...by Chris Tiegreen...
But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— he did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.
Where, then, is boasting? It is excluded. Because of what law? The law that requires works? No, because of the law that requires faith. For we maintain that a person is justified by faith apart from the works of the law. Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles too? Yes, of Gentiles too, since there is only one God, who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through that same faith. Do we, then, nullify the law by this faith? Not at all! Rather, we uphold the law.
[Romans 3:21-31]
The gospel takes a lifetime to really understand. Perhaps we will always be exploring its depths and never finding its boundaries. Though we try to rest in the salvation God has offered to us, it still hasn't completely sunk in. We try to earn it, if not by legalism then by proving the earnestness of our faith.
How do we compromise the purity of the gospel? Every time we look at ourselves to see if our salvation is genuine, we have compromised it. When we asked whether we've done enough good works, we've made salvation something to achieve. When we ask whether we believe strongly or purely enough, we've made salvation a matter of our own resolve. Either approach will give a deep sense of anxiety; they both base salvation on the fickle heart of a human being.
What does it mean that God is both just and the One who justifies? It means that the same One who demands holiness accomplishes it for us. The same One who orders a sacrifice of blood provides the sacrifice of blood. He requires of us perfection; in Jesus, He offers His own perfection in our stead.
The remedy for our salvation-anxiety, whenever it creeps back in, is to fix our eyes on Jesus. Don't look within at the quality of your faith, and don't look at the abundance of your works. Look at Jesus. Count on what He has done. Rest in His work. Know that He has satisfied God fully - for you.
Justification takes place in the mind of God and not in the nervous system of the believer...
~ C. I. Schofield ~
My initial plan for this week's holiday was not to see the sunlight at all. Get myself stuck in the room with a book in hand, that sounded really great, huh? On Monday we had homemade burgers for lunch and dinner. Yesterday, on Tuesday, I got instant noodles and two bulls'-eye... yummy to the max. Tuesday was more exciting rather than sitting at home. I do enjoy both sitting at home in peace and quietness and I enjoy going out frolicking in the sun. 
We were at Logo's Hope again. My third time. This time round we had to queue up. The queue took around an hour. I have been trained to queue when I was in Singapore but of course I get others to queue on my behalf while a few of us went to fool around with my camera. 
Whoa~! Look at the massive human traffic. Surely there must be a lot of bookworms in this little island and I thought there aren't many readers in this country. But if you stand and observe, I did stand for less than 5 minutes before I dashed off again to one corner to do something else. Most people came down from the ship empty-handed. Mostly bought one or two books only. 
Oh.. that's what we did during the hour-long queue. I was busy with my camera while they were busy jumping around. I wished I was the one jumping but nobody knows what I want in a photograph. That's kinda upsetting to know. The whole ship was so crowded it was suffocating at one point as I can't stand crowded area. Makes me wanna push everyone away so that I can have more breathing space. In some of the passers-by conversations, there was one lady who made a sharp remark that there wasn't anything to see on the ship. What a horrible thing to say~! There are so many books up there that I can gladly empty all the shelves and bundle those books home in less than 30 minutes. 
All in all we had a great time on the ship with the ice-cream cones, popcorns and cheez-it. The ice-cream tasted different and we had the salty popcorns instead of the caramel popcorns in cinemas. 
Dinner was even better. We had some scallops to chew on and ordered lots and lots of food. Penang... the food haven...
And we were kinda surprise by our abilities to eat. We ordered so much like we've just come out of the wild. The small table for 3 couldn't fit all our plates so we were shifted to the double tables. Just three of us with all the food costing around RM104... we're really very good. 
See... that's Gracie on my left. She just told me that's she the authentic 
At 2:30 p.m. I was thinking about food. My kitchen is close for the week but we need food. So I rummaged through the refrigerator and huge freezer to find these burgers made earlier, a few months back in fact. There are no leftovers in the refrigerator as all my pots and pans were licked clean by guinea pigs of all ages.
That's Logo's Hope. I have been waiting for it since it should open to the public on the 19th of August. But due to some 'technical problem', it was not to be so. The vision of Logos Hope is to bring knowledge, help and hope to the people around the world. 
Even though the weather here has not been very friendly for the past few days, there were still many visitors to the ship. The condition of the bookstore was better compared to Doulos which was quite hot and narrow. 
I was seeing stars after looking at so many books in neat rows of shelves. I was so excited with the CDs and books, especially devotional books which I can't get it anywhere in the bookstores on land. Moreover, the price of the books are really cheap. As the ship is travelling from one country to another, it's hard to put a price tag with the local currency on all the books. Thus, they are using the unit system of 100 units for RM8 which is really really cheap. Most books range around 200 units to 400 units. Of course there are Bibles which cost around 1500 units which my pineapple insisted on wanting it... 
I do not know what words to use to express my excitement to find so many books in a ship. It's overwhelming. I'm going again to grab more books to fill up my shelf. 
So far I've bought RM630 of books. It's kinda shocking as I grabbed every book that I wanted from the shelves and put them into a basket. I've seriously not seen those books anywhere in the market so I must have them. I don't know when Logos Hope will berth at this port again so I don't want to take the risk. 
You don't know how crazy I am just to snap some photos. It was pitch dark and I was standing out at the sea on the floating cement planks. It was wobbly as the waves were not that friendly yesterday night due to excessive rain for four days straight including today. I was trying to get the best shot and fidgeting with the camera's light exposure. It was so wobbly my legs started to feel like jelly. I couldn't think of what will happen if I were to drop into the murky sea water. 
This is my first time standing under the bridge. Because the bridge is connected in parts, the tyres will make thumping sound when driving on those metal bars across the bridge. From below, it sounded more like the train chugging on the tracks. We have very good imagination. We were afraid that the car will jumped off the bridge and land on us down below. 
There were quite a handful of people down there. Beer cans were strewn everywhere. It's not a good place to go alone. Not safe. They were quite rowdy yesterday 
Let the floodgates open that many will receive Him into their lives. The change will start here as we're drawing near to an end. All should be given the opportunity to know the truth and the truth will set each and everyone free. No one should be forced into a religion. Christianity is NOT a religion. It's relationship between the Creator and His creation. We worship the living God. As how it is written by King David...
Look at that... I know it's nice. Thank you for the compliments. That's the result of a heavy labour in the kitchen... actually it took exactly 10 minutes to cook but the preparation takes at least half an hour. 
Oh, just look at that. By now I realize that nyonya cuisine relies heavenly on shallots, galangal, turmeric, belachan, garlic and dried chillies and not to forget the lemongrass. Of course for different dishes there are a little difference in the ingredients as well. See those leaves on the right. Those are kadok leaves which my kids were asked to pluck them from the edge of the drain. They grow wild as not many people want to plant those kinda leaves anymore. Nyonya cuisine is not one where people would want to spend so much time preparing. It's easier to eat in restaurants. 
The main ingredient in otak-otak is FISH~! You will have to clean those fish yourself. Cleaning doesn't mean washing the fish under running tap water or removing the scales. No scales for this kinda small fish. 
Cleaning a fish means decapitating the fish in a gruesome way. You can opt to use a knife but I prefer using a pair of sharp scissors. I have no skills in using a knife. I always imagine slicing my fingers along with everything else thus, the use of scissors is more relevant. Now, cleaning the fish means chopping off the head with no feelings at all. By the time I was doing the third fish, I felt like puking all over. But after the 10th fish, I got the hang of using my power to chop off the fish's head *sorry fish* then cut a slit on its abdomen to remove the intestines, bile and all those yucky stuff. 
To make really good otak-otak, you have to make sure that they're wrapped in banana leaves. To do so, I stole a banana leaf from the neighbour's banana tree. Hhhmmm... I didn't really steal it, just cut it off without asking permission. Anyway the banana tree is planted on a common ground of the apartment building. 
I have no skills in wrapping otak-otak. So I used coloured staples and tried my best to make it into a small little sampan. As long as the otak-otak is not leaking out then it is good. I just want the egg custard to form in the inside without pouring out all over the steamer. 
Steam it for 10 minutes... and you'll get what I've shown you in the first photo.