By One Man’s Error and One Man’s Triumph

The sound of the trumpets and shouts broke the silence of the horizon. Suddenly, another sound louder than the trumpets shook the whole land. It was the sound of crashing. The famed walls of Jericho went crashing down. Once deemed impenetrable by it’s surrounding cities, the city went down after a curious band of men and women marched outside the city walls.

Thus, ended the existence of the city of Jericho by the hand of God through the people of Israel. <Read More>

Finding Joy part 3

The Real Secret of Happiness.

All our lives we thought that life should be fun. Although it is true that we serve a God who wants us to be happy, fun was never written on the Bible in the context of something that God wants us to have in life. In fact, Pastor David Assherick says that the word fun never occurred in the Bible, but the word joy occurs more than 200 times. This tells a lot about the difference between fun and joy. Read more.

Finding Joy part 2

On reasons to be joyful in Christ.

True happiness could not be found in money, possessions or power. Yet in order to find real joy in one’s life, we need to know why do we need joy. Why do we have to be really happy?

Every Monday evening, our group dug deep into the study of finding Christ. A certain book called “The Steps to Christ” by E.G. White has become our guide throughout our quest with discussion material provided by... Read more.

Finding Joy part 1

Misconceptions on things that make us happy and things that bring joy.

What makes you happy? Is it wealth? Is it power? Is it possessions? In this God forgotten world, we have gone through depths to find one thing few people could ever find. Some think it’s money, or power or possessions. But more often than not, we could not find joy.

I am not referring to any individual. Read more.

Salt

1:30 AM. I arrived home after a really blessed Sabbath. A lot of things happened from morning till late night. Sabbath truly is the busiest yet the most blessed day ever. 

The morning greeted me with the old paintbrush. Once again, Joey Velasco (whom I recently discovered died three or four weeks ago) touched the innermost sanctum of my thoughts with his gripping take on the prodigal son. Who would envision that the prodigal son could be an old man? Besides, the Father in the famous parable represented God, isn't it then possible to have an old man come back to his Father? After all his aimless wanderings in the world, and after tasting all the temporal things the world has to offer, he has decided to return to his Father even when he was at the sunset of his life. My eyes were further opened with the testimonies of two former inmates in New Bilibid prison (now active members of the church) who were given an nth chance, and was finally able to return home to their Father.

Afterwards, I was bombarded by the naked truth that though the ideal is to be responsible as a Christian, a lot of people fall short of doing so. A lot of people seem to try to take the fast and easy lane even if it takes them to bend a lot of rules. In the same manner, we should also be responsible Filipinos and not take the easy way out of the country just because the president did everything from increasing the prices of gas to combs. After all, we ourselves should take the lead in the country and not the president. We should live responsibly not just as Christians, but as Filipino Christians. 

The bulk of the hustle and bustle came from the Deaf Ministry. Once more, I could only stand in awe at the Lord for blessing this struggling ministry to be accepted in the world. Not many Christian denominations are fully aware or fully up to the challenge of meeting the needs of the deaf, not to mention the disabled. Likewise, not many Seventh-Day Adventist Churches would be up to the big responsibility of answering the call to minister unto the deaf brethren, even though the Bible tells "Then I saw another angel flying in midair, and he had the eternal gospel to proclaim to those who live on the earth—to every nation,tribe, language and people." - Revelation 14:6

Yet the Deaf Ministry has developed once again as a caring group for people with hearing impaired.They have been constantly developing into an organized ministry, something that we, the hearing members could not even think of doing. New rules were set as we went along, at the same time, the ministry had a shot in leading the Youth Ministries program. It was a stand-out program with the whole congregation participating in the simple songs and lessons that we taught!

The culmination of the day was by far the best. Right now, my mind still could not rest. It has had its refill of information, emotion, and action. It's one thing to enjoy a Sabbath of service, but it is entirely another thing to strike up a balance between serving and being served. 

Though the day had already expired, the mind seemed to be ready for input and that's just what I got. This was just one of the few moments I really appreciate with people in church. They'd be more than willing to listen to your burdens in all aspects of your life and at the same time offer you timely advise or offer you a listening ear. While those advises and topics that we have talked about simmer in my head, some of which could never be uttered out of the circle, one thought really stuck to my mind. While talking at Wendy's tonight, our pastor who was with us told us that as the youth of the church, we have to stand up and have a say in some of the matters regarding the directions of the church. It's the way we should be salts who would season the church with the way that it should go. How ironic that I was holding a bag of salt at that time. 

I'm still holding it right now. It's true. We should be salts. 

"You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses itssaltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men." Matthew 5:13

Let us all continue in our respective ministries and keep all the corners of the church with fresh ideas to improve our spirituality.

Basketball Fever

I once quipped during the height of the World Cup 2010 in South Africa, that if Filipinos embraced football, we could have been contenders for the World Cup. We could be twice as fast as any World cup players. There's no need to measure height since the height isn't a real big deal in football. If we ever decided to join the World Cup, we could probably be at par with the best teams in the World. We're better off playing football.

Yet a few months after, here I am watching old clips from old PBA games particularly the Toyota-Crispa Reunion in 2003 where most of the old guys sweat it out like they were in their mid-20s. It was a fun match full of heart and passion. Those were times when most of the players wore short shorts and could really fly (yes, guys could wear short shorts and get cheered at by beautiful girls). I don't know about now since I never get to watch any of the games.

Moreover, I bought a PSP three weeks ago. I loaded some games. If you'd look at it, you'd definitely laugh. I have two different versions of an NBA game and I get to play those two more than the other games on my device. I just caught myself today, and had a good laugh out of it.

In another note, the book by Rafe Bartholomew is now out in the Philippines. It's called "Pacific Rims." (The author didn't pay me to promote this. I haven't even read the book yet.) As the author put it, this is about the Philippines where basketball is ingrained in every street in each of the 7,107 islands of our country. In an interview, the author even says that the most basic aspects of our society revolves around basketball, politics for one, is also affected by the hard court.

True enough, this country may not boast of tall players, but watching the game of old guys bumping and bruising each other to get an orange ball inside a hoop is exhilarating. Sure, catching the one point lead of one team in football gives you the thrills as well, but the action of basketball seemed to be more appealing to the hearts of every Filipino.

Sure, anyone could enumerate wonderful reasons why Filipinos should take up football instead. Yet once you hear the "swooop" of the ball hitting the net, the reasons fade and the game begins.

Mis mo!