But his word was in mine heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I was weary for forbearing, and I could not stay. Jeremiah 20:9b A day and a month after the incident I went out with a deep yearning to once again publicly proclaim my Christ. My daughter assisted me today, as I am still unable to walk properly following the complications that came along with the wounds that are still in the process of healing internally. But I was assisted mightily today with the gospel, in power, and in speech. 90% law, 10% grace. The crowd growing visibly uncomfortable throughout the proclamation yet listening intently till the end. We were enabled to give away bibles to the listeners who were eager to both ask and receive them, minus two who were busy with their phones. The Lord pity them. This morning I opened my Android bible translation project again. I started this for my children, to prepare for the day when the Lord converts them. I have finished Matthew and am starting on Mar...

This is a back-post from my Instagram account. A short recap of what caused my present limp that I so thank God for. The present difficulty in walking adds to the perseverance of the spirit in the service of my Lord. Last Dec 20 I sliced my legs in three places with the grinder, a tool that I've been using for a very long time. But on that day, I held it wrong, I positioned myself wrong, and I placed my material wrong. The power tool snagged and flew off my hand to my legs opening up a 5 inch long 3-inch wide gash on the inside of the right knee that reached the bone. It bounced to the left leg and opened a similar deep gash near the ankle, bounced again to my right foot slicing the inside sole, before unplugging itself and resting about two feet away from me. This is the beast that was on it. If you notice three of the carbide teeth are missing. God has sovereignly allowed me to rest this month because of it. And it has opened a tremendous opportunity for deeper examin...

A journal entry. Twilight. First week of January. I am saved. I know this. The Spirit bears witness of Christ in me. Yet I utterly reject nor will I hold on anymore to the quip of one evangelist, 'You can't be a saved sinner. You're either saved or you're a sinner', for I will always be a sinner in this earthly vessel. Not that I live a double life or that I seek to sin, but never before has my nature been so openly revealed to me in such a light, that I despair for my soul, and see no hope, or a will to even continue on to God. My nature is what I am, and I am inclined towards sin helplessly until my demise. I am altogether confounded. I throw myself at the mercy of my God. He is just to judge me. He is just to withdraw mercy from me. My spirit is calloused, nay, leprous. Every vein, every bone. The very fiber of my innermost being, one despicable wretch worthy of the lowest chambers of the abyss. A conceited, heartless, thankless and unlearned hypocrite, who ...

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 ...

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 powerless façade 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...

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...

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. 

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...

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...

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...

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,...

But the LORD.. Jonah 1:4 What great comfort this portion of scripture brings. It conveys the very meaning of all things that happen in the lives of God's beloved children. God takes great delight in giving His children good things. But many people will settle for less: less pain, less trouble, less waiting, less grieving. In doing so, they miss out on the very source of endless bounty and joy. Christ is Himself the greatest reward for those who ask for the best that God can give. The experience of pain spares no one. For both the religionists and godless, when all else is taken away, troubles tend to justify their rebellion, the evidence of an already hardened heart. It drives them further away from the only help they so desperately seek. Ready to blame anyone and everything, except themselves. For the true child of God, however, they see His hand in every facet of their lives, hardships become opportunities for maturity, and troubles drive them further into the loving ar...

I left the construction site earlier than usual because I wanted to fish while I still had daylight. As I was riding on my way to my fishing hole this afternoon I prayed. I prayed that God will glorify His name. God is very kind to me as to gently correct me in the right direction of His will. There are those who preach for the sake of preaching or prepare sermons for the sake of a good sermon. But it is infinitely more rewarding to preach and study to be awed by God's glory. Nothing more.  This afternoon ministry passed just like any other day: people do not even look at you when they take a tract. But after some time pleading with the gospel, the guard inside this building in front of me (it was barred shut so I assumed there was nobody inside) went out to ask for a tract and read it as he went back in. Father is amazing. I will really never know who's listening. I had him in mind as my unseen audience until the end of my pleading. I brought just a handful...

After doing foreman duty at the construction site for most of the day, I proceeded to what has become my usual fishing hole. I brought my gear along plus a handful of tracts, the Lord placing in my mind to fish for at least a few souls before going home. There was a makeshift stall at the corner when I arrived, and I  proceeded to hand out my tracts. A few minutes later a lady alighted from a tricycle and set her stall up right in front of where I was ministering. I must have looked very strange to her, as I received not a few glances while I was proclaiming the good news of Christ to the passersby. But as the evening drew to a close she was intently listening, almost ignoring most of her customers and leaving them to help themselves with her wares. Towards the end of the message, she finally got up and asked for a tract. She read it for a good while. There were a lot of people who passed by me. A few gave me the head to foot look, most of them not even noticing I was...

God has graciously directed us to this part of Bulacan to minister to the people flocking into the cemeteries. We planned to assist the church in today's public ministry in another proposed part of the city but I had the impression that the motive was not for the benefit of the gospel. I have never viewed public proclamation to be a picnic outing, in the sense that those who are expected to bring the good news to the public will not do so unless they go in a group, or with a companion. This I believe is one of the main hindrances of the gospel's furtherance. I am always fearful when I go out alone but I will do so in spite of that fear. Yes, a brother or a group is much preferred, but that is not always the case. Regardless if I go alone or a friend goes with me, I still will go. Praise be to the Lord of heaven and earth, I have a faithful companion with me in this war. The gospel was proclaimed before a passive crowd of passers-by, but the real audience were the ...