Posts

Showing posts from December, 2019

Send Off

Image
These free bibles are going to Negros Occidental as a request from a dear sister who received a burden from the Lord towards the spread of the gospel. The Lord has faithfully provided for both our family's needs and the ministry's needs for over a year now despite having no regular paycheck or sponsors. We are resolved never to ask, solicit, or let any person know about our lack, and make our requests known only to God. We are seeking His glory not in the answers that come but in seeing His mighty hand at work in each instance, so we might declare to all that the Lord answers whatever is asked for the lifting up of His name. He never fails. We also had the privilege to encourage another dear sister who visited us to start giving out the gospel to people on her own, so we gave her some tracts. By God's grace she took our plea as good advice and went out to do so. This particular sister loves the Lord dearly and has often facesd resistance from her family but she

The Modern Cancer

Prayerlessness is the cancer of modern Christendom. Shallow, short-lived, instant, and irreverent prayer. Yet for many, to be able to say a touching monologue before people is already prayer. But prayer is single-mindedly directed to God and to God alone. Often we are found to gather with people who are both strangers and allergic to waiting and being still before the Lord. I remember the prayer meetings I have had with two brothers in the early hours between midnight and morning, long after the leader has finished leading the prayer the other two would still continue for another hour with their face on the floor. Inversely, I say this to my shame, when I slid into sin a decade after, personal prayer was erased from my life, and replaced with the false, shallow, and poweless facade of public or group prayer. I would pray with friends, but shortly after would be snoring. My prayerless years were fraught with short-temper, fear, depression, lack of vision, lack of desire for fellowship

This Blasphemous Mass of Christ

I do not believe that the Father of Truth will reprimand me for refusing to sit in with the scornful or to stand in the way of sinners, who for the sake of carnal gaiety celebrate an erroneous holy day along with the world when I am called to worship my God in spirit and in truth. Replacing a pagan god's holy day for Christ's birth is not worshipping in truth, but living in error, for anything done without faith is sin.  And to those who will say that such a time as this when the world has Christ's birth in mind can be taken advantage of to share Him further, lovingly do I tell you: if they do not have Christ in mind every day for the whole year, they will not have Him in mind for one. Ye merely want to justify setting aside Christ just this one time to be happy with the same world who has declared war with the God you professedly worship.  To wait for any festival just to proclaim Christ is to play straight into the devil's hands. Celebrating the mass of Chris

Last Night

Image
This was an exhortation in the middle of 2018 to the blessed saints in Batia, Bulacan, and is a repost of what I wrote last March 25th, 2019. My wife and children had to leave me for the night to go back to our rented house and continue packing our things for the scheduled move. Only my son was left to tend to me but he was sleeping up on the loft. As I was laying alone on my floor mat I happened to click on this video again, and remember the Lord's goodness as the message towards the end spoke to me. Truly, my God is a God of mercy and goodness. The Spirit and the bride say, Come. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus. 

Year End Musings

Image
Evening and morning comes so naturally that I tend to take it for granted, even in the early morning watches. The house is nearly done but we have already spent the whole week here, adapting well to the overly cold and foggy mornings, the crowing of chickens, and blaring music from our early-rising neighbors. It is only starting to sink in that we finally, by Father's gracious hand, are in our very own house. Many were the times I would stop to sit and be awed at what Father has allowed me to do. I had two months to learn and design the septic system, engineering and architecture, plumbing, roofing, and reinforcement - before commencing to build it. Time, money, and expertise were all against me. All I had was the desire to wait on God for what He wanted me here for. In a span of two and a half months, while our landlord kept visiting to make sure we were packing to move out of their property by year's end, the work slowly began moving forward. We had sold our car, bu

Glory

Image
As I was preparing to close the day yesterday, a message from the dear brother we visited came in. The Lord had finally taken his mother home. For a moment I paused from activity and breathed a sigh of thankfulness. The longing her children had for her pain to end was mercifully heard. On this earth we can only yearn for the end of our pains, but the Lord wills to free us from it. How precious are His thoughts towards His children. How great is the sum of them! If we were to count them they would be more in number than the sand on the sea. (Psalm 139) It was endearing gesture to receive this image. I wanted to have taken this myself last time I was with her but was not able to. She was on her way to the hospital for treatment then. I have this habit of snapping moments in my head and spending time to gather my thoughts about what I saw; she was on her way out for temporal treatment, but in truth, it was a day's march nearer home. For a saint of the Lord, death does nothing

A Great Honor

Image
It was a busy week for the church body I fellowship with, having to attend to a schedule with visiting brethren from the United States who are coming in to see what the Lord has done through the generosity of saints from abroad. Yet not to sound ungrateful, my heart is not in pleasing people, but in ministering to my Lord. I did not participate in the church activities in anticipation of the arrival of one of the least of God's saints, a seeking brother whom I recently met last week. He came home because his mother, a beloved saint of the Lord is sick. This has been one of the greatest privileges God has granted me in my life. Well worth traveling for four hours to see this brother whom I've never met, to meet his dear sister, and to be with them at this trying time. But most importantly: to hold the hand, and look into the gentle eyes, of this sickly but dear saint, who grows weaker by the day. She came to know the Lord even before she married, in a land one would leas

Steady Build

Image
The wall was not in the plan but due to the neighborhood children playing incessantly inside the grounds even while we're building, it was necessary for their safety to build it anyway. This set us back a month from the scheduled build and took away a considerable amount from the budget, but by Father's providence, it gave me time to revise crucial design flaws on the structure and further strengthen it. It is one thing to see this on the screen again and again, but when it was finally lifted up to its place I fell in awe of the Lord's goodness. It stood at over 10 feet, and once finished the structure will be around 12 feet tall - from the floor. From the ground well over 15 feet. I was just humbled by what God had allowed me to make. I have been customizing every interest I had. Only a few things I have owned remained stock, I just had to make it mine by personalizing it. But I never thought the list would include our house. We spent our very first night here,