Simply Jesus

The last week was somewhat interesting I would say. So I didn't even know that on Feb 3, it was the National Prayer Breakfast. I only found out that it was a special day listening to the radio and them remarking how President Obama made an uncharacteristic speech at the breakfast. Granted he didn't speak last year so they might have been comparing the speech to that as well. One of the interesting statements that President Obama stated

"And let me tell you, these past two years, they have deepened my faith" and "My Christian faith then has been a sustaining force for me over these last few years" and finally "When I wake in the morning, I wait on the Lord, and I ask Him to give me the strength to do right by our country and its people.  And when I go to bed at night I wait on the Lord, and I ask Him to forgive me my sins, and look after my family and the American people, and make me an instrument of His will." pulled from the White House website HERE


Now I find it interesting due to fact that President Obama professes his faith on this day, but in the past he hasn't been outspoken about his faith or has set the record straight on some of the countries views on his religion. It is interesting that at this point in his Presidential career that he brings it up. Granted, I am not one to judge he is truly in fact a follower of Christ and a Christian, but I also believe that actions that are outwardly done should reflect what you believe in. I honestly haven't seen actions done by the President over the past 2 years align with a Biblical perspective. 


Aside from that, the Lunar New year was celebrated last Thursday, Feb 4th. It's weird that we don't get day off as a holiday, I mean compared with some of the other holidays we get off, we should get this one as well, but I guess the government is bias towards certain holidays. This year is the year of the Rabbit. I got to celebrate the new year with family out here, although we didn't celebrate it till Sunday night. We had lots of food, eleven courses of food. Yes, you heard right 11 courses of food. Chinese meals are pretty much always an odd number of courses. It went from seven courses, to nine, and finally eleven courses. All the food was amazing. The only bad thing was that it rained pretty hard Sunday evening and we were planning on having dinner outside, so we had to move it inside. 

I volunteered to work on Saturday and ended up working for 9 hours. I got to help with some procedures and tests that we were running on a project on Saturday and got to be on the boat most of that time. Working on the weekend was pretty nice, although I do have to say, I don't want to do it every weekend if I can help it. I did get paid OT though for coming in on Saturday. I also saw the New Queen Elizabeth  while it was in Honolulu for its maiden port of call here (and her maiden voyage around the world I believe). It is a pretty sweet looking cruise ship. I have also decided that I would like to go on a cruise sometime, I would like to take the world cruise if possible. 107 days on a cruise boat going to different countries and ports, that would be pretty amazing. 

This past week, New Hope of Honolulu hosted their conference entitled "Simply Jesus" I actually didn't go to the conference part, but I did attend the Unite Worship night on Friday and then also went and listened to Pastor Francis Chan, author of  Crazy Love, on Saturday night at the church's 5pm service. Now I wanted to listen to Francis Chan preach since I read his book Crazy Love. I do have to say I didn't know what he was getting at during his sermon at church that night. He did bring up a few times that we, Christians, should be more courages when it comes to sharing our faith. I agree with this wholeheartedly.  He also gave many verses throughout the sermon, but I didn't get what his theme was or the overall picture of the sermon. I might have just been oblivious to it or just have plain missed it, but I will have to listen to it again. If you would like to watch the sermon, it is located on New Hope of Honolulu's webpage, or just click HERE. One other observation that I saw with this church is that, besides that the church is large (has 5 services), they are heavily into technology and "show and jazz" during the church service. They do incorporate dancing and other forms of worship in their service. They also have high tech video recording capabilities. It's hard to tell from just going once to the church on how Biblically sound pastor is, but again, I can't be the ultimate judge. I do like one story from Francis Chan when he asks leaders in India, "Everyone so intense here, is there there anyone here that just calls them self Christian here? "And the leaders' response was"Why would you do that? You lose everything when you become a Christian, it's only ones that do it that are serious about it." How true is that though, in many countries that there is persecution, there is a "crazy intense" nature to Christians compared to "Christians" in the United States. It is just amazing how easy we have it here and how we take God's grace for granted.