PaoloPunzalan.com

“I was introduced to the church but not to Jesus.”

This stuck with me when I was having a conversation with Toch. He grew up with wonderful Christian parents.  He was sheltered, protected and well taken cared of.

But when he moved to Manila to study, he was all on his own.  His family, friends, church mates were not there.  He was lost, became lost or got lost.

But whatever the case may be, one thing was missing – a relationship with Jesus.

He had been introduced to the church (the people, the organization, the ministry).  But sadly, he never got to meet Jesus.

Good thing, his college buddy, Crunchie introduced him to Christ.  While they were both getting high with drugs, Crunchie met Christ.

He then reached out to his buddy, Toch.  “Pare sama ka sa akin… eto, mas ibang klaseng high.” (This one, you’ll get a different type of high).

Both of them get discipled, trained and now making a difference where God’s placed them.

Toch, who is now our Senior Pastor in Victory GenSan, said,

“My prayer everyday is that we will build a church that will introduce people to Jesus, not to the church.  Church is great.  But introducing them to Jesus is way better.”

Here’s the restoration story from G.J. I shared last Sunday.

Please take the time to read.  This story is so powerful, it gave me so much hope for families that have been marred by selfishness and broken by sin.

Here it is…

Hi pastor pao! I saw your tweet about any recent testimony and I wanna share something to you and to the rest of the congregation

I’m the only believer in my family and the past 6mos has been one of the major storm that hit my family. My dad accused my mom for having an affair with his friend, but in fact it was him who has been cheating on my mom since my brother and I were kids. It has been a mess. A lot of people had been involved, so many hearts have been broken into pieces. It came to a point where my dad was physically and emotionally abusing my mom. He was threatening his friend and his family and cops has been involved too. They were in the process of divorced. I hated my dad and I’ve been praying that God will just take him away from my family and disappear forever.

But God had a different plan, instead of changing our situation, He started changing our hearts.

He blessed me with peace and assurance that He is in control and that I just have to trust Him. My mom started reading my Bible, my dad asked me about God and my relationship with Him … I’ve been praying for my parents’ salvation since I got saved in 2006, I had some moments when I was upset with God on why He is not saving my parents and bro, but every sunday I see some people who are getting saved, my patience was really running out, but God knocked in my heart again and told me to wait and just trust Him.

And now, God restored my family. My mom and dad are not pushing through with their divorce, my dad finally apologized and admitted everything that he have done in the past. They’ve been going to church every Sunday and I see them reading the Bible together.

God has been really faithful and whenever I think about it, I can’t stop crying on how God works. He works in a beautiful way. my God is an awesome God. He truly is!

In our message last night, I shared a testimony of a father who saw firsthand the miracle working power of God.  Here’s the story of Guia Baluyot …

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Hi Pastor Paolo. I will attempt to write to you in length what happened to her. My daughter is now 9 years old and if you see her you wouldn’t find any trace that one time she had congenital heart disease.

She was born on January 30 of 2001 in Angeles University Foundation Hospital in Pampanga. My wife had a normal pregnancy and a normal delivery. Our daughter looked healthy upon delivery. One thing that we noticed though was that she was having difficulty in feeding. She couldn’t take milk in normal amounts. It’s as if she’s drowning when she was being fed. After 5 days my wife noticed that she looked deathly pale. She keeps on yawning and gasping for air. I was in Manila at that time. I received a call from my wife. She was crying over the phone. She told me that Guia was in the emergency room of Makabali Hospital in San Fernando, Pampanga. I decided to drive back home to be with them. While I was driving I started to contact several of my friends who are doctors. I was a Medical Representative at the time. The doctor who responded to my call was Dr. Jimenez. I told him the situation. He immediately attended my daughter. After a few minutes I received a call from this doctor. He told me that they need to bring Guia to a hospital and she needed to be intubated either in UST or at Fe Del Mundo Hospital. She ended up going to Fe Del Mundo Hospital. I immediately proceeded there and waited for the ambulance that was carrying my daughter. When they arrived the hospital staff immediately brought my daughter to the NICU. They found out that she had bilateral pneumonia (both of her lungs were infected) and her heart was enlarged. After several tests they concluded that she had Atrial Septal Defect (ASD) and Patent Ductus Arteriousus (PDA). Their main concern though was treating her lung infection. Two doctors handled her case, a neonatologist and a pediatric cardiologist. Their advice was to treat the infection first then do an open heart surgery once she recovered from the infection. The church started praying for us and our daughter. We stayed in the hospital for more than a month. Her condition was good one day and worse the next. One of the babies lying next to her in the NICU who had a similar case, who even looked healthier, didn’t make it. But our daughter survived.

This wasn’t the end of the fight though. The infection may have gone but the holes were still there. We were discharged from the hospital but we have been instructed to come back to Manila for a follow up check up. After one month we went to her cardiologist. She said that the heart murmurs are still there but she will give her a few more months to see if the condition improves. We were now advised to come back after 3 months. When the time came we went to her doctor again. But before seeing her we were told to have our daughter undergo 2D Echocardiogram at the Heart Center. My wife assisted my daughter during this exam. What she told me later made the hairs of my body raised. She told me that when our daughter was undergoing 2D Echo the staff first saw the holes. After awhile they couldn’t find them anymore. So they called a higher up to do the examination. Finally the results came. Zero defects! We immediately brought the result of the exam to her cardiologist. She said, “You’re daughter is healed. She’s fine now.” Before we left the clinic the doctor’s secretary raised her voice and asked the doctor, “Doktora kailan po sila babalik?” The doctor replied, “Di na sila babalik.” I will never forget that moment.

My daughter got healed because God answered our prayers and the prayers of the church. We serve an awesome God!