Army of Ordinary People

HELLO earthlings.

So last Saturday night went on as usual. We started off the night with pre-service prayer lead by Sarah.

*insert picture of Sarah Wong because I forgot to snap a shot of her

After our 5 minute toilet break, we moved on to ICE-BREAKER.

Tania lead the ice-breaker.

FOLLOW THE LEADER.

well, sort of.

The game in twenty words or less,

Everyone in the group mimics the leader and 1-2 person/people try to guess who the leader is.

Next was worship and we had yet another bunch of new people in the worship team.

Ivan was on electric guitar.

Faith was singing.

Worship was lead by Le Roy.

Newcomers.

Greeting newcomers. Guess this tradition made its way to firebrands from the main service.

Pastor Heok Cheow.

Pastor Heok Cheow spoke that night and he talked about how God could use ordinary people like us to do His will. He talked about the history of firebrands and how firebrands came about and all that.

A few key points to note:

1. Every generation God uses stands on the generation before it as their foundation.
2. When your heart is open to God, God will use you.
3. God is using young people and He is looking for availability.
4. God is looking for open hearts, not superstars.

Judges 15:4-5.

So he went out and caught three hundred foxes and tied them tail to tail in pairs. He then fastened a torch to every pair of tails, lit the torches and let the foxes loose in the standing grain of the Philistines. He burned up the shocks and standing grain, together with the vineyards and olive groves.

Those torches = firebrands and firebrands has the potential to ignite a bigger flame.

decisions, decisions.

Another fireBRANDS youth service update just for youuuuuuuuuuuuuu.

Yes, YOU :)

Started off with prayer led by Ms Sarah Wong.

Everyone was divided to groups of four/five.

Right after that, 5 minutes for everyone to pee/poop/drink water/chitchat/camwhore/etc.

and of course its.....

PEMECAH AIS!

(ice breaker)

and because Tania Loke didnt exactly prepare/thought of a proper ice breaker, she came up with a LAME game for all of us.

Stand on one foot......

.

.

.

.

.

and turn around.

*awkward silence.

and suddenly a bright lightbulb appeared right next to Pastor Victor's head as he had another (better) idea.

ARM WRESTLING!

Selepas itu, time for some praise & worship, led by Eulene and her team.

Samantha Tan :)

our new firebrands worship team member.

A short time for some announcements

(yes, we somehow, still managed to listen though we dont look like we are in this picture xP)

Without wasting any time, it was time for the second episode of BREAKAWAY.

belief -> decision -> outcome.

God wants us to breakaway, to no longer conform to the patterns of this world.

The way for you to have a different outcome is to retool, renovate your thoughts.

Why? because our belief system is our operating system...

Which impacts impacts ALL of our outcomes.

Basic truth : God knows whats best for you.

Have we ever been so certain that the decision made was the right decision and suddenly it didnt work out? and we look back, thanking that it didnt happen?

Many times, there's a BIG gap between the decision made and the outcome experienced.

He not only knows whats best for you, He ALWAYS knows whats best for you =)

Proverbs 3 : 5-6

Trust in the Lord with all your heart,

- dont trust your heart, trust your Lord WITH your heart.

And lean not on your own understanding,

-Gods command triumphs your knowledge/reasonings, even if you can come up with a 4987498543875 reasons for the decision you made.

In all of your way, acknowledge him.

-Bring your trends,thoughts, patterns in submission to Him

and He will make your path straight.

If we truly acknowledge Him and to know that truly He knows whats best for us,

chances are that our greatest regret... could have been avoided :)

Because when we trust on our own heart and start to lean on our own understanding, then the outcome is gonna be predictable.

Discussion time, led by Le Roy :)

Questions.

1. Has your heart ever mislead you into any bad situation?

2. What role did your emotions play in that decision?

3. Looking back on your life, are there any decisions you are glad you did not make?

4.Describe a time when you chose God's reasoning over your own.

5.Do you agree that God always knows whats best for you? Why or why not?

6. In what areas of life, is it most difficult to choose God's reasoning over your own?

7. In what area is it easiest?

8.What decisions can you make right now regarding God's reasoning to lead a breakaway life?

Remember, the right outcome comes from the right belief.

Doesnt it look like he's asking "wasn't the video an awesome video?" xP

Stay tuned for our next update, readers!

See you again this Saturday, same time, same place.

Jonah

Hey there! Welcome back to the fireBRANDS blog. :)

Here's what happened during last weeks service.

As usual service started with a prayer

After prayer there was a toilet break for those who needed to use the loo.
Then ICE BREAKER!!!

Haha and yes it involves Samurai's

Rules: Use your hand as a sword and slash it towards any random victim while saying war cries(don't really hit your victim by the way) and the victim has too lift his sword (hands) and block the 2 people next to him who will be trying to kill him. :D

Well after the ice-breaker, it was time for worship.

Before I go on, Nicholas is back from Cambodia!!! Woohooo!!

He shared about what he did during Cambodia

One of the awesome things he did was meet a person who raised the dead.

How awesome is that.

Then we watched an amazing video by Daniel Tan, also on Cambodia - this one he made for World Outreach.

And what's super is that our very own fireBRANDS are indeed reaching the nations=)

Okay onwards to the next session and the speaker for the night...

Tan Le Roy!!!

What did he share about??

The Book Of Jonah (Chapter 1)

- Well God asked Jonah was asked to preach to the people of Nineveh.
-The reason why God wanted him to preach there is to show that the Lord loves them.

- Instead Jonah disobeyed and instead of preaching he ran in the opposite direction.

-And as he was running away a terrible storm happened.
-The sailors panicked and after a while found out that Jonah was the reason of the storm.
- They through him of board and the storm calmed and God send a big fish to swallow him.
-And the sailors accepted Christ.

So what can we learn from this??
Even through our mistakes, God can still bring good out of it.

And F.Y.I it was a big fish that swallowed Jonah. Not a whale.

Well thats all for today's blog. See you all next week. :D

Breakaway

Heyyy!! Welcome back to another edition of the fireBRANDS Blog!
Well, the service started with a prayer

by Gary of course.

So, the prayer points were

• For the people from The PLAN '11. That they would have a safe journey back home
• fireBRANDS Annual Youth Camp '11
• The Worship
• The Sermon
  

After that, we formed a large circle and we prayed for the person on
our right. That we'll find our purpose in life in God's will.

After prayer, (and the toilet break) we had ice breakers! (as KL people call it, Jell Time!)
It was the watermelon game.
Yummy.

The rules were. You had to pass the 'watermelon' to the person next to you and making the
sound of eating watermelons.

First victim.

Benjamin has a funny way of eating his watermelons
Woosh!

So its punishment time~!

...the so called 'punishment'. Moving your hips in a circle.

After that fun time of ice breakers. It was time for worship
Led by Eulene Ooi.

Jonathan Choong. 15. Guitar

Joshua Tan. 14. Drummer. Single (According to Sharon).

Eulene introducing the new worship team people

Heyy there! Welcome to fireBRANDS

Well, before the next session. We prayed for a special person that night
None other then Samantha Tan, she's one of the new worship team members
By the way, she's doing Guitar and Vocals!

On to the next session. A video, titled Breakaway by Andy Stanley
(In case you don't know who he is, he is a good friend of Chris Tomlin.)

Part 1 of 6 : A Way Out


When you were a child what did you want to be when you grow up?

We all want to be unique in our own ways. So how do we break out of
the pack?
By running a way from it?

Modern culture suggests that we do so.

"If you run away from your past you wasting years of your life and complicating
it and breaking hearts in the process."

We have to get sync'd with Our Creator because He created us.

The three main points

| Belief | Decisions | Outcome |

We belief that we can change our outcome.
Changing decisions doesn't affect outcomes!

If you want to change the outcome. You must rethink what you believed in
Ask yourself this

• Where am I believing wrong

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Be transformed by the renewing of the mind. By thinking
and believing differently.

There's is no such thing as a clean renovation (totally true, here's a
picture to prove it)


Renovations always take longer than they say.
But, renovations can have a spectacular outcome.


Amazing isn't it?

Renovating out beliefs is by taking out the old stuff and putting in the new stuff.

----

When you're transformed, then you will be able to
recognize God's will for you.

The way you look at the world will effect your decisions and ultimately your outcome.

---
We have to thank out parents because they gave us the belief (or Operating System)
that set us to make right decisions.

Bible: The book of Truth.

Question: What are the deeply held beliefs that led you to make the decisions
that brought you to this place?

Remember, its all about renovating the old to get the new.

----

After the video, it was Discussion Time by Sharon Leow.
Questions

1. What were your dreams during childhood?
2. What are some of the most significant decision that have affected the outcome?
3. If so, what were the deeply held beliefs for the decision?
4. When have you attempted to run away from the outcomes from the decision and what was the result?
5. If you could change one outcome. What would it be?
6. What beliefs do you need to reexamine in order to break away from this area?

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Well, that's all for this weeks post. Have great week and God Bless!