thought this was very sweet and stuff, somewhere in me was this thought that she was somehow missing out, or that it didn’t have to be this way, or that she probably had nothing else to occupy her, and basically that she was a bit over the top about it all – kinda too religious.

Today however, that’s me in so many ways = ) and the one thing I know, is that I am most certainly not religious. I had an encounter with the living God, had a glimpse of what His love for me is and I got hooked. I’m a Jesus junkie now. Totally addicted and loving it. Why wouldn’t I be? He is only like the Son of God who created the universe!!!!! We all want to hang out with the best dudes in town don’t we? This is God almighty who says He will never leave me nor forsake me, who says that He lives in me. Next to Him everyone and everything else just fades away. Why would I want to ignore Him? ?!?!?! I long for a glimpse of that love every day, it gives me such a high and when I don’t have it (only because I get caught up in the unimportant things around me, I go to bed feeling empty). Yes I am totally addicted, and I am so so so thankful for it. May I never never never be so stupid as to lose this, I know I have the potential to, that’s the scary thing, but I have had a glimpse of what I stand to lose if I let my Jesus go and I honestly can’t stand losing that place. I feel lost, alone, like I am going nowhere in life, I feel downright miserable and I walk around pretending like I don't feel this way. Yup! Not very nice withdrawal symptoms at all and so I get right back, and have me a good and proper Jesus dose and all is well with my world.

I was going through our stock shots and I came across these and laughed. Jesus reminded me of the verse that all of creation speaks about Him and I was like, "Lord, what does this say about you?" = ).

Here's the Bible verse. Romans 1:20 (The Message)

"But the basic reality of God is plain enough. Open your eyes and there it is! By taking a long and thoughtful look at what God has created, people have always been able to see what their eyes as such can't see: eternal power, for instance, and the mystery of his divine being."

So, what does this tell me about Jesus?

Well, He's got an amazing imagination. He is a creative genius. He has an eye and taste for the unusual. He has an incredible sense of humour. He cannot be put into a box and He is simply wayyy tooooo cooooool!!!

The 3rd. shot...that funky bug thingy, lives right here in our garden.

That last shot is like so great. It's like..."what's up bro! how u doin today?"

We serve an awesome God!!

My favourite place in the world...

My bed...

why...

cause this is the view I get every morning when I draw the curtain, and that's only one reason. You see that white bloom in the corner, it smells devine. Also my absolute favourite bird in the world the bul bul (reminds me of my childhood) visits this tree all the time and I wake up to that each morning. I LOVE it.
And somehow even though I've been blessed to travel to many parts of the world and stay in some awesome hotels with wonderful, expensive, designer beds and blankets... my cozy, cheap, 'smells like home' bed has always been my favourite place.
Isn't that odd?

Anyway, words of wisdom I received over the weekend.
Unity is not about being the same, it's about loving each other while realizing that we must be different. What a world of wisdom in that statement.