HMCC of Singapore Retreat

After a long flight, Pastor Seth and I arrived into Singapore early Friday morning. It's always a blessing to be greeted by one of our alumni. We will be driving into Malaysia tomorrow morning for the start of the retreat. We look forward to how God will move at the retreat. We would appreciate your prayers!

• Pray for Pastor Seth as he delivers God's Word and ministers to the people. 
• Pray for the both of us as we give a relationship talk and minister to the guys and girls separately. 
• Pray for open hearts and that people would be spiritually fed.
• Pray for the Singapore Church to be growing spiritually healthy.

I will try and keep everyone updated as much as possible. You can go to www.sethskim.com for more updates. Thanks for your prayers! Hope you are all being refreshed and renewed in the Lord!

"Stay Ready, It's Only Halftime"

Hi all! First time in Texas. Enjoying time with family and grandma. Having lived in Michigan almost my whole life, I don't see much of this that often:

(Palm trees in Houston.)

After a long day, I got to read Luke 12, and it is full of great topics. One of them is about spiritual readiness (vv.35-40). 

This really hit me because as much as I want to control my circumstances, I can't. The only thing I can really affect is my state of preparedness for when something happens. On these family trips, it's easy for me to have a complaining spirit and blind myself to the bigger picture of resting and investing love in my family that God is calling me to. 

Spiritual growth and stewardship is a matter of attitude (vv.45-46). Like in this picture, you can either focus on the ugly, messy parking lot below, or the beautiful things above:

(outside a Mexican restaurant in San Antonio.)

It's easy to not have the right perspective and slack spiritually in the context of our community, too. Love takes faith, but it's also hard work! Through this chapter, Jesus is giving me words of wisdom not to become blind to the bigger picture, but to keep my head in the game - it's only halftime!

I hope and pray that God will help us find rest in Him to approach the upcoming season refreshed and recharged. Not deflated, like this poor guy:

("Tiny," at Dallas-Ft. Worth airport. That's his index finger, folks.)

Seek and You Will Find - Luke 11

Happy Boxing Day Team 242! I hope everybody's been having a relaxing and blessed holiday break. My holiday break has basically consisted of three things: eating, catching up with friends, and family time. It's always a challenging time for me to come back home because it requires a lot of patience and compassion for me to support and be there for my widowed dad. Ever since my mom's passing three years ago, I've seen my dad become more and more anxious/depressed with his time and life.

Despite this though, praise God for a more fruitful Christmas lunch yesterday. My brothers and I went to eat at a made-to-order sushi buffet for lunch and I was encouraged by the conversation and enthusiasm from my dad. Normally he does not like to leave the house and also does not eat too much when we go out to eat. This time though, he was more talkative and also ate a lot more than he usually does.

As I come home to visit more and more, my burden to pray for my family increases more and more. I do see God's love and faithfulness in redeeming some of our family wounds but it is still far from being fully healed. Reading today's passage in Luke reminded me of God's amazing love to those who cry out to Him in prayer. I oftentimes find myself feeling self-sufficient and not willing to ask for help (even from God). However, more and more, I find myself in situations or circumstances where I have no control over anything. I cannot control whether my dad is able to get back on his feet and live more purposefully and passionately. The only thing I can do is do my part as a son to visit home and make time for him. The rest is up to God to provide healing and support for my dad.

Another thing that I realized during this time was that I'm not sure when I will be visiting my home next. I do not anticipate any vacations coming up to New Jersey so it's definitely something I want to pray about to discern how I can still support and love my family from Michigan.

Go against the flow - Luke 6

Hi everyone! I'm looking forward to staying connected to everyone through our blog post!

Luke 6
Whether it's the Sermon on the Mount found in Matthew or the one I read in Luke, I'm always challenged from the teachings of Jesus found in these verses. It goes against the flow of our culture and what my flesh is naturally wanting to do. Not many will think that it is a blessing to be poor, hungry, weeping or to be hated, excluded, insulted or rejected by others. In fact, these are situations I would want to avoid. Loving our enemies and not judging others seems to go against the fleshly reactions to those I find unpleasant and might not always get along with.

These words from Jesus are a good reminder that although it's not easy to live this way, they are the building blocks for a strong foundation found in verses 46-49. If I am not intentional in building a strong foundation by doing it God's way, then I will collapse. I was reminded of the importance of a strong foundation from my son, Elliot. In his tech ed class, the students were told to build a bridge that would be tested later on to see if it will hold up to some weight. Elliot's bridge ended up collapsing under the weight. He re-figured what changes he needed to make and attempted to build a second bridge. Thankfully, the second bridge was stronger and withheld the weight!

If I want a strong foundation that will withhold anything that will come my way, I need to live according to the teachings of Jesus and not to the teachings of this world. The logo on this shirt was popular during my college years. Going against the flow of culture when it contradicts God's Word is never easy, but that is what it takes to build a strong foundation. Maybe this could be our next life group tshirt logo :)

Luke 4

Dear Life Group,

I hope you all are doing well as the holidays are approaching in a few days. Covenant also finished off the year with a Christmas party, which was a great time of fellowship and reflecting on all that God has done in 2012. As much as I felt like I was on survival mode most of this year, looking back there are truly many evidences of God's loving care during my toughest moments. I am so thankful that we have a God who came to this earth to relate with the struggles and pain we go through. My passage for today was on Luke 4 where Jesus is first tempted in the wilderness. Three times, Satan tries to get Jesus to do what he wants but Jesus fights Satan off each of those times by quoting Scripture. Satan has never appeared to me in person like in this passage, but I sure do hear voices in my head that tell me things like "Do you really think God can do XYZ?", which leads me to hopelessness and despair. From this passage, I am learning that it is really important to use Scripture as a tool to fight off Satan's attacks. Because my 2 year old son always tries to distract me when I am reading the Bible, I have tried to find creative ways to saturate my soul with the word of God. Some tactics have included listening to the 'Praise Baby Collection' and taking glances at my scripture memory cards while playing with my son. :) I can easily tell that I didn't get my dose of God's word for the day/week, when I find myself getting irritated and having a bad attitude towards those around me. As Jesus says "Man shall not live on bread alone", it is my prayer that we will see God's word as our daily sustenance, something we cannot live without.

Kings and Startups

Hi everyone!

Yesterday I returned from a business trip to MIT, out near Boston. First time there! It was fun riding the subway, visiting other campuses too (BU and Northeastern), though it rained the first half we were there. That was a little less fun. The entrepreneurship scene is growing here, for sure. Our host (whom we found through airbnb.com) turned out to be a local entrepreneur who personally knew some of the UM college grades who had recently moved out there. Talk about small world.

The students and faculty/staff we met there were very nice, and very smart. We had met with them to get feedback on our company's product - a Web portfolio that showcases a college students' experiences and work - and also explore the possibility of partnering together in the future (they get to use our product, and we get new users). And they gave really good thoughts and feedback. A lot of it was of the "improvement" variety.

When you design something, you always have to consider outside opinions. Feedback comes from anywhere, in all shapes and sizes, and it's important to listen with an open mind especially when that person is very different from you. "Like attracts like," but surrounding yourself with similar people of similar opinions is not the way to succeed in a startup company. Instead, we're learning to cherish differences and appreciate diverse insights, even if they disagree with our own.

This really was highlighted in a Bible passage I read recently, 2 Chronicles 10. King Rehoboam, Solomon's son, consulted with different advisors on how to treat his people. In the end, he basically did what he had already decided he would do, and chose to work with the people whose opinions matched his, not those who were wise and did good work.

I wanted to share this because in designing a product, it is so easy to have pre-conceived notions of what's best. It's also easy to skew your priorities and build something for yourself, forgetting who you are actually building the product for. Just like how King Rehoboam should not have made laws to boost himself (that's not the point of having laws), my company and I should never seek to build a product just to benefit ourselves, while not hearing what our users have to say about anything.

team 242's blog kickoff

hi everyone and welcome to our blog! here is the start to our journey throughout the book of LUKE over the next couple weeks and an avenue for us to share our lives since we won't see each other in person. this weekend was packed, but it was a blessing in many ways. i had the privilege of going to the global exec team summit in chicago, and it was a great time connecting with leaders at other HMCC sites and just to be able to seek God together. then the weekend ended with the focus christmas party, where we had a great time eating yummy food and fellowshipping with other single adults :) here is a pic of team 242 representin':

i was blessed by the sermon today b/c it was the same passage we read and reflected about this past wednesday at LG so i felt like it was a confirmation that this is what God wanted to speak to me about personally as well as for our LG. it was another reminder about the importance of having a true heart of worship and i feel like God was really driving that home in me throughout the weekend. reflections on LUKE 1: 1) it's interesting how even though Zechariah & Elizabeth were "upright in the sight of God" and observed all of the "Lord's commandments and regulations blamelessly", he still failed to have enough faith to believe in the words of the angel that Elizabeth would bear a son at an old age. i think this goes to show how difficult it is for us to have an immovable and constant faith in what God can do b/c we are so set in our fleshly logic and perspectives. Zechariah's reaction reveals how we are quick to limit what God can do because of how we view our situations or circumstances and then in turn lose sight of who God is and how He is all-powerful and almighty. 2) it's evident that God has his own time table, and he doesn't operate according to what we think we need or want at a certain time. it's clear that God is able to do the impossible and is not restricted to human limitations. his thoughts really are higher and greater than ours, so i'm challenged to really trust Him with all things, but also to have faith in what God is able to do beyond what i can see now. if i really had genuine faith the size of a mustard seed, i wonder what He really could do. the fact that the consequence of Zechariah's unbelief was pretty severe shows that there is no room for the spirit of unbelief when you're in the presence of God and His words are always trustworthy. 3) it's also encouraging to see how Zechariah's prayers were heard and answered and it also shows that he brought his struggles and difficulties before the Lord to depend on Him. i want to grow deeper in my prayer life and i think this was a good reminder that "the prayer of a righteous man are powerful and effective" so that's something that i want to grow in during the upcoming break/down time. 4) lastly, i'm reminded that we should be content with whatever situation God puts us in (for Zechariah and Elizabeth it was not being able to bear children which must have been a big hardship) and that we should rejoice despite what we feel like we don't get in life esp compared to others. *contentment & trust in His will* btw, ever since we started singing this song, i've had it playing on repeat. it's such a good reminder of who our God is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwybcrHqkeo can't wait to read other people's posts! (doesn't let me do spacing btwn paragraphs so it's all one big one haha)